What Broandband upload speed can you gt from a non-NGB exchange?

Andy From Sligo

Ive been told by eircom broadband support the fastest upload speed I can get for my broadband regardless of supplier is 384Kbps and the reason ive been given, the limitation i because the exchange is not NGB enabled - its an E10 exchange im on if thats any help. So really I'm looking for 2nd/3rd or however many opinion(s) - one thing i cannot get my head around is that in or previous house before june this year only just a mile up the road we were with Utvinternet Broadband(who have now ceased) and when I used to a speedtest.net speed test the upload figure said 768Kbps im pretty sure of it and apparently it was using the same exchange box in the area. Any info/details of what a non-ngb ADSL (g.dmt) maximum upload should get so I have some ammunition just in case Im getting the brush off here would be most appreciated

ED E

Legacy exchanges (the better ones) max out at 7Mb. Thats 7168/384.

Uploads only increase on the higher end of the scale, and not by much. You really need VDSL(eFibre) to get something decent.

flutered

i have 0.20 upload, this is an utter disgrace, how can it be called broadband.

Mayo Yid

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Ive been told by eircom broadband support the fastest upload speed I can get for my broadband regardless of supplier is 384Kbps and the reason ive been given, the limitation i because the exchange is not NGB enabled - its an E10 exchange im on if thats any help. So really I'm looking for 2nd/3rd or however many opinion(s) - one thing i cannot get my head around is that in or previous house before june this year only just a mile up the road we were with Utvinternet Broadband(who have now ceased) and when I used to a speedtest.net speed test the upload figure said 768Kbps im pretty sure of it and apparently it was using the same exchange box in the area. Any info/details of what a non-ngb ADSL (g.dmt) maximum upload should get so I have some ammunition just in case Im getting the brush off here would be most appreciated

A 12mbit business connection from Eircom would have a upload of 1mbit, it's about 70 quid per month though. I had it for ages on a exchange where the max I could get was 8mbit down 200m from exchange, the 1mbit up was lovely

Andy From Sligo

ED E wrote: »

Legacy exchanges (the better ones) max out at 7Mb. Thats 7168/384.

Uploads only increase on the higher end of the scale, and not by much. You really need VDSL(eFibre) to get something decent.

oh so the tech guy was telling the truth then, I was sorry to doubt it but have become so sceptical because in the past some of these technical suport have not always told the truth and have come up with all kinds of excuses why the broadband speed is not good to try and brush off the consumer - I still cant understand why on the same exchange I got 768kbps though, unless of course its my fault and was getting confused with download speed of 7168mbps , that might be whats happening of course

braddun

how far are you from the exchange

Andy From Sligo

fastcom in our area are doing a package of up to 12mbps down and up to 2mbps up at 50euro per month by dish on roof (not satellite) so Im really considering this one day to get better upload rate, i cant see the time we will ever get fibre where we live
http://www.fastcom.ie/#!residential-broadband/cxg1

Andy From Sligo

braddun wrote: »

how far are you from the exchange

in walking distance, just around the corner from us

braddun

then you should get faster

call voderphone with your number and it will tell you the speed

Andy From Sligo

flutered wrote: »

i have 0.20 upload, this is an utter disgrace, how can it be called broadband.

it cant can it - its terrible loading up videos to youtube and facebook or uploadig high res photos isnt it at those upload speeds

Andy From Sligo

braddun wrote: »

then you should get faster

call voderphone with your number and it will tell you the speed

But eircom bloke told me max upload i could get with anyone on ADSL is 384kbit/s which is what im getting - until next gen broadband comes to my area...

braddun

whats your exchange called
check your speed with your phon number

http://www.vodafone.ie/home-phone-broadband/

Andy From Sligo

braddun wrote: »

whats your exchange called
check your speed with your phon number

http://www.vodafone.ie/home-phone-broadband/

As per normal when I do these line checks:
Your line can support

Up to 24Mb - or the maximum speed your line can support.

