NTL broadband not loading some sites

lateshift

i was a bit hasty thinking NTL were sorting out the problem.
megaupload vanished again, filefactory is still gone and since then i've struck out with at least 3 more free file sharing sites.
NTL's service is fast becoming useless for me..
great speed, ok usage allowance.. but nowhere to get anything from.

JNive

yah, the 'cheap way to limit bandwidth usage' has crossed my mind before. instead letting people that visit these sites be able to use ANY bandwidth and squeez out users who dont, and hence result in small speeds, they are making these sites unreachable, so people put it down to 'technical' issues as opposed to crap speed, and those that dont visit these sites anyways, dont notice a thing a get their nice speed.

Its just the type of sites that get affected by this issue are alarmingly similar.
it wouldnt surprise me if youtube goes next week on ntl

dub45

JNive wrote:

yah, the 'cheap way to limit bandwidth usage' has crossed my mind before. instead letting people that visit these sites be able to use ANY bandwidth and squeez out users who dont, and hence result in small speeds, they are making these sites unreachable, so people put it down to 'technical' issues as opposed to crap speed, and those that dont visit these sites anyways, dont notice a thing a get their nice speed.

Its just the type of sites that get affected by this issue are alarmingly similar.
it wouldnt surprise me if youtube goes next week on ntl

Is there any technical objective way of finding out if an isp is blocking particular sites? (thats assuming of course that they will not deal with the problem as people report the unavailabilities)

lensman

2000ad wrote:

Just found this thread and I've been experiencing similar problems. For example,
http://img150.imagevenue.com will not load in NTL but will load from Eircom. The strange thing is that other imagevenue hosts will work. The net effect is that if someone posts 20 pics to a messageboard, all using imagevenue, then I only see a few of the thumbnails. My first impression was that this was a sneaky way of NTL limiting bandwidth but you guys recon this is a routing issue?

yes but this works
http://imagevenue.com/host.php

inforfun

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

I don't think UPC want to become a UTV.

Well... When i was still in Holland i also had to deal with UPC. In the city i lived there were not too many problems. Personally i didnt experience much ****e from them (apart from never getting back my deposit for the modem). But UPC was available all over Holland and if it gave people problems, it was never solved. So as long as it works with UPC it is ok. But you are in deep **** whenever a problem occurs.
And as far as i am concerned... i am in deep poop now. From early evening till around midnight the connection i have is a joke. Dial up would be ashamed for this performance. And this is now since december 29th.

JNive

traffic is stopped with ntl, its pretty hard to determine for sure whether such blocks/stops are technical recurring faults or intentional. the only way is if the 'faults' occur to sites of different types and not just ones which are popular or cause high traffic.

then of these sites, check the routes they go over, see if there is a pattern or if its all fairly random ( if the traffic seems to be going through common points and stopping, its probably a technical fault ) if the traffic is going through a variety of hops, yet traffic to sites you CAN reach also goes through the SAME hops, then i smell something rotten

RaiseTheBlinds

poor you , waiting for ntl to help you out is like ...is like ...err , i dont know

i need to get my tv working again and they tell me i have to wait 3 weeks for somebody to check out the problem !! due to arrive mid feburary !

im sure ill still get billed, for the month i never availed of it.

anybody who subscribes to ntl is vunreable
ask Joe Duffy and his callers !!!
ntl waiting on the phones for up to 45 minutes for an answer.
ntl use a CALL CENTRE , used by staff who know nothing about your problems.

i cant wait to get out of the ntl contract ! just checkout ntl's irish website,... the only direct contact i can find is the email address link.

ntl dont seem to reply to emails. well i never got one back anyhow !!

thats my moan of the week over and done with,..ill bee back to my usual happy self again for another 7 days

2000ad

lensman wrote:

yes but this works
http://imagevenue.com/host.php

Err... yes but that's not the point.

landmonster

For me I can go the imageshack.us home page but I cannot see any images hosting on Imageshack.

Same with the examples above.

I doubt it's deliberate because it's not just these kinds of sites. People's personal sites/businesses are unvailable to me as well. It's more than likely a routing issue. Some of the traceroutes I posted earlier in the thread show the trace breaking down at the same point each time.

