eircom broadband frenchpark contention ratio

gary-ei5fub

Hi Guys,

Wonder if any one can help me? I have been an eircom customer for just on a year and have been happy in general with there service.I would of liked more speed but 1mb is most I can avail of due to being an extended reach customer.


As a general rule my download speeds in the last 12 months have been around 800kbps which I can accept and it has been this for all times of the day, evening, morning, etc.Over the last 3 weeks speeds have plumited in the evening to between 97kbps and as a max 197kbps!!!


This is far unacceptable and I have been on to eircom several times,firstly it was phone line, sky digital, then the firewall, then my router!!!!!
After doing all the test with eircom tech support the guy said there must be a fault with my line coming in and it took over 2 weeks to get a reply back saying that eircom had been out checked all the cables wires etc up to my house and logged the call as no fault found...

Not accepting this and the call being closed I delphed deeper and bought a new net gear router,filters and installed all the kit on my master socket in the house and have disconnected the phone line from the sky box...still only a max of 200kbps in the evening but ok at 5am in the morning around 837kbps!!!!

Again I called eircom bb support and kindly informed the foreign rep on the phone that all was 100% in the house, router, filters etc,,still blaming me I got put through to a sound lad from germany called david,i explained the whole situation to him and also explained that I was a microsoft certified tech with diplomas and a A+ and then I found I got spoken to like a human being instead of a 10yr old child.

David looked deeper into the case and came back with an answer that the exchange in frenchpark has contention issues and eircom engineers will be looking into it in the future but couldnt tell me when??????This year,Jan 2009 when,? Is there any eircom tech out there that can answer me this, as I think the service is piss poor from a paying customer..I realise I will never get 1 mb but i expect at least 80% (800kbps) for my money,any one got any help as downloading drivers, call sheets for work in the evening is now becoming a joke..many thanks

Jonathan

Paragraph your post and I might be bothered to it.

I got as far as 197kbps and gave up...

jor el

You really shouldn't put you name and address on a public forum either, even partial.

Sounds like it's contention, as it's fine at 5AM, but not at 9PM. Nothing can be done about this, that's what a contended product does.

Sponge Bob

Seems like contention all right , Frenchpark has very little backhaul so it took very few customers to congest it . Sometimes 'upgrading' to business 1mbit for 6 months means you are not as contended while they fix the problem.

It was one of the last exchanges done before ethernet backhaul became the norm .

Jonathan

Sponge Bob wrote: »

It was one of the last exchanges done before ethernet backhaul became the norm .

Out of interest bob, how much backhaul bandwidth does the average exchange have?

1/3 the total bandwidth of the connected users?

Sponge Bob

Phew J , that depends on when the exchange was enabled . Typical amounts are

1. 1gbit total on recently enabled exchanges . THIS means that many small rural exchanges have buch better backhaul than many towns over 1500 persons enabled in 2006/2007
2. 155mbit total
3. 35mbits total
4. 8 mbits total in some cases , generally very small and very rural or an island .

Frenchpark has c.300 DSL customers in total so I personally suspect it is a maxed out 155mbit and that there be HOGS in Frenchpark .

Jonathan

Those figures are surprisingly low :eek:

Sponge Bob

eircom only planned 1 gbit+ backhaul for about 250 of their exchanges and THAT as late as early 2007. The rest would be 155mbits , sometimes 620mbits where they were upgraded pre 2007 before they went NGN but they are large towns .

These would all be larger than Frenchpark . They have added a few more since I will say . I would say that up to 350 exchanges will have Gigabit+ backhaul by end 2009 .

That is referred to and shown on a low res map here presented by the then eircom Chairman Pierre Danon.

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/PDanon.pdf

Frenchpark does not have 1Gbit, I suspect it has 0.5mbits for each customer, averaged .

155mbits total for 300 total .

PogMoThoin

I'm in Frenchpark, it does get very slow in the evenings. This is what I'm getting now on the upto 7.6Mbit but its sometimes worse during the week.




I'm probably the Hog that Sponge Bob refers to as my monthly download is usually around 100GB

Sponge Bob

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I'm probably the Hog that Sponge Bob refers to as my monthly download is usually around 100GB

There are at least 2 more of ye up there

Seriously though ....can you possibly chill between 6 and 11pm and HOG the rest of the time only ?

thefinalstage

gary-ei5fub wrote: »

Hi Guys,

Wonder if any one can help me? I have been an eircom customer for just on a year and have been happy in general with there service.I would of liked more speed but 1mb is most I can avail of due to being an extended reach customer.


As a general rule my download speeds in the last 12 months have been around 800kbps which I can accept and it has been this for all times of the day, evening, morning, etc.Over the last 3 weeks speeds have plumited in the evening to between 97kbps and as a max 197kbps!!!


