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

techie

I'm outside Bandon using wireless broadband and routing through smart and its fine for the last few days.

Spare a thought for the Eircom techie up in Churchfield reading the " Where does this cable go " manual !!!!

mtracey

seems ok again, fingers crossed

Skud

ya alright here too touch wood will be ok tomorrow

aidanodr

Yes Faster, but watching pingplotter [ www.pingplotter.com ] at mo, 00:46 Wed morning. Still packet loss but no where near as frequent. So things are improving. Try that app, handy to have loaded for these occasions. Free version available [ I think its the standard ver after trial ]. At least you can watch the fun as it happens

Cheers
Aidan

Waveson1

Been down to 1-2 KBps since Monday evening (Ballydehob, West Cork) on an Eircom account. Rang Eircom support Tuesday morning, waste of time. Though they did ask if I'd assent to a Eur56 charge if they deemed it necessary to make a site visit!

The Eircom lads must be wetting themselves at Telecoms conferences telling all about the setup they have going for themselves in Ireland.

tech

still crap speeds, getting very upset very quickly now !

tech

can someone drop you soem food to the eircom Engineer as it seems as after an all nighter that the problem is still there

bandon1

Getting 5 KB/s download from heanet.

No Skyping for me today then.

The really galling thing is that there is not much in the way of alternatives apart from a lower wireless speed at higher price and cross my fingers when the weather is bad?

tech

shocking stuff now NO SLA on DSL IS cRAP, as most of Cork and other areas are affected ?

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

rochestown road is still dead slow...

bandon1

Is there any point in me ringing BT to bitch or will they just say "sorry mate, Eircom problem, nothing we can do"? How many calls do they need to get before they escalate a problem?

aidanodr

Hi Guys,

Just to say - Carrigaline appears to be back to normal.

Is there any point in me ringing BT to bitch or will they just say "sorry mate, Eircom problem, nothing we can do"? How many calls do they need to get before they escalate a problem?

BANDON1 - you said it, you will get the Sorry Mate line.

The problem has been escalated in Eircom circles since yesterday at 1pm I was told. I was also told in the past [ whether true or not ] that with these kind of faults Eircom BBand Customers [ like me, and I am not gloating here ] get sorted first before BT, UTV etc [ the providers piggy backing on Eircoms infrastructure ]. It would be interesting to know - of the areas that still appear to be slow - does it include Eircom BBand Customers also ...

The reason I have stuck with Eircom is not out of love, its just pragmatism. I have a business and I need to b*****k someone out of it, or at least have it where Eircom cant tell me to bog off your with BT,UTV etc. I rang them yesterday to find out the story, because the account is under my company name which is obviously involved in net stuff by the name, I didnt get tossed around the houses. Either that or I was extremely lucky to get to a tech guy who was straight up. Finally the only time I will go to other providers is IF LLU happens fully. At this stage you cant fight city hall, I did that a few months back when we were down for nearly three weeks I think. Got Article in Examiner biz section, got calls from politicians, all promising things and that this is unacceptable. When all was sorted, it disappeared off the radar quickly. Any talk of unacceptable, cant happen again - vanished - basically all talk. All that happens is you wind yourself up and waste alot of time.

Its a sorry state that I will say all this, but from Government to Comreg to the comms industry itself - no one will do NOTHING for you and their is no avenue where us joe soaps can get satisfactory results.

Cheers
Aidan

bandon1

Yeah, guessed as much.

Any need to reboot DSL box or did the performance just improve all on its own?

Sponge Bob

You may eventually have some sort of MAN with fibre if Dempsey will cough up the shekels and you are close to the fibre , of course .

aidanodr

bandon1 wrote:

Yeah, guessed as much.

Any need to reboot DSL box or did the performance just improve all on its own?

All on its own Bandon1. Download and run Ping Plotter [ www.pingplotter.com ]. I had this on permanently for the last few days. Last night I could literally see the situation improving with less and less red areas on all hops, less big red blocks indicating packet loss. The standard ver of Pingplotter reverts to free ver after trial - I think, their is a free version.

Yes, Spongebob, am keeping an eye on that. A few of the local politicians mention it regularly in newsletters. Also I note Strencom are now down in Ringaskiddy offering services. Ringaskiddy is/was very bad on the BBand front. Rumour has it that the reason Eircom didnt enable the area was that it was too profitable on the LEASED LINE front - all the Chem companys etc

Cheers
Aidan

Sponge Bob

But Dempsey told Cork County Council a few years back to design the fibre runs and prepare to tender the dig out and is now refusing to give any county councils any money .

You local politicos should know that the scheme is now dead in the water if the tender did not go out before June 2006 or so. Remember that some of these MANS have been planned and announced since 2004 and were ready to tender a year back but were not allowed to do so because the funding evaporated.

You can email minister@dcmnr.ie or contact Cork county council for the latest update but I would fear at the moment its not good news for you on that front. Dempsey will announce the whole lot of new Mans again for about the 6th time in some National Development BS but its no good if he refuses to release the money is it ??

fabien

Hi guys

Is this eircom issue still causing slow bb speeds in Cork area? We have an office in Midleton with 3MB eircom BB. Download speeds seem ok, but the connection seems to die every now and then. Our users there are connected remotely via Citrix and lose their connection up to 10 times a day..

Just wondering if anyone knew anything about this or experiencing similar issues in Midleton area...

