[Merged] Ntl250 intermittant service - completely at a loss

[Skyclad72]

My wife and I moved house in May and signed up to NTL's 1Mb service. At our previous address we had a Terayon modem with 1Mb and everything worked perfectly.

However, we have had nothing but problems since our new installation at our new address - let me explain. I hope you are all sitting comfortably.....

May 2005

An engineer, barely out of short trousers turned up with toolbox, meter and shiny new NTL250 modem in hand to set us up with the service. Everything appeared to work well for about a week when we began to experience random dropouts of service. These dropouts ranged from once or twice an hour to every 5 minutes. The only solution it seemed was to reboot the modem and/or PC to get the net connection back on line again. So I phoned technical support in India who ran various line tests and "couldn't find anything wrong" - but on my insistance sent out an Engineer to look at the problem.

Engineer (1) turns up and tests the signal and decides he needs to stick a 10dB attenuator on the back of the modem. "That'll fix it", he says and wanders off. TOTAL VISIT TIME: Less than 5 mins

2 days later the problem reared it's ugly head again so I called NTL and they sent out Engineer (2). Engineer (2) tests the signal, puffs and blows and replaces the 10dB attenuator with a 3dB attenuator. "That'll fix it", he says and wanders off. TOTAL VISIT TIME: 10 mins.

June

After Engineer (2)s visit, all worked well for a couple of weeks then things started up again. So I called NTL tech support and moaned loudly. They sent out Engineer (3). When Engineer (3) turned up, I insisted that he spent more than 5 minutes checking the setup and got him to check the box outside the house, the cable, the modem and the attenuators themselves. He thought the attenuator might be faulty and the connectors outside the house were a little old, so he replaced both, replaced the modem just to be sure, tested everything and went away. TOTAL VISIT TIME: 45 mins.

August

We started losing connection again at the end of August. So we called NTL again, spoke to India again and got Engineer (4) - who coincidentally was Engineer (2). When he turned up he tested the setup and said "Everything's fine, sometimes these things happen" and went away again. TOTAL VISIT TIME: 10 mins.


September, October, November, December

Intermittant problems continue. I just cant be BOTHERED to call NTL. The situation was annoying but calling NTL, getting more engineers and going through all that hassle was moreso.

January

Last night the connection was dropping every 5 minutes. I am one step away from throwing the damn modem out of the window and hanging myself with the length of cable that's coming into my house. I have just come off the phone to India who have giving me the "Everything is working fine Sir" malarky. I give up. Does anyone have any idea what is going on or how I can get a resolution.


My setup

AMD Sempron CPU, 1Gb RAM, Microstar MB.
OS: Win XP SP2

Ethernet card: Intel 10/100 (which I have replaced with 3 others just in case this was at fault - as well as 5 different RJ45 cables). I have even used the MBs own network port and turned it on/off in Bios when using other cards.

I have no other devices between my PC and the outside world. No routers, hardware firewalls etc.

I have re-installed WinXP just in case something was wrong in that direction. Signal still lost with fresh install.

There are no other devices near to the modem or cable that can cause interferance. There are no devices in the house that could do the same.

I have run my PC with / without firewall, with / without AV and without and TSRs that could possibly interfere.

[KevAmiga]

sounds bad... if you email me the modem's MAC address from the bottom, ill run a diagnostic test on it for you.

[Skyclad72]

I'm at work at the moment - but I'll go home at lunchtime and get it for you. Thank you very much :tu:

[KevAmiga]

No problem! Im away from my desk between 12-4, ill check when i get back.

Hopefully i can spot the problem for you :)

:tu:

[JamShady]

You might want to edit your post and email him instead. Apparently it's quite bad to give out your MAC address in public, not sure why though.

[Skyclad72]

Thanks for telling me. It's a good job I checked too - as one of the numbers was wrong anyway :dozey:

[KevAmiga]

Up to you, im an NTL tech. I could find it out if i wanted to lol.

Either PM me your MAC or phone up on 0845 650 0121 - up to you.

One of the mod's here will verify my position within NTL :)

If you email me - it wont be checked tonight.

[JamShady]

Of course, I wasn't suggesting you weren't. But Skyclad had posted his MAC address here (the post has now been deleted) and I was just saying that I believe it's generally regarded as a bad idea, and he should email/PM you the details instead :)

[Chris W]

KevAmiga is a confirmed ntl staff member :)

[KevAmiga]

Cheers chris :)

Best bet - If you want me to check it, PM me it by 12 mid-day today, and ill have a reply to you by 4, or, PM me by 4 and you will get it by 8.

