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

murphaph · 29-05-2014 01:58PM

The Huawei contract seems to involve delivery of complete assemblies, already mounted in the cabinet (arctan reckons even the installations inside exchanges for the direct fed customers involve the whole cabinet being installed) so I seriously doubt the gear in those old cabinets has been replaced. That sort of thing should be way down the list of priorities-they have VDSL even if it's not 100Mb!

SpaceTime · 29-05-2014 03:33PM

It's also possible they'd just buy a small batch of Alcatel vectoring gear.

Alcatel's one of eircom's largest suppliers of equipment anyway - most of the new core IP "NGN" network is built around Alcatel switches and also about half the voice/ISDN network (old tech, but it's still being maintained and made ready for IP integration). Lots of Alcatel optical transmission gear etc etc too. Also, a lot of their ADSL2+ stuff would be Alcatel DSLAMs.

So, I'm sure eircom could simply order up whatever cards are necessary for those Alcatel-Lucent cabs.

OcocO · 29-05-2014 06:53PM

I rang Vodafone yesterday and asked about Vectoring - guy I spoke to checked a database for me but it's not fully populated yet (I asked and he said that it was most of the Dublin and Cork cabs that were on the database as either having vectoring enabled or not). My cab (NMK1_009) wasn't on it so he couldn't tell me - I had an engineer here this morning though and he said that the NTMK ones were not yet enabled. I imagine that anyone can ring the other resellers out of Eircom Wholesale and they'll have similar access to said database (for what it's worth).

MBSnr, and anyone else who would like to see the attainables (and other hidden info about the line connection) on the HG658c router DSL stats page, they can be viewed by editing the CSS in most browsers - just search for "display:none" (it'll be a style attribute) and delete it. if you have the browser extension "Stylish" (or other style adaptor) installed, you can automate this to reveal all the hidden features (not just the hidden stats) with the following:

[style*="display:none"] {display:inline !important}

set to apply to the domain 192.168.1.1

If you're running OS X, I made an app that makes a whole bunch of improvements to the Huawei router's UI - I'd be happy to share.

And if anyone with Eircom who is 1.5km+ from their cab, and on the maximum adaptive rate profile Eircom allows their line, please post their stats - specifically their SNR margins. Thanks.

swoofer · 29-05-2014 08:19PM

Just to add a little bit, I rang VF tech support yesterday and was told there was a fault on my line, this was flagged to eirom at about 4pm yesterday and blow me an eircom engineer called to house today at 2.30pm!! He advised no fault in the line and I was getting the max. I then asked about vectoring and to check if cabinet was enabled he had to ring dublin, he was advised that cabinet was enabled for vectoring BUT.. and this was the killer throwaway remark " cabinet can be enabled but there is no way of knowing if vectoringhas been switched on yet!! " From that I am assuming eircom will up the profiles when they are good and ready and one day soon I hope I will notice a slight improvement in speeds. My pings have improved already but as I am bout 800+ metres from cabinet I am not holding my breath on any dramatic speed gain. Even though eircom line checker says 50mb that could be the usual gibberish ie we meant up to 50. He finished by saying only those close to the cabinet will see a big gain. No surprise there.

I have modem bridged and used firefox as per the guidelines on here but could you explain a bit more how to edit CSS etcin firefox as you have lost me.

I have a macbook pro as well so would be interested in that app.

As an aside when eircom engineer tested my line today it had no errors ie crc = 0. other stats like attenuation 12.5 and snr 9.5. It was a tiny screen so hard to read. My attainable rate was showing as 44493 down and 9 up. actual is 38/39 and 8.5.

OcocO · 29-05-2014 09:12PM

swoofer I don't know what the forum rules are re: linking to an app so I PM'd it to you. Interesting conversation you relate - as I'm sure you know, Vodafone's rate adaptive profiles won't sync at SNR's of below 9dB anymore (used to be 6 which suited me better at 1.8km away) so, with your SNR of 9.5 and a clean line, it figures that there's not much more the engineer can do for you.

Re. manually changing the hidden attribute for the HG658c's unshown stats etc.: Take Firefox as an example.

You'd type in 192.168.1.1 into the URL bar at the top of the browser

Enter "admin" and "admin1234" for username and password respectively.

Navigate to the DSL stats page.

Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the words "Upstream line rate (kbit/s)" and choose "Inspect Element" from the contextual menu that appears.

In the console that appears at the bottom of the page you'll see that, two or three lines below the selected line, are two lines ending "style="display:none"></tr>"

Double click on the words "display:none" and they should be selected. Press delete / backspace and then press enter / return. Repeat for the other one. You should now be able to see the attainables for your line connection. The same principle applies to the other hidden elements elsewhere on this and other pages in the router domain.

