UTV - Pings - Ratios - et al

jonski

Sorry mods I am starting a new thread because these questions will get lost in any of the other threads .

As a UTV customer I have a few questions that I'd like the readers here to give me their opinions on .

I have been on clicksilver since the start of august . and although delighted with this new fangled broadband recently I have been fairly annoyed with the ping problem that seems to plague UTV's service . So I thought to myself , see out your 12 month contract and if there is no visible improvement then off you go .

But now they are about to change their product lineup and are asking ( not forcing ) me to choose one of the two products and start into a new 12 month contract .

So to my questions .

Contention ratio's : although I understand the concept of this I do not know enough to work out if I would have a better ping on a 24:1 , can anyone answer a yes or no on this ?

Contract : if the answer to the above is no , then the 30 euro package is the obvious one to go for except you are tied into a new 12 month contract . Is it right that they can charge you 47.50 for the same product ? ( I assume it is due to the original contract signed )

Ping Issues : does anyone else with the same ping problems really feel that UTV A: will be able to do anything to improve them and B: actually give a damn about them .

Now please guys I am not trying to start a bash/praise UTV thread , because I even fall on both sides of this debate ( I am complaining about the pings and steering gamers away from it while tonight I e-mailed a link to the new offers over to a m8 of mine on eircom b/b who is looking to change and I have strongly reccommended UTV to him ) .

So off with ye , steer me right

John.

phreak

Originally posted by jonski

Contention ratio's : although I understand the concept of this I do not know enough to work out if I would have a better ping on a 24:1 , can anyone answer a yes or no on this ?

it has no affect on your ping. it will still be just as bad.

PcP

I was thinking about this for quite a while earlier today wondering which way to go.

I've decided that at the end of the day my connection is just too flaky and I'm not prepared to sign up to another 12 month contract until there is at least some sign of improvement. An improved cap and contention ratio is no good to me if the connection is spiking like crazy or completely dead every odd weekend.

"does anyone else with the same ping problems really feel that UTV

A: will be able to do anything to improve them"

I really dont know but all the replies from them so far do not inspire a lot of confidence.

"B: actually give a damn about them"

Yes, I'm sure they do.

Just to be clear though, when Clicksilver is up and running it does fly along and there's a lot of people who seem to have little to no problems. There are, however, serious network problems affecting some users and to be honest I dont think UTV are doing enough to get it sorted, certainly not enough to convince me to sign a new 12 month contract any time soon.

.02

bk

I don't think the 24:1 contention will make any difference.

It seems UTV are giving people three choices:

1) e30 with new 12 month contract

2) e45 with new 12 month contract

3) e47 with existing contract

Now the third choice seems very wrong to me.

You may want to query ComReg on this issue, I'm not sure are they allowed to actually do the first or third option. I believe by default all customers are supposed to continue paying the price for the lower product, without a new product and that you only have to sign a new contract if you upgrade to the higher spec product.

Therefore you would automatically be placed on the cheaper product without the need for a new contract.

Now I'm not sure about this at all, but it would certainly be worth checking with ComReg and perhaps with the Competition Authority and Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs. Of course check what your contract says also. I don't know something just seems a bit wrong about this.

BTW if you continue to remain on the e47 product and decide to change later, I assume you will have to pay nothing to upgrade and you shouldn't need to pay anything to downgrade (as that is what you will be on anyway).

ando

I was on UtvIP isdn for a few months before I got Dsl. The pings were a real dissapointment. After I was using Indigo 1891 dial up, I was expecting similar performance from UTV but it was a shock that sometimes my isdn was like 56k or worse. (attached image, me on bottom of screen, you cant miss me with my ping)

dub45

I think UTV's current Clicksilver customers should automatically be transferred to the lower price product without having to request it. Do any of the other ISP's allow a situation where current customers are stuck on the old product?

Before committing to another 12 month contract I really think we need some reassurances about the ongoing service levels.

As I have written in another thread already this year there have been at least three major disruptions at weekends as well as some midweek disturbances.

To judge by UTV's response on here to the most recent one they have not got a clue what caused either Saturday nights or Sunday's interruptons and only began investigating them this morning. Can you imagine the outcry if someone from Eircom posted on here to that effect?

There was at the very least one major weekend disruption last year. Not to mention the throttle on the speed which it took them ages and a lot of customer pressure to find and rectify.

