Utv Letter in the post

dub45

oscarBravo wrote:

I'll echo Moriarty: dub45, you're a class act.

Take a step back for a second: there was a problem. The managing director of the company concerned has come on here, in a public forum, and accepted there was a problem. He explained, in detail, what that problem was. And - get this! - he apologised for it.

Your response speaks volumes. You've invested so much in this, there's no way you can back down now. If you were offered a guided tour of the data centre, passwords to all the routers and shares in the company, you'd still be complaining.

Do yourself a favour: let it go.

As I so regularly point out the people on here who tend to 'defend' UTV are those who are not customers. That speaks volumes in itself.

Baud

dub45: The "exchange" level contention is actually done at the level of the interconnect from the eircom network to the UTV network. That's why everyone got contended at once when they were downloading. Once that pipe was upgraded, the contention went away. It takes time to add more bandwidth, and (guessing) UTV most likely ordered it once they knew they needed to (no point in having & paying for more bandwidth than you actually need right now).

(obDisclosure, no I'm not a UTV customer) The MD seems to have covered most of the issues in the post he made. And as per usual, there is competition. If you move to another DSL provider, you will lessen the contention on UTV as well, so you'll kill two birds with one stone.

L.

Blaster99

Perhaps the real problem is that because of the 12 month minimum contracts, there's no real competition. Even with the 3-month trials you don't really have much choice as you can [supposedly] only get the trial once as it's an Eircom wholesale trial. So if you make the assumption that all services are equal then you go for the cheapest one. It seems that didn't turn out to be such a smart move.

Moriarty

dub45 wrote:

As I so regularly point out the people on here who tend to 'defend' UTV are those who are not customers. That speaks volumes in itself.

I'm a utv dsl customer. Unlike yourself, I don't have a vendetta with them.

dub45

Moriarty wrote:

I'm a utv dsl customer. Unlike yourself, I don't have a vendetta with them.

As I pointed out to you before I dont have a vendetta with them.

PcP

I appreciate you coming back on Scott, and hope you understand why some of us found the 'inconvenience' comment pretty frustrating. I would, however, like to point out that it was the third time in 12 months that contention hit Clicksilver customers badly, and not a once off mistake.

Scott Taunton wrote:

Hopefully our services have been restored to the high standard you should expect from UTV. If not, please let me know and I will be pleased to follow up on the issue.

The problem is not fixed here Scott, the last maintanance only added to my connection problems. Since that upgrade/maintanance I now get ping spikes/data loss 60 seconds apart, 24 hours a day (didn't happen before the upgrade) and in the evening it becomes worthless even in between the spikes.
It's been a long time since this connection actually worked properly. If you want any further details or a contact number let me know and I'll pm them to you.

Moriarty

dub45 wrote:

As I pointed out to you before I dont have a vendetta with them.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..

NeoSlicerZ

Moriarty wrote:

I'm a utv dsl customer. Unlike yourself, I don't have a vendetta with them.

As am I, I sincerely doubt that the MD of any company would appear like this and apologise publically, and his explanation was to me; adequate

dub45

NeoSlicerZ wrote:

As am I, I sincerely doubt that the MD of any company would appear like this and apologise publically, and his explanation was to me; adequate

While I agree that it is a good thing that the UTV MD took the time to contribute here why as consumers and customers of any organistion should we be grateful when that happens? After all we pay their wages. The fact is that we should be more demanding of these people when there is poor quality on the part of their organisations.

PcP

Ripwave wrote:

You paid for a service with a 48:1 contention ratio.

oscarBravo wrote:

Have you priced a 512kb/s leased line lately?

Moriarty wrote:

What? It's exactly the 'sort' of contention that you sign up for. There's always contention at the exchange and there's also always contention at the ISP's internet link.

I've just been re-reading this thread and wondering, what is acceptable then? When we sign up for a broadband service and see it has a 48:1 contention ratio, should we just accept that it will be a really poor service for about 6 of the 12 month contract term?

