NTL broadband update [July 2006]

Dopey

Phone up and complain. At least you will get a refund for the portion of time it's not working.

I am in Dublin 7 but I remember an engineer mentioning Lucan when I had a performance problem some time back. Maybe I'm linked in through there.

I phoned last week and asked them to put it on record. I'm waiting for a call back. I'm using a Netgear wireless router plugged into my 250 modem. The modem is less than 9 months old so I presume it's one of the new ones.

By the way Seamus, I tried specifiying two different NTL DNS servers rather than relying on the automated choice. No joy. It might be worth trying some other servers. I'll give that a go.

Cheers.

fatherdougalmag

What speeds are people experiencing this modem reboot/dropped connection problem with? As far as I can see there are some 250-ers with the problem and I might be operating under the illusion that the newer modem will fix my prob. Once again the engineer didn't show yesterday (that't the third time in the past 5 days) and they're due to (not) show up again on Thursday. I'm beginning to think that I should just drop back to 2Mbps until the dust settles (I'm on 3Mbps with a 120).

daramullally

fatherdougalmag wrote:

What speeds are people experiencing this modem reboot/dropped connection problem with? As far as I can see there are some 250-ers with the problem and I might be operating under the illusion that the newer modem will fix my prob. Once again the engineer didn't show yesterday (that't the third time in the past 5 days) and they're due to (not) show up again on Thursday. I'm beginning to think that I should just drop back to 2Mbps until the dust settles (I'm on 3Mbps with a 120).

I don't think it has anything to do with the speed that you are on. I am on the 2Mbps speed and my modem has been rebooting every few minutes. I called support and they are sending an engineer tomorrow. I mentioned that there appears to be a lot of people having trouble like this and the guy said that there has not been a report of major issues on their system.

Stephen P

daramullally wrote:

I don't think it has anything to do with the speed that you are on. I am on the 2Mbps speed and my modem has been rebooting every few minutes. I called support and they are sending an engineer tomorrow. I mentioned that there appears to be a lot of people having trouble like this and the guy said that there has not been a report of major issues on their system.

What planet are support on? Of course the problem is with their system!!

mang87

stephen p wrote:

I'm probably in the same part as you. My da just said that the engineer first thought that there's too many customers on one of the nodes (I haven't a clue what a node is??). The engineer also said they've gotten a "few" complaints in the area and they're looking into and will ring me (when?? I don't know). He must have checked the modem with some hi-tech gadget cos he said it's working fine. Would he have had something to check to see if the modem was working?

I'll keep you posted if I get a phone call from them and let us know seamus what happens on Saturday?

Just curious, where abouts in lucan are you situated? I'm here beside the spa hotel, and would probably be on the clondalkin exchange, and I have no problems really with my connection, other than the latency is pretty crap for a Cable service, and I can't access
www.irishjobs.ie
www.buy4now.ie
www.superclub.ie

My download/upload speed is fine.

Stephen P

mang87 wrote:

Just curious, where abouts in lucan are you situated? I'm here beside the spa hotel, and would probably be on the clondalkin exchange, and I have no problems really with my connection, other than the latency is pretty crap for a Cable service, and I can't access
www.irishjobs.ie
www.buy4now.ie
www.superclub.ie

My download/upload speed is fine.

I live very close to the Penny Hill/Eurospar. I emailed NTL yesterday evening after the technician had been here to make sure that someone would ring me back and they replied today...YES you heard me correct! THEY REPLIED TODAY! They said:

I have checked your account and I can advise that your details have been passed on to the Area Manager for one of his crews to call and rectify this external fault which is causing the issues in which you are experiencing at the moment. *This should take place within the next 5/7 working days*.

*:(

Infini

I finally got a callback from NTL. Fella on the other end said they delay they had in responddin to me was because they had over 4000+ ppl with the same 120 model as my own who were havin crappy service since the change. Finally gettin someone to come out this friday to change my 120 for a newer 250 model. Hope this fixes my problems. On another note has anyone had problems with torrent file quality since last saturday. I downloaded 2 torrents (100%) and both were corrupted is seems. anyone havin similar issues?

Dopey

I got a call today too but it wasn't from the engineer. It was from one of their support people.

