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

Has anobody spotted anything going on in [snipped]? Map says Febuary...

godskitchen

M!Ck^ wrote: »

Has anobody spotted anything going on in [snipped]? Map says Febuary...

I was in [snipped] this week, Seems to be a fair amount of cabinets around for fibre. I would imagine its just a case of KN getting the go ahead to start from Eircom.

godskitchen

godskitchen wrote: »

I was in [snipped] this week, Seems to be a fair amount of cabinets around for fibre. I would imagine its just a case of KN getting the go ahead to start from Eircom.

Thanks man, looks like I have been getting the bull**** from the sales reps in Eircom. Said I would be expecting a call 'shortly'

J. Marston

Youghal is Efibre enabled apparently, except for seemingly two or three small areas. One of which I happen to live in.

Checked my availability on the website and it says "Unavailable" but for addresses literally one or two minutes walk away, it's available. Balls.

Just got a message back from an Eircom rep (who was helpful) saying they didn't know exactly when Efibre would be ready for my area but it should be before Christmas 2014 so that roughly translates as never.

No UPC available here either so I guess my options are Eircom's 24MB deal (the rep said I could only reach speeds of up to 20MBs though...) or Vodafone's services, which I'm guessing is similar.

Sam Russell

According to the Eircom fibre map, my area is due to roll out March 2014, but they do not even have the green box on the ground yet so little hope of it this side of August. I understood that it was due to go live here in Nov 2013. Lots of planning applications and squares marked out on the ground but no sign of real activity involving installation.

kaizersoze

M!Ck^ wrote: »

Has anobody spotted anything going on in Athlone? Map says Febuary...

Athlone has 4 exchanges areas, Athlone, Roslevin, Blyry & Monksland, so it depends on which you're connected to. Roslevin is fairly complete, Athlone & Blyry is under way (Blyry has some live) but Monksland has a way to go.

Danny Boy

Sam Russell wrote: »

According to the Eircom fibre map, my area is due to roll out March 2014, but they do not even have the green box on the ground yet so little hope of it this side of August. I understood that it was due to go live here in Nov 2013. Lots of planning applications and squares marked out on the ground but no sign of real activity involving installation.

http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Our_Network/

Check the NGA network out at that link

Sam Russell

Danny Boy wrote: »

http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Our_Network/

Check the NGA network out at that link

I did.

kaizersoze

kaizersoze wrote: »

Athlone has 4 exchanges areas, Athlone, Roslevin, Blyry & Monksland, so it depends on which you're connected to. Roslevin is fairly complete, Athlone & Blyry is under way (Blyry has some live) but Monksland has a way to go.

[snipped] for me I would say

notahappycamper

I see my exchange in Clontarf, Dublin has been pushed back further from April to June :mad:

mark_79

Is there any way of knowing when e-fibre will actually be avaiable, IN YOUR HOME?

I rang eircom yesterday and all I got was to check the eircom website.

There are at least a dozen cabinets here in New Ross and I've not seen any engineers at them for the last month. Would they be finished doing whatever they do with them?

We were supposed to be switched on last December.

red_bairn

mark_79 wrote: »

Is there any way of knowing when e-fibre will actually be avaiable, IN YOUR HOME?

I rang eircom yesterday and all I got was to check the eircom website.

There are at least a dozen cabinets here in New Ross and I've not seen any engineers at them for the last month. Would they be finished doing whatever they do with them?

We were supposed to be switched on last December.

You won't know until the cabinet is ready, your details are put into Eircom's database and it then shows up on the online checker (I assume something along those lines).

Our cabinet has been in place since May. I mapped the majority of Greystones for the CrowdSource Mapping project and I knew the approx. dates for the majority of deployments in my area.

Some residents are on the new system (FTTC) in our estate but I don't think there are many and Eircom aren't giving us any news about what is happening. One resident found out from one of the Exec's that it could be due to some older houses having copper lines fed straight to the exchange rather than through the distribution/copper cabinet.

This would mean that we may not be able to get the service until they do loads of civil work, which could take another year or two and they will probably have issues with the county council, which will delay it even further.

Neffa2

Hi

So finally the eircom line checker recognises that I am in an efibre area.

When I run the line checker, it says I can get max 7MB download, which is not great - I have a fixed wireless BB connection today which gives me that.

However, when I put our neighbour's house in, it says they can get 18MB down, which is much better - they are max 30m from our house.

Is the line checker reliable? I'd definitely move for 18MB, but not for 7MB...!

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

I've wondered this the past few days. How did Eircom change the lines from the green cabinets back to the exchange to be fibre? There's loads of them around Ennis but I've never seen them digging up the road nor do I see any evidence of them recently digging up the road near green cabinets.

fat-tony

No change in lines from exchange to cabinet. The fibre is a separate run from the exchange to the new VDSL cabinet. The only link is from the old copper cabinet to the new VDSL cabinet beside it. Your telephone service still runs all the way back to the exchange via copper.

