Eircom Congestion - but solved using multiple TCP connections

dalta5billion

My exchange has for the past couple of months been suffering from serious congestion at peak times. Previous to this congestion, a single connection TCP download would reach close to the theoretical maximum of my ADSL connection (around 480 KBps).

Now however, a single TCP connection will only reach around 80KBps at peak times. This makes streaming anything impossible. However, using a multithreaded download client allows me to average 480KBps. This proves to me that Eircom's backhaul for our (supposedly NGB-uncongested) exchange is saturated at present, and dropping packets on a per-connection basis at the exchange, hence why multiple TCP connections cheats the system (if I understand TCP's slow-start correctly).

Anyone else suffering similar congestion?

ElNino

What exchange are you on? It is obviously one of the ones not connected to the eircom fibre grid.

dalta5billion

ElNino wrote: »

What exchange are you on? It is obviously one of the ones not connected to the eircom fibre grid.

Curragh Camp, which is about to go live for eFibre, and has never had congestion up to a few months ago when it hit hard. This crap has been going on since the storm at Christmas. I'm getting eFibre installed tomorrow.

guil

dalta5billion wrote: »

Curragh Camp, which is about to go live for eFibre, and has never had congestion up to a few months ago when it hit hard. This crap has been going on since the storm at Christmas. I'm getting eFibre installed tomorrow.

Where abouts in the curragh camp? I'm connected to the cabinet up near the rugby club and there's no fibre cabinet built there yet.

dalta5billion

guil wrote: »

Where abouts in the curragh camp? I'm connected to the cabinet up near the rugby club and there's no fibre cabinet built there yet.

Cut Bush cabinet.

ElNino

That is strange because Curragh Camp is on the eircom fibre network.
http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Our_Network/

Maybe it was only connected recently for the efibre and they will be increasing the back haul for their ADSL as well soon. One of the eircom insiders on here will probably know.

guil

As far as I know the only fibre cabinet that's live is the one at brownstown cross. I'm much closer to that.

Interesting though that another cabinet is due to be built at the back of the church I noticed it a few days ago but wasn't there a week ago.

dalta5billion

guil wrote: »

As far as I know the only fibre cabinet that's live is the one at brownstown cross. I'm much closer to that.

Interesting though that another cabinet is due to be built at the back of the church I noticed it a few days ago but wasn't there a week ago.

The long windowed building at the back of the church is the exchange building. The "E" in the cabinet code means that it will provide VDSL to people whose lines do not go through a cabinet. I'm 400 metres from the Cut Bush cabinet, so hoping for good speeds when I get installed tomorrow.

guil

Yeah I've seen eircom lads up there a good few times. Do you think they will move any lines or is that even possible?

Just looked at the map again and it says that exchange is gone live for fibre and 860 premises can now get fibre. I'm lost haha.

dalta5billion

guil wrote: »

Yeah I've seen eircom lads up there a good few times. Do you think they will move any lines or is that even possible?

Just looked at the map again and it says that exchange is gone live for fibre and 860 premises can now get fibre. I'm lost haha.

They mean in the Curragh Camp exchange as a whole 860 people are connected to live fibre cabinets, not actually the cabinet that will be in the exchange, which will serve fewer people.

guil

The map seems to be back to the way it was before now. I'm 600 metres for the brownstown cab, 750 to the exchange and 1.6km to the cab I'm connected to. God knows when that will be updated cos there's no new cab up there yet.

dalta5billion

guil wrote: »

The map seems to be back to the way it was before now. I'm 600 metres for the brownstown cab, 750 to the exchange and 1.6km to the cab I'm connected to. God knows when that will be updated cos there's no new cab up there yet.

You're line seems to take a torturously roundabout route, unfortunately for you. You probably won't see a massive improvement if you do get VDSL.

I'm 3.3 km from the exchange, and I get 5 Mbps ADSL, you sound closer to the exchange however. What are your line stats?

guil

Here you go

dalta5billion

guil wrote: »

Here you go

You seem quite close to the exchange, how do you know that you are connected to the rugby club cabinet?

guil

Vodafone told me I'm connected to that cabinet but don't think the person I was talking to had a clue. They said there was lots of letters but part of it was CUR1_003