Eircom modems affected by UPC Power supplies?

paulhmull

Hi

Cant believe this one. An Eircom enginner has told me that my broadband is crap because of my neighbours UPC power supply is faulty.

Apparently its happening up and down the country.

Anyone else have this problem and isnt that extremely worrying?

Riesen_Meal

paulhmull wrote: »

Hi

Cant believe this one. An Eircom enginner has told me that my broadband is crap because of my neighbours UPC power supply is faulty.

Apparently its happening up and down the country.

Anyone else have this problem and isnt that extremely worrying?

Sounds like a load of waffle, I know UPC are having difficulties lately in certain areas of Dublin, but how could a UPC power supply interfere with Eircoms DSL connection?

I'm open to correction but isnt UPC cable broadband as opposed to Eircoms DSL product?

It appears to me he is making excuses for Eircoms paltry speeds the fault of UPC...

docmol

They are on completely different networks, with different wires etc. The real reason is that eircom can't/won't invest in their substandard infrastructure. It's a new excuse though and shows a little more imagination then usual :rolleyes:

Ciaran_2

There must be some truth in this. Today I received delivery of a new power adapter for my UPC modem. I had not requested it and I have had no issues with my service.

Letter states '.. notified by Cisco,... that a small number of their power supplies have potential performance issues which may impact your customer experience.'

Spear

Plenty of devices can interfere with an ADSL modem due to the EM noise they produce. I've seen it before from various appliances such as large fridges or heating systems igniting.

neilthefunkeone

Ciaran_2 wrote: »

There must be some truth in this. Today I received delivery of a new power adapter for my UPC modem. I had not requested it and I have had no issues with my service.

Letter states '.. notified by Cisco,... that a small number of their power supplies have potential performance issues which may impact your customer experience.'

Just came on to ask did anyone else receive a new power supply today..

I doubt a possibly faulty power supply from the house beside could affect your bb.. the engineer must be running low on excuses!!

GekkePrutser

neilthefunkeone wrote: »

Just came on to ask did anyone else receive a new power supply today..

Yep I received one too... That's why I found this topic I was quite surprised, never noticed any problem with the old one.

derra

paulhmull wrote: »

Hi

Cant believe this one. An Eircom enginner has told me that my broadband is crap because of my neighbours UPC power supply is faulty.

Apparently its happening up and down the country.

Anyone else have this problem and isnt that extremely worrying?

Was told the same by a Eircom engineer last week, major issue it seems...

Spear wrote: »

Plenty of devices can interfere with an ADSL modem due to the EM noise they produce.

Exactly what he said as well as something about Cisco power supplies being manufactured in Japan or something.

Sponge Bob

UPC were supplied with cheap crappy power supplies for their Cisco modems...by Cisco.

The interference issue is genuine and was noted last year. Thankfully they and Cisco are now replacing these cheap crappy power supplies.

As Spear said upthread, interference issues can originate from a HUGE variety of sources, eg street lights interfering with overhead cable etc.

I shudder to think of what a Belkin power supply could do.....probably bring down Airbus A380s.

lucernarian

Sponge Bob wrote: »

UPC were supplied with cheap crappy power supplies for their Cisco modems...by Cisco.

The interference issue is genuine and was noted last year. Thankfully they and Cisco are now replacing these cheap crappy power supplies.

As Spear said upthread, interference issues can originate from a HUGE variety of sources, eg street lights interfering with overhead cable etc.

I shudder to think of what a Belkin power supply could do.....probably bring down Airbus A380s.

ComReg are aware of the problem and as bad as they are, even they investigated a boards poster's complaints about interference to an eircom connection after a neighbour got UPC installed. The power supply was mentioned as a possible culprit.

docmol

I've just seen the problem with this argument. Why would anyone have eircon (or any dsl) when upc are available in the area? Makes no sense to me.

Sponge Bob

UPC do not cover 100% of any town they service...does that make sense??

docmol

If they're available next door....

who_me

docmol wrote: »

I've just seen the problem with this argument. Why would anyone have eircon (or any dsl) when upc are available in the area? Makes no sense to me.

I switched from Smart Telecom (24Mbps ADSL, no contention) to 30Mbps UPC, now 100Mbps UPC; and the Smart service was considerably better. In speed tests the UPC would shine, but in any real-world download test the Smart service was a good deal faster and more consistent.

I'd love to know why that was the case with Smart, yet Eircom - which presumably shares the same infrastructure - has such a bad rep.

dub45

docmol wrote: »

I've just seen the problem with this argument. Why would anyone have eircon (or any dsl) when upc are available in the area? Makes no sense to me.

For many people what UPC now offer as their basic bb product is "excessive" in price point - many people don't need the basic speed offered by UPC as a number of posters have previously pointed out.

The cheapest that you can get bb and phone from UPC now is €44 (plus a possible non dd charge if you don't want to pay that way).

Smart are now offering "up to" 24Mb for €29.99 a month. Thats a considerable saving for a product which would satisfy many people's needs even if they are unlikely to get the 24Mb headline speed.

docmol

For many people what UPC now offer as their basic bb product is "excessive" in price point - many people don't need the basic speed offered by UPC as a number of posters have previously pointed out.

