Vodafone are a Joke!!!

freekhead

Ive been with BT for the past 3years and just a few months ago Vodafone took them over, ever since the speeds have been all over the place. Im paying for 8mb fibre but rarely get over 2mb and bout 100kbs download. On top of it all my pings are through the roof.
I have rang Vodafone and they cant seem to do anything, they say they do not guarantee speeds and that i live to far away from the town to get full speeds. I live 2km from the exchange, just outside the town and they cant guarantee speeds?
Why am I paying for 8mb and only getting 2mb? And why do they do all this advertising about Fibre powered boradband when its a load of ****!!!! Im furious and sick of paying for this service, does anyone know any decent ISP's in the Kells Co. Meath area????

roast

freekhead wrote: »

Ive been with BT for the past 3years and just a few months ago Vodafone took them over, ever since the speeds have been all over the place. Im paying for 8mb fibre but rarely get over 2mb and bout 100kbs download. On top of it all my pings are through the roof.
I have rang Vodafone and they cant seem to do anything, they say they do not guarantee speeds and that i live to far away from the town to get full speeds. I live 2km from the exchange, just outside the town and they cant guarantee speeds?
Why am I paying for 8mb and only getting 2mb? And why do they do all this advertising about Fibre powered boradband when its a load of ****!!!! Im furious and sick of paying for this service, does anyone know any decent ISP's in the Kells Co. Meath area????

Post your line stats.

freekhead

Downstream Upstream
Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 2096 154
SN Margin (dB) 21.80 29.00
Line Attenuation (dB) 39.00 23.00
CRC Errors 187 58

roast

freekhead wrote: »

Downstream Upstream
Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 2096 154
SN Margin (dB) 21.80 29.00
Line Attenuation (dB) 39.00 23.00
CRC Errors 187 58

With those stats you should certainly get a higher speed. Have you checked your internal setup? Splitters, filters, skyboxes, phone sockets etc?

jor el

freekhead wrote: »

Ive been with BT for the past 3years and just a few months ago Vodafone took them over, ever since the speeds have been all over the place. Im paying for 8mb fibre but rarely get over 2mb and bout 100kbs download.

Vodafone took over BT about 2 years ago. Vodafone have no fibre broadband, so you definitely are not paying for that.

freekhead wrote: »

Why am I paying for 8mb and only getting 2mb?

You're paying for up to 8Mbps, and technically speaking, 2 is up to 8.

freekhead wrote: »

And why do they do all this advertising about Fibre powered boradband when its a load of ****!!!!

That's UPC you're thinking of. Please get your facts straight, and if you're going to go off on a rant about a particular company, make sure you are actually talking about that company.

My guess is you're confusing all of this with the change over to NGB, which may have happened in the last few months, and is just an eircom marketing gimmick. If the change to NGB coincides with the start of the problem, then this is most likely it. Congestion at the exchange when all the lines were bumped up to maximum speed could well be the issue. Vodafone are not in control of this, and can't do anything about it, if that's the case.

krautmick

My question would be, is this happening only at a certain time (e.g. when you come home in the evening) or around the clock.

Your distance from the exchange may be 2km as the crow flies, but that doesn't mean that the cable runs that way. It also doesn't mean the cable is of good quality and the CRC errors would seem to indicate some loss.

As already mentioned, you're not paying for 8meg. In fact you can be lucky to get the 2Meg you're getting, there are other subscribers still much worse off around the country.

The critical issue is, if the delays are down to congestion on the exchange (the backhaul, which you are sharing with a pile of other people) or if its a "line problem". If congestion can be positively ruled out, I would keep pushing for a line test etc, but otherwise its "tough luck".

lucernarian

Okay, well the line may be more than 2km as the crow flies but the attenuation being reported by the modem doesn't lie. The line's roughly 3km long and well able to take a higher speed with such a good signal margin (ignoring that I know people with 4km lines enjoying 4 mbps connections!)

As the connection is using ADSL2+ I would expect that line to take 5 mbps with likely success. Possibly 6 depending on how good the line is, on a good day etc. Talking about contention etc is completely irrelevant in this case, the connection speed is being limited by the profile set on that line. CRC errors mean nothing unless as a temporal measurement, i.e. that it's related to time. That could be the number of CRC errors over a few weeks or a few minutes for all we know.