ED E

georgiecasey wrote: »

I've wondered this the past few days. How did Eircom change the lines from the green cabinets back to the exchange to be fibre? There's loads of them around Ennis but I've never seen them digging up the road nor do I see any evidence of them recently digging up the road near green cabinets.

They're blown into existing ducts. They dont need to dig up the road to do it. A small truck pulls up, they remove excess copper and pull a subduct in, then blow the fibre down it.

BK/Kaizer know more.

SpaceTime

georgiecasey wrote: »

I've wondered this the past few days. How did Eircom change the lines from the green cabinets back to the exchange to be fibre? There's loads of them around Ennis but I've never seen them digging up the road nor do I see any evidence of them recently digging up the road near green cabinets.

All of those cabinets are connected back to the exchange via underground ducts. So, all they have to do is push sub ducts (tubes) down those ducts and then the fibres are blown down those to the various cabinets.

Any digging would usually have been for access to electricity. They need mains power.

The lines from the cabinet to your house are the same copper twisted pairs that they've always been.


----

The actual service comes in two flavours:

1) With telephone service from the exchange.
2) Without telephone service from the exchange. (You can provide your own VoIP or some of the other providers like Digiweb are providing VoIP as part of the package)

If you keep the telephone service from the exchange, your line's left connected the whole way back to the exchange and your broadband is basically spliced onto the line at the green cabinet.

So your voice calls go all the way back to the exchange, but your data services are only going as far as the green box and then fibre from there.

If you opt to get broadband only, there's no need for a connection to the exchange, although it may well still be there just in case you decide to connect in the future.

pg17

Neffa2 wrote: »

Hi

So finally the eircom line checker recognises that I am in an efibre area.

When I run the line checker, it says I can get max 7MB download, which is not great - I have a fixed wireless BB connection today which gives me that.

However, when I put our neighbour's house in, it says they can get 18MB down, which is much better - they are max 30m from our house.

Is the line checker reliable? I'd definitely move for 18MB, but not for 7MB...!

A technician working at a new VDSL cabinet told me they test every line from old cabinets back to the exchange - I expect they test lines from cabinet to each house too and would use the information to estimate max speed possible with VDSL on each subscriber line and so could differentiate between your line and your neighbour's.

SpaceTime

pg17 wrote: »

A technician working at a new VDSL cabinet told me they test every line from old cabinets back to the exchange - I expect they test lines from cabinet to each house too and would use the information to estimate max speed possible with VDSL on each subscriber line and so could differentiate between your line and your neighbour's.

As far as I know they actually set it up like this when you connect:

<Exchange POTS service>

---

<Filter>--<VDSL2 broadband cabinet>======<Your house>

So, the line from the exchange carrying voice signals would actually be filtered off to prevent any noise on the long line to the exchange screwing up your broadband from the cabinet.

I'd imagine it's just a simple DSL filter like what you have in your house and is probably built into the splice they do.

If they're testing lines back to the exchange, it's just for routine maintenance as they've nothing to do with the data service to your house from the cabinet.
I'd guess if they're working on your line, they might as well test all aspects of it as opposed to just testing the bit from the cabinet to your house.

....

The PSTN phone service is digital but the signal from your house to the exchange is 100% analogue audio connection much like what connects your headphones to your iPod. There's nothing digital between you and the exchange.

Your line connects to a device in the exchange which is a bit like a VoIP adaptor. Basically like a relatively simple sound card that converts your audio signals into digital signals so they can be processed. It also generates the dial tones, sends out voltages to ring our phone and accepts touch-tone signals from your phone so you can dial numbers.

...

*ALL* of the modems being provided by all of the ISPs using this new FTTC stuff seem to contain VoIP adaptors. So, you can connect a phone straight to the back of the modem if that service is enabled and your voice traffic is sent back to the network 100% digitally via the cabinet instead as VoIP traffic instead of being handled by the local exchange.

AFAIK, Digiweb and Magnet are using this already and Vodafone and Eircom will quite likely follow in the future.

---

At present there's no particularly urgent plan to replace the POTS/PSTN telephone service (the exchanges are still pretty good and can be adapted to an all-IP network), but I guess it will just gradually disappear and be replaced by VoIP technology either in your house like what I'm describing above or via a dial tone sent from the local cabinet.

There's actually a lot of regulatory difficulty with moving away from the existing phone network and at present it still has a lot of active customers and supports a very wide range of services like ISDN etc.

The biggest issue is that eircom's still required to provide carrier preselect voice services to other companies. So, it's going to be around for a long time yet!

