Problems in Leicester LE2

[pilchard]

Hoping someone can explain/help me out here. Ive been a long time NTL BB user and things are just getting worse and worse in my area (LE2). The main culprit is pretty obvious to me (see tracert results below). The last person I spoke to at support seemed to think I was complaining for the fun of it. And I quote "pings of 150ms are nothing mate"... I beg to differ when it comes to cable networks and BB connections.
Personally I think nott-t2core-b-ge-wan63.inet.ntl.com is the problem.
Pings from this machine/router/whatever are wildy erratic.
Does anyone know of anything going on in this area? The problem seems to be an old one ... for me it started about 1yr/9mths ago.
Also it seems to coincide with the start/end of Uni almost to the hour. University holiday = nice steady connection.
University term time = almost unusable for q3 (time of day doesnt seem to matter)

Is there a total oversubscription in certain areas? Is there anything I can ask for to get this noticed/fixed?
All I want is a game of quake now and again

Please help meeeeeeeeeee!
Cheers for any info

pilchard


1 70 ms 30 ms <10 ms 10.175.87.254
2 30 ms 91 ms 40 ms leic-t2cam1-b-ge-wan34-112.inet.ntl.com [80.7.30.193]
3 250 ms 511 ms 210 ms nott-t2core-b-ge-wan63.inet.ntl.com [80.1.79.197]
4 51 ms 40 ms 60 ms nth-bb-b-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.37]
5 70 ms 50 ms 90 ms pop-bb-a-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.14]
6 * 50 ms 50 ms tele-ic-2-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.86]
7 30 ms 70 ms 30 ms lon1-10.nildram.net [213.208.106.169]
8 30 ms 60 ms 71 ms lon1-9.nildram.net [195.149.20.130]
9 30 ms 110 ms 60 ms jolt-gw.nildram.net [195.149.20.126]
10 40 ms 40 ms 30 ms 213.208.119.150

[paulyoung666]

hi and :welcome: to the site , have you tried specifying a proxy to see if it helps :)

[andrew_wallasey]

Is there a list of proxies which NTL use?

[paulyoung666]

Is there a list of proxies which NTL use?


try 62.254.128.4 port 8080 and see if that helps , no guarantees though :erm: :D :D :D

[Paul]

Changing proxy isn't going to help pings - the trace seems to show a problem with either nott-t2core-b-ge-wan63.inet.ntl.com or leic-t2cam1-b-ge-wan34-112.inet.ntl.com [or the connection between the two].

Who ever said pings of 150 are normal is badly mistaken. It might just be average for a poor US based server but should never be the case for a UK based server - and from the NTL network to the IP you tested you should get something like this;

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms W2K-PC [10.x.x.x]
2 17 ms 15 ms 16 ms 10.x.x.254
3 42 ms 23 ms 18 ms nott-t2cam1-b-ge-wan42-122.inet.ntl.com [80.4.46.201]
4 21 ms 31 ms 16 ms nott-t2core-b-ge-wan72.inet.ntl.com [80.1.79.189]
5 16 ms 17 ms 24 ms nth-bb-b-so-300-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.37]
6 24 ms 22 ms 23 ms pop-bb-a-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.14]
7 62 ms * 36 ms tele-ic-2-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.86]
8 35 ms 22 ms 19 ms lon1-10.nildram.net [213.208.106.169]
9 21 ms 20 ms 19 ms lon1-9.nildram.net [195.149.20.130]
10 20 ms 55 ms 20 ms jolt-gw.nildram.net [195.149.20.126]
11 36 ms 19 ms 19 ms 213.208.119.150

[Chris W]

pilchard if you pm me the mac address of your modem (assuming you are using a modem rather than a set top box) i will have a look at this for you.

MB

[pilchard]

Cheers for all the replies peeps. I was a bit confused about the proxy stuff, thanks for clearing that up.... at least that'll help if surfing gets bad.

Pem.... thanks for confirming Im not going insane. Thats pretty much what I thought and your tracert is very close to what id consider a normal (non-term time in my case) ping. When the person from support said 150ms was nothing to complain about I nearly crushed my phone ;)

Monkeybreath.... you're a star. :D . Any info at all will be tops. I'll PM you my info in a mo .... first I need to change a light bulb so I can actually see it tho.
Arf. Who needs light fittings when you've got a monitor.

