10 GB Internet from Eir?

Impetus

Xavier Neill, who now controls Eir, bought Orange Switzerland, and changed its name to Salt. Salt/Orange was regarded as a number 3 network in CH in terms of performance and coverage quality. During Neill’s tenure, Salt has moved up in QoS terms to meet and sometimes exceed Swisscom (which is more expensive for the subscriber).

Salt has gone straight for 10 GB internet, bi-directional at full speed. Salt Fiber costs CHF 49.95 per month (€41.77), and for that the subscriber gets internet at 10,000 Mbits/sec, 250+ TV channels, unlimited telephone calls in Switzerland – without a subscription period lock-in. Discount on internet cost for people who also subscribe to Salt Mobile.

https://fiber.salt.ch/en/offer-en/

(I have 1GB internet in another country (not CH), and it costs EUR 25 per month. It is great for IPTV and downloading fast. The PC’s screen fills take nano-seconds (unless the server running the website is under-provisioned).

Salt has mobile packages that exceed EU roaming offerings:

Switzerland:

Unlimited calls, SMS, MMS
Unlimited calls to the EU and USA
Unlimited high speed Internet (4G)

Roaming in the EU & USA :

Unlimited calls, SMS, MMS
4 GB/month

Subscribers with Salt Mobile get a discount on Salt internet.

The range of TV channels available on Salt makes satellite and cable TV offerings in Ireland look pathetic. https://fiber.salt.ch/en/channels-en/ and this is one key reason why Irish people lack linguistic skills. The cable and satellite networks they subscribe to blanket them with English and little else.

ED E

Post from Impy....wondert what it could be? Oh, another rant against Irish telcos he doesn't use. Quelle surprise!

Gonzo

I don't expect him to turn Eir around the same way as he did with Salt, this is Ireland.

Speeds of 10gig are completely unnecessary here and won't be required for many years. Eir's data cap isn't even enough for the speeds they do offer, maybe fix that problem first.

Switzerland is a very different market to Ireland, being in the middle of Europe and multiple languages spoken, they can accesss/expect TV from all their European neighbors and can even have better access to UK TV than we can.

Ireland's cable and satellite became very UK focused once Sky left the Astra pan European analogue system, they switched to a dedicated digital Astra satellite focused on the UK. Cable services here followed offering mainly just UK and Irish tv. Even as is there are complications with ITV channels in Ireland due to broadcasting rights and Channel 5 have zero interest in offering any of their channels or services here. Oddly enough they have no problem offering them in Switzerland.

tsue921i8wljb3

The anatomy of an Impetus thread:

*Play Swiss national anthem*

You potato eating savage micks don't have a clue about anything. It surprises me constantly that you manage to remember to breathe to stay alive.

*Celine Dion interlude*

Have I relentlessly told you how great a certain Alpine country is? It really is much better than Ireland.



*Free Toblerones for everyone*

turbbo

So the reason we're not multilingual is because we don't have enough foreign channels - last time I checked TG4 hasn't miraculously turned around the slide of the gaelic language in ireland? Maybe the fact that Switzerland borders countries with different languages might have something to do with it. Total twoddle that 10gb connections are gonna change the dominance of english in ireland.

Ultimanemo

Yous Should be more concerned about the staff he is going to fire.

Marlow

Well .. SIRO are already testing 10 Gbit/s symmetric on GPon technology.

Having said that, it's a crap idea to offer a product at a speed that means that one user in a segment can blow the top of your entire capacity for that segment.

That's like what mobile operators do.

And when it comes to OpenEIR ... they've already issues delivering 10gig circuits to their operators within a reasonable timeframe. Only 2 exchanges nationwide offer 100gig circuits.

Never mind delivering that sort of product to end customers.

Ireland is actually not bad off. Standard FTTH packages in most countries are much lower speeds (like 80, 100 or 120 Mbit/s).

/M

9726_9726

Marlow wrote: »

Well .. SIRO are already testing 10 Gbit/s symmetric on GPon technology.

Having said that, it's a crap idea to offer a product at a speed that means that one user in a segment can blow the top of your entire capacity for that segment.

That's like what mobile operators do.

