another ntl thread..

big_moe

ok, major pi§§ed off here... i have recently switched over from eircom 2mb to ntl 3mb. i have the black motorola cable modem plugged into a basic netgear wifi router.

while i appreciate that on speedtest.net my internet speed is usually faster, i have noticed my torrents are absolutely terrible.... since my main internet usage is torrents this is obviously becoming a major pain in the ass.. i have the wifi router set up to port forward and there are no settings on the cable modem for port forwarding. azureus says im not getting a NAT error so i know my port forward is working fine.

i have heard a few people talking about this traffic shaping, which from what i can gather is ntl controlling the flow of the internet for certain applications.. so is that what this is?? they are allowing my browser to get full access to the full speed but my torrents are forced to be slow?? right now my torrent is going along at a whopping 7.1kb/s....



this is my current speedtest.net results.

the ntl connection, while on websites, seems to hang for about a minute or so and then it kicks in and the page loads up very quickly. its does this every couple of minutes.

its not a wifi problem cos i have a desktop connected with ethernet cable to the router and its the same. also the house is relatively new so the cabling should be ok...

is this just ntl all over or whats the story??

cheers
moe

Cabaal

Personally I don't believe NTL are doing any traffic shaping which affects torrents, from my experience anyone I've seen getting slow speeds on torrents is using a public tracker and is downloading something with loads of peers and hardly any seeds.

Also these same people tend to cap their upload far to low which means it cribles their download speed.
Either that are their using a default BT port which is blocked by the tracker or they just don't have their ports forwarded

mollser

yes, its happened to me since the last 3 weeks or so. Torrents are painfully slow, and that basically all I use the broadband for. They do burst into life every so often for about a minute, then back to a crawl. I know that it aint the torrents because most of the ones I use have always been lightening fast, up till 3 weeks ago.

I believe they are traffic shaping, and this may not be so bad if it was only at peak times (i.e. between 6 and 10pm say). But I figured out at the weekend that it appears to be from 8 or 9am to midnight, everyday, making it impossible to use them. grrr :mad:

Jumpy

mollser wrote:

yes, its happened to me since the last 3 weeks or so. Torrents are painfully slow, and that basically all I use the broadband for. They do burst into life every so often for about a minute, then back to a crawl. I know that it aint the torrents because most of the ones I use have always been lightening fast, up till 3 weeks ago.

I believe they are traffic shaping, and this may not be so bad if it was only at peak times (i.e. between 6 and 10pm say). But I figured out at the weekend that it appears to be from 8 or 9am to midnight, everyday, making it impossible to use them. grrr :mad:

That is peak times except the morning part of it, Digiwebs doesnt speed up till about 3 in the morning.

Noelie

Their upload speeds seem awful most of the time. I log into my PC at home using logmein and I can connect and log into my PC but then the connection just hangs and i get disconnected.
Up untill about a month ago logmein worked perfect. so something strange is going on.

00sully

yes torrents are affected by whatever NTL are doing - so is http browsing with certain sites loading up blank pages while they work fine on dialup

shocking service right now

big_moe

so are they allowed to do this traffic shaping at rush hours?? like would i have any case if i was to get onto them about??

because seriously, compared to eircom this service is terrible..

Cabaal

big_moe wrote:

so are they allowed to do this traffic shaping at rush hours?? like would i have any case if i was to get onto them about??

because seriously, compared to eircom this service is terrible..

If they are I can't see how their not allowed, due to the way cable works they are going to do what they have to to make the service workable for the majority of their customers.

If that means limiting downloaders to 40k/sec downloads during peak times so everybody else can use the net then thats fine by them, why not download during the night?

forbairt

big_moe wrote:

so are they allowed to do this traffic shaping at rush hours?? like would i have any case if i was to get onto them about??

because seriously, compared to eircom this service is terrible..

I seriously doubt they'd listen to you ...

I'm seriously thinking of changing from them. Their up time has been heavily suspect in recent times as well as lots of problems with DNS my only question would be who is better than them ... I've had experience with eircom and BT and both are pretty much out of the question. I really wanted to steer clear of getting a land line again as its just money down the drain.

Mojito

Cabaal wrote:

why not download during the night?

Thats what I do. I use uTorrent and it has a handy schedular built in so I have it set to come on at 1am and shut off a 8am.

christophicus

i dont get fast speeds even after 12 .:(

Easy Rider

Well I have had enough of NTL broadband and today switched to Magnet 4mb upload and download rate, free for two months, then 30 euro for 10 months after that....torrents have been awful.....

christophicus

on magnet or NTL?

Snake Plisken

Hey Big Moe welcome to NTHell or UPCrap whatever you want to call it. Your speed seems decent enough on Speednet, but as most of us have found it craps out on torrents. I'm on a number of private torrents and have also found that uploads that used to be fine are now dying a death and having talked to a tech last week he told me they where implementing this traffic shaping software at the moment, so I'm thinking thats what caused torrent speeds to die. Lucan here by the way

Snake

christophicus

Im just wondering. You know the way NTL are trying to blame the bad speeds on us torrent users. And also how they always say that all tehy can do is send an engineer to your house.?? Well is there anyway that we can use our modem log to hold against them to try and get them tp hurry up and fix the problems???


for those of you that want to have a look at the log go here

http://192.168.100.1/

mollser

Would I be right in thinking that this 'shaping' is affecting other P2P apps, like the streaming of tv channels via TVU and the likes?