---

so helpful - they never mention upload speeds though!

regardless of it saying up to 24mb im getting 5mbps download on speedtest.net

Andy From Sligo

braddun wrote: »

whats your exchange called

http://www.vodafone.ie/home-phone-broadband/

Coolaney E10

Andy From Sligo

I wouldnt mind a few years ago I was told the exchange was upgraded to NGB and that the line tested up 8mbps Download .... and now Im being told by eircom that the exchange is not NGB enabled and thats why I cannot get more that 384Kbp/s Upload rate!! - will they ever make their mind up

I dont know where they get now that my phone number/line reports up to 24Mbps speed when I am so close to the exchange - I can only achieve 5mbps (on a good day) and my modem status reports 7168mbp/s downstream line rate

ED E

braddun wrote: »

then you should get faster

call voderphone with your number and it will tell you the speed

No, he cant. Legacy exchanges dont go any faster.

OP the sites all say up to 24 if you cant get fibre, its just them being coded badly/misleadingly.

Simi

The 384kb/s upload (and the 7mb/s download) are artificial limits imposed on old ADSL exchanges. Our home broadband started at 8mb/s down 768kb/s, before being lowered to 7.6mb/s down 512kb/s up & finally down to the current limits.

It's primary effect (intentional or not) is to cripple users ability to torrent or utilise cloud services. It's a great deterrent tbh.

SpaceTime

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Coolaney E10

Coolaney seems to be part of the area covered by Ballymote which has e-fibre rolled out. The main street in Coolaney comes up as having live e-fibre.

BTW: The "E10" suffix is fairly meaningless in terms of what broadband facilities are available. Eircom uses two types of voice exchange, Ericsson AXE and Alcatel E10. They provide the PSTN (traditional voice calls and dial tone) and ISDN facilities in a given area and have been around since about 1980. The entire 07 Northwest area uses Alcatel E10 exchanges as does about half of the network.

Both systems can were designed to be fully distributed, so your local 'exchange' in all likelihood is just a cabinet or tiny building somewhere that's actually a part of a large exchange in a near by big town.

From an end user point of view, the make and model of PSTN/ISDN exchange you're connected to is pretty irrelevant. All it does is provide you with voice services (or ISDN if you happen to have that for some reason)

ADSL is provided by gear that's got nothing to do with the voice exchange.

Also, the e-fibre rollout doesn't necessarily follow the same hierarchy as the exchanges and there are plenty of examples where ADSL services are first generation and pretty bad coming from some tiny exchange and then the e-fibre services were just overlaid on top of it from a hub in the main exchange.

If the speeds available on your line are awful, I'd suggest looking at wireless services (and I don't mean 3G/4G mobile) instead.
There are some fixed-wireless access services up there.

Fastcom are the main one up that way I think?

But, basically if you're on a rubbishy rural ADSL line, you'd be far better off going with something like that as you'll at least get decent bandwidth. It's no where near as fast as e-fibre or cable, but it's at least as a normal ADSL2+ line.

They seem to do 12Mbit/s down and 2Mbit/s up + home phone via a little microwave antenna on your roof.

We had to use a small village exchange in North Leitrim one summer that was only capable of delivering 2Mbit/s and we were within 100m of the exchange!!

Andy From Sligo

this is how I figure we are getting our broadband through ADSL im pretty sure of it - i may be wrong but this is how I have sussed it out, also backs up my theory as when it rains heavy our Internet cuts out and so does the Dial tone!

- so im thinking the heavy rain cuts out the wireless signal between the dish at the exchange box and the mountain broadcasting mast (especially if the dish is not aligned properly which I would bet on, a bit like if your sky dish is not aligned properly and you loose picture or it goes pixally and blocky when it rains) I reckon if someone went up to the park tomorrow and pulled the mast down next to the exchange box (dont even think about it anyone! :eek: ) the whole of Coolaney village would loose their ADSL broadband Internet (and most probably) landline telephone dial tone

anyway, here is a (poor) picture ive done using paint to show how I think we are getting our broadband:

Andy From Sligo

SpaceTime wrote: »

Coolaney seems to be part of the area covered by Ballymote which has e-fibre rolled out. The main street in Coolaney comes up as having live e-fibre.