And when it comes to OpenEIR ... they've already issues delivering 10gig circuits to their operators within a reasonable timeframe. Only 2 exchanges nationwide offer 100gig circuits.

Never mind delivering that sort of product to end customers.

Ireland is actually not bad off. Standard FTTH packages in most countries are much lower speeds (like 80, 100 or 120 Mbit/s).

/M

To be fair, if you gave 1000 res customers a 10Gb connection each, they'll only draw the same aggregate bandwidth as if you gave them 1Gb each. Or 300M.

Marlow

9726_9726 wrote: »

To be fair, if you gave 1000 res customers a 10Gb connection each, they'll only draw the same aggregate bandwidth as if you gave them 1Gb each. Or 300M.

That's not the point. The issue is, that if one customer can max out your connectivity, then you're (as a provider/carrier) in trouble.

You basically can't manage contention properly at that point.

/M

KildareP

Would love to see some traceroute's both within and out of the country on it.

The headline speed into the premises is only half the battle.

Let's just say it's always interesting how a 100Mb Eir line and a 400Mb Virgin Media line stack up against each other in different scenarios, the results are far from what you might assume based on the headline speed alone...

Marlow

KildareP wrote: »

Would love to see some traceroute's both within and out of the country on it.

The headline speed into the premises is only half the battle.

Let's just say it's always interesting how a 100Mb Eir line and a 400Mb Virgin Media line stack up against each other in different scenarios, the results are far from what you might assume based on the headline speed alone...

That part of the equation most consumers don't understand at all.

There's ISPs out there, that give a great deal about quality upstream. And then there's ISPs, that aren't even on the Internet Exchanges.

But that's not great for marketing to the big grey mass of consumers. Power users and business clients do understand this though.

/M

Bob24

Niel actually invested as little as possible in his home network in France and has that kind of ISP whereby the speeds you see on Speedtest.net mean nothing because the core network and links to the internet are all throttled/congested for various types of traffic. He also didn’t invest much in fiber and left Orange do all the deployments work.

So In short what I’m saying: expect him to cut costs and make Eircom cheaper to use for consumers. But don’t expect anything it terms of improving the speed and quality of service for broadband in Ireland.

Marlow

Bob24 wrote: »

So In short what I’m saying: expect him to cut costs and make Eircom cheaper to use for consumers. But don’t expect anything it terms of improving the speed and quality of service for broadband in Ireland.

Imagine, Vodafone and Sky aren't an inch better. The snow days gave us the biggest usage in Ireland we've seen in a long time.

And see, who got contended to foooook.

/M

Bob24

Marlow wrote: »

Imagine, Vodafone and Sky aren't an inch better. The snow days gave us the biggest usage in Ireland we've seen in a long time.

And see, who got contended to foooook.

/M

Oh yeah I’m not saying they’re better. I’m just saying expect Eir to get worse. If it’s anything like what Niel did on the French market, people will love it at first because he will undercut all the others and force them to reduce prices as well. But after a few years they’ll realise that this was done at the cost of reducing investment in the infrastructure and quality of service is dropping.

Marlow

Bob24 wrote: »

Oh yeah I’m not saying they’re better. I’m just saying expect Eir to get worse. If it’s anything like what Niel did on the French market, people will love it at first because he will undercut all the others and force them to reduce prices as well. But after a few years they’ll realise that this was done at the cost of reducing investment in the infrastructure and quality of service is dropping.

I don't think he can do much worse, than Eir already are doing.

Eir are actually not cheap ... only to new customers and only in the first 6 months. .... maybe ....

Then there's the issue with customer service and billing. It's a nightmare.

So ... he can actually only improve things.

And the fun part is, that there's plenty of other infrastructure around and being build in the areas, that he's focusing on. He'll just help SIRO and Virgin to get a better foothold From May 1st, SIRO Gigabit FTTH is getting real cheap for irish standards.

/M

ED E

Marlow wrote: »

Then there's the issue with customer service and billing. It's a nightmare.

They were penny wise pound foolish when they transitioned billing platform and have been getting raked over hot coals for it every day since. CS might actually be mediocre if it werent for that.