Jor el, pointing out the up to 8 mbps part is rather pedantic. It's clear that the issue is with Vodafone here, the customer should expect much higher speeds in this instance. Furthermore, Eircom wholesale don't use ADSL2+ for the typical offerings by the resellers and certainly not for connections that only get 2 mbps anyway. Vodafone in this case are using BT Wholesale's equipment which they seem to have installed in Kells and BT's LLU equipment is now apparently ADSL2+ capable according to an informed poster in another thread. This is all part of their strategic partnership thingamajig. But my experience as one such customer with Vodafone is that they (Vodafone using BT's LLU equipment) do have more control over line speeds than eircom wholesale seem to allow.

My advice to the OP is to firstly turn off and back on the router to see if the speed changes (2096 is an odd number to connect at) or indeed if the stats in general change much. Then, post in the talk to: Vodafone forum assuming it remains at slightly over 2 megs. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1270

jor el

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Jor el, pointing out the up to 8 mbps part is rather pedantic. It's clear that the issue is with Vodafone here, the customer should expect much higher speeds in this instance. Furthermore, Eircom wholesale don't use ADSL2+ for the typical offerings by the resellers and certainly not for connections that only get 2 mbps anyway.

How is pointing out the facts of the situation pedantic? It is up to 8Mbps. The OP mentioned nothing about ADSL2+ or BT LLU, so I don't know where you're getting that from. As the OP has said it is 8Mbps he is paying for, then it is most likely to be NGB.

The sync speed is 2Mbps, but the line should be able to go higher than that. If it was previously getting higher speed, then something must have changed recently. It's either eircom or Vodafone that are limiting the speed. eircom provide all the test result and line capabilities, and Vodafone will interpret this and apply a limit. If they refuse to change anything, then there's nothing more you can do with them.

lucernarian

jor el wrote: »

How is pointing out the facts of the situation pedantic? It is up to 8Mbps. The OP mentioned nothing about ADSL2+ or BT LLU, so I don't know where you're getting that from. .

Look closely at the stats the OP provided will ya:) Those speeds are impossible for an ADSL-only connection. ADSL2/+ can sync at multiples of 1 whereas ADSL must sync at multiples of 32.

Unless BT wholesale provide a little extra in sync speed to account for PPPoE like Smart Telecom LLU customers have, the line appears to be connecting at about 2.05 mbps. It's a very odd speed for a line to be limited to though. And as for the 154 kbps upload, that's a mystery to me.

I'm not sure if eircom wholesale provide test results for unbundled lines but fair enough.


In any case, the modem stats clearly show that the max speed is about 2 mbps with a large signal margin so neither congestion nor line quality are the problem here.

Bohrio

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Look closely at the stats the OP provided will ya:) Those speeds are impossible for an ADSL-only connection. ADSL2/+ can sync at multiples of 1 whereas ADSL must sync at multiples of 32.

Unless BT wholesale provide a little extra in sync speed to account for PPPoE like Smart Telecom LLU customers have, the line appears to be connecting at about 2.05 mbps. It's a very odd speed for a line to be limited to though. And as for the 154 kbps upload, that's a mystery to me.

I'm not sure if eircom wholesale provide test results for unbundled lines but fair enough.


In any case, the modem stats clearly show that the max speed is about 2 mbps with a large signal margin so neither congestion nor line quality are the problem here.

You are right.

Thats most likely just a filter problem (like sky, monitored alarm, phone), he needs to check his internal setup.

Both the Attenuation and SNR values will change once he does this.

Look at the upstream speeds, they are giving you an indication of where the issue is. A unfiltered device will normally give you back results similar to this one (out of the ordinary sync rates if compared to their att/snr values).

For example, this line has a SNR of 21 dB but the line is synching at 2096. As you have pointed out 2096 is neither an Eircom profile nor a BT LLU profile (should be 2048). The only way that a line will give back this kind of result is if its max out, meaning that, for example, the customer is on a 4 mb profile but his line can't take that speed and after training both routers decide that the maximum downstream rate is 2096, but if this was the case then the downstream noise margin will be close to the target noise margin (normally around 6 dB) or at least very low (for g.dmt), but in this case the SNR is 21 dB.

