can we demand more upload speed?

CyberGhost

128k is bad!

can we all email eircom or do a boycott or something to make them change 128k to at least 256k?

does anyone know someone's(who has any influence) email at eircom?

we should email them

or do a petition?

or we should ask Smart Telecom to increase their upload, and then eircom will desperately follow them too.

WizZard

Nah, to the general public upload speed does not matter. Although I'm all for a petition etc, a boycott will never happen. Unfortunately that is the Irish way (leave things be)

DingChavez

or we should ask Smart Telecom to increase their upload, and then eircom will desperately follow them too.

desperately?!?

rymus

im curious, what form exactly would a boycott on eircom take? Handing back our phone lines? A petition I will gladly sign, I'm just very sceptical that it'll make any difference whatsoever.

C Fodder

Nah, to the general public upload speed does not matter. Although I'm all for a petition etc, a boycott will never happen. Unfortunately that is the Irish way (leave things be)

Curious considering we invented the term "boycott" but unfortunately also true.

CyberGhost

DingChavez wrote:

desperately?!?

yes to retain their customers, since they are losing so many

MrVestek

If I'm not mistaken, the whole Irish thing of having crappy upload speeds is because of a government mandate that states that the upload speed can only be a certain percentage of that of the download speed. It's an anti peer 2 peer sharing thing, or something to that affect.

halkar

Well considering up until 6 month I had whooping 56K connection and now easter bunny says 2MB on the way I really don't care about the upload

Are there no packages with higher uploads for those who need? I know the bussines ones but for residential looks like all the providers given the same deal.

aphex™

Achilles wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, the whole Irish thing of having crappy upload speeds is because of a government mandate that states that the upload speed can only be a certain percentage of that of the download speed. It's an anti peer 2 peer sharing thing, or something to that affect.

Thats not true.... Irish Broadband do 512 upload with 512 download. There is no law stating that.

Sponge Bob

Achilles wrote:

the whole Irish thing of having crappy upload speeds is because of a government mandate that states that the upload speed can only be a certain percentage of that of the download speed.

Its actually because of the size of the Irish governments Echelon ingress pipe recording your ack/nack packets and upload packets . Increasing upload speeds would be a breach of solemn International Treaties, ya can't have that .

jimmycrackcorm

Echelon killed JFK

Chalk

@_@

conspiracy theories on bb that dont involve voip.

ffs, we dont have upload because not many people want it, a boycott where we pay for a service but dont use it?
yeah, good idea........

CyberGhost

you guys remind of those 2 fellas from Braveheart, that sold out to the kind for a land, eircom is still overcharging and lying into your face(best starting package in europe? lol yea right), now they gave you a little push in the speed and that's it you are satisfied, you still forget that other european countries, are years ahead of Ireland, 2mb should have been given to you 2 years ago, and don't think they wanted to give you that because they wanted service to be improved in Ireland, it's because of Smart Telecom(God Bless em) that they gave you 2mb, if it wasn't for smart, we'd be on 512 for a loooong time

Infini

That's true. Eircom will only move when someone moves in and threatens them by offering an ACTUAL broadband package. I'm also interested in what smart may be offering. All I know is that they have their 2048/128 package on offer at the moment for their launch but i'm interested in what other packages they may have in store. They may offer a package with better upload speeds and download speeds. 256 or higher is whats really needed at the moment.

clearz

CyberGhost wrote:

128k is bad!

True

CyberGhost wrote:

can we all email eircom or do a boycott or something to make them change 128k to at least 256k?

Yea great idea lets boycott them now and in a months time we can all sit arround and wonder what a 2Mb connection is like.

SkepticOne

If you want Eircom to increase the upload speeds then the only way they will do it is if someone else is providing better and people are switching over to that. Otherwise, why should they bother?

Eircom will never do more than they have to. If someone else says they will provide 2048/128 and it looks like they will take customers then Eircom responds. If Smart provided 2048/256 then there might be some incentive for Eircom to follow. However, upload speed has to be the deciding factor. How many entry-level new users of broadband are concerned with upload speeds? How many even know what it means?

vibe666

how many people even realise that a 2mbps downstream means very little to anyone without the upload capacity to properly utilise it?