There's lots of room for improvement in there, I say wait and see how they do.

Marlow

ED E wrote: »

They were penny wise pound foolish when they transitioned billing platform and have been getting raked over hot coals for it every day since. CS might actually be mediocre if it werent for that.

There's lots of room for improvement in there, I say wait and see how they do.

They went penny pinching on their billing system and didn't pay for a proper reports engine. I know some of the people that deal with that side of things in retail.

As a result, they don't even know what's going on on the billing side. Eir retail currently has 5 billing systems and you never know, which one you end up in.

There's lots of cases, where customers actually cost them money, after they wrongful billed them.

The money management is extremely poor. I believe the wholesale arm is the only thing, that may turn an actual profit. Maybe Eir mobile/Meteor, but they'll destroy that soon, too.

/M

Bob24

Marlow wrote: »

I don't think he can do much worse, than Eir already are doing.

Eir are actually not cheap ... only to new customers and only in the first 6 months. .... maybe ....

Then there's the issue with customer service and billing. It's a nightmare.

So ... he can actually only improve things.

And the fun part is, that there's plenty of other infrastructure around and being build in the areas, that he's focusing on. He'll just help SIRO and Virgin to get a better foothold From May 1st, SIRO Gigabit FTTH is getting real cheap for irish standards.

/M

Trust me he can do worse (I have personal experience using both and have good knowledge of the history of France’s telecoms market).

For exemple Eir seems to have decent data speeds on their core network. For years, Free’s customers (Free is the name of Niel’s ISP in France) basically couldn’t use YouTube because their peering with Google was voluntarily undersized and constantly saturated (similar to what Virgin Media had with Netflix here a while back, except it was more pronouced and lasted for years rather than months).

As I said he might shake up the market in terms of prices and reduce broadband cost in Ireland though.

KildareP

Seems it will be as feared so - sell on the headline speed and price and slash costs in the core network peering

And unfortunately, it seems to work if you look at the mobile sector.

After all, people are all over 3's "4G" All You Can Eata, despite the fact it is as good as useless at peak times, because its a "great deal" compared to everyone elses "limited" data bundles.

People are happy to put up with Tesco's lack of 4G and dwindling 3G coverage because it is so cheap.

And Eir and Vodafone are starting to follow suit to compete, with the natural side effects of that starting to become apparent in many areas, rather than try compete via other means.

.G.

Kenya Bitter Shootout wrote:

*Free Toblerones for everyone*

I'm here for this part.

Bob24

KildareP wrote: »

And Eir and Vodafone are starting to follow suit to compete, with the natural side effects of that starting to become apparent in many areas, rather than try compete via other means.

Exactly, the problem is that in the long run it affects the whole industry and reduces quality of service accros the board.

In every market I think there is space for one entity which unapologetically charges higher (but reasonable) prices and delivers significantly better service though. In France Orange has taken that stance to compete with Niel’s company and it has worked very well for them. It just took several years for them (and the public) to adjust to the new reality of the maket with a period whereby it was just a race to the bottom both in terms of prices and quality of service.

Bob24

And actually to illustrate what we are saying Netflix's ISP index is worth a look:
- Eir in is the middle/top of the pack in Ireland with fairly decent and stable speeds to Netflix
- Free is clearly at the very bottom of the pack in France with slower and more unstable speeds than Eir here

(and that is in spite of Eir operating mostly DSL service in a fairly small market with geographically widespread customer base, while Free is operating a mix of DSL and fibre in a much more densely populated country and a larger market whereby it is easier to deliver fast speeds)

Gonzo

I've yet to read something that isn't negative about Niel taking over Eir. It's all bad news.

Eir have always had alot of issues but if your lucky enough to have decent internet from them and no billing/customer service issues then they are fairly decent as their network currently is very good.

If that goes because Niel wants to cut corners and make the service cheaper and more profitable, then Eir have nothing left and we will have no option but to change provider.

Cuddlesworth

Population density
Switzerland = 212 sq. Km
Ireland = 68 sq. Km

Road density :Km of road per 100 sq. km of land area
Switzerland = 172.85
Ireland = 132

So we have roughly 33% of the population density but 75% of the road density.