MBSnr · 29-05-2014 10:58PM

swoofer wrote: »

.
As an aside when eircom engineer tested my line today it had no errors ie crc = 0. other stats like attenuation 12.5 and snr 9.5. It was a tiny screen so hard to read. My attainable rate was showing as 44493 down and 9 up. actual is 38/39 and 8.5.

As said - Looks like the line is picking up noise (ratio of SNR is at the lower end threshold) and Vodafone are saying it can't go any faster without losing the ability to differentiate between signal and noise on the line (leading to errors). But your line attenuation is good at only 12dB loss.

I have read about others with SNR of closer to 6dB and running ok (maybe some errors) but perhaps they are with Eircom and as OcocO says, perhaps Vodafone are stricter maintaining the 9dB SNR threshold....

irishgeo · 29-05-2014 11:47PM

after working how to find the hidden stats i got this.

i am about 500m from the cab.

Downstream line rate (kbit/s) 30719
Upstream line rate (kbit/s) 8191
Downstream attainable data rate(kbit/s) 42596
Upstream attainable data rate(kbit/s) 21770

do i have vectoring and i how do i get a upload of 20 meg.

ED E · 29-05-2014 11:51PM

irishgeo wrote: »

after working how to find the hidden stats i got this.

i am about 500m from the cab.

Downstream line rate (kbit/s) 30719
Upstream line rate (kbit/s) 8191
Downstream attainable data rate(kbit/s) 42596
Upstream attainable data rate(kbit/s) 21770

do i have vectoring and i how do i get a upload of 20 meg.

You sure you're 500m? Attains leave some headroom but at 500m 50Mb should be possible, could well be unvectored yet.

OcocO · 29-05-2014 11:58PM

irishgeo wrote: »

after working how to find the hidden stats i got this.

i am about 500m from the cab.

Downstream line rate (kbit/s) 30719
Upstream line rate (kbit/s) 8191
Downstream attainable data rate(kbit/s) 42596
Upstream attainable data rate(kbit/s) 21770

do i have vectoring and i how do i get a upload of 20 meg.

It would be good to see the SNR stats but, based on the attainables alone, I'd be surprised if Vodafone couldn't up you to their 40/10 rate adaptive profile. It might be worth ringing their tech support in the morning and ask them to check it and switch you up. There's no longer much of a case for remaining on a fixed rate profile when Vodafone's variable rate ones are so (arguably unnecessarily) robust.

OneEightSeven · 30-05-2014 12:02AM

irishgeo wrote: »

after working how to find the hidden stats i got this.

i am about 500m from the cab.

Downstream line rate (kbit/s) 30719
Upstream line rate (kbit/s) 8191
Downstream attainable data rate(kbit/s) 42596
Upstream attainable data rate(kbit/s) 21770
do i have vectoring and i how do i get a upload of 20 meg.

Best thing to do is take a screenshot of your stats page and post it here because we'll need to know your line attenuation and noise margin.

irishgeo · 30-05-2014 11:51AM

OneEightSeven wrote: »

Best thing to do is take a screenshot of your stats page and post it here because we'll need to know your line attenuation and noise margin.

as requested

i measured the distance from the car, not an exact science.

screenshot of the stats page.

SpaceTime · 30-05-2014 11:57AM

irishgeo wrote: »

as requested

i measured the distance from the car, not an exact science.

screenshot of the stats page.

Your attenuation levels are much lower than mine.

21.5 dB (up) 21.0 dB (down) for me
SNR Margin: 9.2 dB 9.4 dB
I'm connected at : Actual Net Data Rate: 20.478 Mbps 66.321 Mbps

Your SNR is better too. So it's obviously a shorter line.

Measurement by car to my house from the cab is about 650m and about 675m on the eircom map.

What I'm surprised at is that occasionally my modem seems to manage up to 71 Mbit/s .. so obviously it adjusts to varying conditions so I'm guessing something is obviously generating noise at particular times of the day - could be busier lines with more ADSL2+ traffic cross talk to deal with or something who knows.

MBSnr · 30-05-2014 12:00PM

irishgeo ^^^

I'd have thought as your SNR is 15dB you'd be able to get the next profile up - 40/10.

Also reboot the modem if you notice the profile changing - I found on the Eircom F1000 my speed tests showed me connecting at the lower profile speed even though it had been upped. A reboot got me the full speed.

SpaceTime · 30-05-2014 12:02PM

I'd add that my line's been rock solid too since the speed upgrade so the slightly less than 10 SNR seems to work just fine. Seems eircom are willing to push the lines to their limits much more than Vodafone is.

irishgeo · 30-05-2014 12:21PM

no joy with a reboot

OcocO · 30-05-2014 01:27PM

irishgeo: just for the avoidance of doubt I want to make sure that you realise that you have to actually ring VF tech support (1800 805 019) and ask them to raise your profile.

