Via. The verdict.

Sloth · 08-05-2003 5:34pm #1

Last Friday after many years of waiting I finally got my broadband connection installed. The engineer arrived on time and installed all the stuff in a seemingly professional manner but when he tested out the connection it connected at a ludicrious 60kps, disconnected and had pings in the 240 region. He blamed this on a temporary fault and promptly left presumably to go down to the pub. Tech support wasn't open again until Tuesday so I had to wait all weekend with a below par connection. Then on Tuesday I rang them up and was told that another engineer would be out to see what the problem was the next day. The same engineer arrived and told me that he had installed a faulty router, he replaced the router and it then connected at about 300kps with pings between 75-100. I was told this was a standard netsource speed but looking at results for the same service (512) I've seen the pings in the 20-30 region. Also my download speeds are only in the 30k per sec region. I rang them up again today and was basically told to put up or shut up as there was nothing else they could do.
I for one am extremely disappointed in the service I'm being supplied with, ping results aren't much of an improvement on 56k tbh and certainly not low enough for it to be considered good. I for one plan to move to IBB's service once it's up and running and hopefully leave the whole sorry mess behind me asap. Via, the love affair is over.

carbsy · 08-05-2003 5:38pm

That's RADSL for ya!

There will be many more people over the coming months with similar sob stories.....you must remember that it's a rate adaptive service and a lot of people will not be able to get speeds anywhere close to 512kbps.

carb.

Sloth · 08-05-2003 5:42pm

Irish Broadband here I bloody come it seems.

Dangger · 08-05-2003 5:49pm

IBB had their official launch today. Details here.

The company will be offering wireless connections equal to DSL (digital subscriber line) quality at DSL prices. While DSL connections are generally shared between 24 and 48 different users, Irish Broadband says that its service will be shared with between four and eight other users, “so users have better speeds and quality of service”, explained chief executive, Paul Doody.

The Irish Broadband network is already up and running throughout south Dublin and the city centre but the company will be rolling out services across north Dublin and surrounding counties in the coming months. The company will also be rolling out its service in Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway over the coming months. “We have 10 base stations in Dublin at the moment and we have plans to go nationwide over the next six months to a year. Because our technology is based on wireless line of sight we don’t have to worry about digging up roads and the last mile. Therefore, if you look at the 19 towns earmarked in the National Broadband Strategy for metropolitan area networks (MANs), it will only cost us around €100,000 to have our infrastructure in place,” Doody told siliconrepublic.com.

I was there today at the launch, I saw the map for the new transmitters on de Nort Side too!

melachi · 08-05-2003 5:53pm

Originally posted by carbsy
That's RADSL for ya!

There will be many more people over the coming months with similar sob stories.....you must remember that it's a rate adaptive service and a lot of people will not be able to get speeds anywhere close to 512kbps.

carb.

That's not a reasonable response. His pings and download speeds should match everyone elses. There must still be something wrong with it, I guess if they're not willing to look into it then then he will have to try and look elsewhere.

spongebob · 08-05-2003 6:01pm

Originally posted by melachi
That's not a reasonable response. His pings and download speeds should match everyone elses. There must still be something wrong with it, I guess if they're not willing to look into it then then he will have to try and look elsewhere.

Not at all, This is the first post I've seen that proves the RA bit of RADSL is a factor.

Eircoms test (everyone elses too) will fail a line that cannot sustain 256k. Sloth connected at 300k. Eircoms product guarantees a minimum connect speed of 256k and UP TO 512k
They guarantee nothing regarding ping speeds...unfortunately.

M

parasite · 08-05-2003 6:05pm

Originally posted by Dangger
IBB had their official launch today. Details here.