They probably just can't be arsed to fix it.

dub45

RaiseTheBlinds wrote:

poor you , waiting for ntl to help you out is like ...is like ...err , i dont know

i need to get my tv working again and they tell me i have to wait 3 weeks for somebody to check out the problem !! due to arrive mid feburary !

im sure ill still get billed, for the month i never availed of it.

anybody who subscribes to ntl is vunreable
ask Joe Duffy and his callers !!!
ntl waiting on the phones for up to 45 minutes for an answer.
ntl use a CALL CENTRE , used by staff who know nothing about your problems.

i cant wait to get out of the ntl contract ! just checkout ntl's irish website,... the only direct contact i can find is the email address link.

ntl dont seem to reply to emails. well i never got one back anyhow !!

thats my moan of the week over and done with,..ill bee back to my usual happy self again for another 7 days

You have already paid for it! Dont NTL bill in advance?:rolleyes:

mad m

Just an off topic question,any get a phone call from a rep of NTL wanting to know the Mac number of modem,rep said it was to update customer database becasue some weren't done with the change over..

StanLaurel

JNive wrote:

yup, same here, i cant reach ebaums either lol ( on the chorus line )

With regards to the above I had a problem accessing ebaums and have currently been able to access after trawling for info and eventually finding an easy solution which worked for me at least. It might work for some of you as it worked for me in my situation:
I couldn't access ebaums all of a sudden after downloading IE7, after advice and common sense I:
*went back to IE6
*messed with the Ipv6 thing mentioned earlier.
*Downloaded ccleaner, and cleaned out reg issues (this also installed a Yahoo toolbar).
*Disabled pop up blocker on IE browser options.

All with no joy.

Eventually I discovered that two pop up blockers were active one in IE6 which I had disabled, and one in the installed Yahoo toolbar the Yahoo toolbar pop up block option was still in place (under toolbar options /uncheck block pop ups) and it prevented me from accessing ebaums and various flash sites.

Once both pop up options were disabled everything was fine. This may work for some and I thought I would add it. Obviously there are other issues as well as I tried the podcaster link earlier to test and this would not work still.

landmonster

Still banjaxed for me.

lensman

RS.com not loading again this evening,...was grand for a week or so,...it's back to the proxy:( or https

mdev

yes rapidshare.com is gone and all of a sudden megaupload is back at the exact same time, i've never had imageavenue. im convinced ntl is restricting the sites at different intervals. i spoke to an ntl technition and he gave me the impression that they were at fault.

Dodge

rs.com working for me...

lensman

and me

landmonster

Can anyone on NTL try these two sites for me?

http://www.kissingsuzykolber.net/
http://problemchildbride.com/blog/?p=109

Thanks. If you can get them please let me know your location. I'm in Dublin and they don't work.

lensman

landmonster wrote:

Can anyone on NTL try these two sites for me?

http://www.kissingsuzykolber.net/
http://problemchildbride.com/blog/?p=109

Thanks. If you can get them please let me know your location. I'm in Dublin and they don't work.

(NTHell) no luck, Dublin 7

mwrf

landmonster wrote:

Can anyone on NTL try these two sites for me?

http://www.kissingsuzykolber.net/
http://problemchildbride.com/blog/?p=109

Thanks. If you can get them please let me know your location. I'm in Dublin and they don't work.

blank in templeogue

joolsveer

I can get the first site in Dublin 15.

landmonster

I'm Templeogue too. I think this shows us it's not a case that they're deliberately blocking sites like Rapidshare to cut down on usage.

There's no reason these two sites should be 'blocked'. They're simply not available because of an NTL fault.

Funnily enough both those sites have Yahoo as their nameservers.

Name Server.......... yns1.yahoo.com
Name Server.......... yns2.yahoo.com

If anyone else has problems with sites it might be worth checking that out.

Thanks all.

inforfun

After sending an email again, one that was a bit loaded with sarcasm, and calling again i finally got a call back. Unfortunately i was cut off the first time i called after spending 20 mins on hold but that did sound like an human error (some idiot dropped the phone). So again i had to go through 20 mins waiting and got to speak to someone who sounded at least as she was willing to help me out.

Surprise surprise... i got a call back the next day, last friday, indeed. To save me some time i explained what i had done so far and what i think is definitely not the problem (my stuff).

Guy said he was going to escalate my problem to 3rd level support..... We are Monday now and 3rd level didn't contact me of course.

Going into the 6th week with this. :mad:

Last weekend it was pants all weekend apart from maybe in the middle of the night. Getting a bit fed up with this. Unfortunately NTL is my only option for broadband internet. Otherwise they would have found their modem back in places where it feels really uncomfortable.

Anyone who has some advice about getting my money for those 6 weeks (and counting) back?

