When might Eircom to enable vectoring on their eFibre/VDSL service?

MBSnr

bk wrote: »

Yes vectorised VDSL2 is proving to be quiet a good solution for Irelands unique challenges.

I'm also looking forward to the rollout of VDSL to exchange only lines and to see how VDSL handles longer lines in rural Ireland.

In the longterm, I'm hoping they will introduce smaller, pole mounted VDSL cabs, that might help serve rural Ireland even better.

Ohh pole mounted VDSL cabs.... they exist? About 300m from my house all the lines from the exchange are terminated on a pole (with the weather proof connectors) then disappear underground for a few hundred metres under power lines.... That's the phone line for nearly every house 2km and further East of the exchange. If there was ever a location for a pole mounted VDSL cab then that's it....

SpaceTime

MBSnr wrote: »

Ohh pole mounted VDSL cabs.... they exist? About 1Km from my house all the lines from the exchange are terminated on a pole (with the weather proof connectors) then disappear underground for a few hundred metres under power lines.... That's the phone line for nearly every house 1km and further East of the exchange. If there was ever a location for a pole mounted VDSL cab then that's it....

There are pole mounted and also underground ones that can be fitted into vaults.
However, I haven't seen one from Huawei yet. I'd suspect if they're going to be used here they'll probably stick to the same supplier to keep it all in one maintenance contract.

The Huawei gear is proving to be very good though and they've really innovated on VDSL2 stuff. Seems it's getting excellent reviews from operators that have used it elsewhere too.


That's a "mini cab" https://www.ecitele.com/OurOffering/Products/Pages/MiniCab-64V.aspx for example from ECI.

Supports up to 64 lines and you can mount it on a pole or in an underground vault. They require no cooling or anything like that, it's all passive.

Obviously, for eircom it would need to support the same kind of vectoring and it if were from the same vendor as the existing small cabinets, it would make a lot of sense.

          VDSL Profile:   Profile 17a
            Traffic Type:   PTM Mode
             Link Uptime:   1 day: 2 hours: 54 minutes
============================================================================
       VDSL Port Details       Upstream         Downstream
               Line Rate:     20.476 Mbps       68.821 Mbps
    Actual Net Data Rate:     20.477 Mbps       68.822 Mbps
          Trellis Coding:         ON                ON
              SNR Margin:        9.1 dB            8.4 dB
            Actual Delay:          0 ms              0 ms
          Transmit Power:        7.7 dBm          12.1 dBm
           Receive Power:      -13.6 dBm          -9.1 dBm
              Actual INP:       29.0 symbols      29.0 symbols
       Total Attenuation:       21.3 dB           21.2 dB
Attainable Net Data Rate:     21.268 Mbps       67.064 Mbps
============================================================================
      VDSL Band Status    U0      U1      U2      U3      D1      D2      D3
  Line Attenuation(dB):  6.0    31.2    46.9     N/A    15.7    39.6    61.6   
Signal Attenuation(dB):  6.0    30.8    46.4     N/A    17.5    39.3    61.8   
        SNR Margin(dB):  9.7     9.3     9.0     N/A     8.1     8.1     8.0   
   Transmit Power(dBm):- 7.8     1.0     6.4     N/A     8.3     8.2     4.4   
============================================================================

At 650 meters

To Cork Internet Exchange:


To Blacknight:



To London:

bk

MBSnr wrote: »

Ohh pole mounted VDSL cabs.... they exist? About 300m from my house all the lines from the exchange are terminated on a pole (with the weather proof connectors) then disappear underground for a few hundred metres under power lines.... That's the phone line for nearly every house 2km and further East of the exchange. If there was ever a location for a pole mounted VDSL cab then that's it....

Yup there are some mini pole mountable VDSL cabs. As you say excellent solution for a situation like yours. Here is an example of a 16 port model:

http://www.zyxelonline.com/showpic.php?categid=2&picid=84&view=1

I don't think they will look to do this for at least another year, maybe even two or more. There is too much low hanging fruit of standard VDSL cabs and exchange only lines to do first. But I'm hopeful they will.

SpaceTime

Ireland's climate actually has serious advantages for this kind of technology (and poses a few problems too)

Advantage:

It's very temperate and cool meaning that you don't need complicated air conditioning and cooling systems on most outdoor plant. That's a huge issue in most other countries as on warm days it can easily go >30ºC and in winter you can risk freezing temperatures which can cause problems too.