SpaceTime: I've also been taking an interest in the times of day that noise is generated (mostly because if I pick my time I can reboot and squeeze an extra MBit or two out of the connection) so I programmed my new UI for the router to plot SNRs and attainables over time, which yielded the following chart:

SpaceTime · 30-05-2014 01:32PM

What I find odd is that I'm not in a business area (although I do work from home quite a bit and have a home office). The only lines on my local cabinet are probably mostly residential.

The SNR drops during business hours and is improved off-peak. So, I assume it has to be noise coming from either other lines on the network running VDSL, ADSL or even ISDN or, maybe it's coming from stuff like power line routers or broadcast RF from mobile phones or something like that?

I'm not familiar with the frequencies being used by VDSL2 though, so if I knew that I could take a stab at guessing what's causing it.

OcocO · 30-05-2014 01:50PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_speed_digital_subscriber_line_2 links to wikipedia page with some info about frequencies used by the technologies in use on the network and has some pretty depictions like:

My Google search also yielded more reliable academic sources but tl;dr.

irishgeo · 30-05-2014 02:13PM

OcocO wrote: »

irishgeo: just for the avoidance of doubt I want to make sure that you realise that you have to actually ring VF tech support (1800 805 019) and ask them to raise your profile.

SpaceTime: I've also been taking an interest in the times of day that noise is generated (mostly because if I pick my time I can reboot and squeeze an extra MBit or two out of the connection) so I programmed my new UI for the router to plot SNRs and attainables over time, which yielded the following chart:

i got that , someone suggested a reboot, thats all.

ill give them a ring and see what they think.

MBSnr · 30-05-2014 02:16PM

irishgeo wrote: »

i got that , someone suggested a reboot, thats all.

ill give them a ring and see what they think.

That was me. I had to reboot after the profile change as even though the modem said it was connected at the new profile speed it wasn't actually until restarted.

ED E · 30-05-2014 02:33PM

MBSnr wrote: »

That was me. I had to reboot after the profile change as even though the modem said it was connected at the new profile speed it wasn't actually until restarted.

Seen that mentioned a couple times. The profile change re-syncs but the speeds don't change so i'd hazard a guess the QoS values aren't reset and its still ranging to the old max.

MBSnr · 30-05-2014 03:03PM

ED E wrote: »

Seen that mentioned a couple times. The profile change re-syncs but the speeds don't change so i'd hazard a guess the QoS values aren't reset and its still ranging to the old max.

I was at someone's house (with Vodafone) and took a sneak peek at the admin webpage - it was sync'ing @ 70Mb but they were only getting a 30Mb speedtest result. I mentioned they should reboot to get 70Mb but they weren't that bothered.... :eek: :eek: :eek:

jca · 30-05-2014 03:29PM

MBSnr wrote: »

I was at someone's house (with Vodafone) and took a sneak peek at the admin webpage - it was sync'ing @ 70Mb but they were only getting a 30Mb speedtest result. I mentioned they should reboot to get 70Mb but they weren't that bothered.... :eek: :eek: :eek:

I rebooted my eircom modem and the speed dropped even further. ... No more rebooting for me.

SpaceTime · 30-05-2014 03:32PM

OcocO wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_speed_digital_subscriber_line_2 links to wikipedia page with some info about frequencies used by the technologies in use on the network and has some pretty depictions like:

My Google search also yielded more reliable academic sources but tl;dr.

2.2 - 12MHz covers a LOT of spectrum.

Eircom does actively manage spectrum on the copper network though. There's a lot of work gone into ensuring it all works without interference.

Powerline home plug data runs at 2.5 - 30 MHz and 50 MHz to 300 MHz so, maybe that might have something to do with it?

I must unplug my 'home plugs' and see if the VDSL speed changes as I'm not particularly close to another property.