Boggles

vibe666 wrote:

how many people even realise that a 2mbps downstream means very little to anyone without the upload capacity to properly utilise it?

Please Explain

Giblet

For example. Setting your rates in a game. In certain games one might be inclined to go the full hog on a 2mb connect, but unfortunatly choke and loss will start to occur at less than optimum rates. Add more than one player into the equation and you might aswell be sharing an ISDN connection.

Boggles

Giblet wrote:

For example. Setting your rates in a game. In certain games one might be inclined to go the full hog on a 2mb connect, but unfortunatly choke and loss will start to occur at less than optimum rates. Add more than one player into the equation and you might aswell be sharing an ISDN connection.

That wouldn't effect the majority of bb user thou.

aidan_walsh

Boggles wrote:

That wouldn't effect the majority of bb user thou.

Ok then consider this, on a HTTP transfer each downloaded packet has to be confirmed by an uploaded one. Thats all files. Downloads, webpages, images, etc.

Mind you, this isn't really a problem with protocols like BitTorrent (which use a UDP transfer method).

Boggles

doodle_sketch wrote:

Ok then consider this, on a HTTP transfer each downloaded packet has to be confirmed by an uploaded one. Thats all files. Downloads, webpages, images, etc.

Mind you, this isn't really a problem with protocols like BitTorrent (which use a UDP transfer method).

But would that not be a small percentage compared to download.

aidan_walsh

It would, but a faster upload would make the faster download more efficient, the proposed way there will still be (comparatively) a lot of dead time.

Boggles

doodle_sketch wrote:

It would, but a faster upload would make the faster download more efficient, the proposed way there will still be (comparatively) a lot of dead time.

You should still see a huge increase, right??

MrPinK

128K upload will not effect a HTTP session. A maximum sized TCP data packet is about 37 times as big as a TCP ACK packet. If you're download speed was 40 times your upload, you would be restricted slighly by your upload alright. But that's not the case with 2048/128.

Giblet

Well it ruins counterstrike for me, when someone press a link my connection stutters. I had a 512/512 connection and this was never an issue. Seriously, 128 is ridiculous.

MrPinK

It certainly is for gaming alright, and a number of other activities. But the majority or Irish users see the Internet as just WWW. Upload doesn't really matter at all in this case.

2048/128 suits the majority of people. Most, including myself, would rather that than something like 1024/512. But if Eircom had more sense then they'd also be offering a low latency 1024/512 package aimed at gamers and other niche groups. Proactive initiatives aren't exactly their strong suit though.

Infini

MrPinK wrote:

2048/128 suits the majority of people. Most, including myself, would rather that than something like 1024/512. But if Eircom had more sense then they'd also be offering a low latency 1024/512 package aimed at gamers and other niche groups. Proactive initiatives aren't exactly their strong suit though.

That's true. Online gaming is being trumped by the console and PC games producers as the future of gaming but there won't be much chance of it getting very far if (besides having the difficulty of getting a credit card) there aren't decent upload capabilities on internet packages. I'd say that gamers would be happy enough to pay 50 quid a month for a 1MB connection if the upload was 512k. At least there wouldn't be the problem of the line chocking.

vibe666

MrPinK wrote:

But the majority or Irish users see the Internet as just WWW. Upload doesn't really matter at all in this case.

what sort of websites are you visiting exactly? how on earth does anyone using the internet for WWW traffic need a 2mbps connection?

anyone doing that would be more than happy with 1mbps/128kbps.

Anyone who wants or feels the need for a 2mbps connection wants it for one of two or three things.

gaming, downloads or advanced communications (voice or video over IP etc.) and in any of those situations a 128kbps upload is going to choke whatever connection they are trying to make.

as has been said more than once before, I'd much rather have a 1024/256 conneciton than 2048/128 because it would be of a lot more practical use.

MrPinK

vibe666 wrote:

what sort of websites are you visiting exactly? how on earth does anyone using the internet for WWW traffic need a 2mbps connection?

anyone doing that would be more than happy with 1mbps/128kbps.

