What is WRONG with Broadband in Ireland???????

michaelanthony

NTL is wckd

vorbis

shouldn't be. they're using eircom's infrastructure for the backend. BT's problems shouldn't affect their broadband at all.

TwoShedsJackson

Personally I'm as happy as a pig in shite with my 1 meg NTL cable modem

Gonzo

NTL is the best, its the exact same as what they have in the UK, such a shame that its available to less than 1% of the population.

HelterSkelter

Originally posted by TwoShedsJackson
Personally I'm as happy as a pig in shite with my 1 meg NTL cable modem

How good is it? Do you EVER have slow download speeds? Ever any contention issues? (what is the contention btw?)

Gonzo

i dont have NTL but have used by cousins NTL connection many times in Crumlin, when he was on NTL600 he was getting average download rates of 65k/sec often hitting 85k/sec on top quality FTPs, his ping would be about 45 ingame to irish servers and 25 ingame to english servers often dipping down to 14 ingame. For some reason NTL Cable gives better pings to jolt and many other english servers than it does to Irish ones. The service has been rock solid all the time and my cousin has since upgraded to 1mb NTL, his pings are still exactly the same but his downloads are now around 110k/sec on average often hitting 130k/sec on ftps. On top of all this he claims that his cap is 3gig a day but i think its 1gig a day altho NTL dont enforce this wotsoever and the price for this 1mb cable is around €45 a month, best deal in ireland easily

TwoShedsJackson

Yep I get the same performance as Gonzo's cousin there. On the 1 meg service I get at least 60k a second on dl's/torrents from the US, usually 100-115k. Contention is 20:1 according to the site.

On the jolt ut2k4 servers I ping around 18-25 99.9% of the time.

I've only had it three weeks but there has been no down time, they say on the site it's a 1gig a day cap but I've been over that now and again with no apparent ill effects. Seemingly they'll send you a threatening letter if you go mad and start downloading like 7-10gig a day, apart from that no worries

It's €50 a month.

dangerman

i dont know if it is contention but if it is u've only got yourselves to blame.

a lot of my friends are on iol and all they do is plan how to use up their maximum cap. downloading **** they dont need, loads of them rush around the place thinking up ways to fill up their quota by the end of the month, thus tieing up bandwidth for absolutely no reason other than because its there.

I'll bet a large portion of people are doing this, and it could easily be a contributing factor to the poor experience you're all having.

And everyones gonna flame back with 'wah wah wah i paid for this i'm going to use it' and if thats the case then continue to be bandwidth whores and continue to gloat about how u've got the entire collection of enterprise episodes off suprnova (loser) but for gods sake don't complain when from 7 - 11pm at night the whole service gets bogged down.

Granted i cud be completely wrong, and if i am oh well great hopefully its a problem that can be sorted out.

SantaHoe

Well I've never broken my old 8gig cap, and most months I'd only total about 4gigs or there abouts.
The 16gig cap doesn't excite me much, I'd rather they improved their service quality instead. (ie. uptime & latency, and maybe just maybe hire someone to pick up the phone when you ring them)

Tom Dunne

Originally posted by HelterSkelter

I am wondering if anyone has experience of using broadband packages similar to ours (i.e. 512K DSL) in other countries, the UK for example. Or do you know anyone using it in other countries? What kind of performance do they get? Is it only in Ireland that we have to put up with a broadband service worse than dial up at times?

I am in the US using 512k DSL and I do experience slowdowns like you mention. Don't ask me who I am with (DSL came free with the apartment, yes, I know, sickening), but generally from 6:00pm to 9:00pm local time, I experience noticably slower connections.

I haven't really got around to playing games yet, so I can't comment on pings and the like.

tuxy

Originally posted by dangerman


Granted i cud be completely wrong, and if i am oh well great hopefully its a problem that can be sorted out.

yes you are if you had read the other threads on the problems you would know that
you should not rant on about that which you know nothing about



Stonemason check your pm's

dangerman

yes you are if you had read the other threads on the problems you would know that

cheers for the heads up mate. I didn't know it was a requirement to read every other thread before posting anything. Next time I'll know. Also, thanks for explaining what the problem actually is, or providing a link. You're a star.

I'm guessing ur referring to this other one;
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=1520133#post1520133

Which means its a capacity thing? As in IOL can't deal with all the new capacity? Would that mean that contention ratios would kick in and thats why every1 is getting burned?

dub45

Originally posted by dangerman
cheers for the heads up mate. I didn't know it was a requirement to read every other thread before posting anything. Next time I'll know. Also, thanks for explaining what the problem actually is, or providing a link. You're a star.

I'm guessing ur referring to this other one;
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=1520133#post1520133

Which means its a capacity thing? As in IOL can't deal with all the new capacity? Would that mean that contention ratios would kick in and thats why every1 is getting burned?

