Eircom: paying for 3mb, receiving 1-2mb?!

maninblack

Hey, just wondering if this is a common problem with eircom all over the shop at the moment.

I used to have 2mb up until about January of this year with eircom. Worked fine, no probs.

Upgraded to 3mb as it was only an extra fiver a month. Worked fine, no probs.. UNTIL maybe a month or so ago.

Internets gone dreadfully slow, especially at peak hours, sometimes dropping to around the 1mb mark.

Just checked my DNS stats there:

That's what it looks like at the BEST of times these days. So I'm thinking now.... should I just ring up eircom and tell them to put me back to 2mb. I may aswell pay less if I am receiving less!!

Also wanted to know if a new (superior to the netopia) router would boost the speed at all?

Thanks

lewisevans777

It could be just contention. Wait till September when Imagine launch their WiMAX. You'll be staggered by the speed you will get.

cpu-dude

lewisevans777 wrote: »

It could be just contention. Wait till September when Imagine launch their WiMAX. You'll be staggered by the speed you will get.

How are your getting contention from that? Those speeds are fine (not the pings though).

The problem is you are syncing at 2MB (not by poor wiring or anything, the profile is 2MB). Eircom may have dropped your profile on purpose because of the distance from the exchange.

You have a low Noise Margin and a high Attenuation, 3MB looks like it might be too much for your line to handle.

Can we see those line stats again please with absolutely nothing else connected to your phone line in your house (including Sky, Alarms, Phones and Faxes) and connect your Broadband with a short cable to your Main Point in the house.

lewisevans777

cpu-dude wrote: »

How are your getting contention from that? Those speeds are fine (not the pings though).

The problem is you are syncing at 2MB (not by poor wiring or anything, the profile is 2MB). Eircom may have dropped your profile on purpose because of the distance from the exchange.

You have a low Noise Margin and a high Attenuation, 3MB looks like it might be too much for your line to handle.

Can we see those line stats again please with absolutely nothing else connected to your phone line in your house (including Sky, Alarms, Phones and Faxes) and connect your Broadband with a short cable to your Main Point in the house.

I see we have a clever techie here. Call those speeds fine!!?? Looks like rubbish to me. Our friend could be doing a lot better.

dub45

lewisevans777 wrote: »

I see we have a clever techie here. Call those speeds fine!!?? Looks like rubbish to me. Our friend could be doing a lot better.

It helps to be constructive. CPU dude is offering some help to the op who obviously does not have a good line as evidenced by his/her line stats.

So far you have offered pie in the sky optimism and sarcasm none of which advance the op's problem.

cpu-dude

lewisevans777 wrote: »

I see we have a clever techie here. Call those speeds fine!!?? Looks like rubbish to me. Our friend could be doing a lot better.

He's not on 3MB, he is syncing at 2Mb which is 2048Kbps, his results are 1730Kbps. You never ever getting the full 2048Kbps with DSL due to our copper, overheads, the distance itself from exchange to his house and internal wiring. His speeds are normal, his pings are poor.

maninblack

Updated. I don't have sky or a fax etc hooked up to it anyway. I closed down all programs that use the net (itunes, msn etc) along with another PC that was on. Also gave the router a reset/reboot and......... it's pretty much the same!

I'm not really the most tech-minded im afraid. Just concerned that eircom are pulling a fast one on me?

EDIT: Also should not that I WAS getting speeds of around 2-3mb normally up until possibly a month ago. It very very rarely breaks 2mb now. I first noticed it when loading youtube HQ vids started hanging whereas they previously loaded instantly no prob!

cpu-dude

maninblack wrote: »

Updated. I don't have sky or a fax etc hooked up to it anyway. I closed down all programs that use the net (itunes, msn etc) along with another PC that was on. Also gave the router a reset/reboot and......... it's pretty much the same!



I'm not really the most tech-minded im afraid. Just concerned that eircom are pulling a fast one on me?

EDIT: Also should not that I WAS getting speeds of around 2-3mb normally up until possibly a month ago. It very very rarely breaks 2mb now. I first noticed it when loading youtube HQ vids started hanging whereas they previously loaded instantly no prob!

