Eircom 50meg fiber - Anyone else getting Low Speeds ?

Pixelbastardo

For the last few evenings iv been getting very bad speeds on a 50meg eircom fiber connection that usually performs really well. My neighbor across the street is experiencing the exact same thing in the evenings. Maybe from around 8 or 9pm onwards, the same time iv noticed the same issue.

I upgraded to fiber during last summer, and have always gotten no less then 40meg, and less then 100 ping, when testing the connection anywhere within ireland/uk.

Anyone else around the country experiencing this behavior ?
I was told by eircom when ordering, how theres supposedly no congestion when it comes to the fiber broadband.. idk, but its effecting simple tasks like watching netflix, and taking forever for the content to load up.

Below are some test results from tonight, the worst was the night i noticed it first, i was getting half a meg all evening, with 100+ ping, regardless of what server i tested on.







What could be causing this ?

fat-tony

A number of eircom fibre customers are complaining about poor performance in recent weeks. The blame is being placed on a damaged cable in the Irish Sea by some posters, but your issues seem to be local to Ireland as well as to the UK. All of which confirms my view that the problem lies within eircom's backbone network and that all these speedtests are a waste of time in identifying the actual source of the problem and that they are only highlighting that there is a problem somewhere. Vodafone network does not seem to be affected, even over the so-called damaged cable to the UK, but again only the network planners in eircom and Vodafone know the exact routes the packets are taking. Raise the issue on the "talk to eircom" forum and add your complaint to the others.

Pixelbastardo

Yeah, it gets very slow in the evenings now.

Here is a test i just ran now (to the UK) for comparison, where im getting what im paying for. Its a whole other story in the evening though.


Could you link this "talk to eircom" thread/board please ?

allen175

The issue is with that snap in the fibre cable, the cable is owned by another leading ISP, so what is happening is the other ISP is routing its data through eircoms network causing issues with speeds for everyone.

fat-tony

Pixelbastardo wrote: »

Yeah, it gets very slow in the evenings now.

Here is a test i just ran now (to the UK) for comparison, where im getting what im paying for. Its a whole other story in the evening though.


Could you link this "talk to eircom" thread/board please ?

It's here on boards.ie

Link to specific thread - http://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057124340

It's bs though as it doesn't explain your issues with local servers...

fat-tony

allen175 wrote: »

The issue is with that snap in the fibre cable, the cable is owned by another leading ISP, so what is happening is the other ISP is routing its data through eircoms network causing issues with speeds for everyone.

Unless you have specific information about exactly how this is happening, then you are just repeating speculation. The break in the cable may be causing issues on that link, but there are lots of other links and, in any case, would not be causing issues for local traffic.
See this explanation from the Chief Technical Officer of INEX (who should be well placed to speak with authority on internet routing ):
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=88497906&postcount=6912

Pixelbastardo

Like clockwork, after 8pm i get,



Same server earlier,




Atleast eircom have released a statement on the issue.

http://community.eircom.net/t5/Service-Updates-and/Recent-service-issues/td-p/56284

fat-tony

How are Cork/Limerick/Galway stats?

Pixelbastardo

Limerick now


Limerick earlier today



Cork now


Cork earlier today



Galway now


Didnt save a galway test from earlier.

fat-tony

QED - you've just proved that eircom's network performance has nothing to do with their statement you linked to (and I linked to earlier).
Do you not see the nonsense of eircom blaming a cut in an undersea line to the UK on the crappy performance to Irish speedtest servers?

murphaph

fat-tony wrote: »

QED - you've just proved that eircom's network performance has nothing to do with their statement you linked to (and I linked to earlier).
Do you not see the nonsense of eircom blaming a cut in an undersea line to the UK on the crappy performance to Irish speedtest servers?

Surely it's not that simple. I'm a layman but imagine an analogy with the ferries crossing the Irish sea...

Normally traffic can take a ferry from Dublin, Rosslare or Cork. Now imagine the Rosslare ferry goes tech. Traffic now has to divert to Dublin and cork to catch the ferry, causing congestion not only on the Dublin and Cork ferries but also on national routes inside Ireland.

This analogy could be inapplicable but I can certainly imagine how an undersea break might have landside consequences.

ED E

fat-tony wrote: »

QED - you've just proved that eircom's network performance has nothing to do with their statement you linked to (and I linked to earlier).
Do you not see the nonsense of eircom blaming a cut in an undersea line to the UK on the crappy performance to Irish speedtest servers?

While you're right that its just guesswork Tony the fact that the problem started for most around the 1st and then got really bad in the last few days correlates exactly with the works off the wexford coast.

Look back to the fibre threads from december, 9 out of 10 posters were getting rock solid throughput.

fat-tony

murphaph wrote: »

Surely it's not that simple. I'm a layman but imagine an analogy with the ferries crossing the Irish sea...

Normally traffic can take a ferry from Dublin, Rosslare or Cork. Now imagine the Rosslare ferry goes tech. Traffic now has to divert to Dublin and cork to catch the ferry, causing congestion not only on the Dublin and Cork ferries but also on national routes inside Ireland.

This analogy could be inapplicable but I can certainly imagine how an undersea break might have landside consequences.

None of this stuff is simple, but there is huge capacity on the interlinks between the UK and Ireland. Don't get me wrong, no-one can deny that eircom customers are being affected, even between links confined to the island of Ireland, but for eircom to blame all the issues on one damaged link is muddying the real issue. Either, as some posters have suggested, eircom is "throttling" data in the evening times, or their network backbone (national routes in your analogy) is just insufficient to handle the traffic generated when all these new fibre users log on to Netflix at 7pm and start clogging the motorway junctions. The problem points to a real issue within the network planning and management area within eircom.

