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

Impetus

SpaceTime wrote: »

The PSTN is irrelevant for internet and will probably be irrelevant for everything fairly soon.

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.

At least France is in the EU and one expects the gov.fr to comply with EU data privacy laws.... though I am not certain on that. Time will tell how effective and open to the public the EU is in enforcing security standards for the 21st century. In any event the French government is probably only interested in the traffic of a few Irish government departments and a few of the US multinationals with operations in Ireland - eg pharma, perhaps one or two food companies (even Irish ones), software and similar.

The NGN core is upstream of the NAT router if you use Asian product, so if France "owns" eircom's NGN core, they dont supply the NAT router if you buy your own. Onion principle. While most of the ADSL kit is probably from Alcatel, the same concept applies - and one can keep away from this by using VDSL2+.

There is nobody forcing one to use Vodafone, and one can use a VPN for company confidential stuff if you use Meteor etc. If you look at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=88863459 the Swiss have developed many choices and options for someone who doesn't wish to have their business traffic snooped on by criminals. Have a look.....

http://www.crypto.ch/en
http://infoguard.ch/en
http://www.secude.com/solutions
http://www.ascom.ch/ch-en/index-ch
http://www.securesafe.com/en/security.html
http://swissquantum.idquantique.com/...-Cryptography-
http://www.linomasoftware.com/resour...kup-encryption
https://www.swisssign.com/en
https://threema.ch/en/
http://www.seppmail.ch/en
http://www.scrt.ch/en/
http://www.adeya.ch/
http://www.swissphone.com/product/idea-encryption/

Switzerland, a democratic country, like no other, where the people are in control.

SpaceTime

Yeah but they'll still be dependent on foreign technology at some point.

At the end of the day it's all running on the same chips and components.

If a powerful state body like the NSA wants to snoop, they'll snoop.

Impetus

SpaceTime wrote: »

Yeah but they'll still be dependent on foreign technology at some point.

At the end of the day it's all running on the same chips and components.

If a powerful state body like the NSA wants to snoop, they'll snoop.

While I agree that NSA types might be able to snoop on unencrypted international Swiss traffic, they will have a far more difficult time with Swiss domestic traffic. And Swiss companies (unlike Irish ones) are well versed in the security risks and take everything very seriously.

Unlike the Irish, the Swiss are patriotic to the core, and there are very few morons working in the Swiss IT security industry, in my experience.

fat-tony

Oh Sam - look what you started with an innocent question about VDSL modems :eek:

Capt'n Midnight

Impetus wrote: »

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.

Denial is a river in Egypt.

Vendors were legally compelled to put back doors in their Comms equipment to allow wire tapping. https://www.eff.org/issues/calea

Thing is once the back doors are there others can also use them
http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

LOL at China being Kosher
Huawei/ZTE are banned in Oz, USA, India for critical parts of national infrastructure.
http://www.zdnet.com/former-pentagon-analyst-china-has-backdoors-to-80-of-telecoms-7000000908/

The Chinese government reportedly has "pervasive access" to some 80 percent of the world's communications, thanks to backdoors it has ordered to be installed in devices made by Huawei and ZTE Corporation.

Add to that all the stuff that's made in China for western companies. There's a lot of fake Cisco kit with "extras" , some of it wound up in official Cisco channels.

The Israelis are also big players in backbone equipment, and it's not kosher either. Totally ownd the US voice networks.


Take it for granted that everyone's kit will have backdoors and may well phone home when it sees some interesting traffic.

Sam Russell

fat-tony wrote: »

Oh Sam - look what you started with an innocent question about VDSL modems :eek:

I got the answer - I have to get a new modem.

As for back doors, I am more worried about back passages!

Chris369

Anybody know how long after a fibre cabinet is installed will it be ready like when will it go live

seanp_25

Chris369 wrote: »

Anybody know how long after a fibre cabinet is installed will it be ready like when will it go live

Can take months.

