Broadband is sluggish

Civilian_Target

I've just started my free trial with UTV internet broadband and I find it to be very slow. The download speeds are as expected, the pings livable, but the loading times for pages are abismal. Literally, not much faster than a dialup modem. I've just moved from NTL Northern Ireland to this, so I know it's not my computer, because NTL wasn't sluggish. Possibly a DNS thing at UTV?

Are there faster ISPs than UTV, or does it make much difference when using an Eircom line? (I'm not going to sign with eircom.net as their cap is laughable). Is it because I'm in Donegal? Or is there possibly something that could have gone wrong?

kin9pin

UTV speeds were abysmal until maintenance on Friday. Speeds and pings have been good since then so I don't think that's the problem.
IOL have better speeds and pings and you can get the same cap (16GB) for €2 more (I think). Six months ago I might have said stay with UTV, but with there recent record I'd recommend looking elsewhere.
On the browsing issue, is it slow on all sites? What spec PC do you have?

steve-hosting36

UTV are also not an INEX member, so browing irish sits will always be a bit slower than their competitors.

Moriarty

Aye, I was actually wondering yesterday if they have any plans to connect into the INEX. Don't suppose you've heard anything along those lines steve?

pyxxel

Yo, anybody know whether NTL are an INEX member?

oh, and C_T: Can ya let us know why you moved from ntl NI? Anything you didn't like?

steve-hosting36

Yes and No. Yes they are a member, no they dont peer, their links to the INEX are insifficient to actually exchange traffic with members.

pyxxel

(On ntl being INEX member)

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Yes they are a member, no they dont peer, their links to the INEX are insifficient to actually exchange traffic with members.

Sooooo.... what's the point then in being a member?!? :eek:

I always thought INEX membership implies peering with other members...?

-pyxxel

Mutant_Fruit

just wondering if someone could explain what an INEX member means. Either pm or quicky-linky to some informative site. (sorry for Offtopic-ness)

dub45

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

just wondering if someone could explain what an INEX member means. Either pm or quicky-linky to some informative site. (sorry for Offtopic-ness)

http://www.inex.ie/ I had never heard of it before either! This might be of interest to you as well.

Ripwave

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

just wondering if someone could explain what an INEX member means. Either pm or quicky-linky to some informative site. (sorry for Offtopic-ness)

Because it's reasonable to assume that a fair amount of the IP traffic from Irish users is directed at other Irish sites, it makes sense to keep thos packets local, rather than shipping them all to London or New York or Amsterdam, and back again. So INEX was set up so that Irish ISPs could easily peer any they needed to pass between themselves. An ISP that links to INEX can set their routers up to send any Irish packets to INEX, and any other packets on to whatever backbone they are connected to.

PcP

I'm still having problems with Clicksilver here. Pages will freeze up when loading every few minutes then fly along again. I only got a chance to try some games this afternoon and while the pings are generally excellent (40-50 ms), it would go to 999 every few minutes and I'd freeze up for 5 - 10 seconds.
The support folk say there is more maintenance to be done but they never called me back like they said so no idea when it'll happen or what they are doing.

//me waits for this poxy contract to finally end..

[edit]just did some tracerts to Jolt, small bits of packet loss and the odd ping spike.

C:\>tracert clarity.jolt.co.uk

Tracing route to clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    30 ms    30 ms    32 ms  195.218.116.25
  2   398 ms   338 ms   346 ms  UTV-DUB-fastethernet0-0.116.218.195.in-addr.arpa
 [195.218.116.1]
  3    28 ms    30 ms    31 ms  195.218.126.178
  4    31 ms    29 ms    29 ms  195.218.112.2
  5    41 ms    44 ms    41 ms  195.92.55.134
  6    42 ms    41 ms    37 ms  ber-1.r18.telc.as5388.net [195.92.55.156]
  7   555 ms    43 ms    42 ms  lon1-9.nildram.net [195.66.224.59]
  8    39 ms    43 ms    42 ms  jolt-gw.nildram.net [195.149.20.126]
  9    46 ms    44 ms    38 ms  clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11]

Trace complete.

C:\>tracert clarity.jolt.co.uk

Tracing route to clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    30 ms    27 ms    32 ms  195.218.116.25
  2    28 ms    34 ms     *     UTV-DUB-fastethernet0-0.116.218.195.in-addr.arpa
 [195.218.116.1]
  3    30 ms    28 ms    27 ms  195.218.126.178
  4    30 ms    31 ms    29 ms  195.218.112.2
  5    49 ms    42 ms    43 ms  195.92.55.134
  6    42 ms   511 ms    38 ms  ber-1.r18.telc.as5388.net [195.92.55.156]
  7    40 ms    39 ms    40 ms  lon1-9.nildram.net [195.66.224.59]
  8    43 ms    46 ms    42 ms  jolt-gw.nildram.net [195.149.20.126]
  9    42 ms    40 ms    38 ms  clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11]

Trace complete.

C:\>tracert clarity.jolt.co.uk

Tracing route to clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    90 ms    31 ms    33 ms  195.218.116.25
  2    55 ms    32 ms    33 ms  UTV-DUB-fastethernet0-0.116.218.195.in-addr.arpa
 [195.218.116.1]
  3    45 ms    29 ms    28 ms  195.218.126.178
  4    51 ms    29 ms     *     195.218.112.2
  5    41 ms    96 ms    39 ms  195.92.55.134
  6    73 ms    42 ms    42 ms  ber-1.r18.telc.as5388.net [195.92.55.156]
  7     *       44 ms    42 ms  lon1-9.nildram.net [195.66.224.59]
  8    43 ms    40 ms    40 ms  jolt-gw.nildram.net [195.149.20.126]
  9    42 ms    41 ms    39 ms  clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11]

Trace complete.

edit 2: never noticed the scrolly code window thingy before, nice

WaitingForIBB

I've found that IE can randomly slow down and stop altogether particularly if you have a few windows open. Try using Mozilla Firefox I find it to be much better.

PcP

No I only use IE for hotmail and windows update, Firefox for the rest.
It's not just browsing everything over the connection just stops completely every few minutes. I've been recording game demos and it's roughly every eight minutes it freezes up with smaller ping spikes in between.
It'll do until next month anyway, cheers for the tip though