Any Unsatisfied Digiweb customers

slade_x

To start my connection has been limited all week for exceeding my cap, i pay over €96 a month for a 4Mbit with a 60GB rolling allowance, this really isnt what got to me though. Since yesterday according to my.traffic my usage is now around 55GB and i'm still restricted, yet this still isnt whats getting to me. in light of my recent circumstances i've been re evaluating my current package

It only just occured to me to bring this up now but i never got speeds more than 410kb/s no matter what, i effectively have a 3280kbps (3.2Mbit) connection, im paying for 4096kbps (512kb/s). thats just over 100kb/s im not getting, thats nearly 1Mbit lost

Currently there is no way to get an increase cap without upgrading my package to the next available one, you'll see how laughable that solution is below

Accounting for contention and overhead what should an acceptable decrease in line speed be, im in tipperary, as far as i know there's an exchange not too far away from me?

Another thing to note is their introductory packages seem like excellent value:

DSL lite 1Mb/ 128kbps - 10GB - €22.99
DSL 2Mb/ 256kbps - 20GB - €29.95
DSL Xtra 3Mb/ 384kbps - 40GB - €42.34

On the other hand, if this was anywhere but ireland with the cost of the packages below you'd expect a seriously fast connection

DSL PRO 4Mb/ 384kbps - 60GB - €96.79 - of which im a subscriber
DSL Premier 5Mb/ 512kbps - 100GB - €181.49 - :eek:

Chances are if i lost my mind and upgraded to the 5Mbit i would then get my 4Mb connection

For comparison lets take a look at a popular UK ISP;
Virgin have a new upgrade:

"If you're a Broadband XL customer and want to know when you'll be receiving your free upgrade to our new, super-speedy 20Mb service, then you've come to the right place. "

A Broadband XL package's standard price is £37/ €54 and its on special offer for £28/ €40 :rolleyes:
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=2

Of course considering the price of that package im guessing they are using fibre optic cable


Please feel free to post your location if in ireland (please Uk'ers no boasting), connection speed and your loss even if you are not with digiweb. i'd like to have some comparisons thanks.



Anyone know if the smaller urban areas will ever recieve metro access?

watty

There isn't any ISP anywhere with no unhappy customers.

Contention: unless you are on a contention free Business hosting package you arn't G'teed full speed. For example 20:1 contention on 20Mbps would mean only 1Mbps is G'teed.

Virgin is a ironic one to pick. They have a LOT of unhappy campers with throttling & shaping.

How are you measuring your actual speed? At busy times a speed test can be measuring the bandwidth & performance of the speed test provider!

I use downloads from heanet.ie to get a real life idea of speed.

Have you rang and asked about paying for a larger cap at lower speed package?

Also DSL and Wireless get errors and packets are resent unless it is UDP. This reduces the effective speed. Another example ISDN has error correction built in so the 64k channel is a real 64k channel. Comparing real file transfer times on 56k Dialup (syncing at 42k) the 64k ISDN on same files gave a dialup equivalent of over 70K. In reality the 42k dialup had errors reducing its real average speed.

The same is true with DSL. You pay for a package and if the line is good enough that is speed the modem syncs to (if the line is not good enough and modem is sync slower, best to negotiate a bigger cap on a slower package), otherwise the modem syncs as close to the package speed. In real terms a slower more reliable speed may have much less reset packets and be faster in real terms.

What speed does your Modem sync at? You might get much the same speed on 3Mbps and negotiate a bigger cap.

Remember eircom has a virtual monopoly on the copper wires and even Smart LLU is still eircom wire earning eircom more money each month than Smart.


I've no idea though if any ISP negotiates cap vs payment for a particular speed. Probably awkward for billing systems.

slade_x

watty wrote:

How are you measuring your actual speed? At busy times a speed test can be measuring the bandwidth & performance of the speed test provider!

I use downloads from heanet.ie to get a real life idea of speed.

Have you rang and asked about paying for a larger cap at lower speed package?

I have used Gamershell 1000Mbit servers when they're practically unused to test, also apple's HD trailers are excessively high bandwidth

I would never use a speed test, the last speed test i used said i had a 1.5Mbit connection

My router reports full speed

You can only increase your cap on metro.

Im well aware of the current situation with the exchanges, If we are ever going to get any deals its going to come from packages like metro where eircom is bypassed for the initial connection

lucernarian

Sorry to say it, as it means there's SFA you can do, but that's basically the IP speed of eircom lines. As watty mentioned, actual download speeds can be different from the actual data rate. From what I've seen, 1 Mbit lines tend to average out at 105 kBps. So for 4 Mbits, normal download speed is 420 kBps.

You are getting a bit less than that, but I don't see how you can improve it by 10 or 20 kBps.:o

I always wondered why eircom broadband soaked up the best part of 20% of the raw DSL speed. I know there's IP working over Ethernet working over ATM, but is it really that bad?

DemonOfTheFall

All DSL soaks up a fair chunk of the raw bandwidth, not just eircoms. I'd say your right there with your guess of it being IP over Ethernet over ATM. Whole lot of overhead going on there...

lucernarian

True, some other companies, like Smart, increase the raw DSL speed so that actual download speeds come to almost exactly 3000 kbps or 4000 kbps etc.

watty

slade_x wrote:

Im well aware of the current situation with the exchanges, If we are ever going to get any deals its going to come from packages like metro where eircom is bypassed for the initial connection

Unless you are using Metro's phone, then Metro typically might not use eircom at all.

In Ireland it's very hard to connect to the phone network from a non-eircom exchange without an eircom interconnect. Of course Phoning Metro to Metro or Metro to 4G calls does not use eircom at all. I'm not sure how calls to NTL or Blueface work. Almost certainly also via eircom.

Blowfish

slade_x wrote:

Please feel free to post your location if in ireland (please Uk'ers no boasting), connection speed and your loss even if you are not with digiweb. i'd like to have some comparisons thanks.

I'm on Digiweb's DSL Xtra in South Dublin (Can't get metro as there is a four storey apartment block in the way).



I'm fine with that, especially as i've torrents running, and someone browsing in another room.

The download restrictions definitely seem odd. My cap is 40gb, and yet i've managed to go as far as 52gb and still been unrestricted, and I know others who have been similar. Overall I can't complain, although a larger cap would be nice.