If you read the one above it it looks as if they are admitting they did not order extra capacity in time!!!. Really hard to remember that all those new price reductions come around the 1st April and that theres loads of advertising going on trying to get new customers. Coming soon the 'Esat guide to managing broadband capacity!!!'

dangerman

If you read the one above it it looks as if they are admitting they did not order extra capacity in time

Yeh its the typical sales/tech thing, sales just go hell to leather adding customers all over the place, and there's tech going eh...its gonna break, and of course nothing gets done until the problem causes loads of complaints. Pretty cheap way of doing business, really lowers esats reputation, if that is the story.

Ripwave

Originally posted by tuxx
yes you are if you had read the other threads on the problems you would know that you should not rant on about that which you know nothing about

If knowing what you're talking about was a requirement for posting on this board, I'd be able to read every post in about 5 minutes a day.

Reading all the other threads here, you'd be more likely to come to the conclusion that an ability to talk through you arse is all the qualification anyone needs for posting here.

Ripwave

Originally posted by dub45
If you read the one above it it looks as if they are admitting they did not order extra capacity in time!!!. Really hard to remember that all those new price reductions come around the 1st April and that theres loads of advertising going on trying to get new customers.

Really hard to remember that prior to the price reductions eircom were talking 15 working days to activate new account requests, but suddenly, since the price reductions, they seem to have figured out how to do it in 3 or 4 days (according to posts here). So suddenly IOL and UTV have a surge of new customers online within 5 days of receiving their orders, while it's taking 2-3 weeks to get the infrastructure to "catch up".

dub45

Originally posted by Ripwave
, while it's taking 2-3 weeks to get the infrastructure to "catch up".

So Eircom are either too fast or too slow? If the head guy in Esat admits that they did not get their act togther capacity wise how can you still blame Eircom? Surely you dont wait to make sure their is capactiy in place until people are connected?

Did you know that Eircom are responsilbe for crop circles and global warming too?

Ripwave

Originally posted by dub45
So Eircom are either too fast or too slow? If the head guy in Esat admits that they did not get their act togther capacity wise how can you still blame Eircom? Surely you dont wait to make sure their is capactiy in place until people are connected?

You don't want to pay for capacity that you don't need. So you order extra capacity so that it will be in place when you need it, not weeks before you need it. If it takes 2 weeks for extra capacity to "kick in", and 3 weeks for new customers to be activated, then you only order additional capacity after you have received the new customer orders.

If suddenly new customers are being activated faster than new capacity can be brought on line then you might find yourself in a bit of a bind. I've seen 2 or 3 posts recently saying that people were online in less than a week from the time they ordered broadband. Previous posts about activations were usually about weeks and months of delays.

As it happens, the additional capacity has to be provisioned by eircom, the same company that has to enable the users in the exchanges. And the only company that actually benefits from the recent pain being suffered by you and other users is eircom.

Did you know that Eircom are responsilbe for crop circles and global warming too?

Typical - you're not happy unless you have something to complain about. Eircom have done something that they should have done a year ago - improve turnaround times. On the face of it, it appears that they - purely coincidentally, of course - did this at a time when they knew that there would be a surge of demand. It appears that this change of procedure by eircom caught ESAT on the hop, but didn't catch eircom on the hop (surprise, surprise). Was this just a simple oversight, by either ESAT (if eircom told them about the change in procedure) or eircom (if they neglected to tell ESAT about the change)? Even if you could prove that it was a "deliberate oversight" by eircom, what difference would it make? Do you honestly think Comreg would do anything about it?

yorema

cba reading thru 3 pages so i dunno if some1 mentioned it but i suggest u move to tallaght where we have NTL 600k bb or 1mb line with less-then-half the contention ratio to eircom who dump 48:1 and ntl 21:1 for like 40 euro a month for 600k or 50 euro a month fo 1mb and that includes modem rental too and can cancel at any time
(i actually only get charged 33 euro a month for 600k but i think by mistake)


ppl say tallaght is a kip and i agree but has a gr8 bb service compared to most other areas

nadir

Last year I was living in the Netherlands, we had a wanadoo cable internet connection though a motorolla surfboard cable modem (full-duplex). I service itself wasnt the best, In that There was one month when the connection kept dying, And the connection would rarely ever stay up for more than a week, without resetting. However the ping times werent bad, 50 average i guess. And the speed was pretty good, sometimes it would go well above 200 kB/s

dub45

Originally posted by Ripwave
Typical - you're not happy unless you have something to complain about. do ?

You are the one who no matter what happens finds a way to blame Eircom. You were blaming them for being too quick and then previous to that they were too slow!!

