NTL Swansea area..slow city!

[sadken]

I have recently upgraded to the 10mb service and initially was getting crazy download speeds of 2.1mb a second on good sites like NVidia.
Lately this has dropped off alarmingly to the extent I couldn't even surf the web the other day due to the slowness.
Download speeds now vary between 80 and 250kb a sec.
Not really what I am paying the extra for.
Has anyone else experienced this problem?
My mate who lives up the road tried the same download as me earlier and he got over 1mb a sec for a download I was getting 200k on.
I rang tech support (India I think) yesterday and he said something about me being on the 'wrong server'.He made some changes after I gave him my IP addy and improved for a while but back to ****e today.
Also, when pinging the cabel modem and checking the diagnostics, these details were showing:-
Downstream Receive Power Level : -16.4 dBmV
My m8 reckons it should be about 2 to 3.
This never changes on mine.
Is this the problem?

Thanks for any help offered.

[dcclanuk]

my

Downstream Receive Power Level : -6.4 dBmV

...

[nho1993]

Downstream Receive Power Level : 0.3 dBmV i always get full speed anytime of day

[homealone]

have a look here

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=26006

for some advice on the kind of levels you should expect - credit to 'Ignition' for the info -thanks 'ig'.

[nho1993]

so mine would be concided excellent?

[homealone]

so mine would be concided excellent?

provided the other relevant levels are in range, yes. :tu:

however, don't forget dodgy signal levels aren't the only cause of slow speeds, just the first thing that should be addressed, before looking at other possible reasons, in my opinion :)

[John S]

My connection in Swansea is so poor I cant even download amy broadband speed test.

John S.

---------- Post added at 16:57 ---------- Previous post was at 16:36 ----------

Ive just been away to try a speed test again and failed.
It took me over 5 minutes to get back and post.
I dont know which I prefer "server unavailable" or this 5 minute page download nonsense, neither actually, but then I suppose NTL could say the service isnt actually down but in reality virtually out.

John S.

[KevAmiga]

Drop me a PM with the modems MAC if your still having problems mate.

[m1th]

from Swansea here too...

I've been randomly getting "server not found" errors for the past few weeks now. errors get more frequent at certain times during the day... at times every site grinds down to a halt. This is starting to really really tick me off. I've tried calling NTL tech support, their answer is next to useless.

what the frak is going on? I'm thinking it has something to do with their proxy servers? Can someone from NTL hear me out pretty please?

[UncleBooBoo]

Same here, I have been looking at ADSL suppliers!

NTL have been crap the last three weeks, there proxy is screwed!!!

[dannyboi2003]

Hi Guys,

I'm in the Neath area and are having exactly the same problems, web browsing is dog slow at random times during the day. Yet strangely i never get any problems with my ntl email (via outlook 2003) and i can always get at the ntl websites, which would as someone has already mentioned point to a problem with their proxy or link to the outside world. Is anyone on here able to help??? cos im gonna drop ntl if things dont improve soon and go with adsl, or im gonna run a long network cable from work and piggy back off our 100meg internet connection :D.

My pc is fairly new (less than 2 years), runs xp home sp2 and is fully patched, and im running Symantec Antivirus V10. I have an NTL 4meg conection with a little NTL 250 cable modem.

Cheers guys
Dan