I'd say in the medium term (if you're not on it already) you'll be getting a dial-tone from an exchange that's actually using VoIP backhaul if you're not using VoIP directly yourself.

Basically what you're seeing is eircom moving from a company that primarily provided voice services and also did broadband to a broadband provider that also does voice.

Same for cable too - TV is now the secondary product and broadband's the main one.

Other than for business use, landline voice is taking an absolute nose dive in terms of usage. Mobile traffic is replacing it very quickly.

---

It's interesting though as I think we're actually experiencing the single biggest shift in telecommunications since probably the advent of dial telephones in the 1920s.

Sam Russell

This efibre, is it DSL 2 or DSL 2+ or something else?

I use to use a Vodafone modem (HG5556a) but now use a Dlink DSL 2640 which appears to give better coverage for the wifi. Will this modem still work for the new FTTC stuff?

Will I need to get a new modem/router?

fat-tony

Sam Russell wrote: »

This efibre, is it DSL 2 or DSL 2+ or something else?

I use to use a Vodafone modem (HG5556a) but now use a Dlink DSL 2640 which appears to give better coverage for the wifi. Will this modem still work for the new FTTC stuff?

Will I need to get a new modem/router?

Hi Sam! The fibre service is VDSL and your existing modem will not work. The supplied modems by Vodafone and eircom also support a technology called vectoring which will be used to reduce crosstalk on the lines and will eventually supply faster speeds (~100Mbps) than currently offered (70Mbps max). Because of this vectoring technology it might not be advisable to purchase a VDSL modem yourself unless you're 100% sure it's compatible with the network.
The Vodafone modem/router (HG658c) I find perfectly ok as regards stability and wi-fi coverage although I'm told by my speed hungry son that the wi-fi starts to saturate if another laptop is streaming a lot of data.
You can bridge the VF modem if you have a favourite wif-fi router that you want to use, but basically you will need to connect the supplied modem to the fibre network.

Impetus

Sam Russell wrote: »

This efibre, is it DSL 2 or DSL 2+ or something else?

I use to use a Vodafone modem (HG5556a) but now use a Dlink DSL 2640 which appears to give better coverage for the wifi. Will this modem still work for the new FTTC stuff?

Will I need to get a new modem/router?

It uses VDSL2 / 2+. You can either use an eircom supplied modem (which is probably Huawei at a guess - Huawei builds the street box technology). I would personally not trust anything from the US or GB etc. China or Taiwan or South Korea are probably safe for the moment in terms of back doors. By that I mean a device manufactured by a company that is based in and largely controlled from these countries. DrayTek have good routers, based in Taiwan. High quality. I use FTTP myself so I can't speak for their workability on eircom.

Does anybody know if eircom "efibre" discloses the user id and password etc to people who wish to use their own box?

Sam Russell

Impetus wrote: »

It uses VDSL2 / 2+. You can either use an eircom supplied modem (which is probably Huawei at a guess - Huawei builds the street box technology). I would personally not trust anything from the US or GB etc.

Are you alluding to our 'friends' in GCHQ and NSA?

fat-tony

Sam Russell wrote: »

Are you alluding to our 'friends' in GCHQ and NSA?

Tinfoil hat time Sam

Impetus

Sam Russell wrote: »

Are you alluding to our 'friends' in GCHQ and NSA?

Your basic security while online is the NAT router. While Windows and Apple systems have "firewalls", I suspect that it is possible for malware to open a port and dig into everything on your PC and transfer it to their "command center" (spelling deliberate).

If your NAT router comes from a clean source that has no interest in snooping into Irish computers owned by Irish people, one is entirely reliant on them to stop infiltration. I'm not just talking about the three or four letter organisations you mentioned. All black hat hackers.

Does your American owned ISP for example pass your IP number and your ID info to these organisations who have no regard for one's privacy? I don't know, but I would prefer to take preventative measures, like a hard firewall that doesn't come from a suspect source, and not use a US owned ISP.

We can see for example with the slow adoption of EMV payment cards in the US that many people there are clueless or don't care about security. While I have nothing against citizens of these countries, I would prefer if they behaved in a civil manner informatically speaking.

dalta5billion

Did someone just say routers from China are unlikely to be backdoored

SpaceTime

Impetus wrote: »

It uses VDSL2 / 2+. You can either use an eircom supplied modem (which is probably Huawei at a guess - Huawei builds the street box technology). I would personally not trust anything from the US or GB etc. China or Taiwan or South Korea are probably safe for the moment in terms of back doors. By that I mean a device manufactured by a company that is based in and largely controlled from these countries. DrayTek have good routers, based in Taiwan. High quality. I use FTTP myself so I can't speak for their workability on eircom.