Well HTTP would have been more accurate than WWW. I ment web browsing and downloading. However there are plenty of sites with a high amount of multimedia content that are pretty slow to load on 512k. Take for example http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swrepubliccommando/. These kind of sites are getting more and more common. If you have the bandwidth, there will always be sites to take advantage of it.

And I'd agree with VoIP, video and gaming, but I don't see how you can include downloading in that list.

darraghrogan

CyberGhost wrote:

128k is bad!

can we all email eircom or do a boycott or something to make them change 128k to at least 256k?

does anyone know someone's(who has any influence) email at eircom?

we should email them

or do a petition?

or we should ask Smart Telecom to increase their upload, and then eircom will desperately follow them too.

Smart won't offer a higher upload speed because people will be too tempted to use the extra capacity for VoIP. Let us not forget that smart are also offering PSTN service on your newly unbundled line.

Darragh

Kristok

Why do you guys keep saying things like eircom wont do anything unless someone else makes them or unless they are loosing customers and they would have us all sitting at home with a 56k if they had their way. What exactly do you think eircom is ? its not a charity its a company a company with shareholders who want profits. Europe is so far ahead not because dutch and french etc companies said id bet our customers would like cheaper bills, no some company in an open market said i know how we can rob customers from x-com well do bradband before them. We had a closed market until recent times where there was no demand by the population as the need was not there at the time so it had to be built when customers started demanding it and the market opened up.

Again the reason they dont and wont anytime soon give faster upload speeds is cause there really is no need for the general public. 128 up is enough to play games and make a voip call, what they want to stop is a small company (their biggest clients besides homes) getting rid of phone lines and getting basic bb packages to make voip. Or a company telling them to stuff their leased lines and servers cause they can host their own sites on bb for 50euro instead of 10k. They will hold onto every last cent they can till they have no choice then give in and that is exactly how it should be because they are a company, not evil just a company who wants profits. No ammount of protests from people who say they want it for gaming is going to convince them you dont just want to use it for file sharing which you do because if its such a big problem they offer a package with 256 if your willing to pay for it.

Oh and a 128upload speed is not going to screw you up for downloads not unless your on bittorent because the the ammount of upload speed is more than enough for standard download at 2mb.

tuxy

MrPinK wrote:

It certainly is for gaming alright, and a number of other activities. But the majority or Irish users see the Internet as just WWW. Upload doesn't really matter at all in this case.

thats a bit of a crazy statment
do you not think most people that have the internet in ireland use email?
im sure loads of people are disapointed by how long it takes to send a few pictures or videos to a friend by email

Infini

darraghrogan wrote:

Smart won't offer a higher upload speed because people will be too tempted to use the extra capacity for VoIP. Let us not forget that smart are also offering PSTN service on your newly unbundled line.

Darragh

I don't know why they don't just offer their OWN VoIP service. It would probably help them in the long run.

Boggles

tuxy wrote:

thats a bit of a crazy statment
do you not think most people that have the internet in ireland use email?
im sure loads of people are disapointed by how long it takes to send a few pictures or videos to a friend by email

Even if it took an hour to send a few e-mails, it's no big deal, it can be sending away in the background.Whats an hour in fairness. But if your downloading a large file that usually takes 16 hours and with the new bandwith will only take 4, this is where to the majority of users, a higher download bandwith is the winner. Eircom could market specific packages at gamers,voip users, etc. But as been said in the thread already the majority use http,torrents and p2p.

GreeBo

Boggles wrote:

But would that not be a small percentage compared to download.

You need about your upload to be about 6% of your download
Smarts offering is 6.5%.
But what if you want to do something crazy like upload AND download at the same time :eek:

dkane

leap (www.leap.ie) now sell 1 and 2mbit SDSL meaning you have a synchronous connection (i.e. same speed up and down) Their prices are also very competitive and contention of 15:1 is great too.
People just moan and whinge about eircom but there is competition in the market now. If youre not happy with them try someone else. The scary part is that most people that move away from eircom for any service move back within a year so they cant be that bad can they?

