Broadband in Cork

corks finest

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Think of it as the motorway network that carries the data behind the scenes. It's the backbone network that carries traffic.

You could think of the products as being assembled like this:

Access Network

This is the bit that directly interfaces with your house or office.

It's fibre optic, coaxial or copper wires or a radio signal that connects you to the network.

This is the bit that your ISP usually advertises the speed of i.e. up to 100mbit/s VDSL or Gigabit Fibre or Cable etc.

Backhaul Network

This is a network made up of routers and fibre optic lines that are either owned or leased by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). They aggregate (gather) traffic from the access network and carry it around the country.

Peering

This will also usually contain connections to 'peering' sites like INEX (Irish Neutral Exchange) and the Cork Internet Exchange (CIX) (which is also an INEX node) where traffic is interconnected to other Irish ISPs as well as popular international, high-demand services to minimise overhead. The more peering the better! It means routing is more efficient and the distances involved are reduced, so you get better performance.

Some of the larger ISPs also have their own private peering arrangements with high demand services.

INEX members: https://www.inex.ie/about-us/inex-members/

International Network

These are networks that are sometimes owned, but often simply leased capacity on major international fibre routes and connect your ISP to major hubs around the world. The higher the capacity and fewer the hops to popular destinations, the better the end user experience.

To get a top performing ISP, you need to be good on all of these levels.

For example, if you have an OpenEir or Siro gigabit line, that only covers the access network. If your ISP isn't great for backhaul, peering or international connectivity, your high speed local access won't avoid those bottlenecks.

A lot of people think that other companies just resell Eir's ISP service. They don't. Rather, they just use OpenEir's access network. The rest of the network is owned or assembled from leasing arrangements by them.

For example, Sky Broadband is running over largely BT Ireland's networks and is managed for Sky by them. The only Eir involvement is the access network.

Siro also does not provide any internet services, it's purely an access network and the same will apply to the NBI rural fibre services.

Thanking you that's comprehensive as it was generally gobbly gook to me prior to this explanation

Dbu

Hi,
Looking at Pure Telecom for Siro
have been with VF for years but they wont drop the price for existing customers.....great thanks

Has anyone experience of Pure Telecom bb and in particular siro from them?
Thanks
D

TheDriver

Dbu wrote: »

Hi,
Looking at Pure Telecom for Siro
have been with VF for years but they wont drop the price for existing customers.....great thanks

Has anyone experience of Pure Telecom bb and in particular siro from them?
Thanks
D

I was the same, they took a fiver off the full price. Didn't believe me when I said I was leaving. so I left.
PURE are great, I got the gig for 35 for 12 months. Its BT backhaul, works perfectly. Wired, I get 920-940 consistently.
I can't see myself going back to VF to be honest, endless hours on wait, pressing numbers, passed between departments and always ending up with COMREG because no one wants to sort billing issues.

corks finest

TheDriver wrote: »

I was the same, they took a fiver off the full price. Didn't believe me when I said I was leaving. so I left.
PURE are great, I got the gig for 35 for 12 months. Its BT backhaul, works perfectly. Wired, I get 920-940 consistently.
I can't see myself going back to VF to be honest, endless hours on wait, pressing numbers, passed between departments and always ending up with COMREG because no one wants to sort billing issues.

Joking?, those speeds are serious

TheDriver

corks finest wrote: »

Joking?, those speeds are serious

No joking, I have a PC wired to the router and using the speedtest app, I always get 900+ speeds down, 100 up. Obviously on wifi etc, it isn't as good but my laptop can get 500-600 on wifi, phones can get 250-300. Things like TVs or firestick can get 300. I have my own mesh system so I don't use the router wifi (it's only a 100 quid set of 3).
Never get buffering, outages etc.
Having said that, if the 500 package was cheaper (wasn't at the time) then I'd go for that.

corks finest

TheDriver wrote: »

No joking, I have a PC wired to the router and using the speedtest app, I always get 900+ speeds down, 100 up. Obviously on wifi etc, it isn't as good but my laptop can get 500-600 on wifi, phones can get 250-300. Things like TVs or firestick can get 300. I have my own mesh system so I don't use the router wifi (it's only a 100 quid set of 3).
Never get buffering, outages etc.
Having said that, if the 500 package was cheaper (wasn't at the time) then I'd go for that.

