Eircom ping/connection speed [tonight]

BoobeR

Is anyone else experiencing bad pings / connecting at 512 when it should be 3mb tonight? midlands area. ping 90 netopia router.

daveyjoe

I am synced at the full 3mbps that I should be syncing at but speeds are horrible, generally around 300-600kbps. Pings to Irish servers are usually < 20ms, I'm currently getting >40ms.

In Tralee with Eircom 3mb.

Gonzo

no problem here on eircom. 2.64mbps from the 3mbps service.
pings 9ms to irish sites and 19ms to english ones

daveyjoe

Do people mind stating what exchange they're at, I see that Gonzo has Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath as his location but that doesn't mean that he's not somewhere else at the moment (like me).

My guess is that the Tralee exchange (and BoobeR's local exchange) are oversubscribed. Earlier on the night I was getting speeds of 200kbps but the speed has gradually increased as the evening has went on and I'm up to about 2mbps at the moment.

Is there anything that I can do about this? I've noticed that the speed gets pretty bad here (Tralee) in the evenings. Would a call to tech support be a waste of time?

Dcully

Daveyjoe im in the same boat for 3 months now on eircom 3mb.
Perfect during the day but realy slow in the evenings,im a stones throw from the Monasterevin exchange in Kildare.
Ive logged over 25 calls to support and they done sweet F all.

Gonzo

I had same problem on my exchange in Dunshaughlin as soon as the last 3mb upgrade kicked in and it lasted for about 6 weeks. I would get awfull speeds from about 4pm till about midnight and pings in the 1000s while after 1am till about 2 or 3pm things would be back perfect. I was on the phone to eircom support almost every day and they blamed it on virus, spyware etc... after weeks of calls leading to nothing i eventually took screenshots of my speedtest results taking at different times of the days and ping results to eircom and within 3 days of me sending that email they came out to my exchange and did something and the problem went away instantly and hasnt been back since.

dub45

BoobeR wrote:

Is anyone else experiencing bad pings / connecting at 512 when it should be 3mb tonight? midlands area. ping 90 netopia router.

While not condoning slow speeds it is no harm to remember that it is incorrect to say that your speed 'should be 3Mb'. You are buying a contended product which entitles you to speeds up to 3Mb or whatever the max of the product you are on happens to be. You are sharing your 3Mb with up to 48 others etc etc.

CuLT

Pinging games2.iol.ie [193.120.123.135] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 193.120.123.135: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Reply from 193.120.123.135: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=248
Reply from 193.120.123.135: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=248
Reply from 193.120.123.135: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=248

Ping statistics for 193.120.123.135:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 16ms, Average = 14ms

Dublin, Ballyboden exchange (if I recall correctly).

Eircom 2Mbit.

daveyjoe

dub45 wrote:

While not condoning slow speeds it is no harm to remember that it is incorrect to say that your speed 'should be 3Mb'. You are buying a contended product which entitles you to speeds up to 3Mb or whatever the max of the product you are on happens to be. You are sharing your 3Mb with up to 48 others etc etc.

Perhaps I'm reading BoobeR's post incorrectly but my reading of the post was that he is 'connecting' at 512kbps (i.e.. his modem is syncing with the exchange at that speed). If that is the case then indeed he should be connecting (syncing) at the full 3mbps.

He may be referring to the speeds he is experiencing though, in which case you are right (it's a contended product and all of that). Nomenclature.

By the way, do eircom have a defined quality of service for their home broadband products?

challengemaster

im on bt here, having ****e pings/packetloss all day

i had a 44 ping to a .nl server for the past week, today it was about 70 with 10 packetloss.. and somehow i was getting 50+ ping to .ie (was 32/36 all week) with _25_packetloss at times o_o

in the midlands here

dub45

daveyjoe wrote:

Perhaps I'm reading BoobeR's post incorrectly but my reading of the post was that he is 'connecting' at 512kbps (i.e.. his modem is syncing with the exchange at that speed). If that is the case then indeed he should be connecting (syncing) at the full 3mbps.

He may be referring to the speeds he is experiencing though, in which case you are right (it's a contended product and all of that). Nomenclature.

By the way, do eircom have a defined quality of service for their home broadband products?

What exactly would that be? What would expect them to say ideally?