[td444]

Pem, its well known during high activity, that routers give a poor result for ICMP pings. Notice how all the other hops afterwards were reasonble?

Since this is occuring from first hop, it looks like upstream issues. If monkeybreath cant tweak a little, try PM justanothern00b, he may be able to help.

And why do people remove the first few hop's IPs? Cant trace back on that anyway :S

[Chris W]

Pem, its well known during high activity, that routers give a poor result for ICMP pings. Notice how all the other hops afterwards were reasonble?

Since this is occuring from first hop, it looks like upstream issues. If monkeybreath cant tweak a little, try PM justanothern00b, he may be able to help.

And why do people remove the first few hop's IPs? Cant trace back on that anyway :S

MB received the pm after he finished work... so will have a look at it tomorrow ;)

:monkey:

[Paul]

Pem, its well known during high activity, that routers give a poor result for ICMP pings. Notice how all the other hops afterwards were reasonble?

Yes, I know - hence I ignored the tele-ic router which is always bad on icmp. However - I have never seen an ntl core router so loaded or busy that it responds that badly to icmp - and I would be very suspicious of that as an explanation. Still, as you say - Janoob is the guy to answer this one with authority. :)

[Tezcatlipoca]

Not actually related to the problem, but.....

Is there a list of proxies which NTL use?

Try here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/trancache.html#ntl :)

[Halcyon]

From what I've heard, all the servers, routers, whatever they are called, located in Nottingham are as useful as a chocolate teapot and are over subscribed. and the slowest in the land.

[Paul]

From what I've heard, all the servers, routers, whatever they are called, located in Nottingham are as useful as a chocolate teapot and are over subscribed. and the slowest in the land.

Which just goes to show how misinformed people can be. :)

[GazzaB]

Which just goes to show how misinformed people can be. :)

Absolutely Pem, this could be anything from a local CATV network issue or UBR issue. I think Ntl would be getting a lot more complaints if this was a general Nottingham issue. :D
Hopefully Monkey Breath can shed some light on it.

[Chrysalis]

well the nottingham proxies are pretty bad I will back halcyon up on that.

Any consistently high icmp pings mean a problem, just because the last hop has low pings doesn't mean its fine.

[Chris W]

I have looked into this and can't see any problems at the moment. If i ping the hops that are having problems from here:

nott-t2cam1-b-ge-wan42-122.inet.ntl.com [80.4.46.201]
nott-t2core-b-ge-wan72.inet.ntl.com [80.1.79.189]

I am getting a steady 20ms with only 2 packets dropped from about 500.

There are also no issues in the nottingham area that i have heard off that should be affecting you. There are also no oversubscription problems on the UBR that pilchard is on.

MB

EDIT: also tracerts from ntl or my house to pilchard show no problems at all.

[Chrysalis]

well my routing issues I had before have been resolved, my proxy problems are ongoing tho, do you physically check the proxies or do you just check if problems have been reported?

[Paul]

well my routing issues I had before have been resolved, my proxy problems are ongoing tho, do you physically check the proxies or do you just check if problems have been reported?

I use exactly the same proxies as you (as do the other Nottingham based CF people [on ntl]) and I have no problems at all. This would suggest that if you have a problem, then it is your connectivity to the proxies that is causing it, not the servers themselves, otherwise we would all have the same trouble. :)

[Chris W]

well my routing issues I had before have been resolved, my proxy problems are ongoing tho, do you physically check the proxies or do you just check if problems have been reported?

we check every proxy server ;)

[paulyoung666]

have you tried jumping on this 62.254.128.4 , and see what it is like ?????????

[pilchard]

Alright everyone,

Sorry for my lack of postage... busy week. MB's been helping me out with this issue:pp . Nothing is obviously broken or leaking packets all over the server room floor, heh.
Anyway, things are better today, at least Im not getting a 999ms when I connect to Jolt. Me pings are okish, a bit wobbly/spikey but ok.

I cant comment on the proxy stuff, Ive always let things get automatically set on that front.

Cheers for the input peeps, its much appreciated ..... Im a techie hardware geek for a living, so I know how expensive effort in your free time can be.
For me its usually decrepit old lecturers that blow their hard drives up at 5 pm and then tell me they've never used their CDRW/Zip to back up ......EVER!
Ahhhhh, deep joy :)

pilchard