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

sulc84

my speed is 20/1.5 mbit almost for a year ,no speedup

vienne86

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Excellent - I've expressed my interest on the Eircom web site!!

Solair

Praetorian wrote: »

.... Do not buy your own. It may* not be compatible at all, or with future planned upgrades....

Yeah, that is really important.

DO NOT buy your own VDSL2 modem as eircom plan to use vectoring which requires specific types of modem to ensure it doesn't cause problems for your neighbours on the same cabinet.

Whoever you subscribe to eircom, or anyone else will provide you with a 100% correctly compatible modem.

If you don't like the modem's features, add your own WiFi router connected to one of the ethernet ports, much as you would with a UPC cable connection.

No point in wasting your money on something that is quite likely to not work properly, especially when the ISP is going to be giving them away for 'free'.

Richard Dower

sulc84 wrote: »

my speed is 20/1.5 mbit almost for a year ,no speedup

Dude.....you should be high fiving yourself for those speeds....as good as it gets!, you must be VERY close to the exchange.

Richard Dower

IMO its a waste buying a non ISP router....period, sure they can be crap and lack features/updates. But they do the basic job grand, why fork out 150 notes for something you can get for free

Solair wrote: »

Yeah, that is really important.

DO NOT buy your own VDSL2 modem as eircom plan to use vectoring which requires specific types of modem to ensure it doesn't cause problems for your neighbours on the same cabinet.

Whoever you subscribe to eircom, or anyone else will provide you with a 100% correctly compatible modem.

If you don't like the modem's features, add your own WiFi router connected to one of the ethernet ports, much as you would with a UPC cable connection.

No point in wasting your money on something that is quite likely to not work properly, especially when the ISP is going to be giving them away for 'free'.

Richard Dower

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

You must be some distance away if you're only being offered 15mb up instead of 20.

But personally i'd be well chuffed with 50/15....as i said before i'll buy the cheapest fibre package. Cant afford to go higher......:(

Israeli Superiority

Richard Dower wrote: »

IMO its a waste buying a non ISP router....period, sure they can be crap and lack features/updates. But they do the basic job grand, why fork out 150 notes for something you can get for free

Firstly, many routers are much cheaper than 150.

Secondly, having to port-forward because you have a mandatory firewall in place, is a pain in ass. The Sky hub has one, but I ditched it for Ericom's Zyxel and I'll happily buy a new compatible router and do again.

Thirdly, I just don't like the fact my ISP wants to restrict what I do on the internet. Many people have had trouble port-forwarding harmless devices like CCTV cameras all because ISPs want to prevent file-sharing.

---

By the way, anyone, is the Sky hub compatible with the fiber upgrade?

gerryk

Israeli Superiority wrote: »

Firstly, many routers are much cheaper than 150.

Secondly, having to port-forward because you have a mandatory firewall in place, is a pain in ass. The Sky hub has one, but I ditched it for Ericom's Zyxel and I'll happily buy a new compatible router and do again.

Thirdly, I just don't like the fact my ISP wants to restrict what I do on the internet. Many people have had trouble port-forwarding harmless devices like CCTV cameras all because ISPs want to prevent file-sharing.

---

By the way, anyone, is the Sky hub compatible with the fiber upgrade?

Port forwarding has nothing to do with 'mandatory firewall'. It's so that incoming traffic knows where to go. Your router has a single internet facing IP address. Internally, there are a number of devices connected to it. So, if traffic wants to enter your network, it needs to be told where it's destined for. That's what port forwarding is all about.

If an ISP wants to block traffic, it is trivial for them to block it downstream. They use do a hamfisted, amateurish approach, like Eircom do with TPB, or they can simply drop traffic destined for certain ports... as almost everyone does with traffic on 135/139.

Inability to expose devices like cameras is almost never down to the ISP, ans almost always down to the user. There are exceptions, like on a certain ISP, where you are allocated an address in the 10.0.0.0/8 network, or where all inbound traffic is dropped, but for the most part, it's users not knowing what they are doing.