There is the ongoing pings problem which people have been pleading with them to address basically since the introdution of Clicksilver.

There is the ongoing proxy problem which they tried to fob off as a clientside issue.

Now they are asking people to commit to a further 12 month contract or for anyone who is thinking of going elsewhere to stick with what is an overpriced product, in the new environment, until their 12 month contract runs out. This is effectively penalising the early starters without whom there might not be a clicksilver product, and who have already lost out on special offers.

And as far as I can see on here there none of the other ISP's have had the major disruptions in service that UTV have had.

People on here refer to Clicksilver flying when its good but I have not seen any refernece on here to the other ISP's being any worse for speed than Clicksilver.

The new low priced product is likely to attract more customers with consequentially more pressure on UTV support. All of that is hardly likely to improve the quality of service.

Gonzo

I think UTV had always had a ping problem from day 1, I remember trying out utv internet on 56k where my pings never got below 300, yet with oceanfree they often went down to 150. Also im not sure about this but was UTV Internet previously known as DNA Internet? I tried DNA Internet also years ago and the pings from it were dire, they also had game servers set up for online games at the time such as Quake and Quake 2, the pings from those servers were bad even when you were connected using a good pinging isp. If UTV could somehow fix their ping problems and make them as good as eircoms then I feel UTV would win alot of customers back over Eircom/Esat.

jonski

Just something else to throw in the mix.....

How many UTV customers would also like them to go back to "officially" providing support on the newsgroup which was the case when we signed up ?

John

dub45

How many UTV customers would also like them to go back to "officially" providing support on the newsgroup which was the case when we signed up ?

I would like them to officially supply a decent uninterrupted service and if there were disruptions not start looking at the cause almost two days later!!!:rolleyes:

PcP

According to the sig at the bottom of the automated mails from UTV support the newsgroup is for UTV Internet dial up customers only. It seems more of a mixed bag in practise though.

dub45

According to the sig at the bottom of the automated mails from UTV support the newsgroup is for UTV Internet dial up customers only. It seems more of a mixed bag in practise though.

That's interesting I have not heard that before but if you look back over the newsgroup it is amazing how often Clicksilver posts have been ignored. I actually put up a post at one stage remarking on this but yeah you guessed it - it was ignored:)

It does seem a strange attitude to adopt to their so called premium customers.:dunno:

phreak

Originally posted by Gonzo
I think UTV had always had a ping problem from day 1, I remember trying out utv internet on 56k where my pings never got below 300, yet with oceanfree they often went down to 150. Also im not sure about this but was UTV Internet previously known as DNA Internet? I tried DNA Internet also years ago and the pings from it were dire, they also had game servers set up for online games at the time such as Quake and Quake 2, the pings from those servers were bad even when you were connected using a good pinging isp. If UTV could somehow fix their ping problems and make them as good as eircoms then I feel UTV would win alot of customers back over Eircom/Esat.

yes UTV internet was known as DNA internet..

There used to be game servers hosted by utv(under the name dna games, not sure if the servers are running anymore either) which i was an admin on. All utv customers got great pings to it...unfortunately everyone else suffered from terrible pings.

Zion

What is the contention ratio on the old UTV CS package at the moment?

phreak

Originally posted by Zion
What is the contention ratio on the old UTV CS package at the moment?

48:1

Martin-UTVi

although I understand the concept of this I do not know enough to work out if I would have a better ping on a 24:1 , can anyone answer a yes or no on this ?

Generally, your pings will not be much better on the lower contended service.

does anyone else with the same ping problems really feel that UTV A: will be able to do anything to improve them and B: actually give a damn about them

We are working towards a fix of this problem John. Unfortunately our own pings from the router that you terminate on as a DSL customer are showing:

Success rate is 99 percent (4992/5000), round-trip min/avg/max = 12/14/124 ms

The host pinged in question was www.jolt.co.uk

This was carried out today. At present we would have 2 peak periods for broadband usage - one during the day and the other in the evening. I have asked an upstream engineer to work with me tonight between 9pm and 10pm to see if we can trace the problems that seem to be affecting gaming pings. I may also call you John to get some feedback from your connection.

Martin Lyons
UTV Internet

melachi

Originally posted by Martin-UTVi
Generally, your pings will not be much better on the lower contended service.


We are working towards a fix of this problem John. Unfortunately our own pings from the router that you terminate on as a DSL customer are showing:

Success rate is 99 percent (4992/5000), round-trip min/avg/max = 12/14/124 ms

The host pinged in question was www.jolt.co.uk

This was carried out today. At present we would have 2 peak periods for broadband usage - one during the day and the other in the evening. I have asked an upstream engineer to work with me tonight between 9pm and 10pm to see if we can trace the problems that seem to be affecting gaming pings. I may also call you John to get some feedback from your connection.

Martin Lyons
UTV Internet

If you can sort your ping problems out and get lower than eircom, which is around 30-33 to jolt I'll switch immediately Eircom has still got interleaving and i believe pings to UK should be even lower than 30-33 without it.

jonski

Originally posted by Martin-UTVi
Generally, your pings will not be much better on the lower contended service.

. I have asked an upstream engineer to work with me tonight between 9pm and 10pm to see if we can trace the problems that seem to be affecting gaming pings. I may also call you John to get some feedback from your connection.

Martin Lyons
UTV Internet

Martin , two points

1/ I will gladly switch to the 24:1 product if you will allow me to opt out of my contract if the pings do not improve .

2/ if you phone me tonight and the pings and pkt loss do not show up I will cry bitter tears probably for an ungoing period of time that cannot be forseen now ( although I do have screen shots of allseeingeye showing my list of favourites all with pkt loss from Sunday night and had it again last night )

John.


edit : msg to self "read post more carefully"........so you are saying the 24:1 WON'T help my ping problem , so scratch the first point . and change it to I will gladly switch to 1 of the services if you will allow me to opt out of my contract if the pings don't improve or at least stabilise.

Something I forgot to mention , I went quite happily with pings in the 60's for the first 3/4 months of my contract . Its when they go above the 80's and I have pkt loss that I start to complain . Anyone think this is unreasonable ?

Conlai

C:\Documents and Settings\Donal>ping www.jolt.co.uk

Pinging clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 39ms, Maximum = 42ms, Average = 40ms

This is standard pings for my connection, have the odd downtime and getting connected problems. Most of which were solved due to a password cache problem
Not sure why mine should be any better

Gonzo

with eircom ingame pings are generally 35-50 to jolt servers, some uk servers are lower than that sometimes 30-40, if the interleaving was turned off completely (this miracle will prolly never happen) then the ping times ingame wud be nearer to 20-30. Are we the only country to have interleaving on dsl?

melachi

Originally posted by Gonzo
with eircom ingame pings are generally 35-50 to jolt servers, some uk servers are lower than that sometimes 30-40, if the interleaving was turned off completely (this miracle will prolly never happen) then the ping times ingame wud be nearer to 20-30. Are we the only country to have interleaving on dsl?

probably the only country which are limited to interleaved dsl (unless you get esat business which is GOOD LUCK YE, it doesnt have interleaving and it's clear that the pings are lower by 10ms or more)

There has been no difference in connection stability since eircom chose to lower their interleaving setting. So I doubt that there would be any decrease in stability if they just switched it off and made me a 100% happy customer.

ArthurG

I'm quite annoyed about this staying at the old price thing - there is no way I would renew my contract with UTV given their recent shoddy customer service. They STILL haven't resolved the proxy issue, and posts to the newsgroup about it are now seemingly ignored.

If I must pay the full price for the next 7 or so months then I will, purely so I can change provider as soon as possible.

:mad:

_Kaiser_

Agreed.. given the ongoing service issues which seem no closer to an end resolution and which seem to generally plague UTV only, combined with the apparent inability to guarantee or have any real control over this service, and a unfortunate tendency to ignore reports of problems with the service which we are all paying so dearly for (I note that BK and Dub45's posts above - which I think contained some very valid points - were not commented on).

As a result, I think I will be one of those who will sit tight and wait till the current contract runs out.

Asking people to accept a new 12 month contract under these conditions is unreasonable I feel - perhaps a quarterly/half-yearly contract would be better, as well as having the benefit of being more palatable to those of us who don't either live at home or own our own house, and satisfying those who are willing to "wait and see" if things improve.

Now, having said all that, I WOULD take the new 29.99 product if these problems were addressed - the cap isn't an issue for me as I dont use anywhere near the 8GB - but right now I am just not sure if the benefits would outweigh the downsides.

However, I may well be wrong and reading through other people's views here this evening has been very useful, so I will follow this thread with interest... Thanks for reading this far