See? Well oiled machine (well no, but thats my shifts for today ha!)

[KevAmiga]

Bah... you emailed it to me :)

Try sending it via PM. Ill get it in work that way not at home!

Or, ill do it later.

[Skyclad72]

This is quite a long post, so please bear with me.....

Back in May 2005 my wife and I moved to a new property about half a mile from where we lived before. Previously we had subscribed to NTL's 1Mb service and had one of those Terayon Modems (the black tall ones).

On moving to the new house we had a new cable installation and were given one of the little Ambit 250s (the square blue one), and all worked well for a couple of weeks.

We then started getting strange problems whereby the modem would appear to "hang" when transferring data (either by loading a webpage or d/l data). Sometimes it would 'catch up with itself' after 10-20 seconds or so, but most of the time it would hang and the only way to resolve the issue would be to unplug the modem and reboot it. This problem seemed to occur randomly - perhaps happening 4-5 times an hour or perhaps once every two hours or so.

Needless to say we called out an engineer who said our signal levels were slightly high, and a 3db attenuator should fix the problem - which it did before the problem manifest itself again. So we called out another engineer who stuck another attenuator on the back, went away and all was fine for a little while until the problem re-manifest itself.

Let me cut out the last 14 months and jump forward in time.

As of 10th July we have had 11 (ELEVEN) engineers come to our house. We have had 3 attenuators, 2 replacement modems, a new cable run, new splitter thingies on the box outside the house.

I have called NTL-India 67 times.
The longest our modem has been connected is 18 hours
The shortest time our modem has been connected is 4 seconds
Our modem "disconnected / hung" 162 times in the last 7 days
Our signal levels are fine

I have bought 4 new network cards
5 new pieces of RJ45
This problem re-occurs on 2 separate machines
It occurs on a clean "out of the box" Windows XP install
It occurs either patched to SP1 or SP2 and with/without VIA drivers
It occurs with/without a firewall
It occurs with/without anti-virus software
It occurs in IE6, IE 7 and Firefox

The last engineer who came blamed our hardware. Could this problem really occur from moving half a mile down the road. This was the same hardware we used at our previous address when we didn't have any problems.

I called Microsoft and have had 2 hours worth of tech support (to someone who has worked in IT for 11 years !) in case I've missed something. My hardware and Win XP Home install is fine - Microsoft blamed NTL.

Soooo I have MS blaming NTL and NTL blaming my hardware / Microsoft. I still have a modem that "hangs" all the time. The lights stay where they should - i.e. Ready, Sync, Enet - whilst the others don't do anything. I still retain my IP address when I do an /ipconfig. When it hangs 'permanently' the only thing I can do is reboot the modem.

Browsing to 192.168.100.1 the modem is fine, and the signal levels and power levels are fine. So WHY does it keep hanging.

I live in the Reading area and I'm on the Winnersh server although I have proxied through Bromley and get the same issue there.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[MovedGoalPosts]

I've merged your thread into your previous posts on this matter, since it's all related.

Did KevAmiga run his diagnostic? If so what was the result?

When you have been speaking to ntl, have you asked them to escalate this to a higher level? It does seem rather odd that two separate PCs are both experiencing the same problems, which to my layman's view would point to ntl, rather than your kit.

[TheNorm]

Could be a problem with "noise" on the mains electricity. This is something that could vary within a neighbourhood. A good-quality surge protector - or even better, a UPS - should sort this out.

Just a thought.

[Skyclad72]

I've merged your thread into your previous posts on this matter, since it's all related.

Did KevAmiga run his diagnostic? If so what was the result?

When you have been speaking to ntl, have you asked them to escalate this to a higher level? It does seem rather odd that two separate PCs are both experiencing the same problems, which to my layman's view would point to ntl, rather than your kit.

No, but this has been escalated via Wythenshaw's complaints dept. (Especially as the last engineer mysteriously 'cancelled himself'). "M" at the complaints department did escalate this and I had an engineer come out the same evening who was obviously speaking to his superior via a mobile phone - hence why I obtained the Bromley proxy address.

In relation to the electicity noise, it's on a good quality surge protector already, and we don't have any other issues with other equipment being 'interfered with'

I was really wondering if there was something I might be able to do to rectify this myself - or anything I might have missed