Nothingbetter2d

do any of you use a net gear wgr614 v6 or v7 router supplied by ntl? if you have one then i would suggest you update the router's firmware... you can get it from www.netgear.com it seemed to have improved my connection a great deal and microsoft sites (hotmail and live) now load and actually quiet quickly. even boards.ie loads fast now

dub45

inforfun wrote:

After sending an email again, one that was a bit loaded with sarcasm, and calling again i finally got a call back. Unfortunately i was cut off the first time i called after spending 20 mins on hold but that did sound like an human error (some idiot dropped the phone). So again i had to go through 20 mins waiting and got to speak to someone who sounded at least as she was willing to help me out.

Surprise surprise... i got a call back the next day, last friday, indeed. To save me some time i explained what i had done so far and what i think is definitely not the problem (my stuff).

Guy said he was going to escalate my problem to 3rd level support..... We are Monday now and 3rd level didn't contact me of course.

Going into the 6th week with this. :mad:

Last weekend it was pants all weekend apart from maybe in the middle of the night. Getting a bit fed up with this. Unfortunately NTL is my only option for broadband internet. Otherwise they would have found their modem back in places where it feels really uncomfortable.

Anyone who has some advice about getting my money for those 6 weeks (and counting) back?

You could threaten them with the Small Claims court apparently one or two people on here have done that and it frightens the life out of them!.


http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories/justice/the-legal-system/courts-system/small_claims_court/?searchterm=small%20claims%20court

inforfun

Thanks for the info, i will look into it. Heard about it before but since i am not from "here" i couldn't find much info about it.
1 week later and still awaiting level 3 call. I have had it with NTL.

Praetor

inforfun wrote:

Thanks for the info, i will look into it. Heard about it before but since i am not from "here" i couldn't find much info about it.
1 week later and still awaiting level 3 call. I have had it with NTL.

Hi!

I havent read the whole post but just one question... have you reduced your MTU value?????

If its too high the packets will get lost consequently you will not open that webpage. This normally ocurrs with sites like rte.ie, or even microsoft.com...

inforfun

Praetor wrote:

Hi!

I havent read the whole post but just one question... have you reduced your MTU value?????

If its too high the packets will get lost consequently you will not open that webpage. This normally ocurrs with sites like rte.ie, or even microsoft.com...

Well... since i had to look up what MTU was doing i think i can safely assume that i didnt.
Thanks for the input though.

Praetor

inforfun wrote:

Well... since i had to look up what MTU was doing i think i can safely assume that i didnt.
Thanks for the input though.

hehehehe

I am sorry, I will explain, MTU is the maximum data transmitable before it has to be cut into smallers packets. Depending on your ISP this might change. Basically when you access a website this site will send you back an ack signal and it needs to know how big can they be, thats when MTU is used. If your router doesnt ack this then the site will send this packet in the "standard" size (1500) (Normally if you router doesnt answer its due to security issues, such as not being pingable...).

Ok, here is the problem, if the MTU set on your router is smaller than the packets sent by the website then you have a problem as those packets are too big and the modem/router will not "read" them.

Its worth giving it a try anyway.

So try making your self pingable or move MTU up to the highest value, max MTU value is 1500, but you need to substract 8 bits = 1492).

If it doesnt work then set it back to its original.

This is very common when you are under a private network.

inforfun

Praetor wrote:

hehehehe

I am sorry, I will explain, MTU is the maximum data transmitable before it has to be cut into smallers packets. Depending on your ISP this might change. Basically when you access a website this site will send you back an ack signal and it needs to know how big can they be, thats when MTU is used. If your router doesnt ack this then the site will send this packet in the "standard" size (1500) (Normally if you router doesnt answer its due to security issues, such as not being pingable...).

Ok, here is the problem, if the MTU set on your router is smaller than the packets sent by the website then you have a problem as those packets are too big and the modem/router will not "read" them.

Its worth giving it a try anyway.

So try making your self pingable or move MTU up to the highest value, max MTU value is 1500, but you need to substract 8 bits = 1492).

If it doesnt work then set it back to its original.

This is very common when you are under a private network.

Clear explanation, thanks.

Point is that i don't use a router.

But the behavior i am facing looks very familiar to your story. Websites load slow here because my upload is going tits up. So the ack reaches websites with huge delays.
My speed has been up to what it should be from 11 last night till 5 this afternoon. At the moment it is still bad. I expect it to be back to normal in about 1 or 2 hours.
The fact that i am only facing this problem during the evening tells me it has nothing to do with settings on my side and everything to do with NTL screwing up.