At a guess, I would say that if you did a heatmap of Switzerland you would find the vast majority of people live in or right around towns like its neighbouring county's. Meanwhile in Ireland....

So its understandable that that providing a 10 gig service to Ireland would be significantly more expensive in terms of installation and operating costs. To a operator that is well behind in its infrastructure already.

Marlow

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

So its understandable that that providing a 10 gig service to Ireland would be significantly more expensive in terms of installation and operating costs. To a operator that is well behind in its infrastructure already.

Not really. The current FTTH rollout can be upgraded to 10gig without any problems.

It just takes a sh!tload of ONTs, OLTs and NGN hardware upgrades.

Now .. the VDSL covered areas .. that's an entire different problem.

But yes .. the shortcuts, the OpenEIR has made in the past ... and lack of investment in the network ... will haunt them and prevent such things from happening any time soon.

/M

Cuddlesworth

Marlow wrote: »

Not really. The current FTTH rollout can be upgraded to 10gig without any problems.

It just takes a sh!tload of ONTs, OLTs and NGN hardware upgrades.

Now .. the VDSL covered areas .. that's an entire different problem.

But yes .. the shortcuts, the OpenEIR has made in the past ... and lack of investment in the network ... will haunt them and prevent such things from happening any time soon.

/M

I'm not saying that the fibre can't go to 10gig(although its not just a simple matter of some transceiver swaps). Its that the simple cost of installing the network in the first place is significantly more expensive. Which has to be paid off.

Marlow

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Its that the simple cost of installing the network in the first place is significantly more expensive. Which has to be paid off.

Well, that's what I referred to with a sh!tload of NGN upgrades. OpenEIR can't even deliver 10gig ports to wholesale partners in a timely manner.

Never mind delivering a 10gig residential product.

Only 2 exchanges (total) offer 100gig ports (City West and Clonshaug). And that's a recent development.

/M

ED E

Their CPE budget would need to be about 600% of what it currently is as a start before you even got to the CO or core.


Can we stop feeding troll threads perhaps? Ireland isn't Singapore and Impy is just a little fella the fell off the side of a 90's bus.

Marlow

Muhahahhaha.

turbbo

ED E wrote: »

Their CPE budget would need to be about 600% of what it currently is as a start before you even got to the CO or core.


Can we stop feeding troll threads perhaps? Ireland isn't Singapore and Impy is just a little fella the fell off the side of a 90's bus.

Think you mean Ireland isn't Switzerland.
You are paradoxically "feeding the troll" by commenting again on this thread - so am I btw. It's entertaining, how long will a thread like "10 GB Internet from Eir?" keep going? The broadband boards are pretty boring at the moment - not much happening in either of the rollouts and not many people moaning or praising, I wonder is the interest in the rollouts waning? Or as people have mentioned uptake being very poor are we as a nation fed up of poor telecoms service? Maybe we're now happy enough to while away the time on rubbish wireless connections - until eventually the NBP spends some of the 500 million on some actual infrastructure?

ED E

I meant Singapore - its the residential internet capital of the world.

turbbo

ED E wrote: »

I meant Singapore - its the residential internet capital of the world.

I thought South Korea overtook them a long time ago?

ED E

turbbo wrote: »

I thought South Korea overtook them a long time ago?

Depends on which chart you wanna look at.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds

turbbo

looks like Singapore is still on the top:
http://www.speedtest.net/global-index

turbbo

Singapore - they banned chewing gum because it jammed up the doors on the trains there once.
They like their $hit to work and work efficiently. I visited there many years ago and was blown away by the place.
We have a long long way to go.

11214

KildareP wrote: »

Would love to see some traceroute's both within and out of the country on it.

The headline speed into the premises is only half the battle.

Let's just say it's always interesting how a 100Mb Eir line and a 400Mb Virgin Media line stack up against each other in different scenarios, the results are far from what you might assume based on the headline speed alone...

Could anyone elaborate on this or post a link I could read?

Marlow

11214 wrote: »

Could anyone elaborate on this or post a link I could read?

That's because the headline speed isn't everything.