I cant help feeling completely ripped off. I signed the 12 month contract and knew it had a 48.1 contention rate but never expected it to be so crap, so often. I'm still paying for a service that's only useful for browsing/email. Voice comms boots me constantly, downloaded files are becoming corrupt, gaming is a nightmare and browsing freezes regularly.

Should I have expected this to be par for the course with DSL? I don't know what to make of it anymore. Whats the point of broadband again? Why all the fuss if people are just happy to let ISP's dish out whatever they like without any recourse, as long as they're not Eircom.

meh, its just not worth it

/rant

Ripwave

PcP wrote:

Voice comms boots me constantly,

if Voice comms interrup your DSL connection, then you've got a wiring or filter or physical connectivity problem that is not UTVs fault. Get that sorted out, and then you might find that your DSL experience is suddenly just like everyone elses.

PcP

Sorry Ripwave, wasn't too clear there. I meant voice comms as in Teamspeak, it constantly disconnects and reconnects every time my connection goes.

I have formatted 2 hard disks and re-installed Windows, removed everything else on my line, replaced the modem and filters and borrowed a laptop to test (thats the incredibly shortened list). I've also had the line tested from here to the exchange, and from the exchange to UTV (all passed fine). I can dial up through Eircom and get 49.333 kbps on my modem.

If you have any other ideas on what could be causing the problem though, I would really appreciate all/any help. I'm all outta ideas here.

Iago

ok, there's a lot of understandable frustration here, and I suppose it stems from the whole "you get what you pay for" mentality. If I'm paying X for broadband then I expect a secure, faster connection then I get when I pay for dial-up..

realistically though, look at the facts.

1. It's a 512/128 Rate Adaptive service contended at either 48 or 24 to 1. Meaning that all you are guaranteed is 512/48 or 512/24 on the higher product. This is what we sign up for. Again being realistic this shouldn't be an issue the vast majority of the time because
a) not all users will be online at the same time
b) out of those that are online a number will simply be reading webpages/email at any given minute and therefore won't be using bandwidth

However theoretically, you could have 48 users on the same 512 connection at the same time therefore your top speed would be 10.66

This is further compounded by the fact that this service ONLY offers a 512 or close to 512 speed within 500 Metres of the local exchange, so unless you're sitting right on top of the exchange you're never going to get 512 even if you are the only person who is using the service in the entire exchange.

The third part of this is the contention within the eircom network, all operators traffic is taken from each local exchange on a single pipe by eircom to a main exchange in Dublin where it is then connected to your provider over a pipe that is contended at 48 or 24 to 1. Therefore even though you are the only UTV customer on a given exchange you are still sharing your bandwidth with every other operator who is reselling the eircom RADSL product.

The fourth and final piece of this is the copper wire going into the house itself, depending on it's quality the signal strength will be effected, therefore slowing your connection. So while your mate next door is regularly getting speeds of around 300kbps you may only get 1-200 due to the difference in quality and degradation of the copper in your respective houses.

With all this in mind you should be glad you're getting any kind of speed at all out of the service

Seriously though, it is frustrating and inconvienient but at the end of the day it's all that's on offer at the moment, and while I don't think that means we should just grin and bear it, we've signed up for RADSL broadband knowing that those restrictions were in place so it's not like we were lied to...

Iago

oh, and your internal wiring and pc as well, forgot those, they can reduce your speed and cause problems with your connection..

with all that in mind why did we bother

CyberGhost

Sorry for cutting into the conversation, but I have couple of questions(not argument just questions) to Iago as he clearly knows his stuff

Iago,

Isn't a standard DSL single exchange provided with a 2 meg line at minimum for 48 or 24 users? meaning that 2048/48 = each user getting 42.6 minimum speed? during the "load" ?

or is it for ADSL standard only?

---

also if UTV knows that people that are subscribed to RADSL won't get that speed or at least big % of them won't, why do they advertise it as 512?

---

sorry if I said anything stupid! but I'm not challenging you, I'm just asking! as I'm interested in that too!