That's bloody great, I'm happy with VF mostly, but speeds do drop dramatically at times,
I'm paying e45 siro gigabit (Vodafone)

Could u do me a favour Pls?
Speed test it via ookla and as when I use speed test. Net I get massive speeds, but when I test via ookla the results drop big time

TheDriver

corks finest wrote: »

That's bloody great, I'm happy with VF mostly, but speeds do drop dramatically at times,
I'm paying e45 siro gigabit (Vodafone)

Could u do me a favour Pls?
Speed test it via ookla and as when I use speed test. Net I get massive speeds, but when I test via ookla the results drop big time

Isn't speedtest.net and Ookla the same thing? I use the app on pc etc rather than the website.
Issue with VF is that they've a lot of customers on their backhaul Vs small crowds reselling BT or enet backhaul siro.

corks finest

TheDriver wrote: »

Isn't speedtest.net and Ookla the same thing? I use the app on pc etc rather than the website.
Issue with VF is that they've a lot of customers on their backhaul Vs small crowds reselling BT or enet backhaul siro.

So

speedtest.net consistently gives me close on double the speed results compared to ookka,
And also used other speed tests and results same,
Also when I'd issues with vf they consistently asked me to check my speeds via speedtest.net and didn't want to know about results from any other

Ps I'm checking speeds via nvidia shield
wired directly

pwurple

Correct me if I'm wrong here...

I'm urban Cork, south side. Living in this house for 8 years, and have never had broadband. One of a few houses that were built on the garden of another larger house. Seem to have been missed with communication infrastructure in general when they were built, and have not been able to ever get it fixed.

House is not Siro enabled.
No physical phoneline, the pole blew down in a storm years ago and was never replaced by eircom. It was rubbish anyway, very lossy. No phoneline means we cannot access vodaphone, eir, sky etc.
Virgin Media - No service available
Nova networks have told me the coverage isn't good here.
We are ~110m from the nearest fibre enabled cabinet.

So, apart from the crappy 3G/4G hotspots and dongles I've been using, there's nothing else, right?

corks finest

pwurple wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong here...

I'm urban Cork, south side. Living in this house for 8 years, and have never had broadband. One of a few houses that were built on the garden of another larger house. Seem to have been missed with communication infrastructure in general when they were built, and have not been able to ever get it fixed.

House is not Siro enabled.
No physical phoneline, the pole blew down in a storm years ago and was never replaced by eircom. It was rubbish anyway, very lossy. No phoneline means we cannot access vodaphone, eir, sky etc.
Virgin Media - No service available
Nova networks have told me the coverage isn't good here.
We are ~110m from the nearest fibre enabled cabinet.

So, apart from the crappy 3G/4G hotspots and dongles I've been using, there's nothing else, right?

Feck what an infrastructure we haven't

That's hard lines

ACitizenErased

pwurple wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong here...

I'm urban Cork, south side. Living in this house for 8 years, and have never had broadband. One of a few houses that were built on the garden of another larger house. Seem to have been missed with communication infrastructure in general when they were built, and have not been able to ever get it fixed.

House is not Siro enabled.
No physical phoneline, the pole blew down in a storm years ago and was never replaced by eircom. It was rubbish anyway, very lossy. No phoneline means we cannot access vodaphone, eir, sky etc.
Virgin Media - No service available
Nova networks have told me the coverage isn't good here.
We are ~110m from the nearest fibre enabled cabinet.

So, apart from the crappy 3G/4G hotspots and dongles I've been using, there's nothing else, right?