Mutant_Fruit

Even if it took an hour to send a few e-mails, it's no big deal, it can be sending away in the background. Whats an hour in fairness.

if your downloading a large file that usually takes 16 hours and with the new bandwith will only take 4.

Well, whats 12 hours in fairness Its kind of contradictory saying it doesn't matter how slow your emails send, and yet proclaiming that faster speeds are better.

I'm sure there are people out there (like me for instance) who use bittorrent (just for an easy and legal example) in sites such as somesite and thingyplace.

Now, someplace tracks your upload/download to make sure you're not one of those leeching scumbags. If i only have 128kbps up it will take quite a long time for me to reach a 1:1 ratio on any torrent, and so my ability to download from there gets restricted. Also, if i want to upload at a decent rate, i'll have to limit my download speed severely, so as not to choke the upload.

In situations such as this, at least 512kbps up should be availabe to the user, when you have 2 meg down. But thats not happening. Also, supposing i want to download a file while using VOIP, i once again have to severly limit my download speed so as not to choke my upload, as i only have 128kbps.

Praetorian

Sending any kinda of big attachment via email etc is like watching paint dry with 128 up. Gaming on more than one pc is virtually impossible with 128. Using video conferencing software (web cams) is a horrible experience with 128. Gaming / browsing together is impossible on 128. Downloading / gaming together is impossible on 128. 12k/b per second? That's not broadband! I used to get 14k/b per second on my old dual channel isdn connection! ComReg should define broadband as 1024x256 at the very minimum.

Mutant I'd remove those links from your post

Also I believe Leap haven't actually unbundled any exchanges yet, so they can't provide any services.

SkepticOne

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

In situations such as this, at least 512kbps up should be availabe to the user, when you have 2 meg down. But thats not happening. Also, supposing i want to download a file while using VOIP, i once again have to severly limit my download speed so as not to choke my upload, as i only have 128kbps.

If there's a) demand for this and b) someone else offering it, then Eircom are pretty much forced to offer a competitive service. We have seen this with the download speed. Smart offer a 2 meg download and Eircom then respond with their own. When Smart or some other company offer 512k or above and it looks like people are choosing them over Eircom then Eircom will naturally respond.

The SDSL example from Leap mentioned above is probably too expensive to have an impact on Eircom's residential offerings.

Boggles

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Well, whats 12 hours in fairness Its kind of contradictory saying it doesn't matter how slow your emails send, and yet proclaiming that faster speeds are better.
.

I don't think many people would send a 700 meg e-mail.

CyberGhost

dkane wrote:

The scary part is that most people that move away from eircom for any service move back within a year so they cant be that bad can they?

Yes! I'm one of the survivors

---

2048/512 would be perfect, if we had that kind of service, I'd say there is nothing wrong with Irish broadband, and would take off my clothes and run naked on the O'Connell

yes, there would be a matter of caps, but it's not that big of a matter compared to proper up/down speeds

Gosh

CyberGhost wrote:

2048/512 would be perfect, if we had that kind of service, I'd say there is nothing wrong with Irish broadband, and would take off my clothes and run naked on the O'Connell

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

dkane

Leaps basic SDSL package is €89 ex vat per month for a 1mbit up/1mbit down line with 15:1 contention. The same as eircoms business plus (currently 256 up/1mbit down) You also get a static IP which costs €70 with Eircom

Blaster99

Not that I'm planning to pay €90 for a 1Mbps service in a hurry, but does anyone know what Leap's SDSL coverage is like? I can't find anything on the site that mentions which exchanges they've unbundled.

Infini

CyberGhost wrote:

Yes! I'm one of the survivors

---

2048/512 would be perfect, if we had that kind of service, I'd say there is nothing wrong with Irish broadband, and would take off my clothes and run naked on the O'Connell

yes, there would be a matter of caps, but it's not that big of a matter compared to proper up/down speeds

Doesn't look like things will improve anytime soon.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/21/ireland_broadband/

Ain't eircom's response to our BB need just wonderful. :rolleyes: