Eircom Rate Adaptive

Trine

My speed on my pre-upgrade Home Starter line with Eircom (512k) was about 450k, and now with my "upgraded" 1mb line it's around 500k, 470k now, usually about 530k at night.

I rang Eircom and they agreed that this was very slow, that they'd check it out and ring me back.

Next day I got a nice short call saying that was my speed, nothing they could do about it, live with it. When I rang them originally they mentioned something about the line being rate adaptive, and that there could be alot of people on the line.

Now I'm regularly up until about 5am, and between 1am and 5am last night my speed never went above 550k. How coud the lines be busy at that time?

Also, I'm in Raheny. Another poster from Raheny also on Eircom Home Starter posted a few days ago that they were getting speeds of about 1000k. Could my line really be that slow because of distance from an exchange? Raheny isn't that big, it doesn't make sense that the speed would differ so drastically between two lines in the same town.

Anyway my main question is, if I change to a new service provider, will it be any different? And I definitely have no intention of upgrading to a 2mb Eircom line, going from what's happened so far I'll be flying along at about 700k with that... :rolleyes:

Blaster99

Two issues: RADSL (rate adaptive DSL) and contention. The former adapts the speed of the connection to the line quality and the latter is the fact that you're sharing bandwidth with others. You can ignore the contention, it won't affect you. They have plenty of bandwidth. So the problem is either line quality or something at the exchange. I would guess Eircom checked the exchange so it's most likely the line quality. If this is indeed the case, then you should be on the cheapest package as you can't get the higher speeds.

If you search here you'll find the way to get line quality stats from your router, assuming you have a standard one. Or you can connect to your router and try to find SNR and attentuation numbers. If you post them up somebody can tell you how they compare to good numbers. In fact that information should probably be a sticky because this question keeps coming up.

OfflerCrocGod

What speed is your modem saying you are connected at? See if it connects at 1024 kbps.

Trine

Ok here's a few stats, maybe somebody could figure out from them what the problem is like Blaster99 mentioned.

Copyright ©2004 Netopia, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Netopia Model 3341 DSL USB
Running Netopia SOC OS version 7.3.3 (build r0)
Multimode ADSL Capable
(Admin completed login: Full Read/Write access)

Netopia-3000/14582952> show dsl

ADSL Line State:        Up
ADSL Startup Attempts:  1
ADSL Modulation:        DMT
Datapump Version:       3.38.2

                        Downstream  Upstream
                        ----------  ----------
SNR Margin:                  20.34       21.00 dB
Line Attenuation:            55.34       31.50 dB
Output Power:                14.74       11.97 dB
Errored Seconds:                 0           0
Loss of Signal:                  0           0
Loss of Frame:                   0           0
CRC Errors:                      4           0
Data Rate:                     608         128

Netopia-3000/14582952>

Thanks for any help with this.

Blaster99

Your "Line Attenuation" is poor at 55.34dB, the SNR is good. If you look at what people are reporting around here they usually have a line attenuation rating around 20dB. Lower is better. About the only thing you can do to help matters is disconnecting things from your phone lines that might be causing a problem or see if you can muck around with the wiring in the house. It's possible that your line is poor or you're quite far away from the exchange and there's nothing you can do about it.

To answer your original question, changing provider is not going to help.

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

To answer your original question, changing provider is not going to help.

Unless you can go with NTL Cable BB or maybe IBB, but Blaster99 is right about changing DSL provider.

jd

608 128
You are getting a download data rate of 608- not 1024, probably because of your line quality.

tuxy

my Line Attenuation is 20 down 14 up
so yes it look like you have a poor quality line or you are far from the exchange

with line quality like that i am suprised you past the line test
so although it must be frustrating not getting the full speed i think you are lucky you even got eircom to install dsl on that line

Trine

Thanks for the replies. Tonight I'm getting about 720k so that's an improvement anyway, I've no idea how it's improved though.

Just one other question, would the poor line quality be due to how I've set up the lines in my house, or would it be the quality of the lines in the area? Right now the modem is running from a 20m line, into some kind of connection box, which in turn is connected to the main phoneline. It might even be going through a Caller ID thing aswell. Would that be enough to degrade the quality so much?

I'll try a shorter connection straight to the phoneline to see if that helps anyway. Thanks for the help.

bk

Your downstream Line Attenuation @ 55.34 is poor.
Also downstream Output Power @ 14.74 isn't good, 15db is borderline.

I'd say you are lucky to just have BB.

jd

Trine wrote:

Just one other question, would the poor line quality be due to how I've set up the lines in my house, or would it be the quality of the lines in the area? Right now the modem is running from a 20m line, into some kind of connection box, which in turn is connected to the main phoneline. It might even be going through a Caller ID thing aswell. Would that be enough to degrade the quality so much?

Absolutey. Can you try and clean up your connection to the main box?

JNive

To elimanate interference variables, broadband connections should always be made directly to the first port ( or make a new one before it ) on the main phone line entering your premises. Any other equipemnt in its path, whether active or passive, can seriously attenuate the signal or cause interference, and also, try not have too much equipment plugged into your phone line overall.

Trine

Well I'm confused, today my speed is averaging at about 800k, so it's getting better, but my Line Attenuation is exactly the same, as are all the dsl stats.

And I've just after trying what alot of you suggest, my modem is now connected straight to the main box on a short standard phoneline cable, and the modem is connected to the PC through a ethernet cable, instead of the 20m standard phone cable before...speed is now averaging 900 - 1000+k!

So thanks alot for the help, I'd still be scratching my head wondering about that one. Though my Line Attenuation remains pretty much the same as when I was getting 550k...

                        Downstream  Upstream
                        ----------  ----------
SNR Margin:                  16.63       21.00 dB
Line Attenuation:            55.98       31.50 dB
Output Power:                15.10       11.97 dB
Errored Seconds:                 0           0
Loss of Signal:                  0           0
Loss of Frame:                   0           0
CRC Errors:                     22           0
Data Rate:                    1024         128

Thanks again, much appreciated.

JNive

i do assume you have placed the microfilter between your modem and where i connects to your line, in addition to the other filter for the rest of the line going to your phone equipment etc.


MAIN LINE-> split via the 2 microfilters -> line 1 and 2 ( line 2 on DSL microfilter)
LINE 1 -> phone/fax/sky etc.
LINE 2 -> ADSL Modem

Also, for testing, unplug ALL equipment from your phoneline apart from your modem, test if the attenuation is caused on your end, or at the exchange/line