National broadband plan?
Put your eircode in on nbi.ie
If you’re not in it email DCCAE and they’ll survey your house.
I’m in Rochestown and we’re being connected to fibre this month

TheDriver

I failed to find any specific Ookla speed test but rather the speedtest by Ookla app which is same crowd as speedtest.net. I tested again using the app and as always, ping of 5ms and speeds of over 900 down, 100up.
You also have nova selling the same product as pure and digiweb, sky and Vodafone deal with their own backhaul I think.

Sonics2k

Based in Carrigaline and recently had to switch from Sky due to the outrageous prices for speeds they offered, and the internet going down 4-5 times per day.

Been with Vodafone a little over 3 weeks and getting over 800mb/s and not a single outage.

corks finest

Sonics2k wrote: »

Based in Carrigaline and recently had to switch from Sky due to the outrageous prices for speeds they offered, and the internet going down 4-5 times per day.

Been with Vodafone a little over 3 weeks and getting over 800mb/s and not a single outage.

Lucky I'm with them years and have changed modems several times (VF insistence) had engineers out etc, but overall a decent service never at 800 mb down though

seefin

Need to decide whether to cancel virgin broadband today . Have ftth ( not Siro so Eir?) but Virgin sales rep said that even with this other providers won't be giving as fast speeds as sharing ? Is this true?
Want to move to sky as get the tv package thrown in for same price but couldn't be dealing with any internet issues for the next year as wfh. Any thoughts ?

TheDriver

seefin wrote: »

Need to decide whether to cancel virgin broadband today . Have ftth ( not Siro so Eir?) but Virgin sales rep said that even with this other providers won't be giving as fast speeds as sharing ? Is this true?
Want to move to sky as get the tv package thrown in for same price but couldn't be dealing with any internet issues for the next year as wfh. Any thoughts ?

Sales guys will always give that rubbish, no one is as good as us.
In theory sky should be as good but there are a good few stories over on the broadband forum of sky and vodafone customers suffering speed issues in the evening due to their own backhaul not being sufficient enough.
I'd say ask neighbours who have similar products and ask for their experiences.

NeuralNetwork

pwurple wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong here...

I'm urban Cork, south side. Living in this house for 8 years, and have never had broadband. One of a few houses that were built on the garden of another larger house. Seem to have been missed with communication infrastructure in general when they were built, and have not been able to ever get it fixed.

House is not Siro enabled.
No physical phoneline, the pole blew down in a storm years ago and was never replaced by eircom. It was rubbish anyway, very lossy. No phoneline means we cannot access vodaphone, eir, sky etc.
Virgin Media - No service available
Nova networks have told me the coverage isn't good here.
We are ~110m from the nearest fibre enabled cabinet.

So, apart from the crappy 3G/4G hotspots and dongles I've been using, there's nothing else, right?

You would need to just order FTTH from OpenEir or Siro when it’s available.

The speeds available on copper phone lines have nothing to do with FTTH, they just use the same ducts ans poles to carry the fibre. Also if you last tried a phone like more than 7 years ago, it was ASDL2 over a long line from a telephone exchange. Almost all of Cork City suburbs has cabinet based VDSL2 with vectoring, which is vastly superior to ADSL.

Siro would just become available based on your location at some stage. OpenEir would also be available based on location as they’ll be trying to win back customers who’ve left.

If you’ve no phone line at all, you’d just have to order a new connection entirely. They don’t necessarily have any issues bringing in a line overhead.

In older urban areas the lines typically run underground but come up at poles and do the drop from the pole overhead to the house. It’s not that big a deal to connect up.

Also both of those networks are doing fairly big rollouts in the city. Just check your local Eir and ESB polls. If there’s fibre available you’ll see it literally looped on the polls every so often.

Eir is currently rolling out FTTH micro ducts across the areas served by several of the city exchanges like Wellington Road (huge area of the northeast of the city), Quaker Road (big chunk of the south east city) and several others. They’ll have a lot of urban fibre to hone in place over the months ahead. COVID is slowing things up a bit, but they’re still rolling.