Id love you to be right and for me to be proved wrong but i dont think we in Coolaney are served by Ballmote - we have our own exchange in Coolaney up at the football pitch/park and I think the exchange box is fed wirelessly by signal from a mast on the coolaney OX Mountains. - Where did you see that main street in coolaney is live with e-fibre if you dont mind me asking? - we are just around corner from the main street.

SpaceTime

Try entering your address here:

http://www.eircom.net/efibreinfo/map

That little box is not really 'an exchange' per se, it's just a remote part of an actual exchange linked up by microwave by the sounds of it.

Andy From Sligo

Simi wrote: »

The 384kb/s upload (and the 7mb/s download) are artificial limits imposed on old ADSL exchanges. Our home broadband started at 8mb/s down 768kb/s, before being lowered to 7.6mb/s down 512kb/s up & finally down to the current limits.

It's primary effect (intentional or not) is to cripple users ability to torrent or utilise cloud services. It's a great deterrent tbh.

Thats what I reckon happened with me, no matter what the eircom support bloke says about 384kbps being the most i can get on our line blaming it on the exchange box im pretty sure at one time I was getting 768kbps upload, but hes got me wondering and doubting myself!

SpaceTime

Double checked again, another eircom press release says you'll be getting FTTC (E fibre) in July ... 2016...

The problem with your current system is probably that the exchange is back hauling everything over a microwave link that has limited capacity. It could be IP or ATM based but the issue is the same. The whole thing - voice and ADSL data is sharing one narrow pipe via the microwave link.

That cabinet is most likely some kind of modern MSAN (multi service access node) that's hosted at Ballymote exchange.

Andy From Sligo

SpaceTime wrote: »

Double checked again, another eircom press release says you'll be getting FTTC (E fibre) in July ... 2016...

oh, blimey I cant be dealing with these poor upload rate of 384kbps upload and 5mb down until July 2016! its gonna drive me mad - I reckon I will have to go with Fastcom soon 12mb down 2mb up one day - but how to get out of the 12/18 month contract with vodafone home broadband thats what im thinking?

Andy From Sligo

SpaceTime wrote: »

The problem with your current system is probably that the exchange is back hauling everything over a microwave link that has limited capacity. It could be IP or ATM based but the issue is the same. The whole thing - voice and ADSL data is sharing one narrow pipe via the microwave link....

even as far as I know the Fastcom dish on the mast on the Ox Mountains is not a main relay and that it gets its signal from Truskmore in Sligo I think. Sometimes at these times when your looking to get better broadband it really stinks when you live in a rural area

Mayo Yid

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

even as far as I know the Fastcom dish on the mast on the Ox Mountains is not a main relay and that it gets its signal from Truskmore in Sligo I think. Sometimes at these times when your looking to get better broadband it really stinks when you live in a rural area

It's the best you're going to get. You obviously know nothing about fixed wireless it's not like mobile where the speeds quoted are what everyone shares. It's all fixed install, if the signal isn't good enough they won't install it. Everyone gets a fixed install with the best possible signal. Nobody is mobile, so they have full control of the speeds.

Andy From Sligo

strangely I have just put my number in the eircom business broadband line checker and it says my line tests for upload 1mb and download 20mb - strange that after the eircom support fella telling me i cannot get more than 384kbps upload because of my exchange - i wish everyone sung from the same hymn sheet - somebody is wrong, is it the support guy ... or the website!! :

SpaceTime

It's possible that the line checker is just looking at stats from the exchange to your house.
It's possibly assuming that the exchange has a normal connection to the backhaul network.

The choke point would appear to be between your local exchange and its parent node.

If there are outages during bad weather, especially of the PSTN services you should keep lodging complaints. Also get talking to your neighbours and get the local TDs involved.
Also record the incidents and be prepared to file a complaint with ComReg.


Eircom has certain quality of service requirements for the PSTN network.

They should be able to replace that microwave link with a higher capacity, more reliable one even without needing to run new fibre.

ED E

Your diagram is correct Andy, thats exactly how it works. The virtual paths will mean if the link degrades voice traffic will be the last thing to halt.

These links are quite susceptible to problems, Achill sound went offline due to some trees a while ago.

Ignore the line checker, its just measuring your loop length, doesnt account for backhaul limitations.

MBSnr

Simi wrote: »

The 384kb/s upload (and the 7mb/s download) are artificial limits imposed on old ADSL exchanges. Our home broadband started at 8mb/s down 768kb/s, before being lowered to 7.6mb/s down 512kb/s up & finally down to the current limits.

It's primary effect (intentional or not) is to cripple users ability to torrent or utilise cloud services. It's a great deterrent tbh.

I guess it's that way since ADSL has been around from 1999 and when the standard was designed they never envisioned the need for video real time comms or cloud services. It was expected you'd download only and the upload used primarily for requests for content.

SpaceTime

Well, it's likely that the local exchange already supports ADSL2+ but the backhaul doesn't make it viable to even switch on.

A lot of small towns also had big expansions with new homes being built during the Celtic tiger era. Eircom seem to have upgraded the local exchange to provide phone lines but not the capacity on the links back to the nearest hub.

It's also likely that these systems were planned with early 2000s uptake and data loads in mind. Services of 2 Mbit/s were fast back then.

Nollog

I've very close to my exchange, the techs said it was just around the corner, I get 22 down 600k up
dunno if it's ngb, it's not fibre, adsl, probably has a xyzdsl name.

Andy From Sligo

SpaceTime wrote:

Well, it's likely that the local exchange already supports ADSL2+ but the backhaul doesn't make it viable to even switch on.

Does backhaul mean the microwave link to the broadcasting tower?

And my status on my modem says the line is G. Dmt .. Does that mean it's not even ADSL1 let alone ADSL2+ ?

ED E

G.dmt is the specification for ADSL1.

Backhaul is the microwave link yes. Might be 100 or 150mbps only.

SpaceTime

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Does backhaul mean the microwave link to the broadcasting tower?

And my status on my modem says the line is G. Dmt .. Does that mean it's not even ADSL1 let alone ADSL2+ ?

G.Dmt is Classic ADSL up to 8Mbit/s

It's quite possible the exchange can deliver up to 24Mbit/s from the same equipment, it's just that since it doesn't have sufficient bandwidth to provide it, there's no reason why they'd switch it on.

Backhaul just means a generic term for any connection back to the core network and beyond to the internet in general.

Eircom's NGN core is very fast. The issues you have are that you're basically connected via a crappy link to Ballymote which is probably connecting to the core in Rathedmund Exchange (a large building near Lidl/Dunnes in Sligo) which is the main node for your region.

The NGN simply means a high capacity all-IP network that has replaced the older ATM network.

Terms like "digital" and "fibre" aren't really very helpful either as they've been using both since the 1980s.

You could describe dial-up internet as "fibre powered"

The NGN maps here here, and you're definitely not on it ! http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Our_Network/

Andy From Sligo

SpaceTime wrote: »

G.Dmt is Classic ADSL up to 8Mbit/s

It's quite possible the exchange can deliver up to 24Mbit/s from the same equipment, it's just that since it doesn't have sufficient bandwidth to provide it, there's no reason why they'd switch it on.

I wish they would switch it on and enabled in any case so it is ready for when/if the microwave link is upgraded!

SpaceTime wrote: »

Eircom's NGN core is very fast. The issues you have are that you're basically connected via a crappy link to Ballymote which is probably connecting to the core in Rathedmund Exchange (a large building near Lidl/Dunnes in Sligo) which is the main node for your region.

But the thing what I dont get is are we touching Ballymote at all seeing as we are getting the signal from the mast on the Ox mountains and then down through normal copper telephone lines where i live? - what IS feeding that mast on the Ox mountains? - is it a signal from Truskmore in Sligo?

