CS Confirm Contention Ratio Exceeded

[rogeralpine]

Started downloading some stuff for the 1st time in a week and was getting less than 4meg on a 10 meg line. Called CS and got told my network was being overused - basically there are too many ppl maxing out the network - suposidly!:rolleyes:

The matter has been escalated so that the "relevant" techinical team can resolve the problem - whatever that means. 3 days to sort apparently. Not too chuffed to be honest - I'll wait and see what happens. Anyone experienced this?

[Graham M]

Search the forums and you'll find that quite a few people have, it's no mystery!

[James Henry]

Started downloading some stuff for the 1st time in a week and was getting less than 4meg on a 10 meg line. Called CS and got told my network was being overused - basically there are too many ppl maxing out the network - suposidly!:rolleyes:

The matter has been escalated so that the "relevant" techinical team can resolve the problem - whatever that means. 3 days to sort apparently. Not too chuffed to be honest - I'll wait and see what happens. Anyone experienced this?
Complete BS. They've no idea how long this will take and it certainly won't be 3 days unless all the planning and work resource is in place or it is a trivial fix, in which case 3 days is a tad extensive.

There is the minor issue that 3 days takes us into Sunday which is a rather odd time to be doing this work.

You aren't the first person to be told similar stories and won't be the last.

Also please note that the above doesn't mean that any contention ratio has been exceeded at all. ntl don't advertise one and your topic title is rather misleading. Congestion is not necessarily indicative of the contention ratio being broken, that is just a figure of the amount of bandwidth allocated to each customer. I can put 10 2Mbit customers onto a 4Mbit pipe at 5:1 contention, however if 3 of them download at once it's saturated. Doesn't mean I've broken my 5:1 just that bandwidth usage is higher than I've budgeted for.

[rogeralpine]

Complete BS. They've no idea how long this will take and it certainly won't be 3 days unless all the planning and work resource is in place or it is a trivial fix, in which case 3 days is a tad extensive.

There is the minor issue that 3 days takes us into Sunday which is a rather odd time to be doing this work.

You aren't the first person to be told similar stories and won't be the last.

Also please note that the above doesn't mean that any contention ratio has been exceeded at all. ntl don't advertise one and your topic title is rather misleading. Congestion is not necessarily indicative of the contention ratio being broken, that is just a figure of the amount of bandwidth allocated to each customer. I can put 10 2Mbit customers onto a 4Mbit pipe at 5:1 contention, however if 3 of them download at once it's saturated. Doesn't mean I've broken my 5:1 just that bandwidth usage is higher than I've budgeted for.

Cheers - thought as much. Was only going off what I was told re CR and yes, it doesn't make sense to say that they've exceeded any ratios they feel are acceptable.

So at the end of the day the issue will doubtfully be resolved (in the short term) and I'll be surfing on less than 5 meg for 10 meg prices? I'll have a search for other topics on this - I can accept ups and downs on the network over short periods, but I've never had a problem like this in over 2 years of BB usage from NTL - it gets to about 500kbps and won't budge above it, not even a spike, it's as though it's been throttled back.

[sollp]

They wouldn't know what the network is, let alone if it is a contention issue.

It's probably what someone in CS has heard and is applying it to every issue people complain about.

If the part of the network you are on needs upgrading ect they wouldn't have a clue as to where and what was to be upgraded or when.

Think that is bad, i'm on ADSL paying £25.00 for an upto 8mb service,plus line rental and scarcely topping between 1.5-3.5mb.

[scrotnig]

They wouldn't know what the network is, let alone if it is a contention issue.

It's probably what someone in CS has heard and is applying it to every issue people complain about.

If the part of the network you are on needs upgrading ect they wouldn't have a clue as to where and what was to be upgraded or when.

Think that is bad, i'm on ADSL paying £25.00 for an upto 8mb service,plus line rental and scarcely topping between 1.5-3.5mb.
That's because you're with Freedom2Surf. Owned by Pipex.

NEVER touch anything to do with Pipex with a bargepole. Think ntl are bad? You ain't seen nothin' yet. Especially Pipex Homecall.

[James Henry]

So at the end of the day the issue will doubtfully be resolved (in the short term) and I'll be surfing on less than 5 meg for 10 meg prices? I'll have a search for other topics on this - I can accept ups and downs on the network over short periods, but I've never had a problem like this in over 2 years of BB usage from NTL - it gets to about 500kbps and won't budge above it, not even a spike, it's as though it's been throttled back.

Best get used to it when the next round of speed upgrades are done they'll push the hardware even closer to the edge and people who have to really start getitng used to congestion being a fact of life.

Unfortunately you're sold a peak speed not a guaranteed or minimum one.

That is of course if it is actually congestion that's the cause of your speeds and there's a fairly good chance that it isn't and CS were wrong.