Congestion, how should it behave?

Zith

Being on one of the older exchanges I understand that we are well behind the curve regarding eFibre or even NGB and therefore will be subject to congestion at peak times. I know the technical definition and reason for congestion but what I would really like to have from Eircom is an explanation of what you expect the end user experience of congestion will be?

My reason to ask for this is so that when strange things happen to our broadband we have (for example) a list of "normal" issues we can be expecting, so no point calling support for them.

My understanding is that the old ADSL product has a 48:1 congestion ratio. Does that mean for my 3Meg connection I can always expect at least 6K throughput?

Here is a list of symptoms I experience on my broadband connection. Which of these are caused by congestion? I am genuinely curious here. I have tagged the ones I can understand would be caused by congestion.


- Download speeds reduced at peak times (congestion)
- Packet loss increases up to 35% at peak times (congestion)
- Ping times to various sites increases at peak times (congestion)

- DSL stays up (and ATM layer) but the PPP will reconnect a number of times a day (?)

This last one has me puzzled. From speaking to technical support before and going through the whole routine even down to an engineer coming out they found the line was perfect. So can those PPP drops be attributed to congestion? I would not expect that.

Thanks

Zith

Any info on this?

Zith

Assume then that Eircom does not understand how their own network should behave?