...
I was there today at the launch, I saw the map for the new transmitters on de Nort Side too!

there's a piece on tv3 news about this and how irish people aren't interested in BB, only caught the last seconds though, so anyway, when the fark are IBB coming to Cork ...think i might hold out for them, they seem to have a better attitude than most

Mr. Fancypants · 08-05-2003 6:07pm

I thought you went for one of the higher priced packages Sloth? Did you end up going for the low end RADSL package in the end?

flav0rflav · 08-05-2003 6:09pm

This is unfortunate. Sloth what is your location? Do you know how far you are from the exchange? RADSL should be able to do 512k out to 12000 feet from the exchange.

tribble · 08-05-2003 6:16pm

30 KB/s X 8 = 240Kb/s

well within acceptable levels for a 256k connection,
it could be better (your line is 256-512) but if your line is bad you were lucky to pass in the first place.

tribble

Sloth · 08-05-2003 6:21pm

1 mile from the exchange. I got RADSL but with a 24:1 contention instead of the normal 48:1 so god knows what anyone else will get. Tbh this has been one of the crappiest weeks I've had for a long time, I put so much effort and time into getting signed up with via and was willing to pay that little bit extra for the low contention ratio and when I heard interleaving was off I was over the moon. The results I've gotten are nowhere near what I was hoping and I can barely bring myself to read a lot of people's posts who seem to be getting to the magical 50k mark and low pings. God damn it, I really thought I was sorted for once, hell even my signature still shows the youthful optimism I resided in this time last week.

Mr. Fancypants · 08-05-2003 6:24pm

RADSL with a 24:1 contention ratio? Are you sure you didnt get the old ADSL product? If so, it isnt Rate Adaptive so im fairly sure you should be seeing a connection of 512K.

This would also fit in with your pings of about 75 or so as interleaving is on fully on the ADSL products.

DeVore · 08-05-2003 6:25pm

Throughput not maxing out is understandable, there are many factors to consider in that (not least of which is the connectivity of the servers you are d/ling from).

However I see no reason why his ping should be any worse per se...

Slosh, type this in dos:

tracert www.boards.ie

and copy the results and paste them here will you? I'll try and debug them for you and see if theres a problem between us and you.

DeV.

SkepticOne · 08-05-2003 6:27pm

Originally posted by Sloth
1 mile from the exchange. I got RADSL but with a 24:1 contention instead of the normal 48:1 so god knows what anyone else will get.

Hmmm. I thought all the RADSL products were 512k dropping down to 256k. Where does it say you are connected at 300k. Can you get that info from the modem?

flav0rflav · 08-05-2003 6:28pm

What sort of buildling you in? Old, new, house, apartment block. Is the phone line old/new. Is there anything else connected to it? You have the splitter, right? Do you have an electrically noisey equipment near the line? Can you access any line stats on the modem? Stuff like traning details, packet loss, line spectrum?

pete · 08-05-2003 6:35pm

Originally posted by Dangger
I saw the map for the new transmitters on de Nort Side too!

Spill the beans!

please!

ando · 08-05-2003 6:51pm

Originally posted by Dangger
I was there today at the launch, I saw the map for the new transmitters on de Nort Side too!

well thats great

plz do tell

Sloth · 08-05-2003 6:54pm

I've just gotten disconnected 3 bloody times in the last ten minutes.

Here's the trace results.

Microsoft(R) Windows DOS
(C)Copyright Microsoft Corp 1990-2001.

C:\DOCUME~1\KEVINO~1>tracert www.boards.ie

Tracing route to www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 69 ms 62 ms 62 ms rt004dub.netsource.ie [213.79.63.254]
2 61 ms 77 ms 70 ms rt001dub.netsource.ie [212.17.32.97]
3 77 ms 77 ms 77 ms rt001thl.uk.vianw.net [195.102.254.69]
4 77 ms 77 ms 77 ms r1thl.vianw.net [213.2.253.1]
5 93 ms 93 ms 93 ms LINX-ge7-0-oscar.LON.router.COLT.NET [195.66.224
.49]
6 109 ms 108 ms 108 ms s1-0-0-acc-2.IE.COLT.NET [212.74.64.170]
7 109 ms 108 ms 109 ms 217.173.97.170
8 93 ms 93 ms 93 ms 217.114.160.43
9 109 ms 108 ms 101 ms www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147]

Trace complete.

C:\DOCUME~1\KEVINO~1>

I was told 300k from the engineer who said that was as good as it gets in his view but then this is from the same guy who put in a crappy box. I live in an older house but I mean all the lines were totally cleared by them.

ando · 08-05-2003 6:58pm

hmm, i think your latency problem is due to the first hop, between your router and the exchange (nearly as bad as Utv's !!)

What router are you using?

MadsL · 08-05-2003 7:05pm

Going to the UK and back probably doesn't help either...