The cheapest that you can get bb and phone from UPC now is €44 (plus a possible non dd charge if you don't want to pay that way).

Smart are now offering "up to" 24Mb for €29.99 a month. Thats a considerable saving for a product which would satisfy many people's needs even if they are unlikely to get the 24Mb headline speed.

Point accepted.

I've no experience with Smart so I'll take your word that they are OK but years of dealing with eircom has led me to believe that they are not worth the effort of talking to. The only exception I've found is OAPs who can get a special deal and pay a minimal price for a service they use for casual browsing and email.
I honestly feel for anyone stuck with them. Even their ads are full of lies (uncongested!) How do they get away with that one....

Assassins Creed

Wonder how congested a fibre powered cable could get, when bandwidth is sent down a cable to be shared by all the houses connected to that cable.

Sponge Bob

Assassins Creed wrote: »

Wonder how congested a fibre powered cable could get, when bandwidth is sent down a cable to be shared by all the houses connected to that cable.

Seeing as it is about 100x THICKER than an eircom phone cable it can handle 100x the customers of an eircom phone cable before it becomes an issue. Innit.

Assassins Creed

:D:D :D:D:D:D:D:D:D cant stop. Very good.

brownej

neilthefunkeone wrote: »

Just came on to ask did anyone else receive a new power supply today..

I doubt a possibly faulty power supply from the house beside could affect your bb.. the engineer must be running low on excuses!!

I received the same notice from UPC today. Apparently a new powersupply is winging its way to me. Its a little late though as the one I had died about a year ago and I replaced it with a generic one.
No fear that they'd replace the really really really crappy cisco modem.

Out of interest.. those of you who have received replacement PSUs, what modem do you have?

Praetorian

Conspiracy theorists could argue that UPC bringing down Eircom lines was a deliberate and quite a sneaky and effective ploy

I wonder would Dana Strong admit to such tactics?

News just in, UPC modems also causing global warming, snow in winter, and they killed JFK!

Solair

That's part of the problem with DSL technologies in general. Phone lines are basically just like speaker cable, they're not designed to carry data and were originally specified only to carry analogue audio signals.

They are not shielded and can behave like antennae picking up various random electromagnetic fields and also interference from other DSL lines in the same bundle.

Cable Television wiring is coaxial cable designed from day one to carry high-bandwidth signals, initially analogue television channels. It's shielded and not susceptible to interference and vastly higher bandwidth than a simple twisted pair phone line.

Until eircom actually rolls out fibre to premises, and for as long as they are still depending on runs of unshielded copper phone lines to carry data, they will never be able to eliminate these kinds of problems or compete with UPC's top speeds.

Loads of potentially faulty electronics could produce EM that could screw up DSL signals.

As a technology, that's one of its drawbacks.

DSL is basically a 'hack'. It's re-purposing obsolete technology i.e. old copper phone lines designed to carry audio. So, it's never really going to be an ideal access method for ultra-high speed internet.

Phone companies all over the world (not just eircom) are quite happy to sweat their copper assets for as long as they can get away with it.

Cable modems are also re-purposing an older technology i.e. coaxial analogue cable television systems, but at least it's a technology that was designed from the ground up to be capable of carrying high-bandwidth traffic (TV signals) without interference.

ArthurG

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Seeing as it is about 100x THICKER than an eircom phone cable it can handle 100x the customers of an eircom phone cable before it becomes an issue. Innit.

So girth is more important than....oh never mind

arctan

PSU overheats, filter circuit degenerates, sending out "noise" into the entire co-axial system, this system can share subducts with eircom lines and jumps into eircom's network, there are new procedures in place to submit a investigation request into comreg.

note: it is not only UPC PSU's

drummer76

Actually what happens is a componant (mostly a capacitor) goes faulty in the transformer within the power supply. This causes the plug to overheat. When it heats up the electromagnetic frequencies it emits start to spike between approx 100khz and 2Mhz. These signals are then transmitting within the spectral range of dsl broadband. As to how they get into the eircom network its not from cables ran in the same duct its actually happen through the esb network. The faulty power supply is plugged into a power socket, overheats, then transmits the interference out through the socket onto the esb copper, it travells out to a common point (ie. A substation etc.) then travells back on all of the common esb copper. This of course follows through to the power sockets in all of the neighbouring houses. It can then carry through the power supply of an eircom modem into that modem interfering with the bb signal then travells out the phone line copper to do the exact same as it did with the esb, carry to a common point (ie roadside cabinet) then travel back to all eircom customers fed from that cabinet. Easy way to know if your power supply is faulty is just simply touch it, if its hot its more than likely causing a problem. There is also a way to search for this interference using radio frequency meters but thats another days post. Exhausted now from all the typing.

Also as some others said its not just modem power supplies, any piece of electrical equipment has the potential to generate interference.

Solair

There was a lot to be said for the old huge heavy classic coil transformers that we used to use before all these little switch mode power supplies.

You could also use the old ones as a door stop or paper weight

Cabaal

Spear wrote: »

Plenty of devices can interfere with an ADSL modem due to the EM noise they produce. I've seen it before from various appliances such as large fridges or heating systems igniting.

Yes they can, but thats normally only the case if the writing passes very close to the faulty device or interference.

Blaming next door's power supply unit on a UPC device is pie in the sky stuff unless the guys eircom phone line passes extremely close to the power supply

Sponge Bob

I believe the offending devices transmitted EMI on the synch frequencies which are a narrow subset of frequencies used to initially set up ADSL connections after which more tones are opened up for higher speed. Had the interference been obvious at different frequencies it may have affected thruput and speed rather than synch. UPC themselves are in for a lot of fun once LTE is deployed.

drummer76

The eircom phone line does not need to be that close to the source of interference, once they have common esb it will affect sync, and atainable speeds but mainly its the drop in signal to noise ratio that cause the main issues. It is not being carried in on the eircom network its being carried in on the esb into the eircom modem.

Solair

It's the downside of having your last mile network running over what amounts to glorified speaker cable and why ADSL/VDSL technologies will never really be perfect.

There's always going to be interference from RF sources and it's only going to become more prevalent as more and more electronic devices appear. There are switching mode power supplies and other potentially noisy devices in everything from washing machines to PCs these days.

Also, people using things like wireline networking in their house e.g. homeplugs etc etc.

drummer76

It can be combated in vdsl with a system known as vectoring.

Solair

drummer76 wrote: »

It can be combated in vdsl with a system known as vectoring.

AFAIK, vectoring's only purpose is to eliminate crosstalk between wires in a bundle. So, you'd only be removing interference from other DSL lines, not from external random sources like faulty power supplies.

The only way you could avoid that would be shielding the cables (i.e. the way cable TV does it) and ensuring that you don't import malfunctioning / poorly designed PSUs.

drummer76

You could be right I dont know much about vectoring but I dont think shielding the cables will work because as i said it travells in on the esb cables, through your power supply and into the modem, unless the esb cables are shielded also that would only stop it travelling back out on the network cable. If a filter was in the power supplies it could possibly help eliminate the problem.

Solair

drummer76 wrote: »

You could be right I dont know much about vectoring but I dont think shielding the cables will work because as i said it travells in on the esb cables, through your power supply and into the modem, unless the esb cables are shielded also that would only stop it travelling back out on the network cable. If a filter was in the power supplies it could possibly help eliminate the problem.

Properly shielded cables have a screen that acts like a Faraday cage e.g. in coaxial cable used for your TV/satellite/cable tv or shielded network cabling or USB cables

Any stray RF is picked up on the mesh shield surrounding the signal wires and grounded away.

Open bundles of twisted pair like phone lines aren't shielded at all (certainly over the bit that runs to your house anyway)

drummer76

Yes but that still wont make any difference if the interference is being carried along the esb copper it will only make a difference if the interference then tries to enter the shielded cable. But there have even been cases of this upc interference affecting upc customers even though their cables are shielded coax. I've seen areas with upc customers only receiving 1mb.

4ntimatter

I also received a new plug from UPC, however I got a couple of phone calls asking why I hadn't sent back the old power supply "plug" with the enclosed envelope. I told them I would definitely send it back when I get a chance. And today they sent a UPC van out on a Saturday? without notice to collect the plug. There wasn't any particular reason why I hadn't sent back the old plug. other than I just didn't find the time, nor did I think it was of any great importance.

I received a letter prior to receiving the replacement plug.

Quote:
Dear customer, we have been notified by Cisco. The manufacturer of your broadband modem that a small number of their power supplies have potential performance issues, which may impact your customer experience.

In order to address this minor issue, enhance the energy efficiency and approve and extend the lifetime of your modem, you need to replace your old power supply with a free upgrade which will be delivered to you within the next few days.
This power supply unit is energy star level-5 rated, lowering energy costs for you.
The new unit looks similar to the old one but is distinguishable by having a small green bulb on the back which lights up when it is plugged in.

Cisco's courier company DPD will be in contact with you via text message over the coming days to advise when they will deliver your new power supply unit to your home. Upon delivery the the driver will also collect your old power supply unit and dispose this for you.

We urge you to complete this swap today as you may suffer service degradation to your broadband service if you continue to use the old power supply unit.

End quote.

Note: I tried to give the old plug to the delivery guy when he handed me the new one and he had no knowledge of this and wouldn't take the old one.

Basically I find it strange the way they were so eager to get the old plug back.
I hope this info is any use to yous if not sorry. I didn't have any problems with my old power supply other than my electricity bill was much higher than usual.

ED E

If their faulty and could go south then Cisco wont want a legal case on their hands in the off chance one of them seriously malfunctions.


Also, never heard and LED being described as a bulb before

4ntimatter

ED E wrote: »

Also, never heard and LED being described as a bulb before

Your hilarious mate, I didn't even cop that, and that's exactly what it said.

LED bulb?