In general you should be able to install quite compact cabinets as there are no real heat/cooling issues whatsoever and most equipment would be able to cool completely passively all year.

The biggest issue you have to contend with in Ireland is waterproofing as we get a lot of driving rain, drizzle and plants that will happily penetrate enclosures i.e. moss, ivy etc.

So, all in all it's not a bad place to use outdoor equipment and is far more suited to it than say Spain, most of France, or California in some ways where you'd have serious heat issues. In fact, almost everywhere else other than Ireland, Britain, Iceland, New Zealand, Western France and maybe parts of Western Scandinavia etc tends to face far more extreme weather.

---

BTW: Really impressed with eircom's ping times! They've improved dramatically in the last few months.

ED E

SpaceTime wrote: »

BTW: Really impressed with eircom's ping times! They've improved dramatically in the last few months.

IPoE helps there as your packets go direct to their destination, not to an access server that could be half way across the country and back.

Xcellor

Any way of finding out when your cabinet is going to get vectoring enabled? Like a roll out plan?

SpaceTime

Xcellor wrote: »

Any way of finding out when your cabinet is going to get vectoring enabled? Like a roll out plan?

AFAIK, they're all enabled at this stage.

Check your modem stats and see if your 'attainable speed' has gone up. You could still be on a slower profile. In that case, you might need to contact your ISP's technical support.

Eircom seem to be re-profiling their own customers automatically (bit by bit), but that doesn't necessarily mean that other ISPs using the cabinets are necessarily doing the same.

The profile is just the speed that your account is set to rather than what the line's capable of.

Xcellor

SpaceTime wrote: »

AFAIK, they're all enabled at this stage.

Check your modem stats and see if your 'attainable speed' has gone up. You could still be on a slower profile. In that case, you might need to contact your ISP's technical support.

Eircom seem to be re-profiling their own customers automatically (bit by bit), but that doesn't necessarily mean that other ISPs using the cabinets are necessarily doing the same.

The profile is just the speed that your account is set to rather than what the line's capable of.

When i originally got VDSL months back it was synching at 40mb , recently this dropped to 36-38. I am about 1 KM away from cab. My SNR has not changed signficantly or attentionuation leading me to believe vecitoring has not been enabled?

SpaceTime

At 1km from the cabinet, that's probably within the norms.

There are two issues :

1) Noise - vectoring actively cancels this. So on shorter lines this can see big speed improvements.
2) Attenuation - signal fading and becoming weaker as it passes through a medium i.e. copper wire in this case.
Unfortunately, at 1000m away from the cabinet, that's a lot of copper to get the signal through and vectoring doesn't do anything to reduce attenuation.

It's possible the line has vectoring switched on but that it's just having no impact on your speed due to your distance from the cabinet.

Xcellor

SpaceTime wrote: »

At 1km from the cabinet, that's probably within the norms.

There are two issues :

1) Noise - vectoring actively cancels this. So on shorter lines this can see big speed improvements.
2) Attenuation - signal fading and becoming weaker as it passes through a medium i.e. copper wire in this case.
Unfortunately, at 1000m away from the cabinet, that's a lot of copper to get the signal through and vectoring doesn't do anything to reduce attenuation.

It's possible the line has vectoring switched on but that it's just having no impact on your speed due to your distance from the cabinet.

Yeah maybe will check when home. Also measure distance from cab. I think it's probably less than 1km

SpaceTime

Xcellor wrote: »

Yeah maybe will check when home. Also measure distance from cab. I think it's probably less than 1km

Check it out, but just remember that the distance to the cab may not be the distance along the road.

Occasionally phone wiring can take some odd routes for historical reasons i.e. you might have a line going to a cabinet that might have made sense in 1967 when your house was built but doesn't make sense now due to other local developments.

You can also find that the cabinet could be directly opposite your house, but the wiring takes a scenic route through your estate (happened a friend of mine! - they can see the cabinet outside the window on a green outside their house but the wiring goes right around the outside of the estate and back in the main entrance adding about 600m to it!)

Telecom/P&T/eircom also used various different gauges of wire over the decades (although most of it seems to be very good quality surprisingly enough. The main issue in Ireland is that the lines can be VERY long). However, you can get slight variations in attenuation so, it's not always a 100% accurate judge of distance.

swoofer

I am with VF and waiting patiently for vectoring to be enabled, I have the latest frimware in modem, but its bridged. When I check eircom site it says line can take 50mb, it used to say 40mb but when I check VF site it says up to 100mb. I am 800 metres from cabinet and get around 35mb/8mb but when I got fibre first it was a steady 38/8. Pings have improved on speedtest and I notice GALWAY has been deleted. I am in clare.