Virgin is extremely restrictive with their peering and tends to overcontend certain uplinks. So you having a 360 Mbit/s is no benefit to you, when you can't get that speed to the places on the internet, that you want to visit.

Matter of fact: Virgin does only peer with a small subset of irish providers on INEX. Most other providers have to go through their upstream all the way to Amsterdam before you get a connection between a Virgin user and a user on a different irish provider.

Providers should not only be picked on speed, but also on the quality of their upstream.

The same applies to above 10gig connections. No good to you, if the bandwidth further up isn't there.

/M

Bob24

11214 wrote: »

Could anyone elaborate on this or post a link I could read?

You buy a 100mbps service from provider 1 and 1gbps service from provider 2 and try to download a file from Google.

To simplify the network path is :

You <-A-> service provider <-B-> Google

A is the private network of the ISP (which is 100mbps with provider 1 and 1gbps with provider 2) and defines how quickly you can communicate with their own core network.

B is the internet network path between your ISP’s core network and google. No ISP will guarantee a minimum speed for this and it depends on how much they spend to connect themselves to the internet.

The actual speed you get between you and google is whichever of A and B is the slowest, as you have to go through both; but remember only A has a garanted speed (which is the speed the ISP is marketing to you).

So if provider 1 is good you can get your full 100mbps to google because B is not saturated and you can max-out A. But if provider 2 is bad and hasn’t invested in their infrastructure you could get only 10mbps to Google (you have 1gpbs on A alright, but their internet connectivity is completely saturated and B can only deliver 10mbps)

I.e. the 100mbps service will end up being faster than the 1gbps one because 1 gbps is the speed from your driveway to the main road, but the main road is completely jammed and can only deliver 10mpbs to go to google, while your friend only gets 100 mbps from their driveway but then reach a motorway which can also lead them straight to google at 100mbps.

Ok maybe that was a bit long and convoluted, but hopefully it clarifies!

KildareP

11214 wrote: »

Could anyone elaborate on this or post a link I could read?

All explained in the last two posts so won't go any further into the details

But you can take a look for yourself on the peering matrix of INEX - basically a consortium of ISP's and content providers where they can all interconnect with each other.

https://www.inex.ie/ixp/peering-matrix

Green means a direct peer.
Red means no peer.

If you look at Netflix as an example, Netflix have a content cache here in Dublin, except Virgin Media don't peer with it.
Therefore if you want to watch something on Netflix and you're on Virgin, it has to go fetch the traffic from outside Ireland.

This has caused significant issues with them before, at one stage Netflix traffic was coming in from New York, and at peak times the transatlantic links would become saturated meaning you'd struggle to get above 240p resolution on Netflix through your 360Mb Virgin line, yet your 7Mb Eircom DSL line down some country boreen would be streaming away at full 1080P.

I think it's "only" coming in from London now, but still an unnecessary cross-channel hop for something that could be served right within Ireland. Have a search in the Virgin Media forums for Netflix and Youtube - there's megathreads showing the extent of the issue and how long it took for it to be rectified.

It's not just Netflix - they don't peer with Akamai, Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft or SunGard here in Ireland either to name a few - which would serve up the vast majority of content based services like iTunes, Youtube, Spotify, Google Music, Sky Go, etc.
Thus any such connections to those services could potentially be going all the way to Amsterdam and back even if you were standing at that service providers rack but on a Virgin Media DIA circuit.

Can cause similar difficulties in the business world when interconnecting multiple office sites that aren't using Virgin Media exclusively as their ISP, particularly when you're using latency and jitter-sensitive cross-site VoIP or video conferencing, or where there's bandwidth intensive applications going on (like hotsite replication or pushing large files around).

Now in fairness to VM, it's not all doom and gloom, as in, for the most part their connections are generally fast, low latency and reliable, and I wouldn't be put off recommending a VM circuit into anywhere.
It's just a headache when you're trying to diagnose packet loss between two sites and you can see your traffic being hauled halfway across Europe!

tsue921i8wljb3

KildareP wrote: »

All explained in the last two posts so won't go any further into the details

But you can take a look for yourself on the peering matrix of INEX - basically a consortium of ISP's and content providers where they can all interconnect with each other.

https://www.inex.ie/ixp/peering-matrix

Green means a direct peer.
Red means no peer.

