Official new NTL BB Speeds

lensman

dub45 wrote:

Well assign one of them to research bb in your area then.

or you could relocate from Swords to a nice NTL BB enabled area it's all the rage you know :cool:

redbag

Blaster99 wrote:

10Mbps ethernet doesn't give 10Mbps in reality regardless of the router or switch being used. It's also quite possible that the NTL modem is limited to 10Mbps ethernet, so it doesn't matter if the router is capable of 100Mbps on the WAN side. Cheap stuff like Linksys or Netgear is certainly not capable of wirespeed, particularly not through the firewall, but I don't think you'll see much degradation at low speeds like 10Mbps, except for stuff caused by bugs.

Yeah, I've the netgear WGR614 wireless router, get over 6 Mbs plugged into cable modem, down to about 2.5 Mbs once I go wireless thu the router. Annoying, but I've a feeling the only away around it is to change to a decent router. Actually, one thing I didn't try was connecting laptop directly to router and checking the speed...

ripclaw

okcomputer wrote:

yes sorry lensman,

ripclaw why are you moaning at 35 megs!!??? seriously

LOL right, sorry, was apparently using the results from the cache thats what you get for blindly copy&pasting...

But the heanet result was ok. Anyway, played around with the TCP Receiving Window and that actually made a big difference. Getting closer to 500kb/s now which is allright.

okcomputer

i find I rarely get faster than 300K/s on the 6mbit connection!

silverlining

Galway NTL users were upgraded yesterday.

Was on 3Mb/300Kb now getting 1MB down from heanet, 512Kb up from speedtest.ie

Spud

im getting around 1.2 mb per second using netgear all day and night

latenia

I'm moving to a new place soon and was thinking of ntl. My main worry is how strict they are with the cap. I have BT at the moment and am 'getting away with murder'. Will they charge or just ignore it?

bk

latenia wrote:

I'm moving to a new place soon and was thinking of ntl. My main worry is how strict they are with the cap. I have BT at the moment and am 'getting away with murder'. Will they charge or just ignore it?

NTL are probably one of the most lenient operators. They don't charge for going over the cap. The only thing that has ever happened is that they have written to people who regularly went way over the cap (seems to be over 100GB) every month and even then they just asked the user to keep their use down a bit for the benefit of all users.

It seems tthey only do this when you are adversely effecting the other people on your node, which is very fair IMO.

MartMax

is everyone quiet now because they got the upgrade...

mart

okcomputer

not everyone is happy but we have ran out of steam. could anyone who is consistently getting lower than 6 megs post there findings here

PixelTrawler

well i find the only time NTL is quick is before 5 on saturdays and sundays.... after that and after 6 monday to friday its consistently no where near the speed its meant to be...

its p*ssed me off no end since day 1 with erratic pings and speeds that vary wildly depending on which way the wind blows or the position of the moon by the looks of things..

We had engineers out to check the line and apparently we have a perfect connection, very clean, no noise

And the upgrade has just made the variance of speed even worse but has had no effect for better or worse on pings...

Ive given up playing games i used to online as the ping spikes can ruin the experience... BF2 was particularly badly affected. Mind you xbox live doesnt seem to bothered by it, also downloads of marketplace always seem pretty quick. I get no lag off battlefield 2 on xbox but freguent lag on the pc

Ordinary web browsing is generally ok but there still seems to be delays sometimes loading pages that just didnt seem to happen when i had dsl... it doesnt seem like the sites are slow, its like DNS server trouble, like its just taking a few moments to get connected to the sites

I think once my year is up im going back to DSL as cable just seems way to inconsistent...

mwrf

have you got an old gray 100/120 modem? that could be your problem

bk

Working sweet here, need to download 2 or 3 ISO's from heanet in order to get the full 10m, rarely get full speed on a single download or P2P, but I don't think that is NTL's problem, probably throttling on the server.

One day I decided to really push, ran out of HDD space, downloaded of gigs of stuff off Heanet.

Must go download the new Ubuntu and Kubuntu DVD ISO's now

huggs2

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

well i find the only time NTL is quick is before 5 on saturdays and sundays.... after that and after 6 monday to friday its consistently no where near the speed its meant to be...

its p*ssed me off no end since day 1 with erratic pings and speeds that vary wildly depending on which way the wind blows or the position of the moon by the looks of things..

We had engineers out to check the line and apparently we have a perfect connection, very clean, no noise

And the upgrade has just made the variance of speed even worse but has had no effect for better or worse on pings...