If I ring VF tech support should they be able to up the profile or is it still like the old days they wait for eircom? In other words do I just hang on?

The roll out has been a shambles so far.

ED E

swoofer wrote: »

I am with VF and waiting patiently for vectoring to be enabled, I have the latest frimware in modem, but its bridged. When I check eircom site it says line can take 50mb, it used to say 40mb but when I check VF site it says up to 100mb. I am 800 metres from cabinet and get around 35mb/8mb but when I got fibre first it was a steady 38/8. Pings have improved on speedtest and I notice GALWAY has been deleted. I am in clare.

If I ring VF tech support should they be able to up the profile or is it still like the old days they wait for eircom? In other words do I just hang on?

The roll out has been a shambles so far.

Ring em, if the stats are good they'll do it in a few minutes.

Nonoperational

swoofer wrote: »

I am with VF and waiting patiently for vectoring to be enabled, I have the latest frimware in modem, but its bridged. When I check eircom site it says line can take 50mb, it used to say 40mb but when I check VF site it says up to 100mb. I am 800 metres from cabinet and get around 35mb/8mb but when I got fibre first it was a steady 38/8. Pings have improved on speedtest and I notice GALWAY has been deleted. I am in clare.

If I ring VF tech support should they be able to up the profile or is it still like the old days they wait for eircom? In other words do I just hang on?

The roll out has been a shambles so far.

What roll out has been a shambles?

I haven't had vectoring enabled yet, I think I on one of the big cabinets that needs different tech.

SpaceTime

Nonoperational wrote: »

What roll out has been a shambles?

I haven't had vectoring enabled yet, I think I on one of the big cabinets that needs different tech.

To be fair to them, the rollout hasn't been a shambles. It's actually been very quick and very smooth.

AFAIK, the entire NGA rollout is using a standard type of Huawei cabinet. There was an early trial in Dundrum and Sandyford in Dublin that used Alcatel cabinets which were an earlier design - very large white ones rolled out about 5 years ago at this stage.

I had assumed they'd been replaced with the standard Huawei ones that were selected in the end.

ED E

SpaceTime wrote: »

I had assumed they'd been replaced with the standard Huawei ones that were selected in the end.

Theyre still in place in at least two locations.

There's a pair here on Taney Road:
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.291549,-6.233369,3a,39.9y,127.71h,87.65t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1skKe6ORoC1lP6vr-es07BOw!2e0

swoofer

The shambles is that there has been no news by VF about vectoring, all they have done is change theIr website to show " up to 100mb" which I detest.

Eircom did a press release aeons ago and nothing else. One has now way of knowing if local cabinet has been enabled so you are at the mercy of the provider.

Eircom will understandably upgrade their customers automatically but the rest of us are faffing about waiting for news.

The roll out was expected to finish end of March 2014.

What eircom could do and should have done was mark the cabinets on their map as enabled for vectoring as they went along. They could also do a few updated press releases advising of progress.

I am only ranting as my line went bad as vectoring was being rolled out but a great guy on VF tech support told me just now, line has a fault so until that is fixed no point in enabling vectoring but he has put my speed back up to 39mb/8.5mb, however until fault is fixed this may drop again. Its now over to eircom.

I was expecting vectoring by end of March and its nearly June now. I know I should not moan but a lot of the blurb promises great things.

jd

swoofer wrote: »

Eircom will understandably upgrade their customers automatically but the rest of us are faffing about waiting for news.

What happens is vectoring is enabled and higher speed profiles are made available for the lines by eircom wholesale. It is then up to each retail operator to apply the higher profiles to their customer's lines.

swoofer

jd thanks, does that mean VF should do it automatically? But, as in my case, if there is a line fault they will do nothing until I ring them???

SpaceTime

ED E wrote: »

Theyre still in place in at least two locations.

There's a pair here on Taney Road:
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.291549,-6.233369,3a,39.9y,127.71h,87.65t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1skKe6ORoC1lP6vr-es07BOw!2e0

Do they still contain the original Alcatel-Lucent DSLAMs though?
It's quite possible that eircom re-kitted them out with Huawei gear since. Or, at least have AlcaLu gear that's to the same more up-to-date spec.

