Eircom "Broadband" Issue

jester77

Just flew home for xmas last night and my parents told me they got broadband in during the week. I asked them what package/speed they got and they have no idea, they just bought broadband

I setup the router for them and the speeds are awful, glorified dial-up is all it is. The router is showing 160/128 with LA of 55/31. Speednet test shows 136/106 with a ping of 110ms.

What packages do Eircom offer, I'm guessing they got the minimum, it costs €29 pm. And is there anything that can be done about the speed, no way that can be right?! I'm only around for a week and they are pretty much cluesless to this sort of thing so it would be easy for Eircom to fob them off. Would like to get this sorted before I head off again.

Sponge Bob

disconnect everything in the house bar the modem esp sky box

plug modem into main eircom socket with NO filter

get stats

now try it with filter

get stats

now plug stuff in one by one with filter on each device

get stats

post the stage results back in here for erudite commentary

jester77

Cheers, that has really helped!

Had a talk with my dad and the wiring is a little mad in this house (most of it done by himself). The main point is in the attic and there are 3 feeds off that to the bedroom, living room and kitchen. The kitchen phone is hard-wired to the base (I disconnected the chord from the handset), the bedroom point has 2 phones off this point. The modem is connected to the point in the living room. The living room connection was the original connection installed by a technician when the line was first installed.

One thing I noticed is that when I disconnected the handset in the kitchen it killed the modem connection and I got a red light, tested it a few times and it happened each time. This wasn't the case with the bedroom phones.

When I connected without the filter the stats were:
1024/128 LA:54/31

With filter:
1024/128 LA:58/31

With filter & kitchen phone:
160/128 LA:55/31

With filter & bedroom phones:
224/128 LA:54/31 (with cheap phone)
1024/128 LA:58/31 (cordless base connected)
160/128 LA:53/31 (both phones connected)

I then saw that there was no filter connected to the cheap bedroom phone, speed then went up to 1024/128 when I connected it. Only problem now is the kitchen phone as it's hard-wired, so no way to connect a filter right now. Just leaving it disconnected!

Speeds seem ok now, I'm guessing they got a 1MB package, at least it will be usable for them now!

Thanks again

dub45

Eircom innocent yet again. A reminder for anyone new to bb, over the phone line, the recommended point for connection is the first point in the house.

Sponge Bob

Tell your oul fella he has connected those 3 points in PARALLEL instead of in SERIES , a very VERY common mistake .

Spend the christmas splicing pairs

From the main point he should go to the second ( with one pair ) and use the second pair to come back to the main point at which he splices that to the outgoing to the second socket and so on till he reaches the last socket from which the return pair is not used.

This means that all the sockets are in series and not in parallel which causes a current drop across all 3 points at present .

I naturally assume he used 2 pair wires ( 4 cores) to each telephone point from the main point . Otherwise its off to B and Q on Stephens day with ye .

The cordless may also work properly thereafter , it is compensating for low current right now !

Once you do this all 3 points should give the same performance too.

and a Happy christmas to eircom support . Everybody WAVE NOW !!!

dub45

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Tell your oul fella he has connected those 3 points in PARALLEL instead of in SERIES , a very VERY common mistake .

Spend the christmas splicing pairs

From the main point he should go to the second ( with one pair ) and use the second pair to come back to the main point at which he splices that to the outgoing to the second socket and so on till he reaches the last socket from which the return pair is not used.

This means that all the sockets are in series and not in parallel which causes a current drop across all 3 points at present .

I naturally assume he used 2 pair wires ( 4 cores) to each telephone point from the main point . Otherwise its off to B and Q on Stephens day with ye .

The cordless may also work properly thereafter , it is compensating for low current right now !

Once you do this all 3 points should give the same performance too.

and a Happy christmas to eircom support . Everybody WAVE NOW !!!

God help any support dealing with an issue like this one!

jester77

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Tell your oul fella he has connected those 3 points in PARALLEL instead of in SERIES , a very VERY common mistake .

Spend the christmas splicing pairs

From the main point he should go to the second ( with one pair ) and use the second pair to come back to the main point at which he splices that to the outgoing to the second socket and so on till he reaches the last socket from which the return pair is not used.

This means that all the sockets are in series and not in parallel which causes a current drop across all 3 points at present .

I naturally assume he used 2 pair wires ( 4 cores) to each telephone point from the main point . Otherwise its off to B and Q on Stephens day with ye .

The cordless may also work properly thereafter , it is compensating for low current right now !

Once you do this all 3 points should give the same performance too.

and a Happy christmas to eircom support . Everybody WAVE NOW !!!

I'll leave that to him, LOL.

When you say one pair what do you mean, I only saw the wires going into the main point in the living room, there were 2 wires feeding that point? Is each wire considered a pair or should there be another 2 wires feeding this point?

Sponge Bob

telephone cable is usually 2 pairs but the cable deployed may only have one pair , is any of it two pair ( blue and orange coloured wires )

John1000

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Tell your oul fella he has connected those 3 points in PARALLEL instead of in SERIES , a very VERY common mistake .

Connecting the sockets in parallel is not a mistake. Connecting in series or parallel makes no difference to BB. The only mistake was not having a filter on all of the phones

Sponge Bob

Course it does if ( as I suspect) the OP is around 3 miles from the exchange or a tad more.

There is a very good thread on this that should be edited to essentials then stickied and locked

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=57637499


and a guide with colour pictures


http://reci.ie/Portals/0/RECIDocuments/technicalinfo/eircominterface.pdf

as many people hate the mess caused by rewiring the best bet is to rewire with existing cable pairs like I explained .

jester77

Yeah, we would be exactly 3 miles from the exchange. Just had a closer look and there are blue and orange cables going into the main point and I can see a green and brown cable hanging loose.

