Eircom eFibre VDSL/FTTC rollout – plans to reach 1.6m premises by mid 2016

DECEiFER

Israeli Superiority wrote: »

I reckon increasing the speed will shoot the pings back up again.

Halving the copper line = decrease in ping

Forcing more speed down a copper line = increase in ping


If you asked Eircom to lower the speed of your FTTC connection, the ping may decrease/improve.

It doesn't work like that at all. The only way that'd apply is if they were over-capacity and/or didn't have enough bandwidth, and then your pings would be erratically high instead of just having some extra but consistent overhead due to interleaving.

It could also be that they increase the interleaving profile on your account on the higher speed packs but that's at their discretion and isn't an automatic side-effect of having a speedier connection. If that's the case, don't lower your speed, ask them to lower your interleaving profile or to switch it off completely (fastpath).

Israeli Superiority

DECEiFER wrote: »

It doesn't work like that at all. The only way that'd apply is if they were over-capacity and/or didn't have enough bandwidth, and then your pings would be erratically high instead of just having some extra but consistent overhead due to interleaving.

It could also be that they increase the interleaving profile on your account on the higher speed packs but that's at their discretion and isn't an automatic side-effect of having a speedier connection. If that's the case, don't lower your speed, ask them to lower your interleaving profile or to switch it off completely (fastpath).

Ah, right. What I explained above would increase the noise margin, wouldn't it? Maybe that's where I'm getting mixed up.

Tommy Lagahan

Yeah the packets are traveling at the same speed after all, just more dense to give higher over all bandwidth so surely its only stuff like interleaving, error correction and slow equipment that's the limiting factor.

DECEiFER

Israeli Superiority wrote: »

Ah, right. What I explained above would increase the noise margin, wouldn't it? Maybe that's where I'm getting mixed up.

Ah, well, yeah if you were already borderline then increasing the sync manually wouldn't be a fantastic idea and interleaving may then be necessary. But it's down to Eircom and how their system implements it.

With FTTC you shouldn't have that worry at all. Cabinets are like mini-exchanges with DSLAMs inside and are connected by fiber except that last up to 1km to your home. Sure, if you live over 1km away, you'll still be able to get FTTC but as the distance increases, the line sync decreases (which is the same with any DSL product).

So having packet interleaving on a 70Mb/s FTTC connection is just stupid for the majority of people who are within a short distance of their cabinet. It's just not needed.

jca

spix wrote: »

30ms is very very good for gaming. I've been gaming with 80-90ms for years.

I think its more the instability of the connection is the main problem. I'll ring them on Monday and see how I get on. Thanks to this forum I know what to ask for.

Richard Dower

sirione wrote: »

http://speedtest.net/result/2728376083.png

speed seems to be more consistant when plugged directly into router, ping still crap but

what browser are you using?....i did a speed test of Fiefox 21 and it was crap, i tried IE10 and gave an accurate result.....

RogerThis

Got the call from Eircom, getting fibre installed on Wednesday in Castlebar.

godskitchen

RogerThis wrote: »

Got the call from Eircom, getting fibre installed on Wednesday in Castlebar.

Good news, where about are you Rodger in Castlebar?

PeadarB

Letterkenny on Thursday with eircom better late than never

Flibbles

PeadarB wrote: »

Letterkenny on Thursday with eircom better late than never

Morning or afternoon? I'm booked for morning, confirmation letter finally came

PeadarB

Flibbles wrote: »

Morning or afternoon? I'm booked for morning, confirmation letter finally came

Morning as well. Hope they don't need too many engineers up your way:D:D

arctan

saw one today, about 300m from the cab, 28 down, 8 up, 30 ms ping time over wifi, and the underground lead into the house was breaking down supposidly (although thats another problem)

pretty good going

Stinicker

The vast majority of this programme is fibre to the cabinet and VDSL the last few hundred metres. Isn't there also a few towns where Eircom are launching Fibre to the Home (FTTH)?