If you look at Netflix as an example, Netflix have a content cache here in Dublin, except Virgin Media don't peer with it.
Therefore if you want to watch something on Netflix and you're on Virgin, it has to go fetch the traffic from outside Ireland.

This has caused significant issues with them before, at one stage Netflix traffic was coming in from New York, and at peak times the transatlantic links would become saturated meaning you'd struggle to get above 240p resolution on Netflix through your 360Mb Virgin line, yet your 7Mb Eircom DSL line down some country boreen would be streaming away at full 1080P.

I think it's "only" coming in from London now, but still an unnecessary cross-channel hop for something that could be served right within Ireland. Have a search in the Virgin Media forums for Netflix and Youtube - there's megathreads showing the extent of the issue and how long it took for it to be rectified.

It's not just Netflix - they don't peer with Akamai, Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft or SunGard here in Ireland either to name a few - which would serve up the vast majority of content based services like iTunes, Youtube, Spotify, Google Music, Sky Go, etc.
Thus any such connections to those services could potentially be going all the way to Amsterdam and back even if you were standing at that service providers rack but on a Virgin Media DIA circuit.

Can cause similar difficulties in the business world when interconnecting multiple office sites that aren't using Virgin Media exclusively as their ISP, particularly when you're using latency and jitter-sensitive cross-site VoIP or video conferencing, or where there's bandwidth intensive applications going on (like hotsite replication or pushing large files around).

Now in fairness to VM, it's not all doom and gloom, as in, for the most part their connections are generally fast, low latency and reliable, and I wouldn't be put off recommending a VM circuit into anywhere.
It's just a headache when you're trying to diagnose packet loss between two sites and you can see your traffic being hauled halfway across Europe!

Are you certain that Virgin are not using Open Connect within their own network for Netflix? I know eir use Open Connect machines for their Netflix delivery and bar the dispute between Liberty Global and Netflix that you referenced Virgin are and have been way out in front in Netflix's speed ranking.

https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/

https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/country/ireland/

Cuddlesworth

KildareP wrote: »

But you can take a look for yourself on the peering matrix of INEX - basically a consortium of ISP's and content providers where they can all interconnect with each other.

https://www.inex.ie/ixp/peering-matrix

Liberty global is a very large ISP with lots of interconnects, BGP is a very trust orientated protocol, networks get very complex and proper peering can get difficult to manage the larger things get.

Very few of INEX's peering partners would meet their peering policy.

Marlow

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Liberty global is a very large ISP with lots of interconnects, BGP is a very trust orientated protocol, networks get very complex and proper peering can get difficult to manage the larger things get.

Very few of INEX's peering partners would meet their peering policy.

That's a bit of BS to be honest. Because there's vastly larger networks than Liberty, that have no problems having an open peering policy.

Matter of fact, Virgin UK had no problems peering with pretty much everybody before everything got stuck together with UPC. UPC has traditionally always been extremely reluctant to peer with anybody .. even when they weren't that big.

It's their own loss. Because they actually loose customers over it, when the peering between work places and home workers get routed via NL or UK and back companies often tell their employees to find a provider, that has better peering. And that's Virgin out of the window then.

The only reason Virgin does this, is to entice everyone to use their network. But most of the time, it backfires for them.

/M

KildareP

Kenya Bitter Shootout wrote: »

Are you certain that Virgin are not using Open Connect within their own network for Netflix? I know eir use Open Connect machines for their Netflix delivery and bar the dispute between Liberty Global and Netflix that you referenced Virgin are and have been way out in front in Netflix's speed ranking.

https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/

https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/country/ireland/

It has been a few months since I checked Netflix specifically but the last time I checked they were not.

Also it is normal for you to peer with Netflix locally for your country for the daily cache infill. So I'd say its still probably no.

But open to correction!

KildareP

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Liberty global is a very large ISP with lots of interconnects, BGP is a very trust orientated protocol, networks get very complex and proper peering can get difficult to manage the larger things get.

Very few of INEX's peering partners would meet their peering policy.