SpaceTime

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

I wish they would switch it on and enabled in any case so it is ready for when/if the microwave link is upgraded!




But the thing what I dont get is are we touching Ballymote at all seeing as we are getting the signal from the mast on the Ox mountains and then down through normal copper telephone lines where i live? - what IS feeding that mast on the Ox mountains? - is it a signal from Truskmore in Sligo?

They've a national microwave network for decades. It would be going across that. Not sure what route it might take.

Could be disappearing into the fibre network at a tower somewhere and then back to Ballymote.

Andy From Sligo

after just reading a reply from the eircom net tech support guy who said he made a mistake ad that our line CAN get 768kbps upload speed ..... but only after subscribing to a dearer broadband package such as home professional or home Turbo whatever they are so it seems like if your subscribed to the normal ADSL resedential package you get it capped at 384kbps .. so he gave me the wrong informaion the upload limit was not because of the telephone line nor the exchange it was because they want you to buy a dearer package before they give you better 768kbps - when i was with UTVinternet (before they went out of ROI) I was getting 768kbps upload on their basic package and when vodafone ireland took it over I reckon VF Ireland capped it at 384kbps upload speed - time to get onto vodafone support tomorrow now and ask them about it.

ED E

The higher packages will allow the higher upload, but see if you are actually able to order a higher package. On radio exchanges those bitstream products are often turned off a wholesale level.

SpaceTime

You can actually get very fast gigabit microwave links. Nothing particularly wrong with using radio just the radio they're using is obsolete.

I've heard rumours that some exchanges might have as little as 16Mbit/s for the whole site!

Andy From Sligo

SpaceTime wrote: »

You can actually get very fast gigabit microwave links. Nothing particularly wrong with using radio just the radio they're using is obsolete.

I've heard rumours that some exchanges might have as little as 16Mbit/s for the whole site!

yeah and how do you force a company like eircom to update their hardware to the latest specs to benefit their customers. - Even though I am not technically a customer of eircom (im with vodafone home broadband for bills) but as long as eircom still hold onto their phone lines and equipment (cant remember the correct terminology where they still own the phone lines) then I still class myself affected when eircom dont upgrade their telphone system accross the country, or take forever to upgrade the system to todays specs, especially if your off the beaten track. - mind you what am I saying, im not exacty off the beaten track im not stuck in a field miles from no-where or up a mountain or in the deepest darkest valleys, and im only living 12 miles away from sligo town centre. Just as in years ago where telecom eareann caught up late with technology and not investing in the infrastructure all these years later it seems eircom is not keeping up to date with its equipment then

mobil 222

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

I wish they would switch it on and enabled in any case so it is ready for when/if the microwave link is upgraded!




But the thing what I dont get is are we touching Ballymote at all seeing as we are getting the signal from the mast on the Ox mountains and then down through normal copper telephone lines where i live? - what IS feeding that mast on the Ox mountains? - is it a signal from Truskmore in Sligo?

Andy ...Coolaney has nothing to do with Ballymote

Coolaney is an RSU exchange ie white cabinet which has another white and
green copper cabinet attached.
There are a number of the same type around the county ie Ballygawley,
Maugherow and one at carraroe.
As far as I can see both Ballygawley and Coolaney are for upgrade next year

Andy From Sligo

mobil 222 wrote: »

Andy ...Coolaney has nothing to do with Ballymote ...

no I didnt think it did

Andy From Sligo

mobil 222 wrote: »

... As far as I can see both Ballygawley and Coolaney are for upgrade next year

I suppose Ballymote and Collooney (and most probably Tubbercurry) will get it before we get it in Coolaney...

SpaceTime

Actually, most exchanges are RSUs bit the terminology only applies to the original voice/ISDN gear.

The "exchange" is actually distributed so your local RSU is just a remote part of a big exchange sitting at the hub of a big netwoek of RSUs.

You're quite likely connected to and a part of Rathedmund in Sligo.

