Not Again ... Eircom BBand dreadfully Slow - Cork. Anyone else?

aidanodr · 09-10-2006 5:41pm #1

Hi Guys,

After being dumped off Smart last week as one of the 45000 and just recovering I now find my BBand with Eircom here in Cork is ssssllloooowww. I have a Ping Plotter app running and am getting loads of big red areas in the graphs along the route denoting large packet loss - 30%. Anyone else in Cork Area suffering this?

As I work in this area of BBand and network installs etc I had to call to customers today in Cork City and ballincollig. All are slow. I am told this started last friday. It only rared its ugly head here in Carrigaline late last night [ 2am ]. Was setting up an ECommerce site for a client, gave up uploading the backend, timeouts. Same today.

Why I said Oh no not again - earlier this year Carrigaline was effectively BroadBandless for the best part of a month. I imagine others with BT, UTV etc [ who piggy back on Eircom copper cable ] are also slow ... maybe.

Cheers
Aidan

White Van Man · 09-10-2006 6:26pm

BT broadband was painful here at work all day today. Cork city centre also.

holeyshoe · 09-10-2006 6:55pm

I live in Waterford and have been getting extremely slow speeds for the past few weeks, done a couple of speed test which averaged out at about 800kb/s up out of a 2mb connection :mad:

aidanodr · 09-10-2006 7:03pm

holeyshoe wrote:

I live in Waterford and have been getting extremely slow speeds for the past few weeks, done a couple of speed test which averaged out at about 800kb/s up out of a 2mb connection :mad:

Hi Lads,

By slow I mean -14kbs, around ISDN/Dialup type speeds at the mo. As I said this happened a few months back down here and lasted for weeks. I hope this is not the case again. That will once more screw up my Website business.

And by the way - when it happened the last time here we got no refund, no sorry, nothing.

Aidan

CrowdedHouse · 09-10-2006 7:11pm

Very slow in Roscrea - which I think is connected to Cork (Churchfield)

White Van Man · 09-10-2006 7:12pm

aidanodr wrote:

Hi Lads,

By slow I mean -14kbs, around ISDN/Dialup type speeds at the mo.

Yeh, that would describe the kind of speed I had to deal with today

aidanodr · 09-10-2006 7:32pm

Here is the plot for an hour. Note the red blocks on the graph, this is the packet loss - about 30% on average.

If you want a go and join in the fun download this:

http://www.pingplotter.com/

Slowly I know, but small install file [ 948kb for standard ver ].

Have fun watching the red zone

Aidan

White Van Man · 09-10-2006 7:43pm

Cheers, I'll give that a bash at work tommorrow

mtracey · 09-10-2006 11:02pm

Didnt see this post, everything is too slow

same here, in cork also, its driving me nuts. only been slow today though

help !!!

mercurial · 09-10-2006 11:11pm

What's really irritating is the 30 minute exercise in futility going through my system from the phone socket to the desktop that I spent with Eircom Support who made no mention of a service problem at all (despite being asked). It is possible that the techie didn't know of course but that really only goes to show that Eircom are duplicitous with their staff as well as their customers :mad:

aidanodr · 10-10-2006 1:29am

mercurial wrote:

What's really irritating is the 30 minute exercise in futility going through my system from the phone socket to the desktop that I spent with Eircom Support who made no mention of a service problem at all (despite being asked). It is possible that the techie didn't know of course but that really only goes to show that Eircom are duplicitous with their staff as well as their customers :mad:

Hi Mercurial,

My advice is - in most cases, and particularly if you have any reasonable knowledge of your PC - never bother ringing Eircom Tech Support for things like this, pop a message here instead and / or ask around. Eircom support lead you around a merry dance, will not listen and blame you regardless. It is only after 4 to 5 calls and persistence that you may get some sort of admission cloaked at best. AND this after you out match the drones with tech talk.