I'd love to see some photos of the new modems or the fibre to the home installations? I'm on ADSL+2 myself getting 7mb and won't see these new sort of speed for a long time.

phog

Stinicker wrote: »

The vast majority of this programme is fibre to the cabinet and VDSL the last few hundred metres. Isn't there also a few towns where Eircom are launching Fibre to the Home (FTTH)?

I'd love to see some photos of the new modems or the fibre to the home installations? I'm on ADSL+2 myself getting 7mb and won't see these new sort of speed for a long time.

FTTH in Sandyford and Wexford and same modem now ( I think)

Stinicker

phog wrote: »

FTTH in Sandyford and Wexford and same modem now ( I think)

Is UPC cable broadband Fibre to the Home or some other cable system? I'd love to get FTTH but unless I move address it probably is decades away, Dialup was still the only option for me until Three came in 2009 and Eircom finally rolled out ADSL2+ in 2010.

Solair

Stinicker wrote: »

Is UPC cable broadband Fibre to the Home or some other cable system? I'd love to get FTTH but unless I move address it probably is decades away, Dialup was still the only option for me until Three came in 2009 and Eircom finally rolled out ADSL2+ in 2010.

UPC is fibre to the cabinet and high bandwidth coaxial cable from there to your house. It uses a system known as EuroDOCIS 3.0 to deliver the broadband over the cable network.

DECEiFER

Stinicker wrote: »

Is UPC cable broadband Fibre to the Home or some other cable system? I'd love to get FTTH but unless I move address it probably is decades away, Dialup was still the only option for me until Three came in 2009 and Eircom finally rolled out ADSL2+ in 2010.

Absolutely not. It's a completely different system and although I have UPC broadband since 2012 but my understanding of cable broadband is still very basic. It's known as DOCSIS (Data over Cable Service Interface Specification). It is rigged onto their fiber network/backbone but the wires that come into your home are copper (just regular coaxial cables/aerials). I'm not sure if they use a cabinet or split the lines off underground for each estate, I'm completely ignorant of how they do it for the moment, but there is a degree of copper involved but unlike DSL, you don't lose speed over a short distance as I presume the DOCSIS frequencies probably don't degrade as quickly over copper as DSL's do and with DOCSIS 3.0 there are multiple channels to increase bandwidth (I'm using 8 downstream channels, according to my modem). Someone more knowledgeable could probably correct me if I'm wrong and I'd welcome it, and any additional information on DOCSIS.

Solair

UPC have fibre cabinets scattered around cable areas. From there a cable trunk runs along and every cable connection links into it. It's a different network topology to a phone network where each individual line would go back to the cabinet separately. There are bi-directional amplifiers along the coaxial routes too to keep the signals strong enough.

Cable TV coaxial networks are very high bandwidth compared to phone lines and they're completely shielded from interference so the signal doesn't really degrade at all over the distance from the cabinet to your home.

Remember they were designed to carry broadband from day one - analogue television signals require a lot of bandwidth and shielding!

All in all, it's a vastly better technology than VDSL2 and really can only be surpassed by FTTH.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if UPC now bumps its entry level broadband to beyond eircom's 70mbit theoretical max.

In upgrades areas, UPC can boost speeds pretty much with a few mouse clicks. The technology supports speeds beyond 15mbits over the infrastructure they already have.

Stinicker

So basically all this talk of Fibre in the various advertising is just that advertising spin. UPC and Eircom are not true fibre to the home this is a dissapointment because in ten or 15 years time you will have emerging technologies like Ultra-High-Defintion which will make the gigabytes of today seem like megabytes and basically both Eircom and UPC are throwing good money after bad into technologies that are already obsolete yet are a big leap forward as Ireland is so far behind in the game.

In the UK they have found that the cost of FTTH was only marginally higher in cost than the FTTC and VDSL solution which Eircom are going with and can these VDSL and Docsis systems be ramped up in future or will they be constrained to say 100mbps? At least with Fibre there is massive capacity as far as I know.

Solair

DOCSIS can provide absolutely huge speeds over what UPC already have in the ground. It can deliver up to 440Mbit/s down and 108mbits up without any requiring.

VDSL2 can use pair bonding (two lines from the cabinet) to take it up to nearly 200mbits.