After the cabinet is installed, it needs to be commissioned (you'll see a yellow sticker with cab code on it once this has happened). It can then take another few weeks before it goes live.

efb

Tullamore rolled out, but not me

Impetus

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Denial is a river in Egypt.

Vendors were legally compelled to put back doors in their Comms equipment to allow wire tapping. https://www.eff.org/issues/calea

Thing is once the back doors are there others can also use them
http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html

LOL at China being Kosher
Huawei/ZTE are banned in Oz, USA, India for critical parts of national infrastructure.
http://www.zdnet.com/former-pentagon-analyst-china-has-backdoors-to-80-of-telecoms-7000000908/

Add to that all the stuff that's made in China for western companies. There's a lot of fake Cisco kit with "extras" , some of it wound up in official Cisco channels.

The Israelis are also big players in backbone equipment, and it's not kosher either. Totally ownd the US voice networks.


Take it for granted that everyone's kit will have backdoors and may well phone home when it sees some interesting traffic.

While I do not disagree with many of the points, I think it is better to mix and match one's sources of supply of operating systems, NAT routers and ISPs from different countries of origin. Make your setup as incompatible as possible for these info criminals and their corrupt political masters - not to mind the black hat hacking community.

SpaceTime

@Impetus - It would actually seem little/none of the hardware used in Switzerland's telecoms networks is Swiss.
Very few companies can make that kind of gear. You're talking about incredibly specialised manufacturing, more patents than you could shake a stick at and billions of Euro/dollars of R&D over many years.

You can't just copy, reverse-engineer or rip off these companies either. They would sue you to within an inch of your life to protect their intellectual property and patents (and justifiably so given how much R&D they do).
So, coming up with home-grown alternatives isn't easy.

Swisscom Huawei : http://www.huawei.com/ilink/en/success-story/HW_103231?KeyTemps=#.UwKxenm0FdY
Seems they're using very similar gear to Ericom actually.

Swisscom Ericsson : http://www.ericsson.com/news/1710974 for LTE etc, exact same as here.

Swisscom Alcatel : http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/swisscom-selects-alcatel-broadband-access-solution-for-triple-play-with-iptv-66819837.html (Seems most of the Swisscom broadband network's built out by them, much like eircom).

ZTE gear : http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet-on-the-move/devices-accessories/mobile-hotspot-zte-mf91-4g.html

I would also seem from a simple Google that Swisscom largely historically uses Ericsson, Siemens and Alcatel as its core suppliers. Same as most major European telcos tbh.

The Swiss politicians produce a lot of very nationalist hot air at times. It should be read with a large pinch of salt.

It's going to be a very difficult task to replace multinationals and major equipment suppliers with non-existent equipment.
Even where Swiss suppliers are used, the equipment is quite unlikely to be Swiss.

Not trying to cause a row, or take this way OT, but it just makes little/no sense in practice while it may all work very well in political theory.

Even for IT systems, there aren't a lot of choices. It would mean no Windows, No Mac OS, No Android, No iPhones, no iPads, probably no other UNIX operating systems as they're not Swiss.

Where would the hardware come from? I'm not aware of any Swiss chip makers etc. So no Intel, no AMD, no Samsung, no ARM, no IBM...
Where would HDDs come from? They're all made by either Western Digital (US), Seagate (US although incorporated in Ireland!), or Toshiba (Japanese)

Kinda stretching credibility tbh.

The most they could do is use Swiss local re-sellers / service providers and ensure good cryptography and network security practices are in place. That's all anyone can do really. Even the US, China, France and Germany are potentially vulnerable.

Chris369

seanp_25 wrote: »

Can take months.

After the cabinet is installed, it needs to be commissioned (you'll see a yellow sticker with cab code on it once this has happened). It can then take another few weeks before it goes live.

There is a yellow sticker on the side of the cabinet so I guess it's commissioned , how long for to go live?

jca

seanp_25 wrote: »

Can take months.

After the cabinet is installed, it needs to be commissioned (you'll see a yellow sticker with cab code on it once this has happened). It can then take another few weeks before it goes live.