In this case Esat have admitted that they were wrong. Your beloved utv have laid the blame firmly on Esat and you still manage to find a way to blame Eircom.

BKtje

I thought this whole problem(or at least some) was to do with one of the companies not paying there bills for their gateway in telewest (i think telewest?).

[Assumption mode]
Now the following are pure guess work on my part as i havent really been keeping up to date with broadband stuff lately cos mine is working flawlessly and ive therefore been busy

I believe i read on here that UTV buy capacity on some of the Esat network. Now if this is true and Esat perhaps decided not to pay (if they were in the first place as i dunno) for the gateway at telewest (for whatever reason) wouldnt this perhaps cause (or be part of) the problem that the IOL and UTV customers are having as the gateways they still have are being overloaded. This coupled with the increased signups maybe?

All i know is that the first day that the IOL customers went offline my Esat Business connection went down as well. Mine was back up in 5 mins while the IOl people werent and i havent had problems since so Esat obviously have another gateway that they arent using to the maximum capacity.
[/Assumption mode]
Now as i said the above is speculation and rumours that i've heard over the last while and i have no proof that any of the above is true. Quite possibly its all bull**** but maybe there is a grain of truth in there?

Im sure some of you can either verify or completely discredit some of my claims. I look forward to hearing it as im curious as to why it all of a suddent went complelty down the tube for IOL and UTV.

Gonzo

ive heard alot of dutch people on irc and in games moan about cable and dsl in holland particularly some company called chelllo cable, im not sure why they think its bad tho and perhaps their problems are only slight compared to what we see in Ireland. I also hear that dsl in general is not up to scratch in Spain dunno if its true tho.

tuxy

i remember a dutch friend of mine complain that he couldnt game at peak times for about a year because of 500+ pings from chello cable

dub45

Moving to Tokyo might the solution to all our problems!

BKtje

ive heard alot of dutch people on irc and in games moan about cable and dsl in holland particularly some company called chelllo cable

Chello in particular has been bad (particularly with pl) in the past tho their pings have been fairly decen. One of the cable isps (cant remember which, may be chello) recently did a major upgrade on their network which seems to have helped a lot of my friends. They also increased upload bandwidth which my friends say have helped a lot.

Cable is known for giving low pings but with pl.

dub45

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
I thought this whole problem(or at least some) was to do with one of the companies not paying there bills for their gateway in telewest (i think telewest?)...........
Im sure some of you can either verify or completely discredit some of my claims. I look forward to hearing it as im curious as to why it all of a suddent went complelty down the tube for IOL and UTV.

I cant imagine that any company will be too happy at you suggesting that they are not paying their bills so be careful!

Anyways this is the nearest thing there has been to an explanation and apologies for giving it yet again but it appears to be from the horse's mouth so to speak!

BKtje

Hmmz maybe not paying bills was the incorrect phrase(tho it was the exact phrase iw as given ), what i meant to say was that they decide to suspend their contract with telewest. (again i got no proof only rumour etc).

As regards to the explanation we'll see in a week. I dont think thats the full extent of the problem as a capacity problem would see peoples download speeds cut and ping times increase (as we have) but it wouldnt cause people internet to go down completely while a gateway being taken out of action might?

I hope it gets better within the week and that i was wrong

Ripwave

Originally posted by dub45
You are the one who no matter what happens finds a way to blame Eircom. You were blaming them for being too quick and then previous to that they were too slow!!

I'm not "blaming them for being too quick". I'm pointing out that it might not be a coincidence that they suddenly figured out how to be quick at precisely the time that it would cause the most headaches for their competitors (and their competitors customers).

In this case Esat have admitted that they were wrong. Your beloved utv have laid the blame firmly on Esat and you still manage to find a way to blame Eircom.

Funnily enough, the information that the problem that you and other UTV customers are being affected by capacity problems on ESATs network happens to prove that you were wrong all along. But it doesn't disprove my scenario.

spongebob

Originally posted by Ripwave
I'm not "blaming them for being too quick". I'm pointing out that it might not be a coincidence that they suddenly figured out how to be quick at precisely the time that it would cause the most headaches for their competitors (and their competitors customers).

I agree with Ripwaves analysis, the sudden alacrity with which Eircom is provisioning their retail customers is seemingly causing capacity problems on their wholesale customers networks. (ESAT and UTV) . Nor do I suspect that Eircom informed their wholesale customers that they would be speeding up their end of the provisioning .

I do wish at times that Ripwave would present these theories of his in a less confrontational way....especially when they are correct but require a bit of explaining of the wholesale market to fully understand the issues .

As the wholesale market is curently the subject of a Comreg review at the moment I think that one should tell Comreg about these things and not try to shoot the messenger . I will bump the Comreg Survey thread which has the necessary links. Don;t tell us what you think, tell Comreg .

M