BBand disconnecting - Carrigaline!

Lamposts

I just want to be able to play FIFA 11 during peak hours instead of having to wait until 12 to play online. It's a focking joke!

RareVintage

Thanks for your reply there Gibbon75, a very useful link. It has also helped me to understand "attenuation". I love ratios! I didn't know anything about signal to noise ratio before.

So what is happening when I get frequent breaks, say when watching a video, as I did just now (21:45). My router stats don't seem to have changed. On the Netopia homepage I can't see a value for SNR only to the SNR margin (28 dB) which, according to the article is a high (=excellent) value.
Just loading a webpage is now quite delayed...
I just did a speed test at Blackknight and my download is 2.6 MB, about the highest it's ever been! (I'm paying for Eircom's 3MB)
What is impacting on my BB now? It was fine earlier in terms of being able to stream video etc but now I've just given up on watching a programme because it keeps pausing/buffering whatever... is this the contention effect?
If so, how can I measure that in real time for my connection (if that's possible)? If I could check a contention value at any given time I'd better be able to decide whether to spend time online or go and do something else until it improved, for example.

gibbon75

Only Eircom could reveal the real contention stats,if they collect such stats.What you (and all of us) are experiancing in the evening is that the exchanges are seriously overloaded.I'm paying 80 Euro/month for the business package so I can at least play online games.But I used to be on Smart's 12M business package(which is an Eircom wholesale deal) and never had contention problems.I'll be moving back to them as soon is my 12 month up with Eircom.

gibbon75

Another outage this morning around 7....

RareVintage

Yep I had that when I tried to go on line at 7:10. Surely there wasn't any work being carried out by engineers at that hour; if not then there must be ongoing infrastructure issues.
Eircom have had months to work on this since the disruption of the summer. It makes economic sense to invest in improved and expanded broadband, I can't believe that there's no pressure on Eircom to do more than just apply band-aid measures. I was surely not the only one to demand and get a refund on my BB payment...
Oh, and all around Carrigaline we have kilometres of "community broadband" optic cables, installed at huge cost and lying like buried money doing nothing.
Who oversees this incompetence and un-joined up management? They must be related to Brian Cowen somehow!!

[I just remembered that Aidanodr replied last summer to my incomprehension of the "Carrigaline Community Broadband" road-digging exercise: Their was some sort of tussle between the council and Eircom to the extent Eircom didnt plant any new cable ( not sure who's fault ). What this means is their will be a rematch in the future which no doubt will result in the streets being dug up again - just watch this space!] I hate incompetence, especially when it costs so much wasted money so some politicians can puff their egos with "look what I got done" never to be held accountable for the fact that it never actually happened!

Buceph

I know this may only help some of you, but there is an alternative to a DSL connection in Carrigaline. Nova Networks are a local ISP who do fixed wireless. You get a wireless receiver up on the roof, so it's not like the mobile company's wireless. The connection is very good. Initial loading of pages gets a little slow at peak times, half a second or so, but then they load quickly. The best thing about them is their support. Being a small company they're very good in getting back to you, and if they say they're looking at a problem, then they are fixing it. There are some outages, but they're generally resovled quite quickly. I think I've had about 10 hours of no connection in the past year. A few years back when I had a problem on the day before Christmas Eve, I rang up. Even with the time of the year, and them closing their office in a few hours they diagnosed my problem. Then when it was obvious it was a hardware fault one of them went out of their way to drive up to Cork and meet us to give us the replacement. They're really good people.

You can also get a VOIP phone connection of them as well, but we don't bother with that.

This is the link;
http://novanetworks.ie/

And I'm not affiliated to them in any way. Just a very happy customer.

Lamposts

Cut out again at 11! WOO.

RareVintage

Yep me too, cut off at 11 pm. I gave up trying to reconnect at 11.30...

RareVintage

There was also a failure in Glanmire, apparently caused by a fire. In relation to Carrigaline, the "Eircom connect forum - broadband" moderator said that the outage in Carrigaline was connected to the disruption at Glanmire/Little Island exchanges:
I have been advised by tech support that there was a degredation of service on Saturday. There was also an issue on Sun, which may have been triggered by issues within Glanmire and Little Island exchanges. However same issue from Sat remained in Carriganline on Monday.

On Monday our technicians re- seated some cards within the Carrigaline exchange and this is still under observation.

We hope that this action has resolved the particular issues from last weekend and investigation is ongoing.

spooky donkey

as of 3pm today this is still being worked on. Suspecting faulty card trying to pactch to spare channels atm.

Will let ye all know if I hear any more updates.

Lamposts

Cheers for the update, now if they'd just fix the crappy connection we all get during peak hours then that would be swell.

gibbon75

Lamposts wrote: »

Cheers for the update, now if they'd just fix the crappy connection we all get during peak hours then that would be swell.