Remember they have fibre to the cabinet and they can extend that to become FTTH when they feel the need.

Eircom will need to do that long before UPC

FTTH is not only marginally more expensive. It's a LOT more expensive to rollout as it involves rewiring the local network entirely.

BT openreach offer it, if the fibre cabinet if capable of it and if you are willing to pay for the line upgrade. If you're close that's not too pricy but if it involves ground works its very pricy.

Bear in mind corporates and business in Ireland can get fibre to premises no problem if they are willing to pay the bucks for the connection and ground works to hook into a fibre provider. A lot of business parks have it in the ground as do city centre locations.

DECEiFER

Stinicker wrote: »

So basically all this talk of Fibre in the various advertising is just that advertising spin. UPC and Eircom are not true fibre to the home this is a dissapointment because in ten or 15 years time you will have emerging technologies like Ultra-High-Defintion which will make the gigabytes of today seem like megabytes and basically both Eircom and UPC are throwing good money after bad into technologies that are already obsolete yet are a big leap forward as Ireland is so far behind in the game.

In the UK they have found that the cost of FTTH was only marginally higher in cost than the FTTC and VDSL solution which Eircom are going with and can these VDSL and Docsis systems be ramped up in future or will they be constrained to say 100mbps? At least with Fibre there is massive capacity as far as I know.

It'll get done but it's not as if the UK was early into the game either. They used to be eons ahead of us that's not the case anymore. Just like there, there are people in small towns and in the country suck on 512Kbps DSL, so they have the extremely bad side of it there also. Virgin Media, like UPC, doesn't cover the whole country for DOCSIS and right now they're still offering 100Mb/s max with a speed boost of up to 120Mb/s. Not to mention their strict traffic management policies that have been around since...forever!

We'll get there. But I'd be more worried about catching up with the likes of Sweden as the UK was never a good role model and as far as I'm concerned sitting where I'm sitting, I'm better off than most people I know in the UK right now. FTTH is indeed the future as the technology that delivers the service through the fiber can be changed, but the fiber optic cables themselves will be good for a long long time to come as they have massive capacity.

CastorTroy

Flibbles wrote: »

Morning or afternoon? I'm booked for morning, confirmation letter finally came

When did you both order? I ordered on Tuesday evening through a rep and haven't heard anything yet

Tommy Lagahan

PeadarB wrote: »

Letterkenny on Thursday with eircom better late than never

Neighbors got it installed there in Gortlee, 48Mb down, 10Mb up at 30ms ping, after doing a wired test.
The initial test I posted a few pages back was on a laptop with dodgy wireless.
Considering I'm 20m away from them I'm looking forward to Monday!
Might steal their wifi till then :P

PeadarB

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Neighbors got it installed there in Gortlee, 48Mb down, 10Mb up at 30ms ping, after doing a wired test.
The initial test I posted a few pages back was on a laptop with dodgy wireless.
Considering I'm 20m away from them I'm looking forward to Monday!
Might steal their wifi till then :P

Tommy how far to your cab. Your friend is getting good results - must be on 50Mb 300Mtrs+ or thereabouts from the cab. Someone else up at the Gortlee Junction with the new road is getting 40/10 pinging at +45 ms with Vodafone about 4 to 500 mtrs from the Pramerica cab.

PhilMcGee

i called an eircom engineers whos number i got from a friend.
The reason we cant get s straight answer from eircom about when a cabinet has been enabled is that each individual cabinet not enabled yet could be left until after the entire fttc rollout is finished.
For example you could be on the Swords exchange which is enabled, but on a cabinet which isnt.
The reason is that priority is given to the easily enabled cabinets that are in areas that have upc.
Of you are in any other area you might be years before you are enabled ams stuck with 1 or 2mb broadband band for another couple of years, while your neighbours meters away on a different cabinet have proper broadband.

bealtine

mobil 222 wrote: »

Outside sligo town on the Donegal road at a place called Rathcormac they have placed a fibre cab beside the original copper one....this is located about 4 mile from sligo.

Could you please map the cabinet?

