When might Eircom to enable vectoring on their eFibre/VDSL service?

murphaph · 29-04-2014 11:19AM

The good thing about AVM (FritzBox manufacturer) is that they will actually fix the problem if it exists and can be fixed. Can't say that for many manufacturers who don't care once they have your money.

If there's a real problem here then I'd expect AVM to roll an updated firmware fix quite soon, but report the problem as otherwise they have no way of knowing about it.

Vectoring is planned by Telekom here so the German firmware (the firmware is different because Germany uses a different annex for ADSL, which these modems also support, than most other places including the UK/Ireland) so it's not just the language interface that's different, if it were they would probably just have a common firmware and a language option) possibly already supports or has fixed the issue at hand and just needs to be ported over to the international firmware.

Get on to them anyway. Their customer support is very good. Not too many other manufacturers roll out new features in their modem firmware releases so that older devices can profit from new developments. Most want you to bin your device and buy a new one, only releasing firmware to patch bugfixes.

fat-tony · 29-04-2014 03:53PM

I was vectored about three weeks ago (I'm on VF) and have had a substantial improvement in SNR etc. I'm on the 70/20 profile and have waited to see if there would be any bump in speed. Nothing so far, so I checked on VF's line checker and it said I could get up to 100Mb on my line. Contact VF tech support and first lad (nice pleasant chap) said there was no profile above 70Mb available and didn't think there was anything higher available :rolleyes: Told him my line check said 100Mb and the standard offering from VF was now 100Mb. Anyway, nice and all as he was, I was getting nowhere so I terminated the call. Rang again, this time on the mobile via the freefone number and again got through to tech support (different chap). Went through the same rigamarole but this time he said my line was testing as 120Mb capable (this agreed with my extended modem stats), but that he could not raise my profile as it was not available to him on the system. It appears that it is linked to the pre-qual checks run by eircom and that they hadn't been upgraded and that he didn't know if/when they would. Is it worth contacting eircom regarding this? Will they deal with me as a VF customer? My line stats below:

Nonoperational · 29-04-2014 04:20PM

Eircom will not deal with you I'd imagine.

ED E · 29-04-2014 04:24PM

They wont have access to your line to make a change. Only eircom Wholesale could and they dont deal with customers.

The new bitstream protocols are live, eircom announced it and there have been people profiled to 90+ so I supsect either the vodafone techs dont know how to do it or they havent been added into their internal systems yet.

fat-tony · 29-04-2014 04:44PM

ED E wrote: »

They wont have access to your line to make a change. Only eircom Wholesale could and they dont deal with customers.

The new bitstream protocols are live, eircom announced it and there have been people profiled to 90+ so I supsect either the vodafone techs dont know how to do it or they havent been added into their internal systems yet.

The feeling I got when talking with the two bods in VF "tech" support was they they knew very little about the vectoring upgrades. However, some pages back in this thread a poster did get upped to 100Mb profile on VF and AlanS, who got installed last Friday, went straight onto the 100Mb profile and VF's website has 100Mb plastered all over it.
What I need is another prequal done on my line and for it to show up on VF's internal system, I think. Are these prequals run regularly? Maybe I should take my own counsel and just wait for it to happen in the fullness of time

ED E · 29-04-2014 04:50PM

The prequals are done when the cab goes live for vectoring, so if your attainables are good enough to indicate that its vectored then those prequals should have been done.

What may be happening is that vodafone are updating their own copy of the prequal database every X days, if thats whats happening theres no way to tell when that'd next happen.

Deagol · 29-04-2014 05:28PM

Interestingly, Eircom's site seems be doing live speed qualifications.

If I switch between routers (a F1000 and a Fritz7390) that give different attainables, and check my line speed on the Eircom site, the numbers change.

fat-tony · 29-04-2014 05:57PM

ED E wrote: »

The prequals are done when the cab goes live for vectoring, so if your attainables are good enough to indicate that its vectored then those prequals should have been done.

What may be happening is that vodafone are updating their own copy of the prequal database every X days, if thats whats happening theres no way to tell when that'd next happen.

Interesting discrepancy between VF's and eircom's line checkers. VF say 100Mb, eircom say 70Mb. I've been on 70Mb since install day in November and the downstream SNR has more than doubled since April 10th which I assume was when the cab was vectored. Maybe they are having issues with the cab or whatever's connected to it?

apm0003 · 30-04-2014 01:18PM

fat-tony wrote: »

Interesting discrepancy between VF's and eircom's line checkers. VF say 100Mb, eircom say 70Mb. I've been on 70Mb since install day in November and the downstream SNR has more than doubled since April 10th which I assume was when the cab was vectored. Maybe they are having issues with the cab or whatever's connected to it?