I pretty much went through this last time this happened to us here in Carrigaline a few months back. Then I was gung hoo and persisted but I couldnt be bothered now - and thats the biggest point of all, that they have such a structure in place that it seems to be their with the express purpose of wearing down and / or deflecting any of ITS CUSTOMERS away instead of being up front which most would appreciate.

At worst be prepared to stomach this slow down for a week or two or more, at best theirs always tomorrow, I think

If it drags on - the reason may pop up here, I wouldnt hold my breath. My theory - exchanges / equip have reached capacity / lack of investment and they are hopping the problem around from area to area. Am I talking rubbish? Guru's please ...

Cheers
Aidan

tech · 10-10-2006 7:09am

Im in the West Cork Area, BT DSL is gone in 56k Dialup speeds!! not good but it looks like an issue with the DNS server in Churchfield yet again

tech · 10-10-2006 7:13am

have the fatest transfer speed while download of 2.4kb, Im just moving over to Dialup untill this issue is fixed

tech · 10-10-2006 7:36am

Well Upload speeds aer still ok getting about 190k- 220 k pity they cant reverse this and make up upload 2-4k and down load 190k ish untill they fix their issues !

tech · 10-10-2006 10:39am

still in trouble

aidanodr · 10-10-2006 11:12am

tech wrote:

still in trouble

Hi Tech,

Yip - and it seems slightly worse here in Carrigaline than it was yesterday. Its all over the city - getting calls from Customers about it. Peoples reaction is the usual - Oh Eircom, ah well - and thats it. Amazing - seems they can now do anything and people will accept it.

Cheers
Aidan

Sponge Bob · 10-10-2006 11:23am

eircom BB is supposed to be guaranteed 256k minimum at all times so demand a refund for the underperformance .

Foxwood · 10-10-2006 12:40pm

Sponge Bob wrote:

eircom BB is supposed to be guaranteed 256k minimum at all times so demand a refund for the underperformance .

Be careful about what you ask for. If eircom can't get 256k to you, their "guarantee" might mean that they can just cancel your DSL account. So if you ask for a refund, don't get stroppy and piss off the person that you're dealing with.

aidanodr · 10-10-2006 1:45pm

Hi Guys,

Here is a snapshot from www.irishisptest.com/runmyspeed.php

If I did it again I would say I could catch it slower. In this its Dload Speed - 19.6kbs / Upload Speed 6.91

Cheers
Aidan

Foxwood · 10-10-2006 1:54pm

As a matter of interest, what does a tracert to www.boards.ie look like?

Have you tried to do a file transfer between your computer and that of a neighbour on the same exchange to see if that link is fast? And then with a user on another Cork exchange.

It won't solve your problems, but it will arm you with additional information when you deal with eircom.

aidanodr · 10-10-2006 2:07pm

Foxwood wrote:

As a matter of interest, what does a tracert to www.boards.ie look like?

Have you tried to do a file transfer between your computer and that of a neighbour on the same exchange to see if that link is fast? And then with a user on another Cork exchange.

It won't solve your problems, but it will arm you with additional information when you deal with eircom.

Heres the Trace Root:

Foxwood wrote:

Have you tried to do a file transfer between your computer and that of a neighbour on the same exchange to see if that link is fast? And then with a user on another Cork exchange.

No, me in and out - time is a thing

Thanks,
Aidan

Foxwood · 10-10-2006 2:26pm

aidanodr wrote:

Heres the Trace Root:

Okay, nothing useful from a diagnostic point of view there.

By the way, do you know that you can copy text out of a DOS window? Right click on the title bar, select Properties and check the Quick Edit box, and then you can cut and paste from the DOS box just like any other application.

aidanodr · 10-10-2006 2:58pm

Hi Foxwood,

Yip I did, but I thought a pic was alot more dramatic

that thousand words v pictures saying ...

