Anyone on here use ADSL broadband in Dundalk area...?

Wertz

Hey, just wondering if i'm the only one who's service has gone to complete sh*t on the Dundalk exchange...I could post this int he broadband forum but it's region specific and BT have been absolutely no help.
It's only been since the speed "upgrade" last month, but I gte the feeling that there is some sort of contention problems on either my line or at the DSLAM in the excahnge itself, as the problems only happen at peak usage times (6-10 evenings and weekends).
At first I was getting a lot of disconnects and synch losses...maybe 40 a day. Then I got the line downgraded and now the problem seems to be that the signal is just fading out...slows to a crawl and then looses synch...but thankfully the router doesn't reboot like it used to...

Sorry for the long winded post, but I can't get any satisfaction from their tech support and it's driving me up the wall. I know it's not my distance from the exchange, my service was rock solid for years...the only thing I can think of is the new speeds combined with more users on the same network is causing my woes.

Thanks for any replys.

Dr. Dre

Which package are you on? I'm with BT 3Mb line and it's been fine.

Guv

On this topic anyone know of broadband options in lower faughart?
I was told by an eircom employee living in the area that it is but when I check a few lower faughart numbers online the answer is always no.

Many thanks

Wertz

Was on BT option 3 myself, but signal/noise ratio was so bad I had them downgrade me to 2mb again (which I was previous to upgrade) and that fixed my really frequent disconnects...but I'm still having intermittent problems.

If your's has been flawless then it must be a problem on my line or on the street.

Guv; I'd have said some of the wireless options are your best bet...4-4.5 km is suposed to be the outer limit for ADSL under good copper conditions...I'm maybe 2.5K from the exchange and you can see the issues I'm having.
Mate has Irish broadband breeze and says it's not bad, but he wouldn't be a heavy user....just someone who wants internet but not the bother of a phone line.

Guv

Cheers Wertz, am going to give Net1 a call when I move there, hopefully in June.

Not sure how far the house would be from the exchange but doubt the exchange is enabled at any rate! :-)

lucernarian

Get Digiweb Metro! You get a 3 Mb/s connection for €35 I believe. Digiweb are based in Dundalk too. This is a wireless service, by the way, like Irish Broadband except far more reliable in many if not most cases.

You get a phone line with it too, although there are some issues with reliability and quality of the phone service I believe. I think they have been ironed out though...

hellboy99

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Get Digiweb Metro! You get a 3 Mb/s connection for €35 I believe.

Metro 3MB is €42.35 inc VAT a month.
Installation fee of €112.36 incl VAT applies to all services.

As for Esat BT BB users in Dundalk, especially the ones that have the 3MB connection, a lot of them are having dropped connection & speed issues. This is mainly due to the quality of the lines in the area, they just can't handle anything over 2MB.

Dr. Dre

You must be just unlucky Wertz My 3Mb line has NEVER dropped the connection AND I download at 320k/sec.
Also, Wireless should only be used as an ABSOLUTE last resort.

Wertz

hellboy99 wrote:

As for Esat BT BB users in Dundalk, especially the ones that have the 3MB connection, a lot of them are having dropped connection & speed issues. This is mainly due to the quality of the lines in the area, they just can't handle anything over 2MB.

Mind telling us how you happen to know that?
I have no doubt that the copper infrastructure in my region is 30 yr old at least, and was never put down with an eye on the future. But that said, my pre-upgrade line was rock solid, and even since downgrading back to that speed, the stability hasn't been good at all (it was downright laughable on 3mbit)...my SNR seems to fluctuate at given times of the day, signalling noise on the line, and as I said, those times happen to cooincide with peak evening times.
I've thought about a switch to smart or (god forbid) eircom, but it'll still be on the same copper, so if it doesn't get resolved by complaining to BT, I may just have to resort to wireless...

lucernarian

A lot of Dundalk has quite old wiring. You can tell with all the old poles in use and the junction boxes are black or even grey.

The metro price of €42.35 is €35 before VAT is added. You can get ordinary wireless for €35 with an install fee of €89 (512kbps service). The monthly cost for Metro is not brilliant but the install fee is a once-off and well worth it I believe. People spend far more on graphics cards and CPUs etc. Broadband enables you to do more than having an X1600 graphics card as opposed to a 32 Mb card.

hellboy99

Wertz wrote:

Mind telling us how you happen to know that?

here you go, i was on the phone the other day to Esat tech support about the whole dropping connection issue and this is what was i told, word for word :

"to be honest with you the majority of lines in the of the country are ****e and can't take the upgrade to 3MB, eircom know this and we've told them this before the upgrade happened. you'll just have to go back to 2MB i'm affraid".

least he was honest. so why on earth are they advertising a 3MB service when it doesn't work.

Wertz

Interesting that you bumped this thread...connection went down for me sometime during the night and has been unreachable all morning up till just now. Hopefully it's for some sort of maintenance although on a saturday morning on a holiday w/e, it's more likely that something blew up and had to be replaced.

As for the advertising thing...yeah, eircom banging on about bus timetables in a flash every time the weather's on, and the ceaseless bombardment of radio ads for various DSL packages just annoys the hell out of me, but what can you do? Advertising standards maybe...but why bother...probably as toothless as comreg.

hellboy99

my connection hasn't dropped at all today :eek: , anyone else notice this ? maybe the lines/exchange has been fixed ( fingures crossed ).

Dr. Dre

Yeah it was down for several hours yesterday.

hellboy99

since the upgrade i've been dropping connection every 10, 20 - 30 minutes, today so far it hasn't dropped once.

Wertz

No comment.

*touches several nearby wooden items*

lucernarian

Just out of interest, is the eircom exchange in Dundalk on the eastern side or the western side of the train station?

hellboy99

i think it's on the eastern side with up on 15,000 or more lines on it.

lucernarian

14,000 lines is what I read. Drogheda actually has more lines now... Anyway thanks for that. The harp brewery's on the eastern side of the train station isn't it?

Wertz

Yes. Ex-Harp brewery is to the east of station. There's actually very little of the town west of the railway, save for residential.

Our primary exchange is adjacent to the south of the Marshes shopping centre

lucernarian

Oh right? I can remember a place beside the train station with a lot of eircom vans. I guess that would be the engineering depot?

Sorry for going off topic...

Wertz

Aye, probably harks back to a time when the P&T would have used it...most main telegraph lines used follow railway tracks for logistics reason AFAIK...possibly used to be an old exchange up there and they just own the property and use it as a depot.