Not much use but hey... they called. :eek:

Stephen P

Infini wrote:

I finally got a callback from NTL. Fella on the other end said they delay they had in responddin to me was because they had over 4000+ ppl with the same 120 model as my own who were havin crappy service since the change. Finally gettin someone to come out this friday to change my 120 for a newer 250 model. Hope this fixes my problems. On another note has anyone had problems with torrent file quality since last saturday. I downloaded 2 torrents (100%) and both were corrupted is seems. anyone havin similar issues?

The modem doesn't seem to be the problem though. That's what the engineer who called to my house said. He said its a problem in the area. It's hardly the case that in some area's its the modem that's the problem and in other area's its the "area" that's causing the problems.

I'm baffled by all this!!!!

dublinhead

I rang ntl to let them know about being unable to access certain sites.eg www.buy4now.ie
He told me they were aware of the problem. But said he could not give me a timetable of when it will be fixed. Is there any management in this company at all? Why they dont set up a team to close this problem out i dont know...

donspeekinglesh

fatherdougalmag wrote:

Anyone managed to get a replacement modem yet?

An engineer was due to call out last Tuesday - not heard a thing from them. Didn't ring though because things are mostly working again (though had lost connection for over an hour today).
Having no problems with torrents, though I think my speeds are a bit slow (which may be the fault of the people sharing the files - haven't checked into it yet).
My general speeds are okay, just can't access the same sites as everyone else.

fatherdougalmag

Well I nipped up to a mate's house. He's using a 200 modem on 2Mbps service without any problems. I plugged my modem in and it reboots after any kind of sudden upload activity. Have yet to try his modem in my place but quite confident that a new modem should resolve my problem. All the same, the NTL bill arrived this morning and I told them I wouldn't be paying until the problem is sorted.

If this keeps up, I'll be spending the money on marriage guidance due to having VoIP and no backup phone line.

MrPunch

In further problems I've noticed that none of the regular speed tests show my connection (6Mb) as anything approaching that. BTW the cable modem reads as being connected at 6144000 bps

Blacknight (http://www.irishisptest.com/) reads me as 1.4Mbps down while nothing in the States registers higher than 800Kbps

Another irish one Hosting365 (http://www.speedtest.ie/) gives a best speed of 1.22Mb with a stunning 37% quality of service :mad:

Finally downloading the 1.5MB file from eircom's test (http://www.eircom.net/speedtest) takes 10.375secs or 1.15Mbps in real money.

Are other's experiencing such abominable performance with the high end package? Should I just downgrade at this point or move to Smart?

john

_CyRuSS_

stephen p wrote:

I live very close to the Penny Hill/Eurospar. I emailed NTL yesterday evening after the technician had been here to make sure that someone would ring me back and they replied today...YES you heard me correct! THEY REPLIED TODAY! They said:



*:(

Wtf? this is pissing me off.... everytime I email them, i never get a reply back until a week++ later. I sent an email to them last week, and STILL no reply, and the ticket is still open... I am curious to see how long it will take so I can make up a nice reply informing them of how sh*t they are...... I don't care how bad customer support is.... a week delay on emails is taking the piss, 2 days is acceptable for crap support... a week+... what are they doing? checking emails once a week?

well obviously not, you got your reply... but anytime I ever email them I never get a reply til ages GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR im so mad :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Stephen P

_CyRuSS_ wrote:

Wtf? this is pissing me off.... everytime I email them, i never get a reply back until a week++ later. I sent an email to them last week, and STILL no reply, and the ticket is still open... I am curious to see how long it will take so I can make up a nice reply informing them of how sh*t they are...... I don't care how bad customer support is.... a week delay on emails is taking the piss, 2 days is acceptable for crap support... a week+... what are they doing? checking emails once a week?

well obviously not, you got your reply... but anytime I ever email them I never get a reply til ages GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR im so mad :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

That's terrible that you're not getting any reply at all from them!! I know this might not help but try emailing customer.support@ntl.ie, that's the email address that they reply to me from. And I replied to that yesterday and got the reply today. Took a week or more to get the reply from cablemodemhelp@ntl.ie (or .com). If I was you I'd ring them and say you've sent them an email and haven't heard anything.
I'll be hounding them again in 5/7 working days to see if they problem is sorted.

Hope you get a reply from them soon!!

dr.bollocko

Sounds like Bandwidth issues for NTL at their core link out of Ireland to me.
From what I hear with our out connection here, they have problems with routing out of ireland

Everyone is up in arms about a modem replacement, but I dont think that any more than 3 or 4 modems could break simultaneously in the same area. Partic considering NTL have numerous modem models and there are issues with all of them its clearly an issue with their bandwidth available as a whole. A modem change isnt going to improve that at all, and you will still have the same 6mb config file.