This is far unacceptable and I have been on to eircom several times,firstly it was phone line, sky digital, then the firewall, then my router!!!!!
After doing all the test with eircom tech support the guy said there must be a fault with my line coming in and it took over 2 weeks to get a reply back saying that eircom had been out checked all the cables wires etc up to my house and logged the call as no fault found...

Not accepting this and the call being closed I delphed deeper and bought a new net gear router,filters and installed all the kit on my master socket in the house and have disconnected the phone line from the sky box...still only a max of 200kbps in the evening but ok at 5am in the morning around 837kbps!!!!

Again I called eircom bb support and kindly informed the foreign rep on the phone that all was 100% in the house, router, filters etc,,still blaming me I got put through to a sound lad from germany called david,i explained the whole situation to him and also explained that I was a microsoft certified tech with diplomas and a A+ and then I found I got spoken to like a human being instead of a 10yr old child.

David looked deeper into the case and came back with an answer that the exchange in frenchpark has contention issues and eircom engineers will be looking into it in the future but couldnt tell me when??????This year,Jan 2009 when,? Is there any eircom tech out there that can answer me this, as I think the service is piss poor from a paying customer..I realise I will never get 1 mb but i expect at least 80% (800kbps) for my money,any one got any help as downloading drivers, call sheets for work in the evening is now becoming a joke..many thanks

Yeah, that David I know him, hes a liar. He told me all manner of things on the phone. He just wanted to get rid of you.

PogMoThoin

Sponge Bob wrote: »

There are at least 2 more of ye up there

Seriously though ....can you possibly chill between 6 and 11pm and HOG the rest of the time only ?

I never dl in the evening, I run them at night and in the morn up till midday. I usually set a download manager to run before I leave for work, I also have a torrent server which I setup to run at night.

lucernarian

That sounds like a classic contention issue. There really is feck all that can be done about that.

I suppose finding locals who download lots in the evening and cutting their connection would work, but jail is the usual consequence for vigilantism

I've never heard of contention on small exchanges like frenchpark before. I heard of it most in outer Dublin and Pale exchanges (not city centre), or in a couple of Cork ones like Douglas. I'm pretty suprised!

You could try to log a written complaint with eircom directly, telling them that someone in eircom support admitted the issue, and that other people you know in the area have these problems.

PogMoThoin

Anyone know if its of any advantage changing to this Eircom Business Starter package (same speed upto 7.6Mbit as what I'm on but the business package), it doesn't give any info on contention ratio compared to the 24:1 that I'm on. Is it ADSL2? Does it suffer from high interleaving like the residential package?

Sponge Bob

sometimes the business bandwidth is reservered and separated form the residential 'pool' so it would be worth chancing while eircom sort out the backhaul . Minimum contract 6 months .

The not dissimilar (except that it is smaller ) Aughrim exchange near Ballinasloe has 1gbit backhaul for example

As ever you need to complain like **** to eircom .

PogMoThoin

Ok, ordered it online, I'll post back how it goes

Does it have high interleaving like the residential package? My pings are terrible ATM.

Valentia

Sponge Bob, would you know if there is there a major problem in the Trim exchange (well there is maybe you know why)? This is the third weekend in a row that I have had my connection time out when downloading emails.

An Eircom tech came during the week and checked the line, Everything was fine and my line is apparently capable of 12Mbs. When he was leaving I did a speedtest (11am) on irishspeedtest and got a speed of less that 64kps. He just smiled!! Another test at 6.30 am gave a speed of 6.4Mbs. So contention is an issue.

Don't I have some sort of comeback though at such unusable service?? My line is 7.6Mb.

Sponge Bob

Most likely yes . There is NOTHING wrong with that line I would say.

Trim got BB 3 or 4 years ago when eircom were adamant that there was no demand for Broadband , why would they bother with adequate backhaul with that mindset .

The ultimate irony is that the small exchanges being enabled under the current program of 300 exchanges will have much better backhaul in many cases than did their significantly larger predecessors .

Fortunately you Trimmers have that uberVisionary Technological Guru Noel Dempsey to represent your interests , Noel will have it sorted by christmas , you need but ask

Grommet

SB, Valentia,

I have checked with my own sources and am pretty reliably informed that there should be no specific contention ratio issue in Trim. I am doubly convinced by the mention of the low speed being measured at 11 o'clock in the morning - this is certainly way outside of the peak hour (which is normally 8pm to 11pm), so I am guessing that you might have a different problem here.

It is possible that perhaps you might be experiencing some RF interference locally that is affecting the performance of your DSL service. One way to check if you have a local RF interference source is to get an AM radio and tune it to long wave and see if it is picking up a lot of noise on different frequencies. I've seen cases where electric fences, robot lawn-mowers (I kid you not!), electric pumps, etc. can blast high levels of RF into copper pairs and virtually wipe out DSL signals. If you do find something like this, the only way to resolve it is to try to find the source and see if it can be shut down or filtered in some way.

