UTV (Eircom) BB Speeds Deteriorating...

jellybean520

Hi Folks,

Up to October last year I was getting close to the full 7.6Mbps download on my broadband with UTV who are an Eircom reseller.

With no change to my internal setup, my speeds started to drop to 6Mbps, then a week later to 5Mbps and so on until in late Novemeber they sort of stabilised at around 3Mbps.

I'm blue in the face from toing and froing on e-mail and phone with UTV. They have run some tests on the line saying there is a slight voltage detected which may be causing this but I have not changed or added anything internally.

They eventually got an Eircom engineer to run a test which he did remotely at the exchange and he left me a message saying it checked out ok?!!

None of this helps my download speed situation.

I've tried 3 different routers and still the same. UPC is not available in my area and the download limits on wireless solutions are crap.

I've had to endure this now for 6 months. Any advice would be much appreciated. I really miss the old speeds.

Thanks.

Cork Wifi

First of all log into your device (modem) and check what the line rate is showing as. it should indicate something like Line rate upstream - 560 KPS
line rate downstream 8160 KPS.

if it only shows 3000 kps down then your bootfile has been changed to a 3mb connection and you need to call the telco back and scream. if it shows 8000 kps or close then the fault is on the line. Unplug every phone, fax and modem in your house and plug the modem into the main jack then repeat the speed test and use a few different test sites. http://speedtest.upc.ie http://speedtest.magnet.ie http://www.broadbandsupport.eircom.net/speedtest/

The most important part that I almost left out is that when testing your speed always use a cat5 cable and not your wireless connection because of too many variables with the wireless. It may be that a new neighbours modem is broadcasting on the same frequency as yours causing these issues. Simply go to the wireless tab on the modem and change to a frequency not used by anyone else. check a few different ones and repeat the speed test from the same location.


Good luck

jellybean520

Thanks for the reply Cork Wifi.

I could have gone into greater detail in my original post but I didn't want to bore readers!

UTV tell me that they have it set to sync to it's max, which was previously 7616Mbps (684 up) and it did operate at that up to October last year. Trust me I have been screaming at them about this for 6 months but they insist the voltage is detected somewhere internally which makes no sense to me.

My current performance varies from day to day but the most recent has been 3264 down and 512 up. The down figure varies between around 27xx to 33xx. These are the figures indicated on the router and various online broadband speed tests align with these.

I've ensured that every other device has been disconnected from other phone sockets, I don't have an alarm or sky connected. I use Cat5 to connect. I even connected a router to the master socket at the door and that did give me a marginal increase to 3488 but not worth talking about and not practical to have my router there anyway.

It is so frustrating because I had fine fast broadband at 7616 up to last October, now I am back to speeds of 5 years ago. Nothing has changed internally.

If I had access to an Eircom engineer, he could validate that all is well internally but I am sure it is.

Cork Wifi

Have you tried a different modem? Also have them do the test with the modem powered off to see if its causing the voltage.

Again if possible check the line speed status in the modem itself as sometimes telcos put people at lower speeds to help sync and by default allows them to put more people on the same pipe and charge them for something they are not giving. Of course they dont do this on purpose.

jellybean520

Yip, I've used 4 different modem/routers, 2 Netopia, 1 Belkin and 1 TP-Link, all with the same results. I even changed the cables in use.

I'm in a weaker position because I am no longer with Eircom directly. If I was they'd take full ownership but now they have the 'out' because my contract is with UTV and each one can blame the other.

I fear it's a lost cause.

Roll on UPC in my area.

Cork Wifi

same thing happened me recently I switched from eircom to O2 and my speed went from 17.5mb to 7mb and o2 finally told me its because Eircom has a different threshold for deployment of speeds. 25.5db snr (signal to noise ratio) is the limit for o2 when eircom will work all the way to 29.9db. my snr was 25.6db so i was limited to 8mb file. At the risk of repeating myself too much if you hook up the tplink and go to the device info screen it will tell you what your modem is set to at the exchange downstream and upstream. You still havent indicated what they are. Personally Im headed back to Eircom which along with the faster speeds also gives you faster service. If you in a contract with utv they will most likely let you out of it to get rid of you

jellybean520

Thanks again Cork Wifi, I didn't want to repeat myself!! But I thought I already indicated to you what the speeds were a number of times! The speeds I've quoted up to now are all from the device info/status screen on either the tplink or netopia.

Copying and pasting the current status, like I said this varies slightly from day to day if I restart the modem.

Firmware Version: 1.4.0 Build 110620 Rel.52053n
Hardware Version: TD-W8960N v3 0x00000002

This information reflects the current status of your DSL connection.

Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps): 512
Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps): 3264
LAN IP Address: 192.168.1.1
Default Gateway: 194.46.193.74(ppp0)
Primary DNS Server: 194.46.192.141
Secondary DNS Server: 194.46.192.142
System Running time: 0 day(s) 14:49:06
Date/Time: Fri Apr 13 10:54:36 2012