I just got onto Eircom Tech support & a very helpful chap who did not try and send me off on a merry dance [ maybe because it was my tech company name on the bill, so they did not try it on ]. He said yes, they are aware of a problem in Churchfield - a Routing issue. Even though the problem was apparently their since last friday in some cases, it only got ELAVATED at 1pm TODAY. The engineers arrived at CF about then. They are endevouring to sort right now. I asked how long, he said they are not told BUT hopefully by the end of the day BUT it may take a few days ... You know yourself [ Referring to me / Carrigaline being in the same predicament a few months back ] i.e you've been through this before, veterans

Yes but it took about 3 weeks to sort,

Anyways, thats the update,
Eircom Equipment at Churchfield is at fault for this it would appear,
Hang on to your hats
Aidan

CrowdedHouse · 10-10-2006 4:19pm

Thanks for the update...no improvement yet(oddly my u/l speed seems 'normal')

GreenHell · 10-10-2006 4:22pm

Down in west cork, crappy slow speeds all day. Requested an upgrade to the 2 meg package yesterday and was testing speed of the connection this morning when I noticed how slow my connection had become, modem speeds. Rang eircom and told them my line was after getting slower and the answer I got was that because of the requested upgrade I now had 2 BB connections on one line and they were slowing each other down and I had to wait 15 days for a new wireless modem. Made me go "hmmm" anyway.

abcd · 10-10-2006 5:38pm

Also in Cork, on the Quaker Road exchange (which routes on to Churchfield I believe). First noticed last night (Mon 9th, ~11pm).

The symptoms are slightly different.

The DL speed is similarly slow (5-20 Kbytes/sec, compared to a normal speed of 175-200 Kbytes/sec (2Mbit package)).

But there is no significant packet loss in pings (from the command line, I haven't had a chance to run ping plotter yet), or in the ATM or TCP statistics on the modem, which is strange.

Also, UL speed doesn't seem to be affected (~20 KBytes/sec as normal).

Ditto on adianodr's thoughts....here's hoping they sort this out quicker than last time.

for_the_buzz · 10-10-2006 6:37pm

My BB connection is so slow at the min i cant even do a speed test.Now thats slow.Broadband me arse.At least wi dial up i could do stuff, as slow as it is.Does any1 know if Bt have a min connection speed limit so i can get a refund off them as i have only just this sec got connected today so im f****d if im payin 4 a service im not getting.

Cheers

tech · 10-10-2006 7:28pm

still in big trouble still using Dial up as its faster this is NOT good enough

aidanodr · 10-10-2006 7:42pm

Well Guys,

Its now 19:37, the engineers went into Churchfield at 1pm. I would say they are gone home at this stage, so I would say this will carry over to tomorrow at least. I remember this from the last time it happened to us in Carrigaline ... shiver

And Eircom dont offer any SLA's [ Service Level Agreements ] with Broadband, so it could go on for days and they dont have to give an explanation. When onto Eircom while out fixing customers BBnad etc I sometimes get from Eircom Tech - " mmmm, well you know their are no SLA's with Broadband so all I can say is the technician may be out to you in the next 48 hours or so, you should really consider a leased line as this IS covered by an SLA" - yes, I will leave it to some one else to pop up the cost of a leased line from Eircom.

Cheers
Aidan

White Van Man · 10-10-2006 7:57pm

Well it's not just an eircom thing. BT Broadband at work is unusable. Phoned BT support who confirmed that their Cork customers are having problems too.

I wonder if these problems are a result of eircom's crappy infrastructure being unable to cope with the influx of ex-Smart customers. :cool:

bandon1 · 10-10-2006 8:30pm

Thought I was going nuts until I found this thread. Got the usual "have you filters on the line?", "remove everything for 15 mins" malarkey from a BT tech who clearly had no idea there was a general problem.

Started yesterday morning here in Bandon and I've been getting between 5 KB/s and 15 KB/s for nearly two days now. Absolutely ridiculous to call this a service, it is less usable than a dial-up connection at the moment.

The concept of escalation clearly hasn't made it into those organisations yet.

Not Again ... Eircom BBand dreadfully Slow - Cork. Anyone else?

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