There is no way this can happen unless there is some sort of interference (filters). Noise can do this too, normally impulse noise but if that was the case then the line will probably be intermittent too. There are other things than can cause this sort of problem (water leaks for example) but 99% of the time the problem is just a broken filter or an unfilter device such as an alarm, sky etc...

Also the CRC errors. Shame we can't see transmit powers.

My advice is to check his internal setup, if its ok then ask voda to run a PSTN test, if the problem is with the line it will come back as RED (I doubt it though). If everything checks out ok then replace the router, but again, my spider senses tells me is just a filter issue

lucernarian

Note: first 2 paragraphs are rather technical

I think it's theoretically possible to have speed problems while simultaneously having a very healthy signal margin of nearly 22dB (which equates to SNR of 25dB for ADSL2+) but it would involve something that acts as a filter going from 0dB attenuation to 20dB in the space of just over 4kHz! No electronic filter I've ever come across is that good. And a simple attenuation of signal cannot be the problem as both upstream and downstream are affected but downstream is still functional at the same time.

So another alternative is some peculiar source of interference that only affects certain DSL tones but leaves adjoining ones completely intact! This is extremely unlikely but it could be possible, I don't know.

A source of interference is what I suspect rather than a filter problem, but the solutions are similar. Sort out internal phone wiring:) Extensions are the bane of DSL, the more of them that are disconnected, the better.

This leads me to think that the router is somewhat faulty and it's freaking out at using ADSL2+ OR there's a dodgy line card being used in the exchange. OP, as well as fix up your internal wiring (i.e. disconnect the extra sockets, use the modem without a filter in the main socket by itself even temporarily) could you change the modulation type in the WAN settings to ADSL or G.dmt?

Bohrio

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Note: first 2 paragraphs are rather technical

I think it's theoretically possible to have speed problems while simultaneously having a very healthy signal margin of nearly 22dB (which equates to SNR of 25dB for ADSL2+) but it would involve something that acts as a filter going from 0dB attenuation to 20dB in the space of just over 4kHz! No electronic filter I've ever come across is that good. And a simple attenuation of signal cannot be the problem as both upstream and downstream are affected but downstream is still functional at the same time.

So another alternative is some peculiar source of interference that only affects certain DSL tones but leaves adjoining ones completely intact! This is extremely unlikely but it could be possible, I don't know.

A source of interference is what I suspect rather than a filter problem, but the solutions are similar. Sort out internal phone wiring:) Extensions are the bane of DSL, the more of them that are disconnected, the better.

This leads me to think that the router is somewhat faulty and it's freaking out at using ADSL2+ OR there's a dodgy line card being used in the exchange. OP, as well as fix up your internal wiring (i.e. disconnect the extra sockets, use the modem without a filter in the main socket by itself even temporarily) could you change the modulation type in the WAN settings to ADSL or G.dmt?

Both your reasons are perfectly valid

I agree with you when you say that it is theoretically possible to have speed problems while having good snr/att. Most of the time this is due to noise or crosstalk creating huge gaps inside the freq tone range. SNR and Attenuation are just an indication but nobody can be 100% whether there is a fault or not just by looking at the lines SNR or Att.

When I say a filter problem I meant either a broken filter or a unfiltered device. In cases like this logic doesnt apply as the sort of electrical interference we are talking about are not within the "normal" parameters. They affect DSL in a different way, creating "confusion" on both XTUs.

Most of the times is just a monitored alarm or skybox, but I have seen cases where it was just a phone, or even dodgy NTU/socket. Of course, like you said it could be a port problem or even PSTN, but on my experience 9 out of 10 times (probably more) is just internal or like you mentioned the router.

It could be the line card but this should be easy to spot for eircom, a line card carry more than 1 single customer (at least 32) so alarms should go off and they should be aware of this. It is possible that the port might need a reset, worse case scenario the card chipset might need a reset too but that's not a big deal either.

But then again we are just guessing, best thing to do is remove all equipment, phones, etc and test from the main socket, see what results he gets, also try resetting the router!

Also remember the CRC errors!