Gregor Samsa

Richard Dower wrote: »

IMO its a waste buying a non ISP router....period, sure they can be crap and lack features/updates. But they do the basic job grand, why fork out 150 notes for something you can get for free

If you're like my Dad, and just want to hook up a PC to to the internet and be done with it, then fine, use the ISP one. However if you want to do something more complicated, then you might well need to get a third party router. You're assuming a lot (i.e. assuming that everyone only has the same needs as you) by claiming it to be a waste.

I have a mix of B and G speed WiFi devices at home - which many households will have. For the G ones, I want full G speed. But if you set up a G network, and have B devices connecting to it, the network speed will drop to B speeds.

So I have a Netgear router that allows you to set up two different wi-fi SSIDs - a G one and a B one. G devices connect to the G one, and get full speed. B devices connect to the B one and trundle along at the lower speed. That wouldn't be possible on the ISP modem I got.

I'll be using my Netgear in bridge mode when my fibre is setup.

Israeli Superiority

gerryk wrote: »

Port forwarding has nothing to do with 'mandatory firewall'. It's so that incoming traffic knows where to go. Your router has a single internet facing IP address. Internally, there are a number of devices connected to it. So, if traffic wants to enter your network, it needs to be told where it's destined for. That's what port forwarding is all about.

If an ISP wants to block traffic, it is trivial for them to block it downstream. They use do a hamfisted, amateurish approach, like Eircom do with TPB, or they can simply drop traffic destined for certain ports... as almost everyone does with traffic on 135/139.

Inability to expose devices like cameras is almost never down to the ISP, ans almost always down to the user. There are exceptions, like on a certain ISP, where you are allocated an address in the 10.0.0.0/8 network, or where all inbound traffic is dropped, but for the most part, it's users not knowing what they are doing.

How come you have port-forward so inbound connections can connect to client like uTorrent? The firewall blocks them and you're unable to seed your torrent.

My knowledge on this is a bit superficial, but I have two ADSL2+ routers here that won't allow me to upload torrents, but I can download fine. When I use my Zyxel and set the firewall to "low", peers can connect to me automatically and I can leave to the torrent seeding for hours without having to manually update the tracker.

gerryk

On top of which, Eircom's recent history with routers is somewhat less than stellar. Those Zyxel things are beyond rubbish. The silver Netopias were reasonable, but you can't get them any more.

5.11 Tactical

Just to let the Dundalk people know I have seen K&N installing Fibre Cabinets yesterday at Avenue Road Exit of Bay Estate, One in Lennonstown Manor and one on the avenue road outside the ESB Facility.

briany

gerryk wrote: »

If an ISP wants to block traffic, it is trivial for them to block it downstream. They use do a hamfisted, amateurish approach, like Eircom do with TPB, or they can simply drop traffic destined for certain ports... as almost everyone does with traffic on 135/139.

Mentioning 'block' and what Eircom did would be an insult to the word, almost. They didn't block a website, just a range of IPs as far as I can tell. Still not right but that website is still easily accessible through other URLs and that's not even to mention proxies or the other sites which host the same content. I think Eircom carried out that block to the least extent they could get away with knowing fully that 90 % of TPB users would have a way around it within the hour and the spaghetti combovers over at IRMA couldn't say boo.

Praetorian

10belowzero wrote: »

There has been a very quiet seismic shift in how Eircom do business over the last month.There has been a Major transition in how we deal with All customer's of the company , ALL staff have signed a new code of practice, which mean's all customer's of Eircom , be they olo's or wlr's , will be treated equally.
This mean's in real term's, that we will now be resolving all C.P.E customer issue's for the OLO'S - apart from replacing their company modem's , which we will be able to do for Eircom retail customer's.
So where we have not been allowed up to now to resolve OLO customer's C.P.E issue's --- we now are ,, hth's 10

10belowzero,

That is amazing to hear that. It was disappointing to see how differently you were treated if you are an Eircom customer Vs if you are a customer of another provider. At some of my sites, I very often opted to have an Eircom line for that very reason. If you have a problem it just simply was fixed quicker.

That is very positive news indeed. Maybe Eircom really has turned over a new leaf.

1) A seemingly very well run, way ahead of schedule rollout of VDSL with decent future proofing

2) A great decision to do an engineer install everywhere to clean up the network

3) Treating customers well even if they aren't directly Eircom customers.

