UPC’s flaky network down again today, in Cork

roast

Impetus wrote: »

http://www.open-mpi.org/papers/dapsys-2006-self-healing-network/dapsys-2006-self-healing-network.pdf

Thanks for the link. Don't worry, I understand the concept. :pac:

Impetus

cali_eire wrote: »

To be fair I just moved back from Silicon Valley in California and our UPC equivalent there which is called Comcast regularly had outages so I wouldn't be so quick to think far fields are greener.

Anyone who has their ear to the ground knows that US telecommunications stink to high heaven. Mobile is extortionately priced, as is cable TV. And there is zero competition. When an incumbent's copper pair faces competition, they cut the copper for good. Leaving the victim to the mercy of Comcast or similar.

Watch: live.twit.tv or on demand at www.twit.tv See all the problems they (and the co-hosts situated all over) have with Skype - even though they have a dedicated "business class" fiber connection from the carrier exchange almost next door to their Brickhouse studio.

So yes, IRL could be in a worse position, a la USA. But that is no excuse. Many parts of Asia have outpaced us on internet services, and they are heading to outpace Europe and the US on virtually every front - cars, telecommunications, financial services, environmental systems, transportation infrastructure, etc. And most of the people posting to this thread seem to be either industry insiders or fat and happy morons, loyal customer types... Ugh.... What hope for the future?

Impetus

cali_eire wrote: »

To be fair I just moved back from Silicon Valley in California and our UPC equivalent there which is called Comcast regularly had outages so I wouldn't be so quick to think far fields are greener.

PS one neglected to mention that UPC's parent co is based at 12300 Liberty Blvd. Englewood CO 80112. Not CA, but not far away.

One wonders what Edward Snowden has in his files on UPC?

roast

Impetus wrote: »

And most of the people posting to this thread seem to be either industry insiders or fat and happy morons, loyal customer types... Ugh.... What hope for the future?

I work for a company which is in no way affiliated to UPC whatsoever. Your "fat and happy moron" comment is a little offensive to those who have taken the time out to reply to your topic, in the spirit of the debate. However your replies don't seem to discuss the points raised properly, and just come across as whining. :rolleyes:

Can I ask, what industry do you work in?

dub45

SpaceTime wrote: »

d

Not if the network element that has broken down is a cable running across the eves of 10 houses somewhere in Cork City..............................................


You can check for explanations to faults here : http://www.upc.ie/customer_support/service_status/

Unfortunately that is not fully true as the on line status checker is not updated just when it is needed most! UPC have acknowledged that it is not updated over night despite encouraging people to believe that it is " live" on their website.

This means for example that during recent lengthy faults in Dublin people were being given wrong information with the consequences that some people thinking that there is no fault will then begin to "mess" with their settings etc.

http://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057030795

dub45

roast wrote: »

On a side note...
The below is a report from a server I use on a residential UPC connection over the period of a year. 2hrs, 55mins of downtime in total. The majority of this is due to server restarts and maintenance.

Seems good enough to me...

There were three lengthy UPC outages in areas of Dublin in recent times:

Two on successive nights:

18/19 June approx 10 hours - Midnight to 10 am

19/20 June approx 12.5 hours - 23.30 to 12 Noon

27/28 August approx 9.5 hours - 23.30 - 9 am

No causes given and UPC refuse to say when repairs start in the event of such faults.

keithclancy

Impetus wrote: »

Consumer or business user, one is entitled to a quality of service. Hence the need for publicly available service reliability and contention ratio statistics for all, from ComReg. Give people the information they should have to make an informed choice.

You are 'entitled' to what you agreed to in your contract.

Perhaps change provider if you are unhappy with the service.

Consumer product .... if you are losing money in some way due to an outage then you should have an SLA in place backed up with a contract.

If what you ask existed then the price of the product would rise considerably.

Impetus

keithclancy wrote: »

You are 'entitled' to what you agreed to in your contract.

Perhaps change provider if you are unhappy with the service.

Consumer product .... if you are losing money in some way due to an outage then you should have an SLA in place backed up with a contract.

If what you ask existed then the price of the product would rise considerably.

There is no competition for "fat pipe" internet, for the most part, unless one lives in an apartment on top of a telephone switch. UPC has a monopoly, and is getting away with abusing this monopoly. In a properly regulated market, the fat pipe, (ideally fiber) would be open to all service providers, and a customer could then change easily, if s/he was dissatisfied.

[Eircom's eFibre service is a mis-nomer as it relies on copper for the often/usually long, bendy trip from the VDSL2 cabinet to the point of use, the distance of which kills the performance of VDSL in all but lucky cases].

In other countries the telcos often offer the end-user FTTP from the cabinet as an extra cost option, or provide FTTP to everybody - replacing their copper network entirely (the lowest medium and long term cost option because one is not running and maintaining two network infrastructures). Example Andorra - andorratelecom - which is a state monopoly - fiber coverage is 100% of the country, including to mountain locations 20km from the nearest switch - a far longer distance than any flavour of DSL could perform in.

If there was fault reporting and contention ratio transparency as I have advocated I don't believe it would increase the cost. Rather it would help to eliminate the cowboys who make exaggerated claims for the speed or other characteristics of their "service". It would tend to replace these "rubbish claims" with more substantial claims of who has the less faults and the lowest contention ratio (diluting the whisk(e)y with water) - forcing the industry to compete in this direction - ie delivering real QoS.

Impetus

cali_eire wrote: »

To be fair I just moved back from Silicon Valley in California and our UPC equivalent there which is called Comcast regularly had outages so I wouldn't be so quick to think far fields are greener.

Adam Curry (in Austin) and John C Dvorak (in Silicon Valley) do a bi-weekly netcast, and below is a link to their show that aired on 8.9.2013 – listen to all the breaks in their internet connection….. Many of these breaks are probably eliminated from the on demand download link below. ASFAIK Dvorak uses Comcast – don’t know which cable company Curry uses – though I suspect it is Comcast too.

I gave up listening to that Sunday show live, and emailed them suggesting that they use ISDN instead. Dvorak emailed me back a story on how expensive ISDN is – about $450 per month for each of them in subscription charges – which is prohibitive. In Europe one can get 2 channel ISDN for around 25 to 30 € with 64k bandwidth guaranteed per channel. Not so in the US.

Download audio: http://mp3s.nashownotes.com/NA-546-2013-09-08-Final.mp3

Listen live on Sunday and Thursday afternoons (about 18:00 IST). http://noagendastream.com

Show archive: http://feed.nashownotes.com/rss.xml