Nuneaton - Slow...painful...annoying

[Wiggz]

Guys

I am posting this in the hope that others have experienced the same thing and that it can all be put down to Maintenance on the lines (who knows eh?)

I am in the Nuneaton (CV10 ) area, and for the past week or so I have had seriously slow access. I normally max my 10mb line out on ftp.mirror.ac.uk with Linux distros. Since this 'problem' I am getting 30kb tops!!...most of the time it's 2-5kb/sec.

Other HTTP and FTP sites are the same.

I have seen many other people complaining of the same...I simply want confirmation of what is causing my problem: Maintenance or something else.

Anyone shed any light?

[Stuart]

Have you called faults?

[zing_deleted]

I also live in Nuneaton and have no problems at all :)

[Rone]

I also live in Nuneaton and have no problems at all :)


Bet thats cheered him up no end. ;)

[zing_deleted]

Could be his settings, unclean browser,proxy could be changed.Simple reboot of modem.Many possibles not down to ntl

Proxies to try here http://www.cableforum.co.uk/forum/article.php?a=10

[Wiggz]

thanks for quick replies. I have no malware on my pc at all.

Going to try a few little things if zinglebarb's connex is fine.

---------- Post added at 17:48 ---------- Previous post was at 17:41 ----------

I have tried faults yes - tried from my work, but didn't get through. Tried from home and didn't get through.

I have found the guys and gals at CF (here!) much more helpful in recent years

Anyone wanna check it out for me? (i can pm any deets)

Cheers

[Chrysalis]

whats the faults number, when ringing 150 can only choose between CS and TS.

[Wiggz]

Chrys

I have no idea myself. I must confess to jumping the gun a little. I rebooted my router and things improved significantly. However, I am still looking at 4-5mb rather than 10.

There is something wrong indeed (and no, it's not my router this time :) )

Cheers

[Wiggz]

well my connections is still really buggered. Rang faults and asked if there could be a reason for this.

For some reason, unbeknown to me, I mentioned the Router issue...so frmo that point forward, everything was "it's your router".

I know it's not as I have tested without the router also. I seem to jump up to 400k, and then slump to 5 k on every site (both HTTP and FTP) I have tested. Never do I get beyond 5MB

Please help

[jeffcrouch]

dunno what ntl are doing - i was happily getting 10meg until 2 weeks ago, and now get average 6meg - should i complain?? i'm in eastwood area

[Rone]

If your getting 6, keep quiet before they reduce it for you. :)

[Wiggz]

If your getting 6, keep quiet before they reduce it for you. :)

Without wishing to sound a tad "disrespectful" - that is not a helpful comment.

If I was happy with 6mb, I would move to a 6mb package with another company. 10MB is what I pay for, and for the last fortnight, I have not been getting it.

As jeffcrouch said...it was fine a couple of weeks ago, then something just flipped and my connection has been the equivilent of an elderly ladies labido - Non-Existent!

[Chrysalis]

better to avg 6 meg then avg 2 meg.

Someone on another forum was told by tech support anything above 3meg is acceptable, that gives me and others something to base on with speeds below it. Of course this was something verbally said to him and mentioned on a forum so means nothing legally.

[Wiggz]

better to avg 6 meg then avg 2 meg.

Someone on another forum was told by tech support anything above 3meg is acceptable, that gives me and others something to base on with speeds below it. Of course this was something verbally said to him and mentioned on a forum so means nothing legally.

Acceptable to who? The Consumer or the Provider - I think the former would argue the opposite.

I think that a 10mb service should not a) normally drop below 10mb because the company has a severe lack of infrastructure management, or b) drop no lower than stated SLAs.

I haven't checked, but I'd be surprised if there were any speed regulations set out in the SLAs, or anywhere at all.

I'd like to think that NTL would provide a little more help to me than "Router's screwing your connection"

[Chrysalis]

agreed, but my point was if they are saying 3meg is what they expect to not fall below it provides a point where they have to do something to keep it above that level rather then just saying its "up to" 10 meg and so be it no matter what speeds you get.

[Wiggz]

ahh yes - I agree. I'm falling way below that on average so they need to remove their head from their collective anus'

[Rone]

If it had stayed at 3meg i would still be a customer.