Thanks!
Fabien

fabien

CrowdedHouse wrote:

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

Hi CrowdedHouse

I am a BT BB home user in Roscrea, and as of lunch time today still experiencing extremely slow BB (20-50kbps)...is this still going on?

I know some local eircom business BB customers got sorted yesterday and speed is back up but not me...is it because I'm with BT or home user, or just unlucky?

Thanks
Fabien

bandon1

Still bunched in Bandon too. BT home user. Time to talk to Evert Bopp about Wimax-EU I think. This level of service is unacceptable.

I'd go with flat rate 3G except we have a crap mobile signal here too. Just lucky I guess.

abcd

aidanodr wrote:

Hi Guys,

Just to say - Carrigaline appears to be back to normal.

<snip>

It would be interesting to know - of the areas that still appear to be slow - does it include Eircom BBand Customers also ...

From the lack of anyone complaining, it sounds like Eircom customers are back to normal.

Still slow for UTV though. I checked with their Tech. support, they are at least aware of the problem....but still awaiting a "resolution" from Eircom.

What puzzles me though is that although this problem affected all BB providers in the area - which suggests that it was just one single problem - how come it got fixed for just one of those providers first?

Eircom manages everything at the exchanges, we know, but do they have a crazy setup with individual sets of identical equipment for each BB provider, that they have to go and fix individually?

If so, the sets of equipment must be pretty identical, otherwise the same problem wouldn't have affected them all. And, it would suggest the problem was very likely caused by a software update or global configuration change across all the equipment that wasn't thought out and tested properly.

aidanodr

Hi Fabien,

I am a BT BB home user in Roscrea, and as of lunch time today still experiencing extremely slow BB (20-50kbps)...is this still going on?

I know some local eircom business BB customers got sorted yesterday and speed is back up but not me...is it because I'm with BT or home user, or just unlucky?

I alluded to this above in a previous post, the relevant part is here:

"The problem has been escalated in Eircom circles since yesterday at 1pm I was told. I was also told in the past [ whether true or not ] that with these kind of faults Eircom BBand Customers [ like me, and I am not gloating here ] get sorted first before BT, UTV etc [ the providers piggy backing on Eircoms infrastructure ]. It would be interesting to know - of the areas that still appear to be slow - does it include Eircom BBand Customers also ..."

Re the Midleton thing, in running Ping Plotter [ www.pingplotter.com ] it was not just a speed issue, but huge packet loss. I assume this would cause your time outs / dieing connections etc,

Cheers
Aidan

fabien

Thanks Aidan. Do you have any suggestion on how to minimise packet losses, i.e. whose fault is it, and what can we do about it...this office is on eircom business BB 3MB.

Thanks!

Fabien

aidanodr

fabien wrote:

Thanks Aidan. Do you have any suggestion on how to minimise packet losses, i.e. whose fault is it, and what can we do about it...this office is on eircom business BB 3MB.

Thanks!

Fabien

Hi Fabien,

Fraid not. Packet loss is a direct result and an actual problem at the moment ON THE EIRCOM END. It is the Packet loss amongst other things they are trying to fix. Not your Router or equip. Simply put and from what I understand - info is sent over the net in Packets, if a packet is sent it has to be acknowledged on the other end. If it isnt it will keep attempting to send the same packet a number of times at which time it will stop / timeout. So if packets are being dropped / not acknowleged but eventually acknowledged as info comes to your PC, you can imagine this would slow your system Down. In most cases I am told packet loss should be nil or occasionally low in around the 1-2% mark for small periods. Last few days packet loss was up around 30-50% so dropped packets was the order of the day which would make your BBand seem slow. This can be a result of dodgy hardware or software at the eircom end.

Hope this is helpful, other more techy people please feel free to add,

Cheers
Aidan

mercurial

I still have a serious speed problem. Speed tests show a variety of speeds but nothing over 128K. Is this variety related to packet loss?

O'Prez

The Eircom customers in Roscrea have their speeds back to normal. I'm with UTV and am still basically receiving dial up speeds. UTV tell me to just wait it out..it all depends on Eircom. Fabien, is your BT connection still slow?

CrowdedHouse

I haven't :mad:

O'Prez

Maybe it's only the "business" customers! Perhaps the powers that be over at Eircom deem people on their home user packages and people like me with alternative ISPs to be of a lower importance.

CrowdedHouse wrote:

I haven't :mad:

CrowdedHouse

I heard from someone in the know that they haven't found any fault yet.Seemingly all the systems/equipment are reporting themselves to be working normally- no faults or alarms etc.

It's only when the volume of complaints got so large that they looked more closely at it but still nothing obvious has shown up

EDIT : A bit like Boards.ie

O'Prez

Well it's playing havoc with my por...I mean...hymn downloading

abcd

CrowdedHouse wrote:

I heard from someone in the know that they haven't found any fault yet.Seemingly all the systems/equipment are reporting themselves to be working normally- no faults or alarms etc.

It's only when the volume of complaints got so large that they looked more closely at it but still nothing obvious has shown up

EDIT : A bit like Boards.ie

Thanks for the update CrowdedHouse.

Where do they get these Eircom engineers! And this is after how long....since 1pm yesterday?

I'm not surprised that all the equipment seems to be working normally, since its extremely likely that this is a software/configuration issue.

I really hope this isn't all they've managed to do so far....surely they've at least managed to isolate the problem to a particular piece of equipment by running something like PingPlotter. This is step one of any Network Troubleshooting guide.

Is this someone in the know in a position to pass on troubleshooting info to those engineers?