The post from the CTO of INEX on the eircom fibre roll-out thread gives some real world examples of the available data link capacity within Ireland and out to the UK and beyond. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=88497906&postcount=6912

Pixelbastardo

"eircom is "throttling" data in the evening times"

Thats exactly what it seems like. Trying to watch a live stream on say, twitch tv. It plays for 5 seconds and pauses for the next 5. play, pause, play, ..etc. in the evenings. one minute its fine, the next its acting up. very inconsistent in the evening, even when speeds are coming back at 20down with a test, it can feel like using an old dial up connection, and doesnt "feel" like 20m at all.

ED E

fat-tony wrote: »

None of this stuff is simple, but there is huge capacity on the interlinks between the UK and Ireland. Don't get me wrong, no-one can deny that eircom customers are being affected, even between links confined to the island of Ireland, but for eircom to blame all the issues on one damaged link is muddying the real issue. Either, as some posters have suggested, eircom is "throttling" data in the evening times, or their network backbone (national routes in your analogy) is just insufficient to handle the traffic generated when all these new fibre users log on to Netflix at 7pm and start clogging the motorway junctions. The problem points to a real issue within the network planning and management area within eircom.

The post from the CTO of INEX on the eircom fibre roll-out thread gives some real world examples of the available data link capacity within Ireland and out to the UK and beyond. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=88497906&postcount=6912

FYI it was UPC which blamed it first. And some UPC customers are experiencing congestion too AFAIK.

pH

I have no idea what's causing it but my "broadband" is pretty much unusable every evening. My problems didn't start recently but pretty much date back to October last year - *every* evening without fail from 6:30/7pm ish my internet connection falls off a cliff so to speak. I first noticed it playing WoT - a ping of 50-80 during the day and late night drops to 250+ every evening - Twitch.tv streams are unwatchable even on medium.

Even more bizarre is an sftp server I use in the netherlands drops to about 30KiB/s during this period.

dxhound2005

I'm going to tempt fate and say that my broadband is back to normal. For this past four or five days, including after 7pm browsing feels very quick and downloading is back to what it was. For a few days before that I was having the same trouble as lots of other people, especially after 7pm.



All servers UK and Ireland giving results around 47/13 without fail at all times of day. I know it has been pointed out that they are not a proper indicator but this does coincide with my return to normal service.

Mr Cumulonimbus

dxhound2005 wrote: »

All servers UK and Ireland giving results around 47/13 without fail at all times of day. I know it has been pointed out that they are not a proper indicator but this does coincide with my return to normal service.

Manchester grand for me now too (47/17). Still getting back varying results from some of the Irish servers though. Galway 17/14, Limerick 25/11, Cork 20/11, Sligo 36/10 and Dundalk 22/13.

Pixelbastardo

Still all over the place for me in the evenings.. one minute its grand, the next its slow as can be. Ping tests up in the 100's, 5 mins later down in the 40's. very unstable still.

Cork981

I have the same problem for the last week or two.

I've had perfect 50/15 speeds since July but now it's drops down to 4/15 in the evenings.

No problem with SNR always at 10 and 11.

I'm in the churchfield exchange which I assumed would have considerable back haul.

Here's my speed tonight at 10.30 pm.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/748817064

Mc Love

Had this issue one day recently with VF and they told me it was due to the wiring in the house which doesnt make any sense as it returned to normal the following day!

Pixelbastardo

Eircoms latest statement says,

"Hi Guys
Our sincere apologies to all those affected by the recent undersea cable connecting us to the UK over the past few days.
This faulty undersea cable has been fully repaired since approximately 07:00 on Sunday morning.
We do understand that this break has caused considerable inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
If you do have any further queries on this issue, or if you continue to have connection issue please do let us know here.

Regards
eircom Customer Car"

http://community.eircom.net/t5/Service-Updates-and/Resolved-Recent-undersea-cable-issues/td-p/56284


Yet nothing has changed, im still getting congested speeds,throttling, all over the place.

Pixelbastardo

Back to normal after 12am,..... as usual. Between 8pm and 12am, Eircom efibre is F(*&n brutal.

SpaceTime

I'm fairly far from the cabinet, but my speed's actually increased in recent days.

To Dublin:


Was getting about 30 before.

Those ping times to Dublin are very high on yours. 62ms seems quite bad. Mine are usually in 19ms to about 28ms max.

To London:



To Paris:


To Amsterdam


To Washington DC:


To me, that all looks pretty solid!

Pixelbastardo

@Spacetime, take the test between 8pm and 12am tomorrow evening, if you remember. Thats the time when the speeds start jumping around, i cant play FPS's between these hours, which sucks..

Cork981

We've clearly established there's an issue with contention, now how do we get this dealt with ?

Are eircom aware of this issue ?

Could it have anything to do with vectoring ? Firmware updates on the cabs ? Or just basically congestion on core routers and links ?

vishal

We need to have a petetion for comreg and advertising association for false advertising for uncontended broadband

_John C

Im not on eFibre but am experiencing the same problem. Im on up to 24mb and get 15mb during the day but late in the evening im getting anything between 2mb - 5mb. It was never like this before, I was always getting good speeds anytime of day. But now the evenings are just crap.

Mc Love

Back to much again, not getting past 3mb on a 12mb Vodafone fiber connection! Not going to bother to call VF as I am only going to be fobbed off with some ****e about it being internal wiring if there is an issue with the wire connecting UK to ireland!

SpaceTime

I'll test mine at around 7pm and see what happens.

SpaceTime

Here we go :

To Irish servers:





To London



To Paris


To Amsterdam:


To Washington DC:


....

WEIRD results! It's fine out of Ireland and dire in Ireland.