[Chrysalis]

It would be good if a member of the mods could comment on this, the speed and ping issues are popping up every day now someone new. It appears the problem is more then just a minority of areas and warrants attention from someone at the top.

Do ntl have any kind of minimum performance level ie. should it match the previous 3meg tier at a bare minimum during peak hours?

Is there any plans to address the gaming situation?

In areas that are in need of an upgrade why is there no schedule for one? this is now proven as ntl have gave a statement to a customer.

Why are tech support and customer services only able to monitor upstream channels and not downstream channels seemingly allowing downstream to fill up and are they able to monitor ubr cpu utilisation?

Why are different transits used for different areas alongside strange static routes on their internal network? This question may be hard for them to answer as its bit technical.

Do they plan to either buy more proxy servers? upgrade the current ones? or leave them how they are?

Some things to get answered.

[IanUK]

For me (and it appears many others) my speeds to many US servers (including my own) drop to way below 3 meg after about 3-4pm.

My server company have carried out tests and insist it is NTL and not them.
This seems to be correct and other isp's customers have no problems getting 8 meg from my server at any time of day.

I put up a test file which seemed to point to proxies yet again being the problem, NTL just ignore it though - if its proxies they are not interested, and just give you another one, which works for a day or so and then has the same problem, we now have had an NTL employee tell someone that they know his/her area is overloaded but they have no plans to fix it.

Any lawyers here - maybe a big old fashioned lawsuit is the only way to make the morons who are laughably in 'control' of network management at NTL listen, but thats too much hassle and I guess they know that, best if we all start leaving - which I guess is also going to happen en mass soon if the network isn't improved to at least a basic standard.

I'm quite frankly astonished that a company can say 'we will take your money and sell you a 10mb service but we know we cannot supply it - and have no plans to supply it anytime soon'

NTL need to get a clue about basic network management, surely its the first thing you do - make sure that your infrastructure can take any speed increases, not just internally but externally too.

Obviously not at NTL - where morons rule the networking waves !

[Chrysalis]

people wont leave on masse, the scary thing is the bulk of customers just wont notice and care about these problems, my sister for example made a comment to me that the internet feels slow but its not a big issue for her as she doesnt use it much and she just shrugs it of. The problems some people are seeing if they got pregressively worse their is the danger that things get bad enough in that websites hit dialup speed, streams skip all the time etc. and then people will notice. But I think the crunch point for that would be around 30kB (256kbit), most streams run around that level and audio streams at half that, browsing at speeds below that get noticed.

[IanUK]

Most streams need to buffer a fair bit first, you'll often see speeds of 200-300k at first and then they settle, on NTL the streams often don't get the chance to start if they are located in the USA or even in the UK in badly overloaded areas, most people will assume that the site they are on is broken, same as they do when the proxies act up, I'm willing to bet that most of NTL's customers who couldn't care about the technical aspect of things, and just want to see their sites assume that the sites themselves are broken and not NTL.

Personally I come across 2 or 3 sites a day that seem to be down, but switching proxies brings them in, its just amazing that one of the largest ISP's in the UK (and maybe in Europe) has such a basically flawed experience for so many of its customers - and blatantly doesn't care.

[Rone]

You said it, they dont care, and have made that apparent.

[zing_deleted]

Simple solution to all your problems.
Downgrade to 2 meg until your areas network is up to scratch(but im fine in Nuneaton anyway maybe the OP could have a zingscomputers call out ;))
Simple solution

[Rone]

Lol.
2 meg? Hard enough getting one meg, simple solution , change providers. ;)

[zing_deleted]

Think ADSL is any better??? Dont have to be far from the exchange to knock your speed.Take nuneaton for example you only have to go 2k from the town centre to be limited on speed

[Rone]

I'm half a mile from the exchange, and ive had adsl before.
If ntl's answer to this latest fiasco is just wait till its sorted, i might as well pay someone who can supply me with a working connection.
And its cheaper too. :)

[Chrysalis]

adsl is better if the cirumstances are right, like ntl it is a bit of a lottery. Generally bt wholesale adsl sux, llu is good. LLU limited areas. Of course long distance lines suffer as well.