Is it snowing in hell yet ?

RareVintage

Cut off again today at about 11.50am. I last tried at 3pm and it was still down, until I looked just now.

Any inside info on what is happening? Did Wednesday's repair not work or is this a different fault?

CiaranC

This was apparently a fibre fault between Glenbrook & Ringaskiddy, not related to previous faults

RareVintage

From the Eircom BB forum:
there was a fibre cable cut at roadworks approximately 3 km from Ringakiddy. Fibre cable from Glenbrook to Ringaskiddy via Douglas and Carrigaline has been patched and service resumed there however some customers are still experiencing service problems.
At least now the country is bust there'll be fewer roadworks!!

Lamposts

BB keeps cutting out down in Carrig...

Ludo

For some reason my router tells me that I am down to a 1meg connection constantly for the last few days. It used to be 3meg. I am in the Douglas area.

gibbon75

According to Eircom's NGB website Carrigaline is getting the NGB update between December and March.
I'm seriously hoping that will solve this bloody contention issue...

Funkyzeit

In Carrigaline (on the Kilmoney exchange) and I'm still experiencing serious issues which I gather are related to contention.

I'm on vodafone 7mb package but in the late evenings suffering big time.

Pings of over 400ms, 3mb max - poor QOS etc.

Anyone else experiencing similar issues?

The planned NGB rollout looks like it'll drag out into the early summer at least :mad:

daveyjoe

My family back in Carrigaline have broadband and it is shockingly slow everytime I use it. I wish UPC would rollout in Carrigaline because they'd make a killing.

There are quite a lot of people on this thread, how would people feel about individually writing letters to comreg to put some pressure on Eircom?

gibbon75

Lads,

I've started a thread over the Eircom support forums about this issue,feel free to post your problems there as well

http://eircomconnect.eircom.net/Forum/default.aspx?Mode=1&BoardId=32

The pocket loss in the evening is unreal,especially to servers outside Ireland and UK.
I'm into online racing but in the past two months I could run only 5-6 races because of this pocket loss issue...

I ran several tests via a US VOIP provider's site and IMHO it clearly proves that the phone exchanges are overloaded in the evenings.
The test below is from last Sunday:

http://www.hostmycalls.com/isptest/rp.html?Route=RP000027820110106184300&Project=PRO000000420110109125600&Jstart=1/9/2011%205:56:00%20PM&Jstop=1/10/2011%205:43:00%20AM&PName=Eircom&Offset=0

I've been told to ring tech support so they can run tests etc.
But I know they will just blame my line or equipment (or both) blahblahblah...

So please hop over the Eircom forum as we have to keep nagging them to get some resolution.

car03

have been having problems since Oct/Nov with broadband too in Carrigaline and getting no joy from eircom. Got 2 new routers and have logged several calls. Delighted to find this post to quote it to them as am sick of talking to untrained "technicians". Some days my wireless is cutting out every 20 mins - needless to say it's more than inconvenient when you're trying to work from home - or on Xbox live !!! I was getting some outages even during the night - 3am, 5am etc!!
Managed to get 4 months broadband charge returned (should be in the next bill). Meanwhile I am not paying my current bill until it is.
Will keep you updated on what I get. Please let me know if you get any updates. Have seen the thread on eircom hasn't been updated since 14th jan.

gibbon75

As you've seen I was told to contact broadband support :rolleyes:
I don't see the point as there'll be only blaming my wiring or router etc.They won't admit that the lines/exchange is overloaded after 6 PM hence the huge pocketloss and quality issues.

We should sign a petition or something (or just send a letterbomb)...

gibbon75

I play on US servers only (iRacing) and up till November it was always grand.
But now it is just impossible to race due to the quality issues:




UK is perfect:

gibbon75

Lads,

Get over there and post away

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=70486058#post70486058

aidanodr

Hi Guys,

Since Noon today my BBAND has been down in Carrigaline. 8mb anytime. On twitter ( via my O2 back up dongle ) I asked @eircom what was up, I got told:

"Hi aidanodr, yes upgrade to exchange at present + have been advised interruption for approx one hour. If more than this let me know. Tony"

That was at 13:20, its now 16:48 and no sign of BBand. Tweeted again waiting for reply.

Popped this up asking are others in the area having similar issues?

Aidan

aidanodr

OK,

At 17:00 it came back. Running at 6144kbps down. Upgrade of exchange but I would say Next Gen not enabled yet ..

Aidan

Funkyzeit

aidanodr wrote: »

OK,

At 17:00 it came back. Running at 6144kbps down. Upgrade of exchange but I would say Next Gen not enabled yet ..

Aidan

I thought the exchanges were already upgraded to NGB? I'd eircom call about 3 weeks ago saying it was being upgraded that week?

Would be interested to hear if anyone's upgraded to this and the speeds/pings they are getting ?