The white box is just a cabinet with racks. It's what's inside that matters.

iMrApex

My current internet situation with eFibre:
Download: 95.96MBPS
Upload: 19.26MBPS
Ping: 10MS

I can't link the speedtest due to being a new user.

murphaph

iMrApex wrote: »

My current internet situation with eFibre:
Download: 95.96MBPS
Upload: 19.26MBPS
Ping: 10MS

I can't link the speedtest due to being a new user.

Do you live inside the cabinet?

murphaph

swoofer wrote: »

The shambles is that there has been no news by VF about vectoring, all they have done is change theIr website to show " up to 100mb" which I detest.

Eircom did a press release aeons ago and nothing else. One has now way of knowing if local cabinet has been enabled so you are at the mercy of the provider.

Eircom will understandably upgrade their customers automatically but the rest of us are faffing about waiting for news.

The roll out was expected to finish end of March 2014.

What eircom could do and should have done was mark the cabinets on their map as enabled for vectoring as they went along. They could also do a few updated press releases advising of progress.

I am only ranting as my line went bad as vectoring was being rolled out but a great guy on VF tech support told me just now, line has a fault so until that is fixed no point in enabling vectoring but he has put my speed back up to 39mb/8.5mb, however until fault is fixed this may drop again. Its now over to eircom.

I was expecting vectoring by end of March and its nearly June now. I know I should not moan but a lot of the blurb promises great things.

For heaven's sake. Even without vectoring the speeds are very impressive. Come over to Germany and see how slowly Telekom here are rolling out VDSL. Eirom wholesale are absolutely flying along with this stuff.

jd

swoofer wrote: »

jd thanks, does that mean VF should do it automatically? But, as in my case, if there is a line fault they will do nothing until I ring them???

I don't know how VF operate, but it'd be up to them to manage the speed profile applied to the line

wheresmybeaver

MBSnr wrote: »

Would you be able to hazard a guess as to the distance from the cab they are? You can get down to street level on the fibre map here http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Our_Network/. Tick the Live box on the right.

I'm not 100% sure what path their line takes from the cab, but the tech did confirm which cab they're on. Eircom website says 768m as the crow flies, I estimate 1050m if following the road. I suspect the line quality over the last 50m is pretty poor too (house built in the 1930s).

Like I said, after vectoring it's approx. 20 down and 3 up. Rock solid connection too.

iMrApex

murphaph wrote: »

Do you live inside the cabinet?

I could kick a ball at it from my garden, I'm pretty close.

dxhound2005

SpaceTime wrote: »

AFAIK, they're all enabled at this stage.

Check your modem stats and see if your 'attainable speed' has gone up. You could still be on a slower profile. In that case, you might need to contact your ISP's technical support.

Eircom seem to be re-profiling their own customers automatically (bit by bit), but that doesn't necessarily mean that other ISPs using the cabinets are necessarily doing the same.

The profile is just the speed that your account is set to rather than what the line's capable of.

I'm with Eircom and I read this to mean that my cabinet must be vectored already. I have been checking my stats regularly but they had not changed. So I rang Eircom this evening and the rep I spoke to didn't know what vectoring was and had never even heard the word. He asked his colleague who told him they have no idea when it will happen.

swoofer

well I did use the word "shambles" a little earlier.

here is a way to check, may not be foolproof, go to eircom website, put your no. in and it will show you the speed your line can now take, if its the same, then not vectored, if it shows an increase then its been vectored. You need to speak to eircom tech support not customer service,

fat-tony

swoofer wrote: »

well I did use the word "shambles" a little earlier.

here is a way to check, may not be foolproof, go to eircom website, put your no. in and it will show you the speed your line can now take, if its the same, then not vectored, if it shows an increase then its been vectored. You need to speak to eircom tech support not customer service,

I'm on VF (70/20 profile) and my SNR stats improved (up nearly 6dB) in early April and ping times dropped. Rang VF at end of April and they told me line was capable of +100Mb but they were unable to switch me as there was no higher profile available to them. The VF line checker says 100Mb, but the eircom one says max 70Mb. So maybe not vectored? How come the SNR improvement then?

ED E

SpaceTime wrote: »

Do they still contain the original Alcatel-Lucent DSLAMs though?
It's quite possible that eircom re-kitted them out with Huawei gear since. Or, at least have AlcaLu gear that's to the same more up-to-date spec.

The white box is just a cabinet with racks. It's what's inside that matters.

Oh they could have Im sure, but whether they've bothered to I dont know. IMO commissioning new cabs would be higher priority than small upgrades on old ones. Also the wholesale website still list them as "awaiting completion" even though theyve been in for a couple years.