NTL's Poxy Proxies

Now there are six sig's

Get rid of them Totaly !!!!!!

They are slow and unstable !!!!

[Chris]

Originally Posted by erol

Enter nothing in IE proxy settings - no proxy is used.
Enter your local NTL proxy server - local NTL proxy is used
Enter a non local NTL proxy server - non local NTL proxy is used
Enter a third party proxy server - a third party proxy is used.

Seems pretty straight forward to me. Or have I missed / misunderstood something ?

That was my understanding, although I suspect threadbare's question really means, 'how are the majority of users, with little technical understanding, going to make any use of this?'

The answer, I think, is that most of them won't, and many of those who try to read up on it will get intimidated by it. The first time I changed my proxy I screwed my eyes shut and held my breath before clicking 'OK'.

Now I've got over that hurdle I'm happy to muck about with settings like this, but I can well understand why many people would not want to.

[threadbare]

Originally Posted by erol

Well again I would stress I am no expert (and always willing to hear from and learn from one) but I would imagine they simply 'turn off' the forced interception of port 80 requests.



Enter nothing in IE proxy settings - no proxy is used.
Enter your local NTL proxy server - local NTL proxy is used
Enter a non local NTL proxy server - non local NTL proxy is used
Enter a third party proxy server - a third party proxy is used.

Seems pretty straight forward to me. Or have I missed / misunderstood something ?

that is pretty straight forward - but not for joe public. dont forget the majority of this forum are quite technically minded, and more than capable of making changes to their settings. picture a first time computer user trying to change these settings - its not easy for them.

edit: sp

Why not have a webpage on NTL's site that send the settings via WPAD. The user can then just click on the link.

This would work as for some strange reason NTL tech support tell users to turn discovery on in I.E.

[threadbare]

Originally Posted by stuartbe

Why not have a webpage on NTL's site that send the settings via WPAD. The user can then just click on the link.

This would work as for some strange reason NTL tech support tell users to turn discovery on in I.E.

I have been told that - seems to be a fairly common misconception with some of their techs. Not that it makes a lot of difference - just takes a second or two longer for the homepage to display

[Chris]

Originally Posted by stuartbe

Why not have a webpage on NTL's site that send the settings via WPAD. The user can then just click on the link.

This would work as for some strange reason NTL tech support tell users to turn discovery on in I.E.

And for browsers/OSes other than I.E. / Windoze?

[Mr.Moony]

Originally Posted by stuartbe

This would work as for some strange reason NTL tech support tell users to turn discovery on in I.E.

And yet the number of times people cant get to the registration page, that button is ticked and all is displayed....

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Mr.Moony

Well for a start when the fastest Proxy servers in the country start to get unbalanced because every1 is using them constantly the people in the area using them transparently will notice a decrease in service (thought you would have got that one Pem). Not really load balance as such I shall have to agree. The time it will take for the proxy servers to respond to requested urls will get slower and slower and then finaly die.
There are other options around the problems, for instance nthw.com had different meta rules and seemed to get chached allot less than nthw.co.uk

What you describe is not, as you say, really load balancing. What you also seem to forget is that people are manually switching to the "fastest" servers around the country because their default one is a pile of crap. People don't keep switching proxies for the fun of it, they are forced to do it in order to get anywhere.

If users wern't forced through a proxy then, as pointed out elsewhere, few people would mess with their proxy settings at all - and therefore most people would bypass them and connect to web sites direct - so instead of all the http traffic being funnelled in & out of a few creaking proxy servers, it would be spread across the network(s).

[erol]

Originally Posted by threadbare

edit: i think its best for a petition to either make them work or do away with them

and I think these are both 'valid' options and better that the current status quo. I would almost certainly support either petition (whoever 'wrote / sponsored' it) on that basis.

I do think however that making them optional is the most likely to get a postivie response from NTL (however slight that chance is)

To do away with them all togeather would involve NTL accepting that using them in the first place was a mistake. I see this as harder for NTL to do than to change the way they operate.

To make them work is a great solution but again imo if this was as easy and cheap to do as 'flicking a switch' (as I percive making them optional is) then I assume NTL would have already done so.

Originally Posted by Towny

'how are the majority of users, with little technical understanding, going to make any use of this?'

I accept that for many users 'changing your proxy settings' is an intimidating thing to be told to do.
I would see an 'optional' world working in one of 2 ways. Either the standard install package would install the local proxy settings as default or it would not install any proxy settings. I think the former is prob best (though not easiest to implement).

Then if and when a user had web browsing problems they would seek help (presumably) either through CS or via sites like this. It should be relatively easy to then walk the user through 'disabling' the defaulty proxy and seeing if that resolves the issue. ATM such users go through the same process but in time the solution may no longer work (as the proxy they have been set to goes 'belly up'.

If the decision was to not install proxy settings at all as part of the standard NTL install procedure then I would imagine an NTL page (or similar in places like this) that talks about things users can do to try and improve their Internet experience. I believe such 'pages' allready exist. These then could take unexperienced users through the process of setting up a proxy in IE, and the users could judge for themselves if it made browsing better or worse for them.

ATM moment some users, experienced or not, are having to regulary change their proxies or suffer (periodic) web browsing probelms. In a senario of otional proxies this either would not occur in the first place (if the default setup was no proxy settings) or would occur 'once' and be solved. This to me seems preferable to the current situation?

[erol]

Originally Posted by towny

And for browsers/OSes other than I.E. / Windoze?

I would expect NTL to be able to talk users through changing their proxy setting on any platform they support. In reality this would be Windows and MAC (?). Presumably they already do this ? Once you get outside these 2 OS's then I suspect not only are the numbers of users small, they are also on the whole more technically literate and more than able to turn on or off the use of web proxies in their chosen browser.

Yes changing proxies can be intimadating to less technicaly literate users. Do I think this is a valid reason for NTL not making the use of proxies optional? Not really.