But does the jump in SNR indicate vectoring being enabled ? I have an AVM Fritzbox 3390 and the jump in SNR happened when G.INP was enabled. The Fritzbox still says G.Vector is not enabled.

Like other users of Fritzbox, my max attainable speeds dropped significantly after the recent changes and I suspect there may be some issues with their current firmware. My actual data rate did not drop however. Maybe vectoring is enabled but the Fritzbox is not reporting it correctly ?

Are there any other modems that do indicate if G.Vector is enabled on the line ?

AlanS181824 · 30-04-2014 01:26PM

fat-tony wrote: »

The feeling I got when talking with the two bods in VF "tech" support was they they knew very little about the vectoring upgrades. However, some pages back in this thread a poster did get upped to 100Mb profile on VF and AlanS, who got installed last Friday, went straight onto the 100Mb profile and VF's website has 100Mb plastered all over it.
What I need is another prequal done on my line and for it to show up on VF's internal system, I think. Are these prequals run regularly? Maybe I should take my own counsel and just wait for it to happen in the fullness of time

Yeah they put me straight onto the highest profile.
There must be a cabinet closer to me that I'm not seeing because I thought I was around 400 metres away, or my maths is badly off, either or!
Does anyone have that image where it had a graph showing the speed dropping as the distance increases?
It's on this thread somewhere I think.

GIMickey · 30-04-2014 01:27PM

apm0003 wrote: »

But does the jump in SNR indicate vectoring being enabled ? I have an AVM Fritzbox 3390 and the jump in SNR happened when G.INP was enabled. The Fritzbox still says G.Vector is not enabled.

Like other users of Fritzbox, my max attainable speeds dropped significantly after the recent changes and I suspect there may be some issues with their current firmware. My actual data rate did not drop however. Maybe vectoring is enabled but the Fritzbox is not reporting it correctly ?

Are there any other modems that do indicate if G.Vector is enabled on the line ?

If ur a Digiweb customer tell them u are experiencing problems with drop speeds. Because no one is complaining, Digiweb thinks everything is fine. Send an email to support telling the of them dropped speed.

AlanS181824 · 30-04-2014 01:29PM

Deagol wrote: »

Interestingly, Eircom's site seems be doing live speed qualifications.

If I switch between routers (a F1000 and a Fritz7390) that give different attainables, and check my line speed on the Eircom site, the numbers change.

I just checked my line on Eircoms website and strangely this is what it says: "You can get a maximum of 7Mb download speed"

Must just be Eircoms website having some issues.

AlanS181824 · 30-04-2014 01:39PM

AlanS181824 wrote: »

I just checked my line on Eircoms website and strangely this is what it says: "You can get a maximum of 7Mb download speed"

Must just be Eircoms website having some issues.

I looked at Vodafone's website and it says: "Up to 24Mb - or the maximum speed your line can support."

Can Fibre customers not check their lines or something?

fat-tony · 30-04-2014 01:55PM

AlanS181824 wrote: »

I looked at Vodafone's website and it says: "Up to 24Mb - or the maximum speed your line can support."

Can Fibre customers not check their lines or something?

I suspect that when you do a line check from the eircom/VF website, it's doing a check on a database and, in your case, it's not up to date yet. Maybe someone on the inside can qualify that or indicate that it's actually a live test of some sort.

As regards your distance, I'm minimum 350 metres from the cabinet (there are no other cabs locally and the tech confirmed this was the one) and have had 70Mb from day one. The modem is reporting 120+Mb attainable.

AlanS181824 · 30-04-2014 01:58PM

fat-tony wrote: »

I suspect that when you do a line check from the eircom/VF website, it's doing a check on a database and, in your case, it's not up to date yet. Maybe someone on the inside can qualify that or indicate that it's actually a live test of some sort.

As regards your distance, I'm minimum 350 metres from the cabinet (there are no other cabs locally and the tech confirmed this was the one) and have had 70Mb from day one. The modem is reporting 120+Mb attainable.