Are you using a telephone extension cable? Is every device in the house filtered correcty? Do you get noise on your telephone line?

maninblack

cpu-dude wrote: »

Are you using a telephone extension cable? Is every device in the house filtered correcty? Do you get noise on your telephone line?

Funny you should mention that. Around the time the net started slowing down there's been a low buzzing on the telephone line in the house. Never really thought of it before, figured the handset may have gotten a fall.

Does that sound like a wiring problem then?

dub45

maninblack wrote: »

Updated. I don't have sky or a fax etc hooked up to it anyway. I closed down all programs that use the net (itunes, msn etc) along with another PC that was on. Also gave the router a reset/reboot and......... it's pretty much the same!



I'm not really the most tech-minded im afraid. Just concerned that eircom are pulling a fast one on me?

Eircom are not pulling a fast one on you. The dsl system (bb over phone line) has inherent limitations no matter how good the line is and one of those limitations is distance from the exchange - the high attenuation figure would suggest you are far enough away from the exchange - the other contributing factor is snr ideally you want this as high as possible and once its near or under 10 you may have problems particularly cut offs during a bb session.
Also snr is not fixed and can vary from day to day or even over the course of a day:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/lowSNR.htm


http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm

To give you an idea of what can affect SNR - recently simply unplugging a handset from an old forgotten about extension increased the snr by 20 in a friend's house.

cpu-dude

maninblack wrote: »

Funny you should mention that. Around the time the net started slowing down there's been a low buzzing on the telephone line in the house. Never really thought of it before, figured the handset may have gotten a fall.

Does that sound like a wiring problem then?

Possibly a phone or filter problem issue.

Connect the phone only to the socket with no filter and NO Broadband connected, do you still get the buzzing on the line?

mehmeh12

maninblack wrote: »

Around the time the net started slowing down there's been a low buzzing on the telephone line in the house.

What does a low buzzing crackling noise on the phone mean?

cpu-dude

mehmeh12 wrote: »

What does a low buzzing crackling noise on the phone mean?

It means there could be a fault with the phone or filter it's connected through?

Interferrence on the line can easily affect the Broadband because it's such a high frequency compared to the phone.

Cordless Phones are very common faults with situations like this.

mukki

maninblack wrote: »

Upgraded to 3mb as it was only an extra fiver a month. Worked fine, no probs.. UNTIL maybe a month or so ago.


Thanks

2mb and 3mb costs the same, eircom upgraded everyone for free about 3 years ago, but still some on 2mb by mistake or a line problem


your welcome

maninblack wrote: »

Internets gone dreadfully slow, especially at peak hours, sometimes dropping to around the 1mb mark.





Thanks

bad pings and low upload speed,

sound like some kazza,limewire,bearshare, etc p2p junk running on a pc on your network

1) change your wifi password in case a neighbour is using it
2) if you must download stuff, use a torrent program and set upload cap to about 8kbps



your welcome

maninblack wrote: »

That's what it looks like at the BEST of times these days. So I'm thinking now.... should I just ring up eircom and tell them to put me back to 2mb. I may aswell pay less if I am receiving less!!





Thanks

ring eircom on 1800 503 303 and say technical support, tell them your on a 3mb line and only getting 2mb, they will either say there is a note on the account that 3mb didnt work, or they will tell you to turn the router off and on again and you will get the new speed



your welcome

maninblack wrote: »

Also wanted to know if a new (superior to the netopia) router would boost the speed at all?



Thanks

i doupt it very much, try restting yours if its not working right



your welcome

cpu-dude

mukki wrote: »

bad pings and low upload speed,

sound like some kazza,limewire,bearshare, etc p2p junk running on a pc on your network

1) change your wifi password in case a neighbour is using it
2) if you must download stuff, use a torrent program and set upload cap to about 8kbps

His pings are only slighly high and the upload speed is also fine (210kbps and his max is 256).

