Intermittent (at best) connection

[JoelG]

Hi Folks

Any help greatly appreciated here!

After talking to CS 5 times over the last four weeks I am about to cancel my modem service. I am on a 4 meg connection but at best I get download speeds of 30kbs which then usual time out, I also have to refresh internet pages to get them to load. This morning it took me 1hr 20mins to download 60 meg from the Virgin Newsgroups servers.

Everytime I speak to customer service they run through the usual stuff, always saying at the end that it will be escalated and to call back in a few days. This has been going on for four weeks now. Today one of the CS staff switched me to a different server (maybe DNS server?) and reset my modem but it is still the same.

My modem never drops its sync and the ready light is always on. The downstream power level is 2.1dBmV and the downstream SNR 34.8dB. The upstream power level is 35.0dBmV. Also, my computer is connected directly to the CM (which is a NTL250).

The DNS servers I am connected to are 194.168.4.100 and 194.168.8.100. I have run some Trace Routes below.

C:\Users\Joel>tracert www.virginmedia.com

Tracing route to www.virginmedia.com [212.250.162.12]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 34 ms 29 ms 19 ms 10.41.204.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * 13 ms win-bb-a-so-110-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.233]

6 14 ms 39 ms 13 ms win-dc-a-v902.inet.ntl.com [62.253.187.222]
7 57 ms 43 ms 12 ms www.virginmedia.com [212.250.162.12]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Joel>tracert www.virginmedia.com

Tracing route to www.virginmedia.com [212.250.162.12]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2631 ms * 8 ms 10.41.204.1
2 8 ms * 25 ms acto-t2cam1-b-xx.inet.ntl.com [80.2.146.xx]
3 26 ms 36 ms 9 ms brnt-t3core-1b-ge-010-0.inet.ntl.com [195.182.17
4.21]
4 32 ms 10 ms 9 ms bre-bb-b-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.174.249]

5 10 ms 28 ms 25 ms win-bb-a-so-110-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.233]

6 43 ms 12 ms 24 ms win-dc-a-v902.inet.ntl.com [62.253.187.222]
7 529 ms 23 ms 11 ms www.virginmedia.com [212.250.162.12]

Trace complete.

As you can see, the first one stalled but the second one was ok.
Can any one here help me as the people at Virgin CS don't seem to be able to! Again, many thanks in advance.

Cheers

Joel

[Stuart C]

How do you connect to the net? Do you have a Cable Modem? Do you have a router?

BTW, I've edited what appears to be your personal IP. People don't generally need to know that to help solve the problem.

[JoelG]

Hi Stuart

Thanks for the edit. I connect through an NTL 250 Cable Modem which an engineer has previously (about 18 months ago) put a 6db attenuator on.

Cheers

Joel

[JoelG]

I am just gearing up to talk to Virgin BB Customer Support again. Has anyone got any tips on dealing with the first line CS people? Should I just ask to speak to a supervisor?

Thx

Joel