Does anybody know if eircom "efibre" discloses the user id and password etc to people who wish to use their own box?

You'll find pretty much *every* major equipment vendor in the network.

Modem: ZyXel (Taiwan)
DSLAM : Huawei (Chinese)
Core network : Mostly built around Alcatel-Lucent (French) switches and routers. There's quite likely Ericsson, Cisco and plenty of other gear in there too.

The voice / ISDN system is a mix of Ericsson (Swedish) and Alcatel (French) and plenty of other bits and pieces and suppliers involved in linking it all up.

When you add other operators and international links to the route you'll probably have data going through every manufacturer device you can think of!

There's actually very little likelihood of British equipment as they have never really been big players in that type of equipment. Nearly all UK telecommunications equipment makers are gone. Don't think eircom ever used GPT/Marconi gear and those companies are gone now anyway.

Impetus

dalta5billion wrote: »

Did someone just say routers from China are unlikely to be backdoored

I suspect every thing is backdoored. However I assume that the Asians are less interested in snooping on Irish people who have no Asian connection compared with others. It is like an onion, made up of your o/s firewall and the choice of nat router. The more international complexity the better.

Impetus

SpaceTime wrote: »

You'll find pretty much *every* major equipment vendor in the network.

Modem: ZyXel (Taiwan)
DSLAM : Huawei (Chinese)
Core network : Mostly built around Alcatel-Lucent (French) switches and routers. There's quite likely Ericsson, Cisco and plenty of other gear in there too.

The voice / ISDN system is a mix of Ericsson (Swedish) and Alcatel (French) and plenty of other bits and pieces and suppliers involved in linking it all up.

When you add other operators and international links to the route you'll probably have data going through every manufacturer device you can think of!

There's actually very little likelihood of British equipment as they have never really been big players in that type of equipment. Nearly all UK telecommunications equipment makers are gone. Don't think eircom ever used GPT/Marconi gear and those companies are gone now anyway.

But if the NAT router is non compliant with the other components of the network, it is a useful barrier. The French input in Ireland is the E-10 B digital switch which is around in Ireland for some 30 years. Ditto for Ericsson's AXE. These are irrelevant, unless you use dial-up.

The one area of GB risk, if you live in Ireland, is the route your internet packets take. Better to use a solid VPN connection for company confidential communications, end to end. And/or strongly encrypted emails to your business partners. I was talking with a French guy who has his own business in Russia, recently, and he said that the Russians will only negotiate business (in the food industry) face to face. Period. Large French technology companies use military grade encryption for their email and VoIP communications - eg Airbus, etc. The theft of business secrets (assuming you are at the bleeding edge of a technology) by nation states would appear to be rife.

Please see this posting on the Swiss Federal Government resolving to only use kit supplied by Swiss owned companies for this reason.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=88863459

Fortunately for the Swiss, the country has the luxury of a well educated workforce and entrepreneurs to create native solutions to the problem. They are probably only relying on AES encryption as an import, and this was created by the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

SpaceTime

Impetus wrote: »

But if the NAT router is non compliant with the other components of the network, it is a useful barrier. The French input in Ireland is the E-10 B digital switch which is around in Ireland for some 30 years. Ditto for Ericsson's AXE. These are irrelevant, unless you use dial-up.

The one area of GB risk, if you live in Ireland, is the route your internet packets take. Better to use a solid VPN connection for company confidential communications, end to end. And/or strongly encrypted emails to your business partners. I was talking with a French guy who has his own business in Russia, recently, and he said that the Russians will only negotiate business (in the food industry) face to face. Period. Large French technology companies use military grade encryption for their email and VoIP communications - eg Airbus, etc. The theft of business secrets (assuming you are at the bleeding edge of a technology) by nation states would appear to be rife.

Please see this posting on the Swiss Federal Government resolving to only use kit supplied by Swiss owned companies for this reason. .

The PSTN is irrelevant for internet and will probably be irrelevant for everything fairly soon.
They're still potentially relevant to anyone wanting to install backdoors and listen to traffic though.

The French involvement isn't gone. Whole NGN core is built around Alcatel-Lucent 7750 switches. Most of the ADSL equipment is Alcatel too.

Ericsson gear is used extensively for mobile data including 4G on meteor and probably Vodafone.

Newest arrivals would be Huawei and Samsung (3's 4G gear)

Basically, all of those vendors have to be trustworthy and are.

The spy agencies can just tap major fibre routes so they don't seem to even need backdoors!

All you can do is have robust testing and monitoring. The equipment's too complex to have absolute validaton. Sure your own PC is probably the most likely weak spot!

As for Switzerland. They can't be using all Swiss gear.They don't make everything they would need by a long shot.

The US, Japan, China, France and maybe Germany and South Korea would be about the only places that could have that policy.