Eircom destroying pings

Seifer

The only reason I noticed my line had been "upgraded" by Eircom over the weekend was that I normally filter out CS:S servers above a ping of 50ms. When I did that today only five came up.
Eircom have upped my download speed and raped my ping.
There are threads about the upgrades on the broadband forum but since the problem they are causing relates almost exclusively to gamers I said I'd post a thread here.
From reading the threads in the BB forum there doesn't seem to be a certain way to fix what they've done. People are talking about downgrading their lines or asking to have their interleaving changed but nothing concrete.
So any thoughts on Eircom's active attempts to **** over Irish gamers?

BioHazRd

Not really suited to competitive gaming forum - more general tbh. Ill move it there but leave a redirect if anyone wants to contribute

Bio

Kiith

I'd say its just some technical difficulties after the upgrade. I'd give it a day or two, and then start worrying.

Seifer

Kiith wrote:

I'd say its just some technical difficulties after the upgrade. I'd give it a day or two, and then start worrying.

The upgrades have been rolling out over the Summer. My exchange just got done this weekend. Posters that have had theirs done in the past few weeks are still suffering terrible pings. Check out the various threads in the braoadband forum.
There is talk that Eircom are to address such issues after the upgrades are done. They're not due to be completed until September. So we have to suffer a much lower quality gaming service until then?

cian1500ww

Seifer wrote: »

So we have to suffer a much lower quality gaming service until then?

You think thats bad ??!! I;m stuck on 3 meg till then. God what I wouldn't give to have 7 meg.

Captain Chaos

You think thats bad, my line got ''upgraded'' yesterday, went from 2022/212 to 2520/312 and my ping went from 17ms to 42ms. Didn't even get the full 1meg upgrade and my ping doubled, not happy Eircom, not happy at all. I want my old connection back at this stage.

Seifer

cian1500ww wrote:

You think thats bad ??!! I;m stuck on 3 meg till then. God what I wouldn't give to have 7 meg.

I don't think you understand the problem. The only thing that really matters for online gaming is latency i.e. ping. I'd happily give any download speed increase back for my old ping.

Captain Chaos wrote:

You think thats bad, my line got ''upgraded'' yesterday, went from 2022/212 to 2520/312 and my ping went from 17ms to 42ms. Didn't even get the full 1meg upgrade and my ping doubled, not happy Eircom, not happy at all. I want my old connection back at this stage.

I was pinging 30 on this speed test. And had a download rate somewhere around 2.6. My "upgrade" gives me:



A negligible download increase for triple ping. I too am in the undo it, undo it now club.

axer

Seifer wrote: »

The only reason I noticed my line had been "upgraded" by Eircom over the weekend was that I normally filter out CS:S servers above a ping of 50ms. When I did that today only five came up.
Eircom have upped my download speed and raped my ping.
There are threads about the upgrades on the broadband forum but since the problem they are causing relates almost exclusively to gamers I said I'd post a thread here.
From reading the threads in the BB forum there doesn't seem to be a certain way to fix what they've done. People are talking about downgrading their lines or asking to have their interleaving changed but nothing concrete.
So any thoughts on Eircom's active attempts to **** over Irish gamers?

I've actually noticed that too. Just got upgraded the other day and I noticed less halo 1 servers with low pings from me. Not sure why that is happening though since you would expect pings to improve with a speed increase. Could it be contention?

Seifer

axer wrote:

Could it be contention?

I'm not an expert but no, don't think it has anything to do with contention. Have a look at the threads on the broadband forum. They seem to be saying that the interleaving is the problem.

Funky

I'm on Esat BT and I've got the same issue. Pinging ~100 to the UK and ~50 to Ireland. Up from like 25-30 to Ireland and 50 to the UK. Worst upgrade ever. My ISDN 8 years ago was better...

Seifer

Funky wrote:

I'm on Esat BT

Yeah Eircom own their lines so still the same incompetants behind it.
It's horrible that they can get away with this. Changing something so important without it be asked for is ridiculous.
Will ring them after work today to see what the story is. Then will start pricing NTL and other non-eircom line services.

cian1500ww

Seifer wrote: »

I don't think you understand the problem. The only thing that really matters for online gaming is latency i.e. ping. I'd happily give any download speed increase back for my old ping.

I was pinging 30 on this speed test. And had a download rate somewhere around 2.6. My "upgrade" gives me:



A negligible download increase for triple ping. I too am in the undo it, undo it now club.

Then downgrade to 3mb.

Ciaran500

They have now set interleaving to high for the speed increases but I think it affects all lines. This has been reported in a few threads around the BB forum.

Oisinjm

I seem to get high pings on some UK Server providers only. Like Tigit and RTL, Im fine on others. Its strange.

Cuddlesworth

cian1500ww wrote: »

Then downgrade to 3mb.

That won't make a difference, your line speed won't effect your ping. Eircom doubled capacity without doing anything major to their infrastructure in order to compete with other providers. Welcome to the backlash of that disaster. That's what is driving up pings.

Skittle

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

That won't make a difference, your line speed won't effect your ping. Eircom doubled capacity without doing anything major to their infrastructure in order to compete with other providers. Welcome to the backlash of that disaster. That's what is driving up pings.

That's not true in this case. Eircom have turned on Interleaving to high, the high pings are as a result of that and not as a result of network congestion.

Cuddlesworth

Skittle wrote: »

That's not true in this case. Eircom have turned on Interleaving to high, the high pings are as a result of that and not as a result of network congestion.

