Connection problems in Northants

[Furion]

hi guys, i'm having the same problem as a lot of you, but hadn't seen my area so thought i'd post it, i'm in NN9

my connection keeps cutting out while i'm surfing or even worse playing online games, all the lights are fine on the cable modem (ntl 120) and i have no router so its not that, i either have to wait till it decides to work again or unplug the bloody thing, plug it back in and wait for it to restart itself, sometimes i have to do it just to enable it, because it comes up "Aquiring network address" this in itself is really annoying but things got much worse when i had to call technical support, they're call centre is obviously in india cause all i got was uncomprehendable people who's knowledge of computers and the english language could be written on the back of a postage stamp, with room to spare! the last guy was the best, he kept telling me his name was john, probably thought i'd praise his idea, which was; unplug the modem, plug it back in and that will 100% fix my problem:banghead: so lets give john the recognition he deserves:2up:

i've left a not so friendly e-mail for the customer services, because i've wasted enough money speaking to people who until a few months ago were probably goat farmers, so if they don't send out an engineer in the next few days i'll stop the payments and when they send me the bill i'll send it back with a tube of lubricant and a message telling them just where to stick it!

[DocDutch]

Furion, welcome here 1st of all.

do you get any ip address from the modem? Also what speed are you on from NTL??

How do you connect, ethernet or USB?

what you could do is to test if the modem works is to take the NTL cable out and see if you get an ip then, you should in that case get an ip of 192.168.100.??? if you dont get 1 then its a screwed modem.

[Furion]

Thanks DocDutch

i am getting an ip address from the modem 82.29.0.???, i'm on the 4mb connection, infact my connection wasn't too bad until they did that speed upgrade from 2mb to 4mb.

i use ethernet to connect.

i took the ntl cable out and got the ip address 192.168.100.???, which is a pain cause i was really hopin that it was just the modem.

[Cerberus]

:( Gutted for ya Furion but :welcome:

Well after a few days thought, I gave NTL my 30 days notice today and my 10mb conenction will cease as of September 21st. I am going with BT Total Broadband with upto 8mb connectivity. I have had enough of the shoddy conenction speeds and constant poor service from NTL and I will never deal with them again. Their whole network is a shambles.

[Furion]

Thanks Cerberus, and i don't blame ya, i'm thinkin of throwin in the towel myself.

to add insult to injury i even lost connection whilst tryin to send the reply:omg:

claps ntl sarcasticly :clap:

[sollp]

:( Gutted for ya Furion but :welcome:

Well after a few days thought, I gave NTL my 30 days notice today and my 10mb conenction will cease as of September 21st. I am going with BT Total Broadband with upto 8mb connectivity. I have had enough of the shoddy conenction speeds and constant poor service from NTL and I will never deal with them again. Their whole network is a shambles.

Well BT won't disappoint with it's shoddy download speeds, think things will be any better well i hope they are but i think you'll find that it is more unstable and slower.

[DocDutch]

Furion. a nice test to do is to give the modem a continuos ping
open a dos box (start -> run -> type in "cmd") then type in
ping 192.168.100.1 -t -w 10
open a second dos box and there type in
ping 66.102.9.99 -t -w 10 (google ip addy)

let this run for about 2 hrs and check what the results are and paste them in here so we can have a looksie ;)

[Cerberus]

Well BT won't disappoint with it's shoddy download speeds, think things will be any better well i hope they are but i think you'll find that it is more unstable and slower.

Unfortunately, I am limited as to what ISP's I can get in my area. Was considering SKY's offer but opted for BT. I have been with NTL for 4 years now and at first I had nothing but praise for them. Over the past 24 months it has been all downhill since then. It's all trial and error and if BT are worse then I will have to see out my contract and look elsewhere.

[DocDutch]

Cerberus, 1st thing with BT is to check how far you are away from an exchange as otherwise you'll only get something like 2 meg at the most.

the closer you are to a BT exchange the faster you go, with BT it is really a UPTO 8meg connection.

[Cerberus]

Cerberus, 1st thing with BT is to check how far you are away from an exchange as otherwise you'll only get something like 2 meg at the most.

the closer you are to a BT exchange the faster you go, with BT it is really a UPTO 8meg connection.

I can get speeds of 4mb at the moment. Which doesn't bother me too much as the service BT provide will miles better as will their customer service.

[hokkers999]

:( Gutted for ya Furion but :welcome:

Well after a few days thought, I gave NTL my 30 days notice today and my 10mb conenction will cease as of September 21st. I am going with BT Total Broadband with upto 8mb connectivity. I have had enough of the shoddy conenction speeds and constant poor service from NTL and I will never deal with them again. Their whole network is a shambles. And just to provide the flip side of the coin. I have been with NTL for over 6 years. Originally on the old dial-up unlimited free access, then as soon as it was available broadband. Been through them all, 512k 1meg, 2meg right upto 10meg. The only down time I have ever had was when lighting took out the head end in the estate, it was down 4 days and I got credit for that time. If I go to irishisptest.com and check the speed even at the worst it's 5meg and 90+% its 9meg or higher I have cable modem (Surfboard 4100) - wireless router/switch. Ethernet throughout no USB crap. I don't suppose you either of you have considered the possibility that your PC is infested/riddled with spyware and/or viruses? According to the original post that connection was internet-modem-pc. Best of luck.

[Furion]

thanks for your help again DocDutch

not 100% what u mean't so thought i'd check, bit of a newbie to this side of my comp and didn't wanna run it for 2hrs if i'm doin it wrong.

i typed ping 192.168.100.1 -t -w 10 into 1st dos box and got this;
Pinging 192.168.100.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

then typed ping 66.102.9.99 -t -w 10 into 2nd dos box and got this;
Pinging 66.102.9.99 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=241

[Cerberus]

And just to provide the flip side of the coin. I have been with NTL for over 6 years. Originally on the old dial-up unlimited free access, then as soon as it was available broadband. Been through them all, 512k 1meg, 2meg right upto 10meg. The only down time I have ever had was when lighting took out the head end in the estate, it was down 4 days and I got credit for that time. If I go to irishisptest.com and check the speed even at the worst it's 5meg and 90+% its 9meg or higher I have cable modem (Surfboard 4100) - wireless router/switch. Ethernet throughout no USB crap. I don't suppose you either of you have considered the possibility that your PC is infested/riddled with spyware and/or viruses? According to the original post that connection was internet-modem-pc. Best of luck.

No viruses, trojans or malware of any kind on my PC. It's all up to date and secure (as it can be). Also using new NTL 250 modem via ethernet, with router and tried without router. Gaming this week has been poor with 560 ping to most UK servers. Just had enough of the poor service and the really poor CS as of late and I am not going to pay £34.99 per month for an inadeqaute service.

We will just see how we get on with BT but it is bye bye NTL....

[DocDutch]

Furious, not exactly what I mean but it shows that your internet connection is up and active.

The reason why I asked you to do this for 2 hours is to see if your internet connection drops at all over the 2 hrs time frame, as if it did then that would show there is a problem in your modem.

[tweetiepooh]

Google for 3D Traceroute. The free version is fine.

Get this installed and set it up to ping server of your choice.

Personally I ignore the graph and just go to the table. You can leave it running for some time and it will show the ping times to all (most) stages of the journey. You can set up limits etc to flag slow/very slow.

This is only one diagnosis you can do and remember that ICMP traffic can oft be disregarded or slowed by some devices as ping is not regarded as critical traffic.