Dbu

TheDriver wrote: »

I was the same, they took a fiver off the full price. Didn't believe me when I said I was leaving. so I left.
PURE are great, I got the gig for 35 for 12 months. Its BT backhaul, works perfectly. Wired, I get 920-940 consistently.
I can't see myself going back to VF to be honest, endless hours on wait, pressing numbers, passed between departments and always ending up with COMREG because no one wants to sort billing issues.

Thanks for this much appreciated.
I have done a bit or research and Im going with Pure Telecom.
One question if I may, Im out of contract with VF, do I still have to give 30 days notice (and pay for the privilege)
Thanks

jcomm123

Hi all. Moving to a house in Douglas where Siro is available it looks like. Anyone in the area have any experience of the options available? Trying to decide between Pure Telecom and Vodafone at the moment but open to see if there is anything else to consider.

Thanks very much

pwurple

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

You would need to just order FTTH from OpenEir or Siro when it’s available.

Siro have told me I am just over the 100m cut off from the nearest pole, so they will never be able to deliver a service here. Sorry that wasn’t clear in previous post.

I’ve tried to order a new connection, but they have said the position of the house is too challenging to supply. I’m not up the top of a mountain, it’s city.

We have power, sewers, water, road. It’s a 110m lane to behind someone else’s house, so they would need to run it in a pipe or put in a new pole... is that too far from a junction box?

pwurple

ACitizenErased wrote: »

National broadband plan?
Put your eircode in on nbi.ie
If you’re not in it email DCCAE and they’ll survey your house.
I’m in Rochestown and we’re being connected to fibre this month

Nbi.ie shows us as a blue area, as we are an anomaly here. Almost every other house here is covered.

Dccae said I am in a planned SIRO rollout zone. Siro website says no plans to cover my address.

Around in the same circle again.

Ugh.

the beer revolu

pwurple wrote: »

Nbi.ie shows us as a blue area, as we are an anomaly here. Almost every other house here is covered.

Dccae said I am in a planned SIRO rollout zone. Siro website says no plans to cover my address.

Around in the same circle again.

Ugh.

You don't have a broadband connection of any sort or you can't get high speed fibre broadband?

If it's the latter, it's not uncommon. I live in the city centre and the last time I checked, no fibre options are available to us.
10mbps is a good speed here.

NeuralNetwork

There’s a massive rollout of FTTH from openEir going on at the moment in Cork City. Keep an eye out for loops of black micro ducts appearing coming up out of the ground at telephone poles. That’s the first stage of the installations.

They’re popping up all over the city at the moment.

pwurple

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

There’s a massive rollout of FTTH from openEir going on at the moment in Cork City. Keep an eye out for loops of black micro ducts appearing coming up out of the ground at telephone poles. That’s the first stage of the installations.

They’re popping up all over the city at the moment.

Yup. I can see them all along our street here.

Still over 100m from my house though... so.. won’t be accessible to me, right?

NeuralNetwork

pwurple wrote: »

Yup. I can see them all along our street here.

Still over 100m from my house though... so.. won’t be accessible to me, right?

Should be.

If your house is fed underground for Eir, it will come in via a duct. If it’s overhead they run fibre pole to pole.

Those loops are just where the ducts come up out of the ground to a small aggregation box that will serve multiple houses. There are similar devices in the underground vaults (manholes).

In urban areas, there’s an extensive duct network underground, but some places still use overhead drop wires to connect houses, so you’ll get a wire coming up the side of the pole from underground.

If you’ve an eir line coming in, the fibre will likely follow a very similar route.

pwurple

My house is not fed for Eir. Pole blew down in a storm years ago and was not replaced. I do not have an eir service.

the beer revolu

pwurple wrote: »

My house is not fed for Eir. Pole blew down in a storm years ago and was not replaced. I do not have an eir service.

You don't have a phone line?

NeuralNetwork

pwurple wrote: »

My house is not fed for Eir. Pole blew down in a storm years ago and was not replaced. I do not have an eir service.

That’s a fairly unusual situation.

You’ll just have to order a service from any of the ISPs who use openEir when it is live then. They’ll run a new line and treat it as a totally new connection.

They’ll be in win back mode anyway, their aim is to take customers back from Virgin in particular.