Don't place too much faith in the yellow sticker. I'm on eFibre since December but a yellow sticker never appeared on my cabinet.

ED E

Impetuous is continually dragging threads OT and is clearly a fanboy. Dont feed the troll...

seanp_25

Chris369 wrote: »

There is a yellow sticker on the side of the cabinet so I guess it's commissioned , how long for to go live?

What does it say on eircom's NGA map?

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

Chris369

seanp_25 wrote: »

What does it say on eircom's NGA map?

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

It says nothing a lot of cabinets are live in my area but it doesn't say it on that map

TheDoc

Made a final contact to Magnet relating to e-fibre. I've been having an issue for about 8 months now, thatrelies on an Eircom engineer to come and look at the exchange.

A real case of not giving a ****, because I'm the only one making noise about it. So I had pretty much decided to move premises to a UPC enabled area, get onto Fibre, and forgot about this nightmare broadband experience I've been having in Donabate.

MAgnet have been a massive help, and I'd happily stay with them, unfortunately I'd not want to deal with their Eircom resale products, and their own infrastructure is not available in anywhere I'd consider moving.

They informed me that after deliberations with Eircom, Eircom are considering the area of Donabate completed, with only 40% connectivity and coverage. They essentially, walked away not bothering to do the rest, and have marked the region as done. E-Fibre won't be reaching 60% of the area within the next 2 years, and there is no Fibre facilities in the area.


LEaves me gobsmacked to be honest, but as I said. I said enough and handed notice to the landlord, and I'm off. Moving into new place we secured, just on the basis of Fibre broadband.

CAn't ****ing wait to be rid of anything Eircom related

SpaceTime

jca wrote: »

Don't place too much faith in the yellow sticker. I'm on eFibre since December but a yellow sticker never appeared on my cabinet.

Yellow sticker probably just means eircom assigned an asset number to it.

It doesn't mean it's live.

Nuno

Ballyjamesduff pushed out from May -> June on e-fibre map

http://www.eircom.net/efibreinfo/map/

jd

Nuno wrote: »

Ballyjamesduff pushed out from May -> June on e-fibre map

http://www.eircom.net/efibreinfo/map/

On the map, Clontarf looks like it has sunk under water i didn't think the storms were that bad!

yomamasflavour

Does anyone know the specifics of how vdsl cabs go live?

As in, is it a case of every line connected to the splitter cabinet is made eligible for vdsl at the same time, or does an engineer have to 1 by 1 move lines from the splitter cabinet to the vdsl cabinet?


Reason I ask is that 1 cabinet went live in my area, yet nobody with in 500m of it is eligible for vdsl, except for 1 small pocket of maybe 7-8 houses about 600m from the cabinet.

Which seems kind of odd to me. So I figured it might be a case of bit by bit, no?

SpaceTime

They don't move lines at all.

The smaller cabinet has a bundle of wires that connect to the newer cabinet. Each pair of wires carries one users' broadband signals

They basically splice those onto the lines in the existing junction cabinet as users order the service up.

An engineer has to call out to the cabinet when they're setting your service up as part of the installation. That's when they splice the VDSL2 service onto your line.

The wiring in your area may not all connect to that cabinet at all. You could be served directly from the exchange (in which case there could be a considerable wait) or you might be on a different cabinet out of sight somewhere down a lane / behind you or whatever.

yomamasflavour

Ok, but then how do they check whether you're connected to a cab, or directly to the exchange? (Short of sending out an engineer).

In the semi rural area that I live in there's only 1 road (and you can follow the ducting out of our house along the 1 road all the way to the exchange building. About half way along this road there's just one cabinet (checked in both nga map and eircom's leaked rollout manifesto) then nothing until you get to the exchange.

I figured that I'm either connected to that cab or directly to the exchange. So wasn't too bummed when I found out that I couldn't get it.

However when I tried all my neighbours houses / businesses that are near it, none of them qualified either. Except for one old culdisac of about 8 houses near me. (About 6-700m from cab)


Surely they wouldn't go to the bother of all the earthworks and cost of installing a cab if they knew there was only ~10 people connected to it?

JackieChan

yomamasflavour wrote: »

Ok, but then how do they check whether you're connected to a cab, or directly to the exchange? (Short of sending out an engineer).

In the semi rural area that I live in there's only 1 road (and you can follow the ducting out of our house along the 1 road all the way to the exchange building. About half way along this road there's just one cabinet (checked in both nga map and eircom's leaked rollout manifesto) then nothing until you get to the exchange.

I figured that I'm either connected to that cab or directly to the exchange. So wasn't too bummed when I found out that I couldn't get it.

However when I tried all my neighbours houses / businesses that are near it, none of them qualified either. Except for one old culdisac of about 8 houses near me. (About 6-700m from cab)


Surely they wouldn't go to the bother of all the earthworks and cost of installing a cab if they knew there was only ~10 people connected to it?

Just on this, could you order a new line in order to be connected to the that cab? Or are you too far for it to make a difference?

In my case there are cabinets to be installed(in June) <50m from house, another 200m away but I've a feeling my line(as the house is so old) goes back to the exchange ~900-1000m away. I'm thinking that if this is the case to request a new line and cancel the old one.

Maybe this is total nonsense and not possible but in that instance it would make sense to connect me to the nearest cabinet(and there currently can only be about 40-50 homes off it as it is new).

yomamasflavour

JackieChan wrote: »

Just on this, could you order a new line in order to be connected to the that cab? Or are you too far for it to make a difference?

In my case there are cabinets to be installed(in June) <50m from house, another 200m away but I've a feeling my line(as the house is so old) goes back to the exchange ~900-1000m away. I'm thinking that if this is the case to request a new line and cancel the old one.

Maybe this is total nonsense and not possible but in that instance it would make sense to connect me to the nearest cabinet(and there currently can only be about 40-50 homes off it as it is new).

I'd love if that was the case, seems so simple to fix.

Even if there was a charge to get an engineer out for the day to reconnect it, I 'd happily pay.
I think a lot of people would be willing to pay an extra charge if it meant they could get a decent service.

ED E

yomamasflavour wrote: »

However when I tried all my neighbours houses / businesses that are near it, none of them qualified either. Except for one old culdisac of about 8 houses near me. (About 6-700m from cab)

Call them, dont trust the online checker, its not necessarily up to date. They're unlikely to have fitted a cab for 8 lines so more can probably get it.

crawler

Remember - some homes are fed directly form the exchanges and not connected to cabinets at all. These simply dont get VDSL at the moment. This means you can have odd situation where a home can be close to "a" cabinet but fed from the exchange - House A can get VDSL (cabinet fed) and house "B" just up the road, cant.

BigMoose

Is there any way to tell if your line is connected directly to the exchange or not? Asking Eircom seems fairly pointless as they wont know without investigation - they didn't even know what exchange I was connected to when I got the line activated and went off looking in the wrong one.

Delboy5

From looking at this map:
http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Our_Network/

I can see my town has 4 "Fibre Cabinet Planned" (small orange dots), there is also a large orange ballon that indicates "Fibre Services Planned", this large ballon is at the location of our local exchange......does that mean anyone connected to either of the 4 cabinets or directly to the exchange should get fibre!?!

yomamasflavour

Delboy5 wrote: »

From looking at this map:
http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Our_Network/

I can see my town has 4 "Fibre Cabinet Planned" (small orange dots), there is also a large orange ballon that indicates "Fibre Services Planned", this large ballon is at the location of our local exchange......does that mean anyone connected to either of the 4 cabinets or directly to the exchange should get fibre!?!

If you're connected to one of the cabinets, and have a sufficiently short line (as in less than 1000m) then you should be able to get it.

The issue seems to be that there's no way to know whether you are connected to one of those cabs or not. Eircom seem to have little interest in finding out/telling you anyway.