They have removed the 10mb connection and put it onto a 6mb connection, and the only reason why some people were on the 10mb while others were on the 6mb is that they didnt reset their modem. Every time those cable modems are reset they go through a logon process to the network. This involves, I think, resending the config file. If you dont reset the modem, the config file on the modem would stay the same.
A comms company wouldnt normally reset all modems remotely as this could cripple the DHCP server.
There is absolutely no point at all changing DNS, there is no magic DNS where problems are all resolved IMHO, partic as I am thinking that the problem is beyond the DNS, its an issue with bandwidth to servers outside ireland.

I reckon if you traceroute to google, and then ping or speed test all the hops, you will see that from your modem, to any server in ireland, the speed will be incredibly fast, once it leaves ireland, this seems to be where the problems arise. That is indicating that NTL need to bulk up their bandwidth for their areas as a whole, probably just too many users and not enough bandwidth. This is the only explanation I could have for such a wide array of problems. I reckon within a month things will get back to relative normality.

Also Id reckon that the problem with accessing Irish sites is an issue with them, failing to resolve Irish IP addresses, and failing to route them or link the IP address to the site correctly.

fatherdougalmag

It's clear that their problems are manifold. Right now, access to the Irish NTL network is via the Netherlands (try playing with http://visualroute.visualware.com/ and telling it to trace to www.ntlworld.ie). So if you ping/access an Irish site it goes through considerably more hops than it used to. Information from Blueface suggests that "they have a capacity issue on their (NTL Ireland's) INEX connection" and "they cannot undertake any new peerings until it is upgraded". So that's one aspect of their problem.

The other aspect is that some people are having problems particularly with upstream communication. If you do any kind of serious upload (or possibly combined upload and download) activity, the modem actually reboots. I agree that they seem to have pushed some kind of firmware update/config to the modems and it's caused a certain amount of upset.

Then there appears to have been some problems with email and webspace too.

So NTL Ireland are in a state of flux at the moment and until the dust settles it's a sit and wait game.

Mossy

dr.bollocko wrote:

There is absolutely no point at all changing DNS...

There is if you've set your DNS settings manually because the DNS servers have changed since the "upgrade" last week (or whenever it was). If you still have the old DNS server settings then your not going to get far.

Of course that problem can be fixed (or avoided) by using the automatic settings.

dr.bollocko wrote:

... there is no magic DNS where problems are all resolved IMHO, partic as I am thinking that the problem is beyond the DNS, its an issue with bandwidth to servers outside ireland.

Agreed, but changing the DNS settings can fix the problem described above for the handful that have that issue.

dr.bollocko

Yeah this much is true, I was referring only to someone moving from an automatic DNS to a manually selected DNS wouldnt make any difference, but if U have manually selected a DNS in the first place, definitely change it!!! I dont know if NTL are even acknowledging these issues. Does it appear to be countrywide at the moment? I mean if U have a 6mb line, at peak times this should be approx 4mb. 3mb would be mean but 1 or less is ridiculous.

MartMax

the major problem i am having now since two weeks ago is connection constantly drops, every 2-4 mins like and around the clock!

mart

_CyRuSS_

dr.bollocko wrote:

Sounds like Bandwidth issues for NTL at their core link out of Ireland to me.
From what I hear with our out connection here, they have problems with routing out of ireland

Nah can't be true, I'm having no speed problems or any connectivity problems at all, just before the modem reset I was getting 10mbps no problem, a little spikey down to 8mbps but at night i got the full 10mbps... now i get a constant 6mbps no matter, no spikes at all.... only connectivity problem I have is accessing those few Irish sites everyone else has probs with

They have removed the 10mb connection and put it onto a 6mb connection, and the only reason why some people were on the 10mb while others were on the 6mb is that they didnt reset their modem. Every time those cable modems are reset they go through a logon process to the network. This involves, I think, resending the config file. If you dont reset the modem, the config file on the modem would stay the same.

true, but their modem will eventually be forced reset, maybe not everyone at once, but they will force the modem to get a new config, I believe it does it periodicly, So they won't have 10mbps for long.