Good god though, can someone for the love of god fix the Eircom web site.

That checker is a disaster. You put in the county, fine. You put in the postal district / town fine. Then address line, even when you put in one that it knows about. It craps out frequently. Then when you even select one it knows about. it says you can't put in more than 50 characters? I've tried about 100 addresses in it. Exchanges areas I know to be complete. Ridiculously bad.

Just take it down Eircom. Fix it. Put it back up.

Solair

5.11 Tactical wrote: »

Just to let the Dundalk people know I have seen K&N installing Fibre Cabinets yesterday at Avenue Road Exit of Bay Estate, One in Lennonstown Manor and one on the avenue road outside the ESB Facility.

Any chance you could stick it on the map?

See instructions here

wheresmybeaver

Sorry now but I've another query on the home install for this fibre product.

We have the main Eircom phone socket in our hallway - looking behind the panel, I can see where the main cable comes in from outside, and the extension lines that run out to the rest of the house (about 4 extensions).

There's not even a phone connected to this eircom socket in the hallway - the ADSL modem and normal phone is connected in the living room to one of the phone extensions. It would be hugely impractical to move everything back out to the hallway (NAS, switch, server etc!)- will the engineer who calls out be able to "move" the main eircom box into the livingroom (using the existing extension line) where I can continue to connect the existing phone and the new VDSL modem with its LAN cable connection? Will this be a standard thing or would it be luck of the draw if an engineer would do it?

gazzamc

Solair wrote: »

Any chance you could stick it on the map?

See instructions here

There was none located in Tralee (on the map) so i added one i saw near me..

gerryk

wheresmybeaver wrote: »

would it be luck of the draw if an engineer would do it?

Possibly. My experience is that engineers can be very accommodating if asked politely. YMMV, of course, but in the past, I have had an Eircom engineer run 30' of cable and install an extension box for nothing but a polite request and a cup of tea.

Tommy Lagahan

Richard Dower wrote: »

You must be some distance away if you're only being offered 15mb up instead of 20.

But personally i'd be well chuffed with 50/15....as i said before i'll buy the cheapest fibre package. Cant afford to go higher......:(

~380m to 430m away, whenever the engineer comes I'm going to see if I can squeeze 20Mb up out of it.
Going on the fact that im around 2500m away from the exchange according to speedguide.net and google maps - dividing my line attenuation by 5 (~500m) I should have 6.8dB downstream attenuation in an ideal situation - should be enough for 70Mb on standard VDSL2 (can't afford that package but it will leave some space on the noise margin for upload hopefully).

My uncle (eircom engineer in Donegal town) got them to change his line sync somehow to get a higher upload on his ADSL connection.

As for using your own router, I just bridged the Zyxel to my Asus RT-N56u with some cat 6 and have both my pc and ps3 wired up to it.
Turned off everything - firewalls, wifi, and filtering on the Zyxel to leave as little load on that hunk of junk as possible, leaving all the work to the Asus.
I've never had any trouble with NAT type or port forwarding with this setup so I hope eircoms VDSL unit supports bridging.

My house is full of wires at the moment but after using Three's NBS crap back at home for years I wouldn't have it any other way !

wheresmybeaver

gerryk wrote: »

Possibly. My experience is that engineers can be very accommodating if asked politely. YMMV, of course, but in the past, I have had an Eircom engineer run 30' of cable and install an extension box for nothing but a polite request and a cup of tea.

What if I throw in a couple of HobNobs?

I'm hoping it won't be seen as an unreasonable request since the extension line is already there, it's just a matter of connecting it up a bit different back at the main socket (I think?). I don't mind disconnecting the rest of the extensions to the upstairs of the house if it helps reduce interference.

red_bairn

wheresmybeaver wrote: »

What if I throw in a couple of HobNobs?

I'm hoping it won't be seen as an unreasonable request since the extension line is already there, it's just a matter of connecting it up a bit different back at the main socket (I think?). I don't mind disconnecting the rest of the extensions to the upstairs of the house if it helps reduce interference.

I thought I read on here that the Sierra team will be allowing you to request where the NTU goes. Unless I dreamt it...

Tommy Lagahan

wheresmybeaver wrote: »

What if I throw in a couple of HobNobs?

I'm hoping it won't be seen as an unreasonable request since the extension line is already there, it's just a matter of connecting it up a bit different back at the main socket (I think?). I don't mind disconnecting the rest of the extensions to the upstairs of the house if it helps reduce interference.

I think the NTU has an RJ45 connection on it for the modem to separate line noise, so say you had the NTU at the entry point to the house, you could still have your phone or whatever on the extension point but also run Rj45 cable up to your modem, meaning you would get no negative impact on line noise, or would that be too many cables?

10belowzero

Just to let you all know - Eircom has just sold Eircom PhoneWatch for an undisclosed sum to Sector Alarm Corporation of Norway, announced at 13.30 today.Link to press release here http://pressroom.eircom.net/press_releases/article/eircom_accepts_offer_for_sale_of_eircom_phonewatch/

Solair

wheresmybeaver wrote: »

Sorry now but I've another query on the home install for this fibre product.

We have the main Eircom phone socket in our hallway - looking behind the panel, I can see where the main cable comes in from outside, and the extension lines that run out to the rest of the house (about 4 extensions).

There's not even a phone connected to this eircom socket in the hallway - the ADSL modem and normal phone is connected in the living room to one of the phone extensions. It would be hugely impractical to move everything back out to the hallway (NAS, switch, server etc!)- will the engineer who calls out be able to "move" the main eircom box into the livingroom (using the existing extension line) where I can continue to connect the existing phone and the new VDSL modem with its LAN cable connection? Will this be a standard thing or would it be luck of the draw if an engineer would do it?

Can't really answer that without knowing two things:

1) The type of wiring used for your extensions / how they're installed.
2) Eircom's installation policies (as yet we've no idea exactly what they'll do / be willing to pay for)

You could (in theory) run CAT5e from the incoming point to the desired modem location and then install the NTU there.

The incoming line would go down say the blue pair. It would pass through the filter and the filtered output would be sent back on say the green pair, where you could connect it to the existing wiring back at the point it entered the house.

They do things like that for eircom phonewatch installations and for old ISDN 'HiSpeed' installations.

Now, whether eircom would be willing to do that is another question entirely as they'll be sending out contractors with a target of completing the installation within a set time and a set budget.

One thing's for certain though, you absolutely won't be allowed to have the VDSL2 signal running to all the extension sockets and use microfilters. It will have to be filtered centrally by an NTU and the modem will have to be connected to that NTU.

It's very sensitive to line noise and having all the internal wiring hooked up to it is just a bad idea for stability / speed.

The NTU will definitely have to be sited near a power socket though, regardless of where the line comes in.

There were reports that in some cases, in the test areas that already have VDSL2 up and running, eircom just installed a fresh line from outside where the wiring was very old / confused.

That's very similar to what UPC tend to do where the wiring's a mess at a house.

Solair

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

I think the NTU has an RJ45 connection on it for the modem to separate line noise, so say you had the NTU at the entry point to the house, you could still have your phone or whatever on the extension point but also run Rj45 cable up to your modem, meaning you would get no negative impact on line noise, or would that be too many cables?

The NTU has an RJ45 socket that also takes an RJ11 plug. Only the two centre contacts are used, it's exactly the same hook-up as a phone line.

It just gives them the option of fitting an RJ45 plug on devices to prevent you mixing them up with phone jacks.

As far as I'm aware, there seems to be some European Telecommunications Industry norm emerging where RJ45 jacks are being used for new standards too. They've been rolled out in a few countries e.g. France, the UK etc for newer services replacing old plugs/sockets.

The eircom faceplates already had RJ45 sockets on the modem port, but it accepts an RJ11 plug without any problem and that's how it's normally used here.

VDSL2 is still just carried on a normal 2-wire phone line, it's not ethernet or anything like that.