It doesn't matter as I already have Fibre but it's interesting to see.
My Max attainable download was around 116Mb last time I checked.
I must be around 400 metres then.
Thanks for your help!

fat-tony · 30-04-2014 02:16PM

apm0003 wrote: »

But does the jump in SNR indicate vectoring being enabled ? I have an AVM Fritzbox 3390 and the jump in SNR happened when G.INP was enabled. The Fritzbox still says G.Vector is not enabled.

Like other users of Fritzbox, my max attainable speeds dropped significantly after the recent changes and I suspect there may be some issues with their current firmware. My actual data rate did not drop however. Maybe vectoring is enabled but the Fritzbox is not reporting it correctly ?

Are there any other modems that do indicate if G.Vector is enabled on the line ?

Sorry - missed your post as it had gone over the page. You may well be right as my INP symbols are 30.0 / 29.0 which would indicate G.INP has been turned on. The problem with the VF DSL stats display is that it doesn't show these details by default - you have to play around with the browser to force display of the hidden fields. Unfortunately I can't compare INP symbols with any prior readings - only SNR. So it may be that my particular cab has had G. INP turned on but not vectoring? I wonder why the SNR has gone up though? That's more a function of the actual RF quality of the line.

airuser · 30-04-2014 02:48PM

Still on Sky.
However, when checking with Eircom "up to 50"
Vodafone "Up to 100"

Anywhere can one check what speed one may obtain.

My cabinet as the crow/road goes 500m. But there are two estates. So one does not know which way the cabling travels.

Praetorian · 30-04-2014 03:53PM

fat-tony, I'm in a similar situation, although my snr didn't get as good a bump as yours. I was in touch with vodafone and they can't upgrade me past 70m/bit even though my attainable is in the 90's.

I'm sure vectoring is enabled on our cabs. Hopefully it's a prequal problem or a database problem or something else trivial that is stopping us being able to get bumped to the speeds our lines are capable of.

Praetorian · 01-05-2014 12:55PM

Praetorian wrote: »

fat-tony, I'm in a similar situation, although my snr didn't get as good a bump as yours. I was in touch with vodafone and they can't upgrade me past 70m/bit even though my attainable is in the 90's.

I'm sure vectoring is enabled on our cabs. Hopefully it's a prequal problem or a database problem or something else trivial that is stopping us being able to get bumped to the speeds our lines are capable of.

So I got an update from a very nice fella from Vodafone and my cabinet isn't actually vectored. I did get a bump in snr from 9-13 and I did get the ping improvements. Could be q4 before I'm vectored then hopefully I can get 90-100m/bit!

jantheman91 · 01-05-2014 12:57PM

What sort of pings are you guys pulling to the likes of Paris/Roubaix?

HellboundIRL · 01-05-2014 01:39PM

Praetorian wrote: »

So I got an update from a very nice fella from Vodafone and my cabinet isn't actually vectored. I did get a bump in snr from 9-13 and I did get the ping improvements. Could be q4 before I'm vectored then hopefully I can get 90-100m/bit!

That's good to hear, had a similar bump in SNR myself and ping times are great but told 70mb is my Max and my attainable went from 101 to 91. I was fairly disappointed in thinking that was it for vectoring for me.

AmilcarAlho · 01-05-2014 01:50PM

jantheman91 wrote: »

What sort of pings are you guys pulling to the likes of Paris/Roubaix?

Paris:

Roubaix:

Amsterdam:

Madrid:

AlanS181824 · 01-05-2014 01:57PM

Some very nice speeds here.

I wonder if and when Eircom will enable the technology for up to 200Mb.

jantheman91 · 01-05-2014 02:35PM

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Some very nice speeds here.

I wonder if and when Eircom will enable the technology for up to 200Mb.

Soon I imagine.

They've took the plunge for Fibre, and now they'll aim to pick UPC apart piece by piece most likely.

ED E · 01-05-2014 02:46PM

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Some very nice speeds here.

I wonder if and when Eircom will enable the technology for up to 200Mb.

Not many homes go over 100Mb, and at best they reach 140 when super close. Dont know if they'll bother.

AmilcarAlho · 01-05-2014 02:57PM

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Some very nice speeds here.

I wonder if and when Eircom will enable the technology for up to 200Mb.

I'd much prefer that the investment is shifted towards general availability and backbone, rather than end user supadupaspeed. As more and more services are on-line based, backbone will be critical, both from a bandwidth as well as latency perspective.

bk · 01-05-2014 03:10PM

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Some very nice speeds here.

I wonder if and when Eircom will enable the technology for up to 200Mb.

jantheman91 wrote: »

Soon I imagine.

