Eircom ruined our BB service

Richard Dower

:mad: - ever since the "upgrade" things have just gone to hell. You only have to read the numerous posts and reports from people who say the same.
What I'd like to know is WHAT is causing all the problems?

BT upgrade lines and everything goes fine, Eircom do it and the network is on the verge of collapse...why?
Has anyone from Eircom or technical support given any solid reason as to what is happening and why it's happening?

Blaster99

Are you an Eircom user?

Infini

First of all the only thing eircom is good for is making broadband as crap as possible. Second, there was another thread in which someone mentioning that eircom switched to RADSL and that line quality is what determines the speed as far as I know. Third you should get rid of eircom's bb unless they are the only ISP available to you. Most people on boards would say the same thing.

Pauly26

First of all I completely agree that eircom are crap, but little over a month ago I was going to order BB and was asking here what provider should I pick from my choice of 2 esat and eircom. I had alot of ppl say eircom because esat accounts and customer service was crap and I'd be waiting about 4 months for them to install the BB.
Needless to say I still went with esat and since there upgrade iv had no problems at all, my connection has gone from a 50k download speed to 100-103k.
Im soooo feckon happy i picked esat and didn't listen to the few users that posted here.
By the way im on the Phibsboro, Dublin 7 exchange

-ADREN-

Um, I'm on eircom broadband atm and im getting fine service.. low pings and 100 kbs stable dloads. Infact I would be giving out about esat, when it comes to the billing side of things they are terrible!

Tazzle

Yup, esat have pretty awful customer service. I've only seen 4mb Eircom users complaining.

JNive

what is the big deal about radsl, so what if the speed is adjusted according to line quality, at least it works, as for me, ive never had a single moment of dropped speeds nor billing issues, nor have i ever had to ring eircom about any problem whatsoever.

100% quality of service/speed and never had any service interuption, and when i ordered it nearly 2 years ago, it was all setup, with equipment posted to me in 3 days flat.

Now that was service.

Zenith74

Pauly26 - Are you on the standard or Plus Esat DSL package? 101kb/s is what I'm getting, but I'm on the Plus package so that isn't even half what I should be getting!
I heard talk of Esat not having the bandwidth in place because the upgrade came around so fast and all that so figured I wouldn't bother ringing up for a week or two. So is anybody on the Plus package getting near 200kb/s consistently?

btw. We're on Eircom 4Mb Enhanced in work, www.irishisptest.com shoes 4.37Mb/s down and 255kb/s up.

On the Eircom vs. Esat issue, I was on Eircom for a year but changed to Esat for phone and BB because they were cheaper. I would go back to Eircom in the morning if I was paying the bill. I presume I'm suffering much higher contention on Esat then I was on Eircom, I used to get 55kb/s practically all day every day. 50kb/s is the max I get now but it's rare enough, 40kb/s is more common. Browsing the web isn't as "snappy" as it was with Eircom; ping times are up as well I guess. IMO if you're looking for the cheapest way to get BB then Esat are great, but if you're not trying to save the pennies go for Eircom and ignore the people on here wrongly claiming Eircom are the worst out there.

JNive

In experience, solid service, reliabilty, and consistent quality is what you get from eircom, and yes, you might have to pay that bit more for it, but if its important to you, then why not.

Many others are cheaper, but just looking around here, its evident why, either more variance in quality, higher pings/contention, or frequent faults or loss of service, or even woeful customer service etc.

As they, it depends on whats important to you, and what you are going to use it for.

I am MAN

Never a problem with my eircom broadband and havent had any offline time in 2.5 years.

CyberGhost

oh man I thought this wouldn't effect me, but I too am getting slow speeds, and I'm pretty close to the exchange, I was getting full 215kb/s but today it's like 60-80

and pings are pretty aweful too

eircom is crashing and burning

Blaster99

This wouldn't be another one of them Eircom problems that only affects IOLBB customers would it...

Dcully

Well Im on Eircom bb plus 2048/128 and consistently get betweet 210 and 230 kbps downloading from UK,Ireland and some Euro servers.
This morning i dloaded from east coast USA @ 150-160 kbps.
Ive had absolutely no problems whatsoever with eircom bb so far except ingame pings are not what they should be but im lead to believe this is cos of interleaving?
I ping between 30-50 on 32-64 player Battlefield and vietnam servers in UK,40-70 on UK CCall of duty united offensive servers in UK and between 30-50 on CS,DOD etcUK servers.
Overall im very happy but it seems many are unhappy.

JNive

i ping 100 on east coast US server ( in game ), and 30ms (DOS) to jolt etc.
ping to the exchange is ~20ms, caused mostly by the interleaving. so yah, the interleaving setting accounts for about 15ms or so on all connections

Pauly26

Im on the standard package, at the www.irishisptest.com site im getting 946kpbs but only 95.4kbps upload!!!!!!!.

CyberGhost

maybe they can't handle the load and are throttling people down one by one slowly back to the old speed? and are blaming it on radsl?

jonski

Missed this thread aswell Richard , maybe I have u on ignore , what exchange are u on ? . I am having problems but I am not sure where they lie . just before the upgrade there was a eircom guy at the pole outside my house , our server changed , my game got a new patch , my modem is the old usb crappy one and the upgrade happened ,,all around the same weekend . So not sure if it's eircom or me . Happens around 8-0-clock though and my pings go a bit crazy .

Roches street exchange here .

leeroybrown

Infini wrote:

Second, there was another thread in which someone mentioning that eircom switched to RADSL and that line quality is what determines the speed as far as I know.

It wasn't a case of switching to RADSL. From the moment they were introduced all Eircom resedential broadband products were RADSL. Also, it doesn't slow you down it just allows people who are outside the standard ADSL range to get a connection by reducing their connection in small increments until they can connect reliably. If you've been rate adapted down it will reflect in your negotiated connection speed (the speed your modem says it's connected at) as well the download speed which can be affected by many other factors. The vast majority of users are not rate adapted down.

As for the slow down itself, yes there is one at peak times. There are two main reasons for it:

1) The average connection speed per connection has increased between two and four fold meaning that at busy times contention ratios are coming into play where they previously didn't. If your DSLAM (in the phone exchange) is busy then you'll be slowed down. A user contends with the other users on their DSLAM (multiple per exchange) not with all users on the exchange so you may be slow and another user of the same exchange may be faster.

2) The backhaul bandwidth used to transit data between exchanges and the ISP data centres (where the internet bandwidth is) is probably congested as the amount of data it is now dealing with is similarly increased.

Also, if you're getting 870Mbit (on a 1Meg line) or 1730Mbit (on a 2Meg line) in a speed test there is nothing wrong. There is a 13% or so overhead in getting the data to you.

Zenith74

I understand what you're saying about contention, but as it is I'm now slower at peak times then I was before and about the same all other times. For me this upgrade has been a definite downgrade. My router shows me connected at 2048/128.
On the backhaul bandwidth, is there any likelihood of this being increased to solve this problem? As I'm getting less the 512 from a 2048 line, I'd probably be better off switching to the cheaper 1024 line.

IBB and their 3mb are looking more and more attractive...