anyone else disappointed with 128kbs upload?

CorkMan

128kbs upload is just not good enough IMO.

I know Eircom say "surveys" show that people think that downstream speed is more important than upstream speed, but that doesn't mean that upload speed is not important! I'd like at least 256k upload, ideally 512k.

I can think of plenty of uses for upload which are important:

(i) Hosting games
(ii) when sharing files with some (especially large files) making the transfer quicker.
(iii) When playing computer games online, getting your input via the controller to the net and through to the other persons console as soon as possible.

There could be another variety of reasons which would need much more than 128kbs upload. I must say I am disappointed by Eircom in this department.

Are there any packages by Eircom that offer more than 128kbs upload, that don't cost big €uros?

CyberGhost

and finally while downloading, it chokes the download speed

when I'm uploading something I can never download at full speed(and lately they screwed that up too can't max out ;()

Gonzo

the upload of 128bps is appauling, I can download wonderfully at 215k/sec all the time untill I try to upload anything, today i sent a 6mb email and it must have taken 20 minutes and during that time I could hardly surf the connection got so choked, it felt as slow as 33.6k, pages took forever to load or would time out... then when the email finished I was back at 215k/sec... the 128k upload on a 2048k line is madness.

JNive

Most definitely, in addition to that, are other widely used & perfectly legal uses.

Voice
Video Conference
VNC / Other Remote Controls
VPN
Large Emails
Any other transfer of large 'legal' files, like picture albums, game patches/mods etc.
Any form of server, although technically speaking this isnt allowed on residential connections, although that may only apply to 'commercial' server services.

Again, i think 256 basic, 512 as a 'plus' package

I mean, upload bandwidth cant be all that expensive, considering the majority of internet traffic is probably in the downstream direction through ISP etc. and most infrastructure is purely symmetric lol.

causal

CorkMan wrote:

I can think of plenty of uses for upload which are important:

(i) Hosting games
(ii) when sharing files with some (especially large files) making the transfer quicker.
(iii) When playing computer games online, getting your input via the controller to the net and through to the other persons console as soon as possible.

JNive beat me to it, but...
(iv) sending Emails
(v) uploading files to a website or wherever
(vi) webcam / videoconferencing
(vii) VoIP
(viii) VoIP
(ix) VoIP
(x) VoIP


causal

CyberGhost

yep, 512 for the plus

and actually it should be 768 for 2048

tuxy

i have seen a few people on these boards say that for ordinary net users 128k up is loads

but to that i say do ordanary net use not use email or webcams or make web pages?

i guess eircom are worried about their business package suffering if they offered 256k up or leased lines suffering if they offered 512k up
because i dont think they would have trouble proving those upload speeds if they wanted to

Stark

And of course 128kbps upload is rubbish for bittorrent (which has legal uses btw before anyone gives out to me. Most linux vendors distribute ISOs through bittorrent these days).

DonkeyStyle \o/

I was just thinking about this the other day... I was sending an email attachment (just a small jpeg like 200kb) and my streaming radio in winamp cut out and had to re-buffer... just an example of how easily 128 gets choked
Also, yeah the webcam thing is annoying... no improvement over ISDN there. :rolleyes:
512 upstream would be just about nice for webcam'ing.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Stark wrote:

And of course 128kbps upload is rubbish for bittorrent (which has legal uses btw before anyone gives out to me. Most linux vendors distribute ISOs through bittorrent these days).

Mih... ftp.heanet.ie/pub ... problem solved.
Has most current distros ... I downloaded 2 Ubuntu ISO's from there yesterday... finished in around an hour... you wouldn't see that kind of speed on a torrent.
(Just to nit-pick.)

Vadrefjorde

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

Mih... ftp.heanet.ie/pub ... problem solved.
Has most current distros ... I downloaded 2 Ubuntu ISO's from there yesterday... finished in around an hour... you wouldn't see that kind of speed on a torrent.
(Just to nit-pick.)

And are Heanet planning to supply all the programs that BBC are planning to supply to people for free by Bittorrent in the very near future. (Actually i think channel 5 may have already beaten the BBC to it). Your little nit-pick is what keeps Bittorrent in the bad spotlight it currently gets.
ISP's will hold out to the last on the issue of upload sppeed because business/leased lines/synchronous lines are a great money spinner for them.

Lex_Diamonds

128 upload is like being in a whorehouse after a recent schlong removal operation.

flop71

I work a fair bit from home and i use VNC, i have to say since the "upgrade" i haven't noticed much of an improvement in VNC performance

I realise i could upgrade to an expensive business package, to have 256k upload. Since it's such a rip off i don't think i'll bother.

Flop

PS IBB is not available in my area.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Vadrefjorde wrote:

And are Heanet planning to supply all the programs that BBC are planning to supply to people for free by Bittorrent in the very near future.

I'm all for legal content on BT, but this old "but what about my Linux ISO's?!" excuse is wearing thin, especially when you've got fast FTP mirrors like heanet. :rolleyes:

Your little nit-pick is what keeps Bittorrent in the bad spotlight it currently gets.

Funny that... I thought it was the thousands of Gigs of warez, music and films.
But no, of course it's not that... it's people like me suggesting faster ways to get your Linux ISOs.
Keep the dream alive there, good work.

JNive

yah, when im connecting to my girlfriends pc ( also on eircom ), its exactly the same as conncting via a 128K ISDN line, and considering the nice 2MBit DSL line, it doesnt get used as such, since there is only 128K each way.

If smart were smart :-) and considering eircom taking a leap with their sudden upgrade, the single best way to entice customers again, considering the whole phone number problem, i think would be to offer a 2MBit/256K package for €40/month ( including line rental ) and that would be extra nice indeed :-)

Stark

Bittorrent is just a protocol. I remember HTTP and FTP sites storing warez as well. If embraced the amount of legitimate content could easily outweigh the illegitimate content just as the amount of legitimate content on HTTP and FTP servers outweighs the illegitimate content.

As for the Linux ISOs, yes they are provided for on FTP servers but Bittorrent places a lot less pressure on the mirrors. MandrakeSoft (now Mandriva) are one company that gives strong preference to Bittorrent. People willing to download off Bittorrent get their ISOs faster (in the recent past, a whole month faster, unless you could find a nice user gracious enough to let you download from a HTTP mirror provided by them).

bk

Another important legal use is mounting my work directories when working at home using Samba.

I saw little or no improvement with VNC and Samba when it upgraded to 2mb/128k.

That is why I have now gotten NTL 1.5mb/256k I have seen a nice improvement in VNC and Samba. Funny thing my download speeds on NTL are almost as fast as Eircom 2mb!!

Another reason for a higher upload speed is if two or three people share the connection.

The two reasons why Eircom don't have a higher upload speed:

1) It would make VoIP work much better, but Eircom don't want this as it will cut into their phone business.
2) More importantly if you had a higher upload speed, it would make the product very attractive to small and medium sized business who currently pay a small fortune for reidicuosly overpriced leased lines.

Frankly why Smart don't offer a couple of different packages with higher upload speeds, download speeds and SDSL packages aimed at business users like Leap is beyond me.

Baud

the upload of 128bps is appauling, I can download wonderfully at 215k/sec all the time untill I try to upload anything, today i sent a 6mb email and it must have taken 20 minutes and during that time I could hardly surf the connection got so choked, it felt as slow as 33.6k, pages took forever to load or would time out... then when the email finished I was back at 215k/sec... the 128k upload on a 2048k line is madness.

256k won't fix that. You need to read up on how internet connections work. Your upload is maxed, so the ACKs for the download are slowed down, and all your dowloads will be limited to 128K. For a fix in linux, http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.cookbook.ultimate-tc.html

I can't tell you how to do it in windows. Basically you need traffic shaping on whichever machine has the PPPoE endpoing.

L.

Praetorian

Baud,

In reality the 256 upload allows a person to get more done, even when the upload is maxed out.

The upload speed on Irish dsl should be at least :

1024 x 256
2048 x 384
3072 x 512
4096 x 640

I'd love to see smart offer these speeds, because maybe it would get Eircom off their ars€ to match them. I also think Ireland Offline should make a big deal about the pathetic upload speeds.

JNive

agreed, he doesnt want to prevent the choking, he just wants it to be as short as possible for such a seemingly simple task, as it should be. but seriously for the vast majority of 'important' uses, 256 or more is needed with a 1MB+ downstream, otherwise the downstream itself isnt put to much use, in fairness, the little faster web-browsing isnt all that important when you are over 512 anyway, but twice as fast VNC, emailing etc is a hell of a lot more noticeable, and important.

MrB

anyone else disappointed with 128kbs upload?

-Yes

Terminal services is horrible at 128kbs :mad:

jor el

As bk already mentioned, one of the reasons Eircom don't want to increase the upload speed could be to deter people from using VoIP technology. This would reduce the profits they make from voice calls and hence, they don't want you doing it.

From the Smart BB thread over the past few months, Smart also seem very slow to give real answers on why they won't increase the upload speed. I'd imagine, since Smart are also a voice telephony company, they too want to hold back on VoIP so as to maximise their profits from voice services. Remember that Smart BB is a bundled voice and internet package, and at €35 a month including line rental there doesn't seem to be much money being made. The voice traffic will likely be what's carrying the company.

In short, I wouldn't expect any telephone company to increase the upload speed anytime soon as it will hurt their profits. The only companies offering increased upload speed seems to be the ones that aren't in the telephone market, NTL, Irish BB, etc.

JNive

good point, but still extremely narrow from the ISP's point of view, if widely available, affordable broadband in this country was actually BROADBAND, they might find themselves getting much more customers for DSL, instead of seeing them run off to IBB or other such providers, plsu many people havent a clue about VoIP lol, hell, VoIP is possible at 128K, and would be just as possible , if slightly better quality, at say 256 or 512K ( i use teamspeak currently, which is about 25kbit/sec tops, fine quality really) so what would be the biggest difference, the sudden increase in VoIP usage to the detriment of the normal voice service, or the explosion of customers rushing in to get their BB+Voice service.

Personally, i think the latter.

bk

While VoIP is an issue for Eircom, the effect it would have on their leased line business would be far greater and more detrimental.

For instance a 2mb leased line costs over €30,000 a year, now while ADSL certainly isn't a replacement for this (due to contention, uptime and SLA's), I know of many companies who have leased lines, but they don't really need that sort of performance, instead an ADSL service with a decent upload speed would be perfectly sufficient for many companies.

JNive

exactly, they want to shaft customers, by forcing them to get premium services, nice competition there lol.

But yah i think there still is a big difference between say 24/48:1 contented, 'adaptable' 256K upload to a 2MBit dedicated / guaranteed upload.

even 512 still provides some headroom, but would deserve a higher price indeed.

Plus, if you want 2MBit Symmetric, or even 1MBit, i do not think you should be forced to get a leased line, its plain crazy, and characteristic of the 'milking' that occurs in Ireland.

The download specs are indeed 'up to par' if the technology and capacity can follow suit, but the upload rates still leave our broadband in the dark ages, since many uses of it are made impossible due to bandwidth restrictions, hence making it unsuitable to use the term broadband, since that term is technically used to mean that the applications of the line are not limited by its bandwidth.

For all intensive purposes, all interactive use on our current DSL, is on a par with 128K ISDN, and that just aint broadband. They need to re-think their strategies a bit, for the long-term direction of broadband here.



[end of rant]

bk

I agree totally JNive, I know there is a big difference between a dedicated leased line and DSL and I have no problem with Eircom charging a premium for a leased line.

However the porblem is that they are many small and medium sized companies who simply aren't catered for. THey don't need the capabilities of a dedicated leased line, yet the upload speed of DSL is currently too low for them, therefore they are forced to pay the prime for a leased line.

There is a huge market for a middle ground, good enough, DSL technology.

What I'm talking about here is an office with 20 or so employees who use the internet to download and upload pdf's, email attachements, surf the web etc. They certainly don't need a leased line with 1 to 1 contention, a highend DSL product would be prefectly suitable for this sort of user. Yet at the moment they are forced to pay a fortune for leased lines, the only users who relisitically need leased lines are people hosting their own servers or permenantently attached to to a distributed company network.

A good example of the type of product I'm talking about is the SDSL products from Leap. They offer 1m/1m for €89 (excl vat) per month and 2m/2m for €169 (excl vat) per month with a 15:1 contention over LLU. This sort of service is perfect for many small to medium sized ofices.

JNive

As was suggested in another forum, The ADSL offerings in ireland should be called 'One-Sided Broadband'.

lol