Ive given up playing games i used to online as the ping spikes can ruin the experience... BF2 was particularly badly affected. Mind you xbox live doesnt seem to bothered by it, also downloads of marketplace always seem pretty quick. I get no lag off battlefield 2 on xbox but freguent lag on the pc

Ordinary web browsing is generally ok but there still seems to be delays sometimes loading pages that just didnt seem to happen when i had dsl... it doesnt seem like the sites are slow, its like DNS server trouble, like its just taking a few moments to get connected to the sites

I think once my year is up im going back to DSL as cable just seems way to inconsistent...

ya i feel your pain, this problem has gone on for a long time now.I had eircon
from day one (april 03 i think) and never had a single problem except towards the end when the line went poor and i had it disconnected.Smart say its seven weeks to get me a new phone line if i want to go with them.Anyway this seems to be a problem with the galway network. Lets hope they get it sorted soon

PixelTrawler

Stebishop

its the newer 250 so its not that either... Thanks for the suggestion though... i think at this stage we've tried eveything... I mean its usable, it does download, sometimes quick enough even. Too hit and miss for fps gaming though.

Huggs,
I had eircom too before and the only bad point was the price. Service was top class. It was my first broadband product and i didnt know how good i had it til i went to NTL...

Edit: Huggs where abouts are you in galway Or an easier question is do you live in a new estate or an old one. I live in an older estate that has the NTL cables running along the gutters and down the outside of the walls. I wonder has this have anything to do with it. Maybe its all the old exposed cables?

Bk...
Its true you can run several downloads at once, but response to server/pings is still poor/variable, and those weird pauses that occur sometimes before pages load can be annoying... Mind you when it is quick its very very quick, its a shame it doesnt happen too often. You're right though, multiple downloads is the best way to get your bandwidths worth

huggs2

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

Stebishop

its the newer 250 so its not that either... Thanks for the suggestion though... i think at this stage we've tried eveything... I mean its usable, it does download, sometimes quick enough even. Too hit and miss for fps gaming though.

Huggs,
I had eircom too before and the only bad point was the price. Service was top class. It was my first broadband product and i didnt know how good i had it til i went to NTL...

Edit: Huggs where abouts are you in galway Or an easier question is do you live in a new estate or an old one. I live in an older estate that has the NTL cables running along the gutters and down the outside of the walls. I wonder has this have anything to do with it. Maybe its all the old exposed cables?

Bk...
Its true you can run several downloads at once, but response to server/pings is still poor/variable, and those weird pauses that occur sometimes before pages load can be annoying... Mind you when it is quick its very very quick, its a shame it doesnt happen too often. You're right though, multiple downloads is the best way to get your bandwidths worth

joe, I live in an older estate on the extream outskirts.But like you said all the readings are perfect.I personally think they have too many customers and not enough bandwidth.I also think your average user dosent fully realise they have a bb problem and if they do think they have a problem they probably put it down to their computer or something else.Yes eircom was a good service alright.always got consistant results, like you say the price was crazy
though.
no i dont think its the cables or the readings would not be perfect. They now assure me that this problem will be sorted in the next few days.Was told this before but i live in hope.

PixelTrawler

lets be positive then! might as well try it, ive exhausted every other option...:)

christophicus

My connection dropscompletely for hours on end every day,which really pisses me off!!!If it wouyld just stay on the whole time i wouldnt even mind the fact that most of teh time when it is working i only get a speed of around2.5Mb down when im on the 6Mb package.

redbag

Just a quick note for anyone on the netgear WGR614 router that comes bundled with NTL. I know a few people had issues with the speed once connected wirelessly... I downloaded tweakmaster and ran the wizard for optimising wireless connections.. Increased speed instantly from 2Mbps to 6Mps.... Now full benefit of NTL package available all over the house

ozmo

redbag wrote:

Just a quick note for anyone on the netgear WGR614 router that comes bundled with NTL. I know a few people had issues with the speed once connected wirelessly... I downloaded tweakmaster and ran the wizard for optimising wireless connections.. Increased speed instantly from 2Mbps to 6Mps.... Now full benefit of NTL package available all over the house

Another note - anyone using NTL wireless - Make sure you lock down the modem - I found someone using mine and I had WEP64 and 'MAC Access List' security.

So the Disable SID Broadcast, Setup Access list or WEP64 is NOT enough to stop your neighbourhood sharing your connection (unless you are really nice and dont mind)
Use WEP128 or WPA-PSK that is in available in the modem - that should slow em down a bit more.