I am thinking that the problem is beyond the DNS, its an issue with bandwidth to servers outside ireland.
...
Also Id reckon that the problem with accessing Irish sites is an issue with them, failing to resolve Irish IP addresses, and failing to route them or link the IP address to the site correctly.

The problem with those irish sites is a routing problem (i think), since ntl/chello have changed all their routes, something has gone wrong with one of their routes, it must be a static route, or it is out of their control (in a sense) the router that is causing problems for all those irish sites is an Eircom router, same one for all those websites, it stops all traffic there..... I am thinking since ntl have changed over to chello, Eircom's router is still confused on who is sending these packets, and whether or not it is allowed to or something.... honestly it should have been fixed by now, they're very slow.... it'd just be a config change on the router (i'd imagine, as i've done this stuff in my Cisco course)

bit silly that its taking so long.. anyway I don't think there is any problem with bandwidth outside of Ireland, theres a problem in some of ntl's areas where they messed something up..... here in Knocklyon all suprisingly works fine.... except they deleted my email address *grumble*

*edit* well if there is a problem with their bandwidth out of ireland, i sure am not noticing it, so i don't see why only certain ppl or areas would be, instead of everyone... so no way is everybodies problem here to do with bandwidth out of Ireland.... ntl are so damn slow with these problems, I don't mind them having these hiccups with the changeover, but what REALLY pisses me off, is (1) they didn't tell us about any of this, they should have sent a letter out saying there will be a massive changeover occuring and services may be interupted for a cpl of weeks. and (2) in the week or two all these problems have been happening, I have not noticed one single change/improvement (has anyone?) it's like they're just doing nothing! these can't be that hard to fix if you can't fix these sort of problems within 24 hours, hell even less, they could lose out so much money... i hope they are... worst support ever!

_CyRuSS_

woohoo about time, my email is back working again! 122 emails downloading (slowly :P) only been down for 2 weeks :P

hehe and ntl still never got back to me on my support ticket, typical

Stephen P

_CyRuSS_ wrote:

woohoo about time, my email is back working again! 122 emails downloading (slowly :P) only been down for 2 weeks :P

hehe and ntl still never got back to me on my support ticket, typical

That happened me, my email wasn't working for about 5 days and I had emailed them about it and then a couple days later it was fixed. So I think they just do something to fix it and don't let you know it is fixed. Great support!! :rolleyes:

dr.bollocko

U know I think what I said in previous post is wrong. I think that NTL are moved to UPCs line. I am pretty sure that they have a fibre optic line... so how could they have bandwidth issues?
:clueless:

Infini

On my 6megabyte line.....

http://www.irishisptest.com/ Quoted me at 3.25 meg download. Rest unavailable cos the line dies when the upload test is preformed,
http://www.speedtest.ie/ download speed 2.23 megs upload 529k QoS = 97% round trip 67ms
http://www.eircom.net/speedtest quotes me at 3.29mb download speed

Strange results :X

Gonna run an update of these results tomorrow after my 120 has been replaced......

fatherdougalmag

Since the routing is going through the Netherlands you might be better off using a Dutch speed test. (more listed here)

[Edit: The NTL man came today and replaced my 120 modem. My modem reboot problems appear to have been sorted from what testing I've done.]

Drapper

fatherdougalmag wrote:

Since the routing is going through the Netherlands you might be better off using a Dutch speed test. (more listed here)

[Edit: The NTL man came today and replaced my 120 modem. My modem reboot problems appear to have been sorted from what testing I've done.]

might seem like a dumb question but the routing will take what direction:-

1. Dublin
2. Holland

where is the link ?? does it go via the UK ?

fatherdougalmag

From what I can remember, it goes through the UK to Holland and then it goes to wherever it's going. Use the VisualRoute thing to do a combined traceroute/geo IP lookup to see where the route is going.

Drapper

so if you ping a server in the UK it goes to HOlland first or peers in the Uk (sorry not at an NTL conneciton at the moment)?

fatherdougalmag

That's the jist. Sorry I'm a bit sketchy but I'm firewalled to the hilt at home and I just get timeouts on traceroute so I asked an NTL mate to do it for me. I looked up the IP's along the route and they went through UK-Netherlands-UK-Ireland. That was a traceroute to sip.blueface.ie. My understanding is that they do intend to peer at Inex eventually. For example, you could try traceroute'ing to www.ntlworld.ie or upload.ntlworld.ie from anywhere and it will go through the Netherlands. Use VisualRoute or plot the hops into http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm.