Speed Decrease [Eircom Broadband]

MichealKenny

Hey guys, My name is Micheal and I have Eircom's 3Mbps package.
My problem is the recent speeds I have been getting, they are awful, in late 2010 my line could handle 4Mbps, in early 2011 my line went down to 1.7Mbps, It happened very suddenly and has stayed the same ever since, I live in a small village and we have a small local exchange capable of 7Mbps, so congestion wouldn't be the problem here, I have had Eircom come over 2 times and they said the line is perfectly fine from the street to the gable, the house has 3 phone line connections and I've tried the router on all and it has stayed the same, I have limited it down to two possible problems:

• The router is faulty.
• There is something wrong with the box that feeds to all 3 extensions.

Recently, the broadband would just not load a web page, I would still be connected, the router would say 1.7Mbps, but the web page just wouldn't load, when I would restart the router everything would be fine, leading to two possible problems

• The router is faulty.
• Congestion (unlikely).

I'm guessing its a problem with the router and I called up Eircom and they basically said "we would be happy to give you our cheap router with 3 year old firmware if you would sign another 12 month contract " so I am not doing that, you're very mean people Eircom

Any help would be welcome, I'll try anything to get my 4Mbps capabilities back, thanks

dub45

MichealKenny wrote: »

Hey guys, My name is Micheal and I have Eircom's 3Mbps package.
My problem is the recent speeds I have been getting, they are awful, in late 2010 my line could handle 4Mbps, in early 2011 my line went down to 1.7Mbps, It happened very suddenly and has stayed the same ever since, I live in a small village and we have a small local exchange capable of 7Mbps, so congestion wouldn't be the problem here, I have had Eircom come over 2 times and they said the line is perfectly fine from the street to the gable, the house has 3 phone line connections and I've tried the router on all and it has stayed the same, I have limited it down to two possible problems:

• The router is faulty.
• There is something wrong with the box that feeds to all 3 extensions.

Recently, the broadband would just not load a web page, I would still be connected, the router would say 1.7Mbps, but the web page just wouldn't load, when I would restart the router everything would be fine, leading to two possible problems

• The router is faulty.
• Congestion (unlikely).

I'm guessing its a problem with the router and I called up Eircom and they basically said "we would be happy to give you our cheap router with 3 year old firmware if you would sign another 12 month contract " so I am not doing that, you're very mean people Eircom

Any help would be welcome, I'll try anything to get my 4Mbps capabilities back, thanks

Why should any isp be giving out free routers when you can leave with a month's notice and you have not established anyway that its the router thats at fault?

Were your extensions installed professionally? What is attached to the extensions? Have all attached devices got filters attached?

What are your line stats?

MichealKenny

dub45 wrote: »

Why should any isp be giving out free routers when you can leave with a month's notice and you have not established anyway that its the router thats at fault?

Were your extensions installed professionally? What is attached to the extensions? Have all attached devices got filters attached?

What are your line stats?

When you are a long time trusted customer, I think they should give you at least a router to borrow so you can see if that is the actual problem (when they say it is).

Extensions were done professionally
1st extension has a phone with a filter.
2nd extension has a phone without a filter.
3rd extension has the router with the filter.

Line stats (according to the router)

DSL Mode: ADSL_G.dmt
Speed: 1760Kbps/384Kbps
Line Attenuation: 49/24
DSL Noise Margin: 17/12

Speedtest.net Line Grades

Before: A
After: C

dub45

MichealKenny wrote: »

When you are a long time trusted customer, I think they should give you at least a router to borrow so you can see if that is the actual problem (when they say it is).

Extensions were done professionally
1st extension has a phone with a filter.
2nd extension has a phone without a filter.
3rd extension has the router with the filter.

Line stats (according to the router)

DSL Mode: ADSL_G.dmt
Speed: 1760Kbps/384Kbps
Line Attenuation: 49/24
DSL Noise Margin: 17/12

Speedtest.net Line Grades

Before: A
After: C

All phones should have filters.

Have you tried testing your speed with the extension phones removed and your modem connected to the main socket?

MichealKenny

dub45 wrote: »

All phones should have filters.

Have you tried testing your speed with the extension phones removed and your modem connected to the main socket?

thanks, I don't know much about them but what are there official names so i can buy one on ebay?

Also, I have looked at this and ruled it out as that phone didn't have a filter beforehand, thanks anyway, I'll buy one right away

Tungsten Tide

Line Filters should be on all Phones and check to see if they are working. 1 of mine's broke n the line SNR was a very bad.

MichealKenny

Tungsten Tide wrote: »

Line Filters should be on all Phones and check to see if they are working. 1 of mine's broke n the line SNR was a very bad.

thanks man, never knew they were that important, i've one ordered, will order a few more just in case I ever need them

MichealKenny

Question for Tungsten Tide: does it only matter if the phone is used?

Also, I bought one of those Linksys by Cisco modem/routers off Amazon, lets hope this fixes the problem

Tungsten Tide

All phones need 1. If a call comes out the line and someone answers it they will talk into it. That in its self creates noise so a line filter filters out most of the noise. Thats how i knew 1 of mines was broken. When someone called the internet would disconnect all a sudden.

Also Cisco routers r a good choice same goes for the Netgears. I personally would buy this Cisco-Linksys-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-Broadband

dub45

MichealKenny wrote: »

Question for Tungsten Tide: does it only matter if the phone is used?

Also, I bought one of those Linksys by Cisco modem/routers off Amazon, lets hope this fixes the problem

No - in my experience the phone doesn't have to be used to have a negative effect, have you plugged it out to see what effect it has?

Tungsten Tide

Whatever modem u use setup up the configuration as follows HERE

E39MSport

Mine's also gone to poo lately. I'm on the Donadea exchange in North Kildare. Was at just over 1Mb and now is hovering about .5Mb.

Interestingly, there's a new build around the corner that has just been moved in to.

MichealKenny

I am not looking forward to setting up a new router, I had the last one so finely tuned, I used up all my available port forwarding spots :P thanks for the help everyone! I will report back when I have the router setup

lucernarian

Micheal, while you're waiting on those filters, could you do a favour for me? Could you plug out the 3 phones and the modem and then plug just the modem back in? Then get the line stats again and post them up here to see how much has changed. You can plug the phones in after you've checked the stats.


What hasn't been said here is that eircom are supposed to check the line up to and including the first socket in the house as it is their responsibility. If the linesman only checked up to where the line meets the gable from the pole then he didn't do his job.

But the filter is needed on that second phone as has been said.

As an aside, on occasion I've seen some sparks use stuff like alarm cable to put in phone wires and wired the extra sockets incorrectly even though the RECI have released a document showing how to do it (http://www.reci.ie/Portals/0/RECIDocuments/technicalinfo/eircominterface.pdf). Joining up the different sockets the wrong way can cause suprising problems for DSL.

MichealKenny

I'm so sorry about not mentioning this, but he did come in the house and check the socket in the kitchen, also, we do have an alarm hooked up to the phone line, but the phone service in the alarm was never set up, so its basically an unused extension (why i was asking do you need a filter on a line that is not used) Eircom asked me to unplug all lines before but there were no improvements, tomorrow at around midday i will post the full stats again with the phones plugged out, thanks for the help!

lucernarian

No worries. Plugging out extra lines can often help, I've seen it with relations where an extension socket (and no phone plugged in) was causing stability problems. It acted as an aerial for interference. If that line going from the alarm to the socket isn't being used, you may as well leave it disconnected from the rest of the wiring completely. You can always join it back up at the socket when the time comes. One less way for interference to enter the phone line!

A socket which has no phone, fax, alarm, sky box etc plugged in, won't need a filter.

E39MSport

I changed my DNS config from older IP addresses to those in the link posted above and my speeds jumped by about 50% (granted still not very high)

Not sure if it coincided with someone upstream ramping down on usage at the time. Speeds are currently still okay.

Ta.

MichealKenny

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Micheal, while you're waiting on those filters, could you do a favour for me? Could you plug out the 3 phones and the modem and then plug just the modem back in? Then get the line stats again and post them up here to see how much has changed. You can plug the phones in after you've checked the stats.


What hasn't been said here is that eircom are supposed to check the line up to and including the first socket in the house as it is their responsibility. If the linesman only checked up to where the line meets the gable from the pole then he didn't do his job.

But the filter is needed on that second phone as has been said.

As an aside, on occasion I've seen some sparks use stuff like alarm cable to put in phone wires and wired the extra sockets incorrectly even though the RECI have released a document showing how to do it (http://www.reci.ie/Portals/0/RECIDocuments/technicalinfo/eircominterface.pdf). Joining up the different sockets the wrong way can cause suprising problems for DSL.

To_be_confirmed I love ya, 100% homo, unplugged all phones and restarted router, 3072Kbps must be because of that socket in the master bedroom that doesn't have a filter, i'll attach it the minute it comes.