Have had enough, who else does broadband with no phone line and no traffic shaping??

Seriously, since UPC took over it really has become the sh!ttiest product out there, think i'll write to them.

big_moe

@christophicus what do the logs mean?? and how could i use them to get some fookin service??

i had a problem with them, stayed off work cos they said somebody would call out.. nobody showed.. rang 3 times... said they'd call me back... no call back.. surprize...

anyway, at least i know its not just my connection...

moe

christophicus

Sorry man , I dont really know what it means thats why I was asking does anyone here have any idea if we can do anything with them.

big_moe

looks good though, i have ALOT of "critical" priority warnings on mine...


moe

MiloFoxburr

So I'm curious is it just torrent users who are noticing this slowdown?

I don't use torrents (Moved onto usenet never looked back) and the only time I notice any kind of slowdown is around 5-6PM (Which coincidently is the time my Dad gets off work and starts downloading from usenet)

I have to say sometimes web browsing is terribly slow but nothing I cant live with especially since I'm well used to browsing sites from China.

If its just torrents why not move onto other services (and there are loads) but then again I suppose torrents are free..

-edit- I also fine it very strange that multiple people have had technicians not arrive for their appointments.. In the 3 odd years we've been with NTL A technician has never missed an appointment. Oh also do any of yous get text messages the night before telling you the techy will be out?

Easy Rider

christophicus wrote:

on magnet or NTL?

NTL, have yet to get Magnet, mate has it..torrents work great...

christophicus

big_moe wrote:

looks good though, i have ALOT of "critical" priority warnings on mine...


moe

Yeah I have alot of critical priority messages aswell.

mollser

Torrents and Traffic Shaping:

There are usage caps generally on bb services, say mine with NTL is 30gigs per month. If the network is capable of handling 30gigs per month per user, as described when they sell the package, then surely that should be enough to stop one using unfairly their bandwidth? ie. they can use their 30gigs a month, enforce the cap and there should be plenty to go around.

Peak times for home users, they want to be fair. Ok, peak time MUST be between 6pm and 11pm, say. Why oh why does the traffic shaping software need to be on almost 24 hours a day given the useage limits? With these limits, I am never going to get near downloading 30gigs a month or whatever. Or else I need to use a heck of a lot of electricity running my computer...

Anyother providers no phone line, no traffic shaping for same prices??

Kernel

mollser wrote:

Would I be right in thinking that this 'shaping' is affecting other P2P apps, like the streaming of tv channels via TVU and the likes?

Have had enough, who else does broadband with no phone line and no traffic shaping??

Seriously, since UPC took over it really has become the sh!ttiest product out there, think i'll write to them.

Yup, that's correct. DC++ is also painfully slow, and drops connection frequently... Really bad service from NTL/UPC. I recommended the old NTL service to several others about a year ago, and one has already left and moved to eircom.

Kernel

mollser wrote:

Anyother providers no phone line, no traffic shaping for same prices??

I'm thinking of Smart.. no down/up limits and fast enough.. (then again dialup would be faster than NTL/UPC **** lately - and their mean spirited traffic shaping).

Snake Plisken

Whats Smarts top Speed is it 4meg? Also how stable are they as a company following the problems they had last year?

Snake

Kernel

Snake Plisken wrote:

Whats Smarts top Speed is it 4meg? Also how stable are they as a company following the problems they had last year?

Snake

Yeah 4mbs, might be able to get another 2mbs if you pay more. Not sure about them, don't know anyone who is with them, maybe some others can advise?

dub45

Kernel wrote:

Yeah 4mbs, might be able to get another 2mbs if you pay more. Not sure about them, don't know anyone who is with them, maybe some others can advise?

http://www.smarttelecom.ie/broadband.php

fowley

hey, i too have been having a lot of problems with ntl, i jsut moved toi them actually, i cant seems to access everyanime.com or another site called anime alliance, course it works from everywhere else. there seems to be a broken connection to something in denamrk though, i ran a traceroute and tried to ping all the stops alongf the way, cant remember where it failed but it was after about 10 stops, and i think t ended in .dk somethign. im happy (but still let down) to read that this is an NTL problem affecting everyone. ill call them tomorrow.

oceanclub

Rang up NTL tonight; for the last week and a half they've been abysmal, and tonight I couldn't even download email ... Spoke to customer support...yes, the lights are flashing... yes, flashing.. OK, send the guy out.. WHEN? APRIL 24th? THAT'S A MONTH AWAY!

Ridiculous. Will be ringing sales tomorrow to say I'm cancelling , or at least want money back, if I can't get someone out promptly.

P.

Jonnie_Onion

I don't believe they're limiting torrents. I don't have any problems.

Have you tested private trackers or another heavily seeded torrent (like a linux distro)?