93 ms 93 ms 93 ms LINX-ge7-0-oscar.LON.router.COLT.NET

Sloth · 08-05-2003 7:08pm

disconnected 6 times over the last 20 minutes now. It's never been this bad, could they be doing line tests atm that are stopping the signal flow?
Oh and ando I'm not using a router, just the supplied modem.

Terminator · 08-05-2003 7:10pm

I'm with Via RADSL and am thrilled with it. I'm connecting at 512K - the engineer said that most people were getting that connection but there some unfortunate souls who were getting terrible results - which he said had more to do with attrocious self-install wiring issues.

Sloth · 08-05-2003 7:10pm

I didn't get a self install.

DeVore · 08-05-2003 7:21pm

ok a few things...

Here is my tracert using a 1Mb Eircom line

  1   <10 ms   <10 ms   <10 ms  POOH [192.168.0.3]
  2   <10 ms   <10 ms   <10 ms  192.168.0.100
  3    50 ms    50 ms    50 ms  virtual.bas1.dbn.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.
4]
  4    50 ms    50 ms    50 ms  fe0-1.edge1.dbn.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.8
9]
  5    50 ms    60 ms    50 ms  atm4-0-39.peering1.inex.dublin.eircom.net [159.1
34.191.126]
  6    50 ms    50 ms    50 ms  fa0-0.ipr1.dub2.ie.insnet.cw.net [193.1.208.205]

  7    50 ms    50 ms    60 ms  62.221.31.9
  8    50 ms    50 ms    60 ms  62.221.2.78
  9    50 ms    50 ms    60 ms  217.114.160.11
 10    50 ms    60 ms    60 ms  [url]www.boards.ie[/url] [217.114.166.147]

Now Boards is hosted with Hosting365 and is in DEG's facility so its not near me physically nor is it hosted with Eircom (haha that would be a laugh).

First thing to note is that your first hop is a tad high... wouldnt really worry too much about it but you it IS on the high side.

After that you start to bounce, firstly you bounce over to London which is BAD. I dunno but I would have expected Via to have an INEX (Irish Neutral EXchange... the machinery that links a lot of the irish based ISP's together) connection.... surprised they dont.
Anyway, after that you bounce back to Dublin via Colt who hand you off to DEG (it looks like) and thence to us.

Now, all in all that doesnt look TOO bad.... but you can see from mine that after the first hop you shouldnt really be adding much to it after that.... tops another 10ms I would have thought.

Are you looking to play games with this? D/L stuff fast? Both?

DeV.

Sloth · 08-05-2003 7:29pm

Both and I can download pretty much sod all at this speed and most of my games while pretty smooth still have very high pings. No one on xbox live wants me on their servers because my ping is so damned high.

Tenshot · 08-05-2003 7:29pm

I live in an older house but I mean all the lines were totally cleared by them.

Do you have any self-fitted phone extensions around the house? Could they be tapping off the main line before it gets to the DSL splitter and causing interference?

You could also try borrowing a different DSL modem from somewhere; maybe the one you have is marginal.

Sloth · 08-05-2003 7:32pm

Well the dsl connection is on the first connection point in the house so I doubt thats the issue. The modem doesn't seem to be the issue but then theres so many things that seem to be going wrong I don't think theres anything I could possibly rule out.

disco_rob_funk · 08-05-2003 7:57pm

This should shed some light, Sloth; can you get your modem to give you the Signal-to-Noise ratio of your line? I was the first on Netsource, and it's been rock solid 55kB/s and jolt ping 32ms. My SNR is typically 18 (+-2) dB. This will indicate whether it's a cr@p line or something technical.

Nuphor · 08-05-2003 8:00pm

I was under the impression that RADSL adapted the upstream rather than downstream speed to compensate for distance. 300Kbps is slightly ridiculous…

http://www.qruse.net/main/adsl.htm

Sloth · 08-05-2003 8:05pm

Rob, how do I do one of those tests?
Nuphor, that link doesn't seem to work.

disco_rob_funk · 08-05-2003 8:09pm

eep...depends on your modem.

On my ethernet jobbie, there's an internal IP address (10.0.0.2) you type in which lets you do all sorts of diags and configs.

RTFM (!)

Via. The verdict.

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