An RSU could be anything from a couple of hundred lines in a small cabinet to a 20,000 line suburban exchange.

The ADSL services are provided by another layer of network that's basically laid on top of the PSTN and is totally independent from it.

So in your local exchange there's a DSLAM that provides ADSL or ADSL2+. That's connected back to a big router, probably in Rathedmund.

Then the efibre gear is another separate network overlaid ontop of all that again. In that case it might not even pay any attention to exchange boundaries where a small RSU is used.

Sometimes small E10 or AXE RSUs are used to provide service to new build housing estates, industrial parks etc the difference between those and your setup is that they're fibre connected.

They'd provide 24mbit ADSL2+ reliably.

Andy From Sligo

so a rather comical (not in a funny way) answer from vodafone support that if I go with vodafone business i will be paying double than I am and no guarantees that my upload seed will go up in fact it could get worse!! - so pay double, possibly get worse! - how on earth do these providers get business most of the time

- a much more helpful thing would be if they lifted whatever restriction they impose for residential customers broadband internet just so the customer can see if the speeds will change or at least give yo a cooling off period. Yes i want faster upload speed that 256kbps , if that means paying more, OK not happy but would consider it - however if no-one can confirm that my upload speeds will increase (or maybe will get worse because of congestion ... why would a dearer business internet acount be worse than a residential account more congested?? surely a business internet account should be better?) why would/should i pay double for same speed or worse?? - and I bet if you signed up to a business account you wouldnt be able to go back to the residential account if it was to prove worse...

Nollog

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

so a rather comical (not in a funny way) answer from vodafone support that if I go with vodafone business i will be paying double than I am and no guarantees that my upload seed will go up in fact it could get worse!! - so pay double, possibly get worse! - how on earth do these providers get business most of the time

- a much more helpful thing would be if they lifted whatever restriction they impose for residential customers broadband internet just so the customer can see if the speeds will change or at least give yo a cooling off period. Yes i want faster upload speed that 256kbps , if that means paying more, OK not happy but would consider it - however if no-one can confirm that my upload speeds will increase (or maybe will get worse because of congestion ... why would a dearer business internet acount be worse than a residential account more congested?? surely a business internet account should be better?) why would/should i pay double for same speed or worse?? - and I bet if you signed up to a business account you wouldnt be able to go back to the residential account if it was to prove worse...

A business account is really all about the support, you should get better support if your line goes down and all that as a business.
Don't you get a 14 day cooling off period for exactly this reason?

Andy From Sligo

/\/ollog wrote: »

A business account is really all about the support, you should get better support if your line goes down and all that as a business.
Don't you get a 14 day cooling off period for exactly this reason?

I would have thought you should get a calling off period, i shall check that with them when I phone them - surely they wouldnt expect me to pay double for the same or worse speeds and let me opt out?

Andy From Sligo

so just wondering how do ISP's restrict upload and download rates for residential customers as opposed to ones that take out a subscription for business broadband? - do they mess about with line attenuation or gain for the particular phone number of the subscriber or how do they the technical peeps actually do it there end does anyone know?

when broadband first came out years ago, im pretty sure that if someone was getting bad speeds they could adjust the gain on the line or something allowing a better speed or am I getting mixed up with when it was Dial up and not broadband when they did that?

SpaceTime

That sounds like they're just managing bandwidth by capping the capacity on each connection. It's nothing to do with the line quality. The exchange just has very limited capacity back to the core network, so they're squeezing people onto smaller bandwidth allowances to avoid it clogging up.

Coolaney only has a population of 1000 people, on average maybe 3 people per household, so there might be 200 to 400 lines on the exchange at most and if say half of those were using ADSL, that might mean there's a 100-200 port DSLAM. Basically, the size of a single e-fibre cabinet!

The exchange might only have as little as 16 Mbit/s or 32 Mbit/s connection over a microwave link back to its parent. It has to use part of that for voice/ISDN traffic which will always get priority and the rest would be used for internet access.