Interesting bit of tech info on it : http://www.atis.org/legal/Docs/INITIATIVE%20PG%20ONLY/COAST_to_NIST_050510.pdf
AITS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions)

and that's Ireland's RF plan : http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg13118.pdf

OcocO · 30-05-2014 04:26PM

Well there sure is a lot going on in the airwaves - but that's probably a topic for another thread.
This extract from the first link:

The most commonly used ADSL, ADSL2, and ADSL2plus frequency bands for ADSL are:
upstream: 25.875 kHz to 138 kHz (for all ADSL) downstream: 138 kHz to 1.1 MHz (for G.992.1 and G.992.3) downstream: 138 kHz to 2.2 MHz (for G.992.5)

The frequency bands specified in ITU-T Recommendation G.993.2 (VDSL2) are:

optional upstream band: 25.875 kHz to 138 kHz

downstream 1: 138 kHz to 3.75 MHz 
upstream 1: 3.75 MHz to 5.2 MHz

downstream 2: 5.2 MHz to 8.5 MHz
upstream 2: 8.5 MHz to 12 MHz

downstream 3: 12 MHz to 23 MHz
upstream 3: 23 MHz to 30 MHz

Please note that the VDSL2 standard specifies several profiles which define different maximum frequencies: 8.5 MHz, 12 MHz, 17 MHz, and 30 MHz. Thus, not all VDSL2 implementations utilize the full 30 MHz spectrum.

as well as being interesting, gives me something to hang my hidden attenuation stats on:

Not sure why half are "loop" and the other half "signal" but I'm mainly curious to know if the VDSL2 here in Ireland are, in fact, using those higher frequencies as part of Noise reduction/ error checking or some such.

SpaceTime · 30-05-2014 05:27PM

OcocO wrote: »

Well there sure is a lot going on in the airwaves - but that's probably a topic for another thread.
This extract from the first link:

as well as being interesting, gives me something to hang my hidden attenuation stats on:

Not sure why half are "loop" and the other half "signal" but I'm mainly curious to know if the VDSL2 here in Ireland are, in fact, using those higher frequencies as part of Noise reduction/ error checking or some such.

I don't think so. The main reason you'd pick frequencies would be based on what you're allowed to use by the regulator and also based on the type of wiring that was used and what it can support.

In some other countries (France and the US for example) you'll find big chunks of spectrum taken for 'defence forces / military' use. In a lot of cases they're probably not even used, but just got block-booked in the 1950s / 60s and are outside the scope of the telecoms regulator.

In general the eircom wiring's proving to be quite high quality compared to what's used in some other markets.

I'd suspect there's also probably less noise in Irish phone wiring due to the fact that the country's just not very densely populated. Even in big cities we would tend to mostly have housing estates, not dense apartment dwelling. So, you're not going to have anything like as many connections sharing the same duct spaces going back to the same FTTC cabinet.

Also, not that many VDSL deployments have attempted to use 100Mbit/s speeds. Most of them are operating at a bout half that. VDSL2 with vectoring is very new so you won't find all that much information about it online.

Eircom's definitely one of the very first major deployments of it. Mostly it's been small scale / test projects from what I've seen. Quite a few European telcos are still only playing around with it, including BT.

AlanS181824 · 30-05-2014 06:10PM

Why are so many people having issues with Vectoring?

Maybe it's because I only joined Vodafone Fibre recently but when I was connected I sync'ed at 100/20 straight away.

I'm around 400 Metres but probably less.

Maybe Carlow is just one of the few (or so it seems) places where Vectoring is enabled?

OcocO · 30-05-2014 06:16PM

Yes, it seems evident that the rollout here is being guided by someone who knows what they're doing alright - aided, as you say, by the fact that Ireland, for the various reasons that you and others have mentioned in this thread, is a good candidate for VDSL2's successful implementation. Something to be grateful for

Cream2000 · 30-05-2014 06:50PM

Hi All,

I just got upgraded to Vodafone fibre. I get a 50mb d/l and about 19mb up. Vodafone said 50mb was all my line could take. I checked the router's attainable for my line as per the instructions in this thread and is said a 88mb d/l and 29mb up. Can I get Vodafone to up the speed on my line? Am a bit peeved as I knew I would never get 100mb but didn't expect it to only be half of that.

Thanks for the help!

OcocO · 30-05-2014 07:03PM

Cream2000 wrote: »

Hi All,

I just got upgraded to Vodafone fibre. I get a 50mb d/l and about 19mb up. Vodafone said 50mb was all my line could take. I checked the router's attainable for my line as per the instructions in this thread and is said a 88mb d/l and 29mb up. Can I get Vodafone to up the speed on my line? Am a bit peeved as I knew I would never get 100mb but didn't expect it to only be half of that.

Thanks for the help!

Hi, a screenshot of your line stats would assist in guestimating whether or not Vodafone really can't put you on a better profile, however it looks like you joined to ask that question so it may not be immediately apparent how to include a screenshot of your stats in your post (You would upload it via an image hosting site such as http://tinypic.com and paste in the "forum / message board" link it gives you).

Anyway though, it couldn't do any harm to ring VF tech support on the number I mentioned above (they're open till 9pm) and ask them if they can put you on a higher profile - perhaps a rate adaptive one. Give it a go!

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

Comments