Also, I've done something like this before, and it went to 3072, but then went back down to about 1777 in under an hour, i'll report back.

lucernarian

What's the signal margin like when it's at 3072 kbps?

MichealKenny

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

What's the signal margin like when it's at 3072 kbps?

current stats:

DSL Mode: ADSL_G.dmt
Speed: 3072 kbps /384 kbps
Line Attenuation (Down/Up): 48 dB /24 dB
DSL Noise Margin: 23 dB /12 dB

before:

DSL Mode: ADSL_G.dmt
Speed: 1760Kbps/384Kbps
Line Attenuation: 49/24
DSL Noise Margin: 17/12

lucernarian

Jeez that a very healthy signal margin. When you get the filter, try it out for perhaps a week and check the modem stats every so often. If the downstream signal margin stays above say 14dB then I suggest you call eircom to put you up to 4 mbps (if your service is one of the "up to 8mbps NGB" setups or the old top tier package still available on many smaller exchanges which gives up to 7 mbps.)

MichealKenny

for a line that's 20 years old, it ain't doing too bad :P thanks for the recommendation, (un)fortunately i cant get ngb, there are goods and bads to that, haha, i'll look into the 7mbps. thanks

lucernarian

MichealKenny wrote: »

for a line that's 20 years old, it ain't doing too bad :P thanks for the recommendation, (un)fortunately i cant get ngb, there are goods and bads to that, haha, i'll look into the 7mbps. thanks

In that case, I'd hold off and wait for the exchange to get the NGB upgrade. You may be waiting a year or two but you should get it eventually. Check here: You'll probably only get an upgrade from 3 to 4 mbps if you pay for the higher package. Check here (http://www.ngb.ie/) to see when your exchange is scheduled for the so-called "NGB" upgrade. NGB my ass, UPC already offer speeds of at least 30 mbps to over 40% of houses in this country!

dub45

Tungsten Tide wrote: »

All phones need 1. If a call comes out the line and someone answers it they will talk into it. That in its self creates noise so a line filter filters out most of the noise. Thats how i knew 1 of mines was broken. When someone called the internet would disconnect all a sudden.

Also Cisco routers r a good choice same goes for the Netgears. I personally would buy this Cisco-Linksys-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-Broadband

Just in case anyone reading your post might be looking for recommendations its important to point out that the model you recommend is a wireless router only and will still need a dsl modem.

Tungsten Tide

dub45 wrote: »

Just in case anyone reading your post might be looking for recommendations its important to point out that the model you recommend is a wireless router only and will still need a dsl modem.

Come again. I saw 4 Ethernet ports in the back. Is that not a wired solution for u.

lucernarian

That router does not have a built-in DSL modem. It would need to be plugged into an existing netopia or Zyxel modem/router for it to work, which wouldn't be very useful in comparsion to a different wireless router with DSL built in.

MichealKenny

Tungsten Tide wrote: »

Come again. I saw 4 Ethernet ports in the back. Is that not a wired solution for u.

there is no dsl input, its not a modem, just a router

Tungsten Tide

R u sure?
Anyway I changed my mind this 1 is the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiDUVu53W9c

lucernarian

I'm rather confused, why are we talking about other routers when the main problem has almost certainly been identified? Wireless N routers aren't so useful when the internet connection doesn't come close to using up Wireless G speeds. (802.11g can handle about 21mbps of data when it's connected at "54mbps" and with no other devices transferring data through wifi.

Tungsten Tide

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

I'm rather confused, why are we talking about other routers when the main problem has almost certainly been identified? Wireless N routers aren't so useful when the internet connection doesn't come close to using up Wireless G speeds. (802.11g can handle about 21mbps of data when it's connected at "54mbps" and with no other devices transferring data through wifi.

No I think u r confused. Wireless G is slower than Wireless N. Can u point to the issue to which u refer to.

lucernarian

Tungsten Tide wrote: »

No I think u r confused. Wireless G is slower than Wireless N. Can u point to the issue to which u refer to.

You're agreeing with me then, I am indeed confused:D I'm not referring to any issue. Also, you need to re-read my post. I had said that when a connection doesn't even use up the available speed from "wireless G" (802.11g) then there's little point in going for 802.11n gear. Especially when so many devices still don't have 802.11n and will force a router to work at 802.11g speeds if any device isn't 802.11n compatible (in most cases anyway).

My main point is that the OP was having problems with his line and these appear to be resolved so I don't know what replacing a functional router (at cost of course) would achieve here unless he was having other problems with it?