Software running on the computer would affect his download speeds which are running fine.

mukki

cpu-dude wrote: »

His pings are only slighly high and the upload speed is also fine (210kbps and his max is 256).

spot on, i mis read it

cpu-dude wrote: »

Software running on the computer would affect his download speeds which are running fine.

off topic....

okay p2p apps will affect download speed when your downloading stuff, but the huars wreck your upload speed and ping when seeding/uploading with no limit

sparklepants

Hi, I just thought I'd let you know I had the same problem on a lower speed 1MB connection. Problem appeared a few weeks ago. Download speeds went from 840kbit/s to 120kbit/s. I tried all the usual things to exclude wiring and phone connections and I reset the router, all to no avail. I rang eircom. They talked me through the resetting procedure once again but that didn't help. Then the support guy accessed the box remotely and reset it. After that the speed was fine. I'm not sure what he did, but whatever the problem was with the router, a normal reset didn't sort it.

I think my problem might have been indirectly related to the attack on the eircom servers a few weeks ago. At the time I was unaware of the eircom issue and I reset the router a number of times in a vain attempt to get online. Perhaps this reset something in the box.

My advice would be to ring eircom and get them to reset the router.

cpu-dude

mukki wrote: »

okay p2p apps will affect download speed when your downloading stuff, but the huars wreck your upload speed and ping when seeding/uploading with no limit

Upload and download speed yes, not so much ping.

This is irrelevant to the problem anyway, the customer upgraded to 3MB and now his profile is on 2MB and he's getting higher pings than normal - most likely due to the noise on his line causing interference and poor noise margin. It doesn't help that he's nearly 5KM's away from his exchange either.

irishpancake

mukki wrote: »

1) change your wifi password in case a neighbour is using it
2) if you must download stuff, use a torrent program and set upload cap to about 8kbps

Just slightly off-topic, apologies.

I'm not sure that advising ppl on eircom BB to d/l using Torrents is good advice, depending what is being d/led of course.

This is a sure-fire way to allow IRMA recover your IP address, and get you a 3-strike warning from eircom.

How about using Newsgroups, like Astraweb. You pay a little, but using the ssl option is much safer than torrents, IMHO.

See this post for some good deals, by no means exhaustive list.

lewisevans777

Not being unfriendly or anything, but as a recent arriver on these shores, I am just staggered by the low quality and patchy nature of broadband here, and that fact that you even need to have a conversation like this. I've travelled a lot this past year, and even in Turkey it just worked, fast and no problem. Since I've been here, I've had a lot of contact with Imagine and I think they are going to sort it very soon - and you will be able to forget the rest.

irishpancake

lewisevans777 wrote: »

Not being unfriendly or anything, but as a recent arriver on these shores, I am just staggered by the low quality and patchy nature of broadband here, and that fact that you even need to have a conversation like this. I've travelled a lot this past year, and even in Turkey it just worked, fast and no problem. Since I've been here, I've had a lot of contact with Imagine and I think they are going to sort it very soon - and you will be able to forget the rest.

Have you come here to work for Imagine, in any capacity :P

lewisevans777

irishpancake wrote: »

Have you come here to work for Imagine, in any capacity :P

lol. No. I am a freelance consultant. I did some work for them but have no other affiliation or connection to them. I work with several companies and have been looking closely at the broadband scene here, among other things.

I do think that better broadband is pretty important for the state of the economy here. Both are third world right now.... :cool:

steamjetjoe

I dont know if this is just coincidence or not but im expecting an engineer out within the next few days over bb speed issues. At this time of the evening I usually get speeds of 80kbps on a 7mb package but now when I run a few tests im getting speeds of 4500kbps to 6000kbps:eek:

sting60

maninblack wrote: »

Updated. I don't have sky or a fax etc hooked up to it anyway. I closed down all programs that use the net (itunes, msn etc) along with another PC that was on. Also gave the router a reset/reboot and......... it's pretty much the same!



I'm not really the most tech-minded im afraid. Just concerned that eircom are pulling a fast one on me?

EDIT: Also should not that I WAS getting speeds of around 2-3mb normally up until possibly a month ago. It very very rarely breaks 2mb now. I first noticed it when loading youtube HQ vids started hanging whereas they previously loaded instantly no prob!

did you notice any eircom contractors in your area recently.on the cheap the installing to low poundage cable.this means when the cble leaves the cab the resistance build up will such that you get at best,poor to no broadband.i dont know your exchange area but i would be fairly sure that the cable in your area is not capable of supporting the speed.