Iago

CyberGhost wrote:

Sorry for cutting into the conversation, but I have couple of questions(not argument just questions) to Iago as he clearly knows his stuff

Iago,

Isn't a standard DSL single exchange provided with a 2 meg line at minimum for 48 or 24 users? meaning that 2048/48 = each user getting 42.6 minimum speed? during the "load" ?

or is it for ADSL standard only?

With RADSL, for each 2meg pipe supplied per exchange, eircom will push up to 192 users down that pipe. Which works out at 10.66, however you could lose up to a 1/3 of that capacity in overheads so once you hit 120-130 users then you start to have real problems and need to open a second 2 meg pipe to cope, this isn't always done fast enough, which leads to some of the contention issues quoted by people here.

---

also if UTV knows that people that are subscribed to RADSL won't get that speed or at least big % of them won't, why do they advertise it as 512?

Because technically the best possible speed you can get is 512 and the service is sold on a wholesale level as a 512/128 service so that falls through into retail as well. I've clocked my connection at 456, I've also clocked it at 130 or so..

Also depending on your definition if you are advertising a service at anything less than 512 you can't call it broadband only High-Speed...not quite as catchy, and you could run into issues with the ASAI

CyberGhost

what about ADSL Iago?

does eircom push that much people on 2 meg line too or is it different?

CyberGhost

what I want to know is that

with RADSL - you may or may not get the speed advertised, but with ADSL should you get the speed, they advertise? or atleast close to the advertised speed?

Iago

essentially yes that's correct. Rate Adaptive DSL doesn't guarantee anything but a minimum speed based on the contention ratio

Generally the ADSL service is contended differently, therefore offering higher speeds, but as a result is also more expensive...

CyberGhost

aha!....


Thanks a lot for explaining these Iago!


I'm out of the conversation

Ripwave

CyberGhost wrote:

what about ADSL Iago?

does eircom push that much people on 2 meg line too or is it different?

Eircom dole out exchange connectivity in 2MB units - they sell retail connectivity in 512k units - so they will put up to 192 "48:1" people, or 96 "24:1" people on a 2MB pipe.

In actual fact, they don't have seperate pipes for the different services, but the allocation works out the same way - eircom won't simply upgrade the connection to the exchange until the pipe is approaching it's "paper capacity". I'm sure that there are probably lots of exchanges that have additional capacity, but if contention arises on any partiuclar exchanges backhaul because some users on an exchange are using a significant amount of bandwidth, eircom won't automatically consider it a problem that they need to fix.

By the way, there are about 75,000 DSL connections in place at the moment. There are only about 100 DSL enabled exchanges - that's an average of 750 connections per exchange. In reality, it sounds as though most exchanges are likely to be using more than 1 2MB pipe, so if you were hoping that you'd only have to share that with 10 or 20 other people, it's unlilkely to work out. People who are on exchanges that primarily serve residential areas will experience higher rates of actual contention during evening peak times than people on exchanges with signifcant numbers of business users, because the business users probably won't be using "their share" of the capacity between 7PM and 10PM, effectively decreasing the "active contention" on that particular exchange (and if businesses are more likely to be on the 24:1 contended service, then that frees up even more additional capacity, assuming eircom aren't effectively partitioning it from non-business users).

dub45

Iago wrote:

ok, there's a lot of understandable frustration here, and I suppose it stems from the whole "you get what you pay for" mentality. If I'm paying X for broadband then I expect a secure, faster connection then I get when I pay for dial-up..

............
Seriously though, it is frustrating and inconvienient but at the end of the day it's all that's on offer at the moment, and while I don't think that means we should just grin and bear it, we've signed up for RADSL broadband knowing that those restrictions were in place so it's not like we were lied to...

While we may not be lied to I have yet to see any isp highlight the contention isssue for prospective customers (ok UTV did highlight it afterwards in their recent letter to customers:)) or say to them anywhere in big print you may get worse speed from to time than on dial up! And bear in mind that the average person signing up for bb has not got the faintest clue what contention may mean either from a technical point of view or in practise.