That link from reci is good, diagrams make it clearer!

Sponge Bob

It means your line is OK for that distance too, I would expect around 48-50db at 3 miles on a very good line and you are at 54db . Not too shabby TBH

However you would do well to get 2mbits out of it , stably , no matter whether you rewire or not so it may not be worth the hassle .

I moved my parents largely onto cordless phones instead of adding a snake of wiring to the house .

Had you 50+db at 1 mile from the exchange a rewire could improve matters so that an upgrade to 3mbits was feasible but not at 3 miles .

See this . Its expected db @ a given distance assumes thinner cable than eircom uses I think .

jester77

Thanks for all your replies Sponge Bob, great info in there

zt-OctaviaN

Im not on boards much at all but this is the 2nd post in a week Ive read related to 160/128 D/U speeds with Eircom and my neighbour had same thing I noticed on the weekend since intstall?? is this normal e.g. does this sort of thing happen from date of install if so do eircom have checklist to ensure an install is setup correctly or indeed the line is enabled 'properly'?

Sponge Bob

Jeez , did you read the thread at all. NONE of this was eircoms fault/problem

eircom are not responsible for internal wiring .

They are responsible for providing ONE functioning phone point inside the house , known as the main socket , and you or your electrician are responsible for all the other sockets and the equipment in them.

vorbis^cs

sorry for kinda hijacking thread but if my Line Attenuation is 44/26 dB whats does this mean??
thanks

Sponge Bob

It means nothing if you are about 2.5miles ish from your exchange!

rugbyman

Sponge, you seem to be a multi task man. And from the above thread i imagine you could land the USAF Challenger on one wing. I read you on another thread today ,about politics,economics or something.

Anyway more to the point, any sure things for Leopardstown tomorrow?

zt-OctaviaN

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Jeez , did you read the thread at all. NONE of this was eircoms fault/problem

eircom are not responsible for internal wiring .

They are responsible for providing ONE functioning phone point inside the house , known as the main socket , and you or your electrician are responsible for all the other sockets and the equipment in them.

?? Was that directed at me? I only asked a question if this was normal practice... I wasnt blaming Eircom I enquired if they check things when they install as the problem outlined seemed to be a common one this week!

To reply to an line in your response:
"They are responsible for providing ONE functioning phone point inside the house.." Whilst I understand this and that phones lines are only gauranteed for voice, they are responsible for installing a broadband package you pay for!

The neighbour I talked to had their issue sorted over the phone.. thus not internal wiring but 160/128 speeds.

So is this a common thing?
What causes this?


Thanks.

thefinalstage

zt-OctaviaN wrote: »

?? Was that directed at me? I only asked a question if this was normal practice... I wasnt blaming Eircom I enquired if they check things when they install as the problem outlined seemed to be a common one this week!

To reply to an line in your response:
"They are responsible for providing ONE functioning phone point inside the house.." Whilst I understand this and that phones lines are only gauranteed for voice, they are responsible for installing a broadband package you pay for!

The neighbour I talked to had their issue sorted over the phone.. thus not internal wiring but 160/128 speeds.

So is this a common thing?
What causes this?


Thanks.

It was most likely that who you bought the broadband from from was not sure what your line could take so they put you on the lowest possible.

rogue-entity

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Tell your oul fella he has connected those 3 points in PARALLEL instead of in SERIES , a very VERY common mistake .

That's actually what I did.. but then we have an ancient setup. Eircom line comes in goes into a small box, from there grey/white twisted pair runs down the length of our hall, and and into another junction box. From here, we had two wires to feed two seperate master sockets on the property this was all done by Telecom Eireann engineers nearly 10-15 years ago. When I got broadband in, I ran a length of telephone cable (two orange and blue twisted pairs), wired them to the same terminals as the gray/white pair, as opposed to the other pairs that fed the two master sockets, and used a standard eircom extension socket. From here I run it through a surge-protector and use a filter splitter to connect the broadband, and the sky box.

I get the full 7.6Meg speed out of the line and I have never had any problems although I'm aware that the setup isn't correct. I've been meaning to rewire the whole lot from scratch but I dont have one of those new eircom master sockets and dont know any eircom engineers to hand. Since the setup works fine at the moment, I couldnt be bothered doing anything unless it breaks.

OP, I'd just get rid of the phone point in the kitchen and use a cordless, its less hassle.

Sponge Bob

I put it to you that the house was wired for electricity in the 1960s in the early 1970s and that there is no power for a cordless in the hall Rogue Entity

The phone line itself dates from 1970, + or - 3 years.

I further put it to yo that you are 1.5 miles or less from your exchange where it does not matter if you make a small mistake .

Am I right on all counts ??

rogue-entity

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I put it to you that the house was wired for electricity in the 1960s in the early 1970s and that there is no power for a cordless in the hall Rogue Entity

The phone line itself dates from 1970, + or - 3 years.

I further put it to yo that you are 1.5 miles or less from your exchange where it does not matter if you make a small mistake .

Am I right on all counts ??

I dont know when the house was wired for electricity, but we have only fuses, and an RCD for the electric shower. Its safe to say you are correct.

I dont know when we got at telephone in the house either, but we used to have one of those Rotary phones, and what I presume was a pre-PBX type of extension system with a hand-crank. Eircom told me the line was activated in 1996, but I believe that was when the line was changed from the Waterford Central exchange, to the local exchange we are now connected to, which is roughly 300 meters away.