Grommet

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Ok, ordered it online, I'll post back how it goes

Does it have high interleaving like the residential package? My pings are terrible ATM.

I am afraid that that you will see no difference by moving to a business package. Your exchange in Frenchpark is hanging of Castlerea and it is congesting. Because of this, service in your exchange is also affected. I know that Castlerea is due an upgrade - though my source tells me it might be February before it is completed. Once it is - you will definitely see improvement in your service.

Grommet

Sponge Bob

I stand corrected by Grommet as always

eircom are not responsible for broadcast interference in most cases .

In a town like Trim there should be no electric fences but arc welding gear , pumps in apartment blocks , ( normally no lawnmowers in december thank God but ROBOT lawn mowers will not go out when it is raining if that is any help ) and arcing space lighting / neon lighting could be suspects.

Then comes the really painful bit. Making Comreg do their job to shut these random broadcasts down because it is a micro pirate radio station technically speaking ....

Valentia

Grommet wrote: »

SB, Valentia,

I have checked with my own sources and am pretty reliably informed that there should be no specific contention ratio issue in Trim. I am doubly convinced by the mention of the low speed being measured at 11 o'clock in the morning - this is certainly way outside of the peak hour (which is normally 8pm to 11pm), so I am guessing that you might have a different problem here.

It is possible that perhaps you might be experiencing some RF interference locally that is affecting the performance of your DSL service. One way to check if you have a local RF interference source is to get an AM radio and tune it to long wave and see if it is picking up a lot of noise on different frequencies. I've seen cases where electric fences, robot lawn-mowers (I kid you not!), electric pumps, etc. can blast high levels of RF into copper pairs and virtually wipe out DSL signals. If you do find something like this, the only way to resolve it is to try to find the source and see if it can be shut down or filtered in some way.

Could this be town wide? A friend on a business line at the other end of the town is getting less than 1Mb on a 7.6 line. The Eircom tech said that "everywhere" he went was experiencing slow speeds, including Eircom customers. (I'm with BT, who said they have had a number of complaints from Trim and were raising it with Eircom)

Longwave eh? Hmm, Atlantic 252 were here years ago. Wonder if there is a rogue transmitter plugged in somewhere?

BTW it is very unlikely that there is any large electrical stuff within a mile of my house.

gary-ei5fub

Thanks to all the comments here..I will call eircom every week as they have admitted contention problems at the frenchpark exchange..


Feb isn't that far away so I hope eircom will re imburse for a problem they know about and a 20% service that I am receiving...

The word "chancers" comes to mind as only this country would put up or shut up as seem eircom policy..

Pog keep us informed how you get on with the biz upgrade

Sponge Bob

You are entitled to a minimum 256k , if it stays above that it is within eircom service level agreements !!!

PogMoThoin

All the people in the know and not one has answered my question.
Is there high interleaving on the business packages? What is the business contention ratio or does it change?

lucernarian

I hear there is high interleaving on the business package, but i'd need someone else to confirm.

I doubt anyone suffering contention issues would be reimbursed, unless they were suffering disconnections.

Grommet

PogMoThoin wrote: »

All the people in the know and not one has answered my question.
Is there high interleaving on the business packages? What is the business contention ratio or does it change?

Sorry Pog - missed the questions on business package Contention and interleaving. Ok here's the facts....

Interleaving - I know for fact that eircom sets interleaving as high by default on all products from 7.6Mbps and above. All products below that (including their new 7Mbps consumer product) have low interleaving (aka "fast path"). Exceptions to this are longer lines (usually those beyond about 5km from the exchange) where high interleaving profiles might be configured to ensure stable service.

With respect to contention - the split is pretty simple:

All products with speeds up to and including the 7Mbps consumer product (and this includes the basic business products and "Time" products) are in 48:1 contention VP's (ATM "paths"), whereas all products from 7.6Mbps and above are in 24:1 VP's (soon to be reduced to 12:1 I believe).

G.

PogMoThoin

Thank You

BadCRC

Seems there is a lot of useful info being shared by Grommet and Sponge Bob in this thread. Just wondering if either of you know what the story is on the Pelletstown exchange? From speaking to multiple people in the area I'm pretty sure the problems are due to contention. I believe it's a small exchange with about 800 lines. Any info on it for me please?

gary-ei5fub

Two speeds tests 2 nite

145kb around 7pm and 97kbps just a hour ago...phoned eircom and there now escuating my case, pog hows your speed, further up in the village dia bollickly here going spare, even speakin to the pub the sideline speeds there on eircom desperate too.....