Assuming that everyone's not downloading at full speed all the time, they still have to divide up whatever capacity they have between the 100+ active lines. The result of that is that they'll have to cap the speeds to share out the bandwidth. If they gave 2 customers 24mbit/s, all the other customers would be left with no connectivity.

Basically they're just rationing out a very small connection. I don't know how big that connection might be but, it sounds pretty low capacity.
I assume if you're willing to pay for a business account, you just get a slightly bigger ration and maybe a slightly higher priority.

If your little cabinet exchange were connected to fibre, it would have no issue providing everyone with reliable ADSL2+ 24Mbit/s service.

Obviously, if you're very far away from the exchange, then your line length will start to become problematic, but if you're in the village/town itself you should be able to get really good ADSL2+, sadly that's not the case there because the exchange is connected to the network over a crappy radio link instead of fibre.

It's quite possible that your entire town has less bandwidth than a single house in Sligo Town with UPC!

Also, it's not even the fact that it's a microwave link, it's the fact that that link is quite likely using prehistoric ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) protocols to connect you rather than IP (internet protocol). It's probably limited to maybe at most 100mbit/s for everything and I would suspect quite a bit less than that given that you're capped at such a low speed.

Andy From Sligo

SpaceTime wrote: »

That sounds like they're just managing bandwidth by capping the capacity on each connection. It's nothing to do with the line quality. The exchange just has very limited capacity back to the core network, so they're squeezing people onto smaller bandwidth allowances to avoid it clogging up.

Coolaney only has a population of 1000 people, on average maybe 3 people per household, so there might be 200 to 400 lines on the exchange at most and if say half of those were using ADSL, that might mean there's a 100-200 port DSLAM. Basically, the size of a single e-fibre cabinet!

The exchange might only have as little as 16 Mbit/s or 32 Mbit/s connection over a microwave link back to its parent. It has to use part of that for voice/ISDN traffic which will always get priority and the rest would be used for internet access.

Assuming that everyone's not downloading at full speed all the time, they still have to divide up whatever capacity they have between the 100+ active lines. The result of that is that they'll have to cap the speeds to share out the bandwidth. If they gave 2 customers 24mbit/s, all the other customers would be left with no connectivity.

Basically they're just rationing out a very small connection. I don't know how big that connection might be but, it sounds pretty low capacity.
I assume if you're willing to pay for a business account, you just get a slightly bigger ration and maybe a slightly higher priority.

If your little cabinet exchange were connected to fibre, it would have no issue providing everyone with reliable ADSL2+ 24Mbit/s service.

Obviously, if you're very far away from the exchange, then your line length will start to become problematic, but if you're in the village/town itself you should be able to get really good ADSL2+, sadly that's not the case there because the exchange is connected to the network over a crappy radio link instead of fibre.

It's quite possible that your entire town has less bandwidth than a single house in Sligo Town with UPC!

Also, it's not even the fact that it's a microwave link, it's the fact that that link is quite likely using prehistoric ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) protocols to connect you rather than IP (internet protocol). It's probably limited to maybe at most 100mbit/s for everything and I would suspect quite a bit less than that given that you're capped at such a low speed.

I still cannot understand why we were getting 6mbps down and 768kbps up on the same cabinet before with utvinternet ,before vodafone took over when utvinternet left ROI - to hear the press release from vodafone they said that it would be better, less congested on their servers - but in reality the internet speeds (well upload anyway) has got worse in our case - thats not progress thats going backwards - I suppose they think that download speed is more important these days for people rather than upload, but its not when you want to upload video or photos to the internet.

Even when we had Fastcom years ago they used to do 3mbps down, 3mbps up but I see these days they dont offer 3 mbps up on their standard package. When I asked why they said it was more tailored these days to customers requirements and its more important according to customers to have the best download speed.

- it really does look like to get better upload speed I will have to go with fastcom it looks (if I can somehow get out of this 18 months contract with VF) but whats the betting with my luck (or sods law as they call it) that I will get Fastcom and then not long from getting it they get e-fibre for our area! - could see that happening!