Details on how to do it are here : http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=83997736&postcount=1

Thanks

bk

Stinicker it isn't as bad as you make out.

First of all the UK has pretty much the exact same setup as us, just their rollout is two years ahead.

They have Virgin Media, which is their equivalent of UPC and uses the exact same Hybrid Fibre Coax network, where they have fibre to your estate/street and then coax using DOCSIS3 for the last few hundred meters.

BT is their equivalent of Eircom, and they have built almost exactly the same type of network as Eircom is building. Fibre to you estate/street and then VDSL over telephone cable over the last few hundred meters.

Very few people have true fibre to the home in the UK.

Interestingly UPC actually offers higher speeds (150mb/s vs 100mb/s) and no throttling or caps compared to Virgin. Likewise Eircom is using newer, more capable VDSL2+ gear then BT, which already offers faster speeds then BT (70mb/s vs 40mb/s) and should be relatively easily upgradeable to 100mb/s when vectoring is turned on and 200mb/s if bonding is used.

Also there is a certain degree of future proofing with all of this. Both UPC's and Eircoms VDSL networks drive fibre very close to peoples homes. In fact Eircom supply each cabinet with extra fibre pairs so that in future it should be relatively easy to run fibre to the home from them.

As for UPC, the new cable they have laid is actually capable of delivering 3gb/s worth of bandwidth!!

Now yes this is currently theoretical (they have already tested 1gb/s over cable) and they would need new modems, plus they would need to switch off analouge and digital TV services and switch to all IPTV system, but there is certainly a great deal of overhead in cable and it will be a very long time before UPC need to consider going to fibre to the home.

bk

Actually, just had a thought, can any of the Eircom heads here answer this question?

When the Eircom engineers do the VDSL install, do they connect both twisted pairs to each home both at the home side and cabinet side?

What I'm getting at is, if Eircom decided to use both pairs in future to increase speeds, will it just be a case of a switch they can flick or will it require another engineer visit to activate?

Tommy Lagahan

PeadarB wrote: »

Tommy how far to your cab. Your friend is getting good results - must be on 50Mb 300Mtrs+ or thereabouts from the cab. Someone else up at the Gortlee Junction with the new road is getting 40/10 pinging at +45 ms with Vodafone about 4 to 500 mtrs from the Pramerica cab.

430-450m from the cab down at the Gordons corner cab on the mapping project, down by the junction near the Swilly Inn.
Our lines are really good up here for some reason, using speedguide.net's dsl calculator with my Downstream Attenuation gives the exact distance of cable that I'm guessing with google maps to the exchange down the town, so its spot on from here to the cab really. I'll post attenuation and everything I can get my hands on, come Monday.

bk wrote: »

What I'm getting at is, if Eircom decided to use both pairs in future to increase speeds, will it just be a case of a switch they can flick or will it require another engineer visit to activate?

Yeah would like to know this too, if nobody gets back to us on it by Monday I'll ask the engineer myself. Was thinking of telling him to connect both pairs up anyway to leave it easier in the future. Although I can't imagine them going through all this trouble to make sure the lines into houses are working properly, and then not connect the extra pair.

phog

Stinicker wrote: »

So basically all this talk of Fibre in the various advertising is just that advertising spin. UPC and Eircom are not true fibre to the home this is a dissapointment because in ten or 15 years time you will have emerging technologies like Ultra-High-Defintion which will make the gigabytes of today seem like megabytes and basically both Eircom and UPC are throwing good money after bad into technologies that are already obsolete yet are a big leap forward as Ireland is so far behind in the game.

In the UK they have found that the cost of FTTH was only marginally higher in cost than the FTTC and VDSL solution which Eircom are going with and can these VDSL and Docsis systems be ramped up in future or will they be constrained to say 100mbps? At least with Fibre there is massive capacity as far as I know.

The cost of FTTH rises significantly once you include the cost of getting the fibre into the home/premises. An underground pipe is required and in some cases this requires licensing from the local authority. At this moment in time supplying FTTC and using the existing connection seems to be the best option.

Northern Ireland have gone the route of FTTC too.