They've took the plunge for Fibre, and now they'll aim to pick UPC apart piece by piece most likely.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

They can't just go to 200mb/s on existing copper lines, the technology doesn't exist.

They could maybe go to 200mb/s by using two pairs and pair bonding, but there are a number of issues with that.

- Often a spare second pair doesn't exist, so a new cable would be needed to be pulled, you might as well do FTTH if pulling cable.
- Requires another expensive engineer visit to connect the second pair (the fact that they aren't connected both pairs during the initial VDSL rollout shows they have no short to medium term plan to do pair bonding).

UPC would simply start offering 500mb/s to consumers (they already sell it to business customers today) and 1gb/s in two years time with DOCSIS 3.1

So no, Eircom 200mb/s would do nothing to pick apart UPC, UPC have massive amounts of bandwidth potential in their network.

No, I believe the next step for Eircom would be to look at FTTx (FTTH, FTTB, FTTdb/G.Fast, etc.) however I wouldn't hold my breath on this. I expect Eircom will milk their VDSL network for a long time to come. The only thing that might drive them to FTTx is competition from the ESB's planned FTTH network.

As AmilcarAlho says, I'd rather see Eircom focus on rolling out their VDSL to as much of the country as possible so that we can give most people "good enough" broadband and close the rural gap.

apm0003 · 02-05-2014 10:47AM

Praetorian wrote: »

So I got an update from a very nice fella from Vodafone and my cabinet isn't actually vectored. I did get a bump in snr from 9-13 and I did get the ping improvements. Could be q4 before I'm vectored then hopefully I can get 90-100m/bit!

So the change that lots of us have seen where we get higher SNR and reduced ping times does not necessarily mean that vectoring was turned on. That would explain why my modem reported G.INP enabled but not vectoring.

I will contact Magnet and see if I can get them to tell me when vectoring will be turned on for my cabinet (South Dock st, Ringsend).

TheDriver · 02-05-2014 10:59AM

bk wrote: »

I wouldn't hold my breath.

They can't just go to 200mb/s on existing copper lines, the technology doesn't exist.

They could maybe go to 200mb/s by using two pairs and pair bonding, but there are a number of issues with that.

- Often a spare second pair doesn't exist, so a new cable would be needed to be pulled, you might as well do FTTH if pulling cable.
- Requires another expensive engineer visit to connect the second pair (the fact that they aren't connected both pairs during the initial VDSL rollout shows they have no short to medium term plan to do pair bonding).

UPC would simply start offering 500mb/s to consumers (they already sell it to business customers today) and 1gb/s in two years time with DOCSIS 3.1

So no, Eircom 200mb/s would do nothing to pick apart UPC, UPC have massive amounts of bandwidth potential in their network.

No, I believe the next step for Eircom would be to look at FTTx (FTTH, FTTB, FTTdb/G.Fast, etc.) however I wouldn't hold my breath on this. I expect Eircom will milk their VDSL network for a long time to come. The only thing that might drive them to FTTx is competition from the ESB's planned FTTH network.

As AmilcarAlho says, I'd rather see Eircom focus on rolling out their VDSL to as much of the country as possible so that we can give most people "good enough" broadband and close the rural gap.

plus keep in mind most users simply surf facebook and the difference between 20 and 100mb/s is minimal to them. It also seems we all want more speed but for what reason? Only because we can probably. In fairness to eircom, the VDSL rollout has been good unlike some previous ventures.

lmimmfn · 02-05-2014 12:39PM

TheDriver wrote: »

plus keep in mind most users simply surf facebook and the difference between 20 and 100mb/s is minimal to them. It also seems we all want more speed but for what reason? Only because we can probably. In fairness to eircom, the VDSL rollout has been good unlike some previous ventures.

I have to hand it to them, its been absolutely excellent for me, while i can only get 50/20 it is 50/20 and pings are ~18ms to boards, unlike with ADSL2 where i got 4/.386 and had constant drops, couldnt download any large file over HTTP without it disconnecting, youtube was constantly caching and not really watchable and pings were in the 50's to boards.ie

Now i have great broadband, im not too pushed about faster speeds, would be nice simply to know that in 5 years time when internet speed requirement increases that ill be able to handle it but for now its great( knowing that once the VDSL rollout is complete Eircom will probably rest on it and do nothing with the infrastructure for another 10 years ).

When might Eircom to enable vectoring on their eFibre/VDSL service?

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