You can see whos using your internet by looking at the modems "Attached Devices" menu. Default at this address:

http://192.168.1.1/DEV_device.htm

(dont forget bluetooth box will show up here as a device if you have one...)

Foxwood

ozmo wrote:

Use WEP128 or WPA-PSK

Use WPA-PSK - it was designed to address the weakenesses in WEP - including WEP128!

dub45

Foxwood wrote:

Use WPA-PSK - it was designed to address the weakenesses in WEP - including WEP128!

Much easier to set up and use as well.

keyran

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

BF2 was particularly badly affected. Mind you xbox live doesnt seem to bothered by it, also downloads of marketplace always seem pretty quick. I get no lag off battlefield 2 on xbox but freguent lag on the pc

Would this not suggest a possible a PC issue if the xbox is running ok all the time.

bk wrote:

rarely get full speed on a single download or P2P

P2P is going to rely on the upload speed of the Person you are downloading from. With most people on P2P limiting the amount of upload bandwidth aloud by their P2P programs you probably wont get full connection speed.

Drapper

used a syware programme to check for probalems? do you use a firewall?

PixelTrawler

keyran wrote:

Would this not suggest a possible a PC issue if the xbox is running ok all the time.

well i had eircom and had none of these problems... the only thing thats changed with my setup is my broadband provider

keyran

Its possible you have gotten some spyware. Just because it didn’t happen with eircom doesn’t mean the computer develop a problem after you got connected to ntl. If the connection is ok through the xbox then that almost undoubtedly suggests the connection is fine and the problem is PC related.

Check you firewall settings too an automatic updated may have changed the settings higher then they where previously causing the problem.

PixelTrawler

the problem isnt spyware - the machines clean... ive scanned it with multiple programs...

also the behaviour is the same on two pcs. The problem is ping spikes, constant fluctuating pings 30-70 with spikes of 100+. Now some games are more affected then others. Anything based on half life 2 seem less affected, its as if they can compensate (maybe its smoothing it out somehow).

Battlefield 2 is really badly affected. Ive found project gotham racing 3 and Bf2 MC are not really affected. Again Live like Steam might be very good at smoothing out the connection. It all depends on the game.

Also if you run a tracing program to look at the connection over time, the biggest spikes usually come in the 3 - 7th hops which seem to be from one ntl router/ server to another (ntl routing seems really weird).

This makes me think its either the network in my area, or the Galway networks connection back up to Dublin which then connects out to the rest of the internet

Also Huggs there seems to be hitting similar issues here in Galway...

Thanks for the suggestions though... I had thought of spyware myself but nothing is showing up

EDIT : Just noticed this guy with the exact same problem as me in the same area http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054940057. His traces look like mine
The one other thing ive noticed recently is i have a UK ip address and sites like showmyip.com show me as connecting through NTL Nottingham! One advantage here is i can see all the bbc and channel 4 uk only stuff....

shltter

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

the problem isnt spyware - the machines clean... ive scanned it with multiple programs...

also the behaviour is the same on two pcs. The problem is ping spikes, constant fluctuating pings 30-70 with spikes of 100+. Now some games are more affected then others. Anything based on half life 2 seem less affected, its as if they can compensate (maybe its smoothing it out somehow).

Battlefield 2 is really badly affected. Ive found project gotham racing 3 and Bf2 MC are not really affected. Again Live like Steam might be very good at smoothing out the connection. It all depends on the game.

Also if you run a tracing program to look at the connection over time, the biggest spikes usually come in the 3 - 7th hops which seem to be from one ntl router/ server to another (ntl routing seems really weird).

This makes me think its either the network in my area, or the Galway networks connection back up to Dublin which then connects out to the rest of the internet

Also Huggs there seems to be hitting similar issues here in Galway...

Thanks for the suggestions though... I had thought of spyware myself but nothing is showing up

EDIT : Just noticed this guy with the exact same problem as me in the same area http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054940057. His traces look like mine
The one other thing ive noticed recently is i have a UK ip address and sites like showmyip.com show me as connecting through NTL Nottingham! One advantage here is i can see all the bbc and channel 4 uk only stuff....

That is weird I just checked my IP address and it has changed as well after a year of having the same one.

Mine also comes up as NTL nottingham but I'm in Dublin so it is not just a Galway thing

fatherdougalmag

And that's why google.com redirects to google.co.uk

JPA

fatherdougalmag wrote:

And that's why google.com redirects to google.co.uk

Routing through the UK has it's advantages when it comes to the BBC now that the world cup is on.