Any of the advertising for bb that I have seen is over the top and while we sign up for 48/1 or 24/1 that is only the beginning so to speak. during the recent 'crisis' which was so bad that people were asking to be released from their contracts and so on UTV were quick to quote t%c's which effectively remove any obligation from them. Now I presume that all of the other ISP's have similar so this is not a UTV bashing session (for once!) In reality when you sign up for bb you are buying a pig in a poke and as long as the isp say we are doing our best that appears to be it. It is amazing that even now consumer law will allow Companies to put in place t&c's like these. and who can blame the companies for wrapping things up as neatly as possible for themselves if the law allows it?

dub45

Ripwave wrote:

Eircom dole out exchange connectivity in 2MB units - they sell retail connectivity in 512k units - so they will put up to 192 "48:1" people, or 96 "24:1" people on a 2MB pipe.

In actual fact, they don't have seperate pipes for the different services, but the allocation works out the same way - eircom won't simply upgrade the connection to the exchange until the pipe is approaching it's "paper capacity". I'm sure that there are probably lots of exchanges that have additional capacity, but if contention arises on any partiuclar exchanges backhaul because some users on an exchange are using a significant amount of bandwidth, eircom won't automatically consider it a problem that they need to fix.

By the way, there are about 75,000 DSL connections in place at the moment. There are only about 100 DSL enabled exchanges - that's an average of 750 connections per exchange. In reality, it sounds as though most exchanges are likely to be using more than 1 2MB pipe, so if you were hoping that you'd only have to share that with 10 or 20 other people, it's unlilkely to work out. People who are on exchanges that primarily serve residential areas will experience higher rates of actual contention during evening peak times than people on exchanges with signifcant numbers of business users, because the business users probably won't be using "their share" of the capacity between 7PM and 10PM, effectively decreasing the "active contention" on that particular exchange (and if businesses are more likely to be on the 24:1 contended service, then that frees up even more additional capacity, assuming eircom aren't effectively partitioning it from non-business users).

Forgive me but I am still confused! Ripwave's post is more or less as I had always thought contention was - that you were contending with others on that exchange irrespective of which isp they may be a customer of but earlier in the thread it was suggested that further contention takes place after the exchange stage. So is there one stage of contention or two? (and somewhere in the back of my mind is a post a long time ago where someone claimed that netsource had lumped some of their serious downloaders together so that they could slow each other and leave ordinary god fearing folk alone - is that sort of thing possible?)

Ripwave

dub45 wrote:

Forgive me but I am still confused! Ripwave's post is more or less as I had always thought contention was - that you were contending with others on that exchange irrespective of which isp they may be a customer of but earlier in the thread it was suggested that further contention takes place after the exchange stage.

Contention can occur at a number of points. When it occurs at the exchange level, there's little or nothing that UTV or any other ISP can do about it. (Technically, eircom the ISP can't do anything about it either, as they're supposed to be a seperate company from eircom wholesale, who can). It can also happen at the interconnect level, where the ISP can do something about it (though they require eircom wholesales cooperation too). And a single ISP can have more than 1 interconnect, and it can happen that some interconnects can be more heavily contended than others.

dub45 wrote:

So is there one stage of contention or two?

Contention can happen at many different places on the network. The "contention ratio" is set based on the connectivity at the exchange, but contention is part of the picture as you work your way further up the network.

dub45 wrote:

(and somewhere in the back of my mind is a post a long time ago where someone claimed that netsource had lumped some of their serious downloaders together so that they could slow each other and leave ordinary god fearing folk alone - is that sort of thing possible?)

It's pretty straightforward.

PcP

Scott Taunton wrote:

If not, please let me know and I will be pleased to follow up on the issue.

PcP wrote:

If you want any further details or a contact number let me know and I'll pm them to you.

I guess I'll just go ahead and forward my details on anyway. Thanks.