Eir Fibre Broadband Nightmare

JohnnyMustang22

Hi,

As a last resort I am reaching out on here to try and find help with an issue I am having with EIR Fibre Broadband. This is not a rant/vent at EIR but it does outline how bad their customer service is.

I have used EIR Fibre for a few years and always found it reasonably reliable then we moved to a new rental property in June of 2022. Its an old 1960's single story bungalow in a rural setting. (Darver, County Louth). We are in a cluster of houses opposite a school and neighbours both sides. This property has never previously had fibre. So the install guy came along and ran the cable from the pole outside to the corner of the house, through the attic and down into a central point behind the TV in the sitting room. All of the walls in bungalow are solid. He tested the line before he left and said all was good.

We use the internet to stream(Netflix, Prime, RTE Gold etc), 2 phones, an 1 IPad and my laptop on the days I work from home.

After a few days I noticed that streaming services were slow to load, running slow, in low resolution mode or freezing altogether. Its not as bad on services that buffer but services that do not buffer like online radio or using MS Teams for video calls will freeze every time. Initially I assumed it was interference over the Wi-fi or all the solid walls. So I hardwired the TV, Apple TV and my laptop to the router and it did not help at all. I removed any other wireless devices(baby cam, CCTV, etc) and again no difference. Over the last 8 months I have gone through endless troubleshooting with EIR. I have called EIR about 20 times and get the usual responses or get fobbed off and told they will call me back and never do. They run a test on the line and it comes back perfect. We have moved the router, swapped it out 3 times. Installed all brand new cables. etc etc

We use an IT support company for general IT support in work and I got them to troubleshoot it and they came to the conclusion that its a problem on EIR's side. They suggested I install a ping tool on my laptop and monitor/log dropped pings/packets. Every time I am working from home I run a ping test to the router and the google servers(8.8.8.8) I noticed that the service drops out every 2-3 minutes for anything from 2-3 seconds up to 2 minutes.

After many more calls to EIR and threats of ComReg and Small claims court an EIR engineer finally called to the house to troubleshoot the problem. I brought my laptop up to the sitting room and connected it directly to the router and stared a ping test. Pinging the router and the Google servers(8.8.8.8). 0% failure to the router and 56% failure to the google servers. I also streamed internet radio and Netflix and demonstrated both of them freezing. They came back and swapped out the box on the wall which converts the signal from Fibre optic to Cat6. Again, no improvement. They then came back and test the line with some sort of tester, i was not there but i have a picture of the results(attached)

At this stage EIR are saying there is nothing more they can do and they said the service is fine...when it clearly is not. The engineer agreed that there is an issue with pings failing from the router to the google servers but cannot tell me what the issue is and avoids admitting that it cant be anything on my side despite the logic.

If anyone has any ideas, suggestions, similar experiences with this sort of issue please do chime in and let me know if you were able to sort it out. At this stage I am considering cancelling the EIR Fibre service and getting Tesla's starlink service which is much more costly.

Thanks in advance

BArra

Have you tried Ethernet directly from the ONT into a laptop and run the ping tests, which would confirm if the router is causing the issue?

heavydawson

There's a tool you can use to identify which "hop" the issue might be occurring at.

Run the above from a Windows machine (open Terminal / Command Prompt) and it might show you where in the access/core network the issue is

Yellow_Fern

I wonder did you rule out damage to cable or connectors? Any dings in any part or any sharply bent or even creased cable?

JohnnyMustang22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120275083#Comment_120275083

No, i have not tried this. Just plug the CAT6 cable in and run the ping test?

JohnnyMustang22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120275145#Comment_120275145

Thanks. Will try this.

JohnnyMustang22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120275158#Comment_120275158

All cables & equipment have been replaced as far as the ONT. So unless there is damage to the Fibre cable between the ONT and the pole outside but EIR are saying the line is good after many test.

heavydawson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120275639#Comment_120275639

If there are no issues with the line, then you should see consistent ping times on the first hop after your router in the pathping tool I mentioned above. If that first hop ping time varies wildly then it's a good indicator there's either a line issue, or a problem with the equipment in the local exchange.

ItHurtsWhenIP

I used to have a license to PingPlotter in a previous job, and it was well worth it for network problem identification. It gives a graphical representation of something similar to the pathping command above.

You can get a free trial of it here https://www.pingplotter.com/download

BArra

any update OP, did you test direct ethernet from ONT to your laptop ?

lilylarkin

I have eir gigabit fibre installed in last few weeks. Speed is excellent but packets are continuously dropped so the signal is not constant. I deliver virtual lectures all day and students complain that there are gaps in my speech and regularly request I repeat sentences. I have heard of too many similar experiences with eir's G fibre signal and sadly the prognosis is not good. I am now faced with trying another provider for non-gig broadband (not any of those using eir infrastructure) but solely for an uninterrupted signal.

Why broadband providers do NOT use eir's infrastructure?

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122171066#Comment_122171066

Are you connecting over WiFi or an ethernet cable?

Ciferos

open a complaint with eir, you have been very patient. tell them you need a complaint number, as you want to escalate this to comreg, once you get the number, email comreg and describe your issue. after 10 working days, if eir didnt help you, they will intervene and someone from eir will contact you until the issue is solved, only way with eir unfortunately.