Did you consider that Eircom increased interleaving because they were worried that packets on their network were extremely susceptible to data corruption from the increased strain? You don't make a change to a ISP's network without a damm good reason.

Illkillya

This used to be the case a few years ago... the high bandwidth / business broadband had high ping due to interleaving, while the 1mb/2mb broadband had low ping. Not good for gamers, unless it is a temporary measure or if you can get it reduced on an individual basis.

Ivan

There is a minimum signal to noise ratio that must be maintained in order to achieve acceptable ping/packet loss levels.

By increasing the bandwidth limit, they may have inadvertently crossed the signal to noise ratio threshold on many connections with poor line quality.

I had a similar experience with my Smart telecom. Originally started on the 15Mb package but realised shortly afterwards that I could not play a game or realistically, download anything; as the connection would drop repeatedly for hours at a time. After downgrading the line to 3Mb I havent had any connection issues and the link is stable as a rock.

Anyone experiencing these types of issues should investigate their current signal to noise ratio. You can usually get that info from your router/modem but there are probably specialised sites/programs to use, also. Then get onto eircom armed with as much info as you can get, and politely ask them to either upgrade the quality of the phone line or to downgrade the connection speed.

Hope this helps.

Cuddlesworth

Ivan wrote: »

There is a minimum signal to noise ratio that must be maintained in order to achieve acceptable ping/packet loss levels.

By increasing the bandwidth limit, they may have inadvertently crossed the signal to noise ratio threshold on many connections with poor line quality.

I had a similar experience with my Smart telecom. Originally started on the 15Mb package but realised shortly afterwards that I could not play a game or realistically, download anything; as the connection would drop repeatedly for hours at a time. After downgrading the line to 3Mb I havent had any connection issues and the link is stable as a rock.

Anyone experiencing these types of issues should investigate their current signal to noise ratio. You can usually get that info from your router/modem but there are probably specialised sites/programs to use, also. Then get onto eircom armed with as much info as you can get, and politely ask them to either upgrade the quality of the phone line or to downgrade the connection speed.

Hope this helps.

Good Advice, for anybody who goes looking its labeled as SNR.

Sqaull20

My pings are up and down all the time, I am getting disconnects every 20 minutes or so and I have changed the 2 filters in the house with new ones.

Do these signal to noise ratio stats look ok?

Downstream | Upstream

Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 7616 | 672
SN Margin (dB) 23.00 | 6.00
Line Attenuation (dB) 15.00 | 9.00
CRC Errors 0 | 5

axer

Sqaull20 wrote: »

My pings are up and down all the time, I am getting disconnects every 20 minutes or so and I have changed the 2 filters in the house with new ones.

Do these signal to noise ratio stats look ok?

Downstream | Upstream

Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 7616 | 672
SN Margin (dB) 23.00 | 6.00
Line Attenuation (dB) 15.00 | 9.00
CRC Errors 0 | 5

SNR Margin
In general, a higher signal to noise ratio will result in less errors.
6bB. or below = Bad and will experience no line synchronisation or intermittent synchronisation problems.
7dB-10dB. = Fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions.
11dB-20dB. = Good with little or no synchronisation problems
20dB-28dB. = Excellent
29dB. or above = Outstanding
Attenuation Rates
In gerneral, attenuation is the loss of signal over distance. Unfortunately, dB loss is not just dependent on distance. It also depends on cable type and gauge (which can differ over the length of the cable), the number and location other connection points on the cable.
20bB. and below = Outstanding
20dB-30dB. = Excellent
30dB-40dB. = Very Good
40dB-50dB. = Good
50dB-60dB. = Poor and may experience connectivity issues
60dB. and above = Bad and will experience connectivity issues

Seifer

So I rang Eircom, asked what they were at. Didn't really get anywhere useful as he told me to ping their DNS server (was about 39ms) and he said they don't address issues unless its above 75ms.
So I said surely he knows the upgrades are causing problems. Told him I wanted it fixed for gaming. Mentioned interleaving. And he said he has changed it and to check in about 20 minutes.
So I wait with baited breath :eek:

Seifer

Incase anyone is curious:



So that's what my stats are like now. It seems to me like he's put me on the 3mb(which was the 2mb) package. While I was ranting at them at some point I did say I just want it back the way it was so that's what he seems to have done. Or would turning down interleaving lower my speeds? Do to my unique situation of my Dad's company paying for the broadband I don't care, I have my ping back

PogMoThoin

cian1500ww wrote: »

Then downgrade to 3mb.

Then your going from a 24:1 to a 48:1 contention ratio

cian1500ww

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Then your going from a 24:1 to a 48:1 contention ratio

But its the lower ping he's looking for not the higher download speed.

Skittle

Seifer wrote: »

So I rang Eircom, asked what they were at. Didn't really get anywhere useful as he told me to ping their DNS server (was about 39ms) and he said they don't address issues unless its above 75ms.
So I said surely he knows the upgrades are causing problems. Told him I wanted it fixed for gaming. Mentioned interleaving. And he said he has changed it and to check in about 20 minutes.
So I wait with baited breath :eek:

So any word? Did your ping change?

Ciaran500

Skittle wrote: »

So any word? Did your ping change?

He has posted since then...

the_syco

With the flooding, I've gone from a 3meg line to under a meg line.



Phone line is not working, so I'm happy the DSL is. Won't look into it until the phone line is back, tbh.

Skittle

Yep sorry didn't realise that mea culpa. Must read all of the posts the next time :-)

Seifer

PogMoThoin wrote:

Then your going from a 24:1 to a 48:1 contention ratio

Contention ratios here. The 3mb eircom home plus has a ratio of 24:1.