What would restrict most interconnections is the 1:3 and 3:1 ratio. All of those I mentioned above would meet all other requirements bar that one.

oscarBravo

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Very few of INEX's peering partners would meet their peering policy.

That's because their peering policy is radically OTT. Almost every other ISP in Ireland, including some much bigger companies than them, manages to peer without such a restrictive policy.

So, yes: the reason very few networks peer with them is because of their restrictive peering policy. But that just pushes the question back: why do they have such a restrictive peering policy?

Cuddlesworth

oscarBravo wrote: »

That's because their peering policy is radically OTT. Almost every other ISP in Ireland, including some much bigger companies than them, manages to peer without such a restrictive policy.

So, yes: the reason very few networks peer with them is because of their restrictive peering policy. But that just pushes the question back: why do they have such a restrictive peering policy?

Because a laxer peering policy means more staff, more work, more chance of mistakes, more money. This is the company that threw out DS-lite with no hesitation, they are clearly cost conscious over customer.

Its worth noting as well, they don't really host a lot of business traffic so very few of the providers in INEX would send any really traffic to them. Netflix/Microsoft/google and Facebook is a bit odd, as they would be a pretty serious percentage of their bandwidth within Ireland.

Marlow

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Because a laxer peering policy means more staff, more work, more chance of mistakes, more money. This is the company that threw out DS-lite with no hesitation, they are clearly cost conscious over customer.

It doesn't mean more staff or more work.

And it also doesn't mean more cost. They have more cost right now, because they're hauling tons of their traffic out of Ireland and to primarily NL. That means they need to pay for that capacity, when the traffic could be handed off locally.

As a result of that quality suffers.

All of that actually goes against their customers.

/M

Impetus

Please don't miss the point. I have had DSL since 2000 (not in Ireland). It started off with 512k and moved up. There were so few competing subscribers that 512k looked fast on screen page fills.

I now have 1GB (for EUR 25 pm), and I have a 10 GB Ethernet connection on my workstation.

Time moves on. I uploaded a 5 GB video of a trip in 4k to AWS last week, and it didn't take long - but few of my friends have fast enough internet connections to download while watching, so they have to download and save and watch from their mass storage.

Any company installing fiber, might as well install 10 GB fiber. It is far more appealing compared with what competitors might do. And it gives their infrastructure investment a longer life.

The other issues are contention ratios, jitter (eg for phone calls), ping time, and the issue of up and down speeds. These are areas where back street operators (and their so called 'regulators') can con the average subscriber.

The main difference between IRL and CH is that Xavier buys an also ran network (Orange) in Switzerland, and has to out do Swisscom's - excellent but expensive service. So Swisscom's 1 GB looks slow compared with Xavier's 10 GB.

In Ireland, Xavier has bought Eircom (Eir), which is the Irish Swisscom type legacy operator. Expensive, but Eir is a low quality company in comparison with Swisscom. In most parts, Eir's only competitor is a second rate cable operator, who in addition to delivering a handful of crappy TV channels, also does internet, over EuroDOCSIS3.

Ireland is dominated by high price low quality companies. Europe's downmarket capital. In Irish supermarkets you can usually only find small packages of an item at extortionate prices. The typical Irish aircraft is dirty, serves poor quality junk food and beverage and nickels and dimes its victims, at every opportunity. I prefer to travel Lufthansa (which includes Swiss, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, and many others) - the only fire star airline in Europe. Most of the time the LH group ticket cost a fraction of the price charged by an Irish airline, to Ireland. And the Lufthansa crew are far easier to interact with, more friendly than their equivalent on an Irish airline. The country is full of poorly designed, one off housing (which makes internet and other utilities expensive to provide) - as a result of poor zoning and planning regulations by an overpaid, over pensioned, incompetent government. Why? Because people put up with it.

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Marlow

Impetus wrote: »

Europe's downmarket capital.

In how many countries do you post on forums and tell them, that their internet operators and broadband products are only 2nd rate to Switzerland ? And that they essentially are third world countries ?

Just asking.

/M

oscarBravo

Impetus wrote: »

Any company installing fiber, might as well install 10 GB fiber.

You don't really understand how fibre works, do you?