As far as I know there is none. For instance UTV used to have a clause tucked away in the T&C's that they accepted no responsibility for the quality of service. Probably still there:)

kaizersoze

If sync speed is fluctuating/dropping it would point to a line or modem or exchange problem rather than contention. Contention only kicks in at the exchange, as I understand it, and would affect actual transfer speeds but not sync speed.

daveyjoe wrote:

By the way, do eircom have a defined quality of service for their home broadband products?

All they guarantee is a minimum speed of 256.

CuLT

dub45 wrote:

What exactly would that be? What would expect them to say ideally?

As far as I know there is none. For instance UTV used to have a clause tucked away in the T&C's that they accepted no responsibility for the quality of service. Probably still there:)

I pored over the eircom broadband T&Cs when I had nothing better to do recently; it makes no mention of QoS, guaranteed or not. So I don't know where this minimum of 256kbit is coming from (I'd like to be pointed in the right direction though).

The service is advertised as "up to 3Mbit", so I guess that covers them.

I imagine they'd let you cancel your contract if you were having persisent trouble, but realisitcally they're not going to pull the exchanges apart for someone paying 40 or 50 quid a month.

daveyjoe

CuLT wrote:

realisitcally they're not going to pull the exchanges apart for someone paying 40 or 50 quid a month.

I'd imagine that the problem is effecting everybody on the exchange, not just me.

dub45 wrote:

What exactly would that be? What would expect them to say ideally?

If I'm on a 3mbps package I would demand to be achieving a download rate of at least 1mbps and I would expect to receive close to 3mbps during off-peak times.

To be honest when I pay for a 3mbps package, I expect to be getting pretty darn close to 3mbps all of the time. Setting a service minimum of 33% of the advertised speed is not unreasonable in my opinion. 256k is a bit of a joke, basically they are guaranteeing less than 10% of what they advertise as a 3mbps service.

dub45

daveyjoe wrote:

I'd imagine that the problem is effecting everybody on the exchange, not just me.


If I'm on a 3mbps package I would demand to be achieving a download rate of at least 1mbps and I would expect to receive close to 3mbps during off-peak times.

To be honest when I pay for a 3mbps package, I expect to be getting pretty darn close to 3mbps all of the time. Setting a service minimum of 33% of the advertised speed is not unreasonable in my opinion. 256k is a bit of a joke, basically they are guaranteeing less than 10% of what they advertise as a 3mbps service.

But if you read the ads you will see that it is up to 3Mbs or whatever the max may be - to get a guaranteed speed effectively means a dedicated line and that costs a fortune. On the Eircom website it states:

*These speeds are not guaranteed as eircom broadband is rate adaptive i.e. a distance dependant technology.

They seem very reluctant to mention contention rates at all on the site - with a quick search I could not find any mention and there are probably some grounds for a complaint to the asa about a lack of clarity. But I think it would be very hard to prove that they are advertising a '3Mbs service' when there is a qualification as I quoted above.

BoobeR

No when i load the statistics -> dsl in expert mode when i load IP of router, downstream was 512k >_> it seems to be a bit recovered today but pings are still recovering :S.

Quite typical though, Pay for a 3mb service and get it half the time. Sounds like something an ex-con would do.

TheToast

Not so great here either. Unusable really. Web is crap, MSN is impossible.

3mbit, Castletroy exchange.

ping -c 20 boards.ie
PING boards.ie (82.195.136.250): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 82.195.136.250: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=32.194 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.250: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=21.894 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.250: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=19.683 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.250: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=19.715 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.250: icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=17.603 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.250: icmp_seq=10 ttl=57 time=26.079 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.250: icmp_seq=13 ttl=57 time=2501.557 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.250: icmp_seq=18 ttl=57 time=3059.341 ms

--- boards.ie ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 60% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 17.603/712.258/3059.341/1202.193 ms

dub45

BoobeR wrote:

No when i load the statistics -> dsl in expert mode when i load IP of router, downstream was 512k >_> it seems to be a bit recovered today but pings are still recovering :S.

Quite typical though, Pay for a 3mb service and get it half the time. Sounds like something an ex-con would do.

What are you line stats? Have you confirmed that they are up to taking the 3Mb?