They always tend to put in way more contacts than they ever use incase they decide to do something that needs more wires e.g. pair-bonded VDSL (using 2 lines instead of one)

CraigSmith_IO

Eircom have removed their FUP on unlimited broadband....

http://www.eircom.net/policy/

"eircom net Next Generation Broadband Regular 8Mb: the ADSL service which provided the Customer with unlimited hours per monthly billing, with an unlimited traffic allowance."

Tommy Lagahan

Solair wrote: »

VDSL2 is still just carried on a normal 2-wire phone line, it's not ethernet or anything like that.

Ah so there is no advantage to it like better line shielding and such? I thought maybe there was some sort of power booster in the NTU that would carry the signal better over an ethernet cable.

Finical

Praetorian wrote: »

10belowzero,

That is amazing to hear that. It was disappointing to see how differently you were treated if you are an Eircom customer Vs if you are a customer of another provider. At some of my sites, I very often opted to have an Eircom line for that very reason. If you have a problem it just simply was fixed quicker.

That is very positive news indeed. Maybe Eircom really has turned over a new leaf.

1) A seemingly very well run, way ahead of schedule rollout of VDSL with decent future proofing

2) A great decision to do an engineer install everywhere to clean up the network

3) Treating customers well even if they aren't directly Eircom customers.

Good god though, can someone for the love of god fix the Eircom web site.

That checker is a disaster. You put in the county, fine. You put in the postal district / town fine. Then address line, even when you put in one that it knows about. It craps out frequently. Then when you even select one it knows about. it says you can't put in more than 50 characters? I've tried about 100 addresses in it. Exchanges areas I know to be complete. Ridiculously bad.

Just take it down Eircom. Fix it. Put it back up.

Thoroughly agree. That site checker is a nuisance. Shows two houses in my estate and I tried other addresses which are way outside the town and it says they are available to get it!

Solair

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Ah so there is no advantage to it like better line shielding and such? I thought maybe there was some sort of power booster in the NTU that would carry the signal better over an ethernet cable.

You can use CAT5/6 cable to carry phone/DSL signals and it does help because they're really good quality cables and the twisted pairs help keep things 'cleaner' and even better again, some versions of those cables are shielded.

However, the modem will just use a single pair as it's just designed to operate over a phone line.

wheresmybeaver

Solair wrote: »

Can't really answer that without knowing two things:

1) The type of wiring used for your extensions / how they're installed.
2) Eircom's installation policies (as yet we've no idea exactly what they'll do / be willing to pay for)

You could (in theory) run CAT5e from the incoming point to the desired modem location and then install the NTU there.

The incoming line would go down say the blue pair. It would pass through the filter and the filtered output would be sent back on say the green pair, where you could connect it to the existing wiring back at the point it entered the house.

They do things like that for eircom phonewatch installations and for old ISDN 'HiSpeed' installations.

Now, whether eircom would be willing to do that is another question entirely as they'll be sending out contractors with a target of completing the installation within a set time and a set budget.

One thing's for certain though, you absolutely won't be allowed to have the VDSL2 signal running to all the extension sockets and use microfilters. It will have to be filtered centrally by an NTU and the modem will have to be connected to that NTU.

It's very sensitive to line noise and having all the internal wiring hooked up to it is just a bad idea for stability / speed.

The NTU will definitely have to be sited near a power socket though, regardless of where the line comes in.

There were reports that in some cases, in the test areas that already have VDSL2 up and running, eircom just installed a fresh line from outside where the wiring was very old / confused.

That's very similar to what UPC tend to do where the wiring's a mess at a house.

Thanks for that, I suppose really I'll have to see what the engineer says when they visit the house. It was built 5 years ago and seems fairly tidily setup, and all the extension lines are in their own ducting in the wall cavities of the house, but of course it could still be a non-optimal setup for VDSL. I'm basically hoping this NTU yoke can be put in the living room since the extension running to that room looks to be identical to the cable coming into the main Eircom socket in the hallway. I don't need extensions anywhere else in the house and there's no monitored alarm.

I suppose the alternative is to run CAT5e cable alongside the telephone extension cable in the wall and run the VDSL modem in bridge mode. But still, would have to find somewhere for the modem to be plugged in and hidden in the hallway.. and I don't know how I'd actual run the CAT5e through the wall in the first place.. ah well, first world problems!