upc 20mb is next to useless

Hellrazer

Just a quick one--Is UPC really that bad.As per another thread here Im having terrible problems with Eircom and a supposed 7.6 meg BB.


Been just told that I`ll never get anything faster than what Im getting at the minute (equivalent to 3-4 megs)

Should I just jump and go with UPC?

Ive been getting 20 mb solid for over 9 months.


I do however have good points, reinstalled bout 2 years ago, if your pointsare old have em redone, ive seen BB installed with the old old cablelink points left inplace!

niallk

OK problem solved, kind of. I got a new cable "f-plug to coax" and plugged the router into the outlet upstairs in my room and I am getting a quality signal now. Problem is there's only one socket so I have to use internet/tv at different times which is grand for a game of CallOfDuty but I can't surf/watch tv at the same time (There's currently a load of static on the box).

There's a few other cable outlets around the house that I'll try tomorrow so I can watch tele in my room but I'm starting to think this may be the outlet with the best signal.:o

mickger

Since the 20meg speeds were introduced i was getting full speeds up to about a week ago. Since then my speeds have dropped to about 5-6megs in the day or evening time and then back up to 20megs late at night. Are NTL holding back speeds at peak times? I'm in Waterford.

DisasterIRL

[DM]-TheDOC- wrote: »

interesting thread.

I'm living in swords and got a leaflet through the post saying i could get 20mb BB for 46 euro a month.

I currently give eircom 55 euro a month for a 2mb line. I have to say its a decent line for gaming, but downloads is horrendous, i rarely get over 150 k/bs a second.

I'm strongly considering getting upc. I know i wont get 20mb download, buts its the possability. I live close to the exchange so i generally get high speeds.

For 46 euro a month, its cheaper then what i pay for a faster service with no caps.

I generally download a heap load of stuff, play world of warcraft and surf the net. But download speed is my main concern.

What do we think folks? Should i do it?

I'm more concerned with dublin posters, helpful if near my area. A mate of mine got it in, has it gonig 6 weeks now and says its the bees kneews.

He lives 5 doors up and ive witnessed the speeds of 6-7 mb a second. (We live extremely close to exchange)

But hes not tech savvy, doesnt game, jsut downloads.

Some info would be great Solid reliable info aswell please. Im pretty in touch with tech stuff, and I know every provider has been having horribly lately.


Eircom isnt bad, just they are a rip off for a higher package, 250 a month for 20 mb, no thanks.

On one hand if your friend is quite close to you and getting very good speeds then I would say yes, go ahead with it, the general view of UPC is that if it's good it's great, if it's bad it's not.

Just price wise it is a smart move, worst case scenario is that you get the high package it costs less and is the same speed as the previous package.

Vendetta

Still only getting 2 megabits, was anyone on to upc? I will ring them tommorow in work if not.

vibe666

[DM]-TheDOC- wrote: »

I'm strongly considering getting upc. I know i wont get 20mb download, buts its the possability. I live close to the exchange so i generally get high speeds.

assuming you are talking about your telephone exchange it's not going to make the slightest difference how close you are or not to it, the ntl 20mbps service works off an ntl cable tv connection, not the phoneline.

ROC1977

I live 100 yards from UPC's office in Limerick. I've got the cable signal booster for the whole street on the wall. Still get up and down speeds.

vibe666

lol, guess that's that quesiton answered then.

yeah, it's up and down, but tbh it's never gone below 7mbps for me since I had it in and the upload has stayed above 800kbps the whole time (up to the full 1.5mbps) so I'm not that fussed.

so far it's been more than quick enough so that I'm not waiting long for anything and I couldsn't really do any more with it if it was any faster tbh. my main interest at this stage is not having to mind my usage like with BT and the freedom to do what i want with it.

oh, and pings are much better too.

LimerickGuy2009

Hi all,
I signed up to the 20mb chorus package 4 weeks ago and within 1 hour i had speed issues...they did the usual send the installer back to check it, sent techs(so called techs i must say as they did nothing i had'nt done) tht all happened in week 1 and 2. Then upon ringing customer care a day or 2 later i was told it would take 10 working days to resolve.......12 working days later guess what still not fixed....shock......given a new fix date of wed the following week....still not....told it will be thur.....not fixed....told it will be fri(which will be tomorrow).
Being told different stories each time i ring from *1: transmitter is faulty *2: the node is faulty *3: congested line( currently re-segementing the line)

During this time i found most of the staff to be very unhelpful, except for 1 customer care agent who was helpfull.

i left a reliable isp to move to chorus as they assured me that the 20mb was available in my area of limerick.

Personally i would'nt recommend chorus/ntl to anyone, would rather use one of the o2 usb things than chorus.

Vendetta

LimerickGuy2009 wrote: »

Hi all,
I signed up to the 20mb chorus package 4 weeks ago and within 1 hour i had speed issues...they did the usual send the installer back to check it, sent techs(so called techs i must say as they did nothing i had'nt done) tht all happened in week 1 and 2. Then upon ringing customer care a day or 2 later i was told it would take 10 working days to resolve.......12 working days later guess what still not fixed....shock......given a new fix date of wed the following week....still not....told it will be thur.....not fixed....told it will be fri(which will be tomorrow).
Being told different stories each time i ring from *1: transmitter is faulty *2: the node is faulty *3: congested line( currently re-segementing the line)

During this time i found most of the staff to be very unhelpful, except for 1 customer care agent who was helpfull.

i left a reliable isp to move to chorus as they assured me that the 20mb was available in my area of limerick.

Personally i would'nt recommend chorus/ntl to anyone, would rather use one of the o2 usb things than chorus.

The staff are clueless. They tell you to ring the premium line and you are greeted with "unplug your modem for 30 seconds". I found the best way was to email them using this address. Very helpful and is from a proper engineer.

customer.support@upc.ie

Make it out to Stephen he is helpful.

huggs2

I have had problems now for about 2 months, a series of problems i wont go into now.After they were all solved the IT guy said i have contention issues.Anytime i had to check speeds on Speedtest.net it was always the Frankfurt hub i had to test as that was their main hub.Same results on my laptop connected directly to their box and the readings from the modem are "good" hence the contention issue. At peak times it goes to a crawl.The IT guy
tells me they are setting up a new server room which should be finished in 2 weeks to ease the contention issues and he is going to put me on it

LimerickGuy2009

Cheers for that info Vendetta,

LimerickGuy2009

Just after been told by Chorus that it could be up to 2 weeks before they fix my problem (something about when they put in a new server they discovered they had to put new cable into ALL the nodes)
Although this is the 5th time the date for a fix has changed, so looks like another 2 weeks of crap speeds.

huggs2

LimerickGuy2009 wrote: »

Just after been told by Chorus that it could be up to 2 weeks before they fix my problem (something about when they put in a new server they discovered they had to put new cable into ALL the nodes)
Although this is the 5th time the date for a fix has changed, so looks like another 2 weeks of crap speeds.

I was promised about 2 weeks for the new server last week and now on friday they are back to normal and have been fine since.

NiSmO

This post has been deleted.

LimerickGuy2009

Got a call from chorus/ntl this evening, saying that my problem is fixed.
So far, everything seems to be good, getting the full 20mb down and 1.4mb up.:D

hope its stays like that

koHd

Nice to hear some good things about NTL broadband at last.

I have been considering changing from Smart Telecom to NTL broadband for the last few months, but have been put off by this torrent slow down stuff.

Not much point in having 20Mbps if you can't use it.

How is it for gaming? Anybody else have good news regarding downloading torrents?

If they're still restricting torrent downloading I'll stick with Smart.

Also what is the contention ratio with the 20Mb product? Because Smart has zero contention which is a huge factor in sticking with them.

huggs2

koHd wrote: »

Nice to hear some good things about NTL broadband at last.

I have been considering changing from Smart Telecom to NTL broadband for the last few months, but have been put off by this torrent slow down stuff.

Not much point in having 20Mbps if you can't use it.

How is it for gaming? Anybody else have good news regarding downloading torrents?

If they're still restricting torrent downloading I'll stick with Smart.

Also what is the contention ratio with the 20Mb product? Because Smart has zero contention which is a huge factor in sticking with them.

I changed from smart to upc because i have had a bad phone line and eircom would never do anything about it and when i went to smart they managed to tweak it so i got 3.2 megs down and as you say no contention which was great. I changed to upc when they advertised 20meg. The last 3 months i have had very poor downloads which turned out to be "contention issues." and torrents have been very poor.If i was able to get a new phone line i would be back with Smart in a flash.In my humble opinion Smart are the best,never had a problem.

koHd

huggs2 wrote: »

I changed from smart to upc because i have had a bad phone line and eircom would never do anything about it and when i went to smart they managed to tweak it so i got 3.2 megs down and as you say no contention which was great. I changed to upc when they advertised 20meg. The last 3 months i have had very poor downloads which turned out to be "contention issues." and torrents have been very poor.If i was able to get a new phone line i would be back with Smart in a flash.In my humble opinion Smart are the best,never had a problem.

Thanks for the info. Yea I just found out NTL have a contention ratio of 17:1, and this would be a factor in why people are getting bad speeds at times.

Looks like I'll be stickin with Smart.

It really was smart of them to go with zero contention from the start. Pun not intended.

Dr Bolouswki

For all those celebrating I hope it stays well

For all those using it as a erason to change, it's nto all rosy in the garden

This is my supposedly 6MB connection tonight...

game4it70

Dr Bolouswki wrote: »

For all those celebrating I hope it stays well

For all those using it as a erason to change, it's nto all rosy in the garden

This is my supposedly 6MB connection tonight...

Why did you speedtest Roubaix server?
Try the Dublin one and your speeds will be better.

Moriarty

For what feels like the millionth time: speedtest sites are not reliable. More often than not the speed that it reports will be significantly less than what your connection can actually sustain.

Download a large file off ftp.heanet.ie or have a bunch of other downloads running at the same time to get a somewhat reliable idea of what sort of bandwidth you have.

LimerickGuy2009

Dr. Bolouswki :
When i was dealing with UPC customer care/Broadband support at first they asked me to use the Frankfurt server on speedtest.net as thats where most of there traffic goes through, although recently they have being asking me to use www.upc.nl/speedtest
Also when i was onto there tech lads in Dublin they sent me the following link to download to get a true speedtest :
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/iso/cd/openSUSE-11.0-KDE4-LiveCD-i386.iso

Elessar

Just got UPC myself. Speeds were fine (20mb) for the first 30 minutes now they are all over the place.

I download files from Usenet using private hosting which always maxes out my connection, but with UPC the d/l rate varies wildly between 3mb/s to 22mb/s and usually hovers somewhere in between. I can't get a steady 20mb/s!

It's obvious UPC have their internet servers outside the country (Germany probably) as the Frankfurt server on Speedtest.net gives me a much better Ping and download rate than Dublin.

Really not impressed so far as I'm not getting what I'm paying for. Although I'm glad to be rid of BT, I always got the max my connection would allow.

Dougals Daddy

I have complained endless times so far about the obvious contention rate on my 20mb connection. Never had a problem when I was on the 6mb.
Once 6pm comes it drops right down to 1 maybe 2 mb. Same on Saturday and Sunday is apalling.
All day long I get 17 or 18 mb. Its blatently obvious whats going on here.
Each time they send out a tecnician and make some excuse about the modem.
The tecnician arrives and says " your line is perfect, your modem is perfect, this is a contention/sales issue"
After I got talking to him he explained that all the "non national" clients of UPC are constantly complaining and eventually get moved to a lower contention. However as the "Irish no no better "they get ignored.
These guys are ripping us off rightly. When I had Eircom I had a solid 3mb(what I paid for) all the time. My friend has BT 24mb and gets 16-17 on average all the time. The very odd time it drops to 10mb but its very rare.He's happy and I would also be happy if my 20mb stayed on the right side of 10.
Might just move back to BT as the UPC Digital TV service goes very bad some nights too with freezing , pixelation etc.
Might have to finally tell UPC to shove it!! 20mb my arse!! easy to say that when 201 customers share a line!! And whats more they are getting away with it.
If you are thinking of changing to UPC....DON'T!!
Their attitude and customer service SUCKS!!
Also they are increasing their prices by 10% from next January, thats 3 times in the last 2 years.
UPC (Universally Poor Contention)
For TV Sky is no more expensive and the service is 100%

Marlow

LimerickGuy2009 wrote: »

Dr. Bolouswki :
When i was dealing with UPC customer care/Broadband support at first they asked me to use the Frankfurt server on speedtest.net as thats where most of there traffic goes through, although recently they have being asking me to use www.upc.nl/speedtest
Also when i was onto there tech lads in Dublin they sent me the following link to download to get a true speedtest :
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/iso/cd/openSUSE-11.0-KDE4-LiveCD-i386.iso

The reason, why they won't recommend using the Irish speedtest servers is, that the majority of their traffic is send through AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) and maybe DE-CIX (German one, located in Frankfurt).

They refuse to peer with most providers in Ireland unless you transfer more than 50 mbit/s traffic to them and even then there's additional rules.

Essentially, the Galway server (ours) and Blacknights (irishisptest) will most likely often be rubbish from NTL vs. all the other providers, that have no problem peering at INEX.

Dunno about Dublin server (Westnet, located at H365) and Limerick (FWI, located on a line from Smart Telecom in Limerick). But similar issues there.

It's down to them being ignorant.

Mind ya, this also gives people gaming, voip etc. issues, when they are with NTL.

/Martin

Moriarty

Dougals Daddy wrote: »

After I got talking to him he explained that all the "non national" clients of UPC are constantly complaining and eventually get moved to a lower contention. However as the "Irish no no better "they get ignored.

I call bull****. The odds on an installer knowing this are pretty slim to begin with even if it was true. Secondly, I can't see UPC giving anyone anything like that, "non-nationals" or irish (what, they're not citizens of any country now? Foreign national might be the term you're looking for. Dem dere foreigners stealing our bandwidth)

Dougals Daddy wrote: »

.. all the rest..

If you've complained and it hasn't improved, by all means move. It sounds like there are patches of heavy contention on UPCs network alright. There are lots of people that have a very good connection from UPC too however, myself included. I rarely see contention.

Marlow wrote: »

The reason, why they won't recommend using the Irish speedtest servers is, that the majority of their traffic is send through AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) and maybe DE-CIX (German one, located in Frankfurt).

They refuse to peer with most providers in Ireland unless you transfer more than 50 mbit/s traffic to them and even then there's additional rules.

Essentially, the Galway server (ours) and Blacknights (irishisptest) will most likely often be rubbish from NTL vs. all the other providers, that have no problem peering at INEX.

Dunno about Dublin server (Westnet, located at H365) and Limerick (FWI, located on a line from Smart Telecom in Limerick). But similar issues there.

It's down to them being ignorant.

Mind ya, this also gives people gaming, voip etc. issues, when they are with NTL.

/Martin

UPC's peering has improved greatly in the past year, your information is out of date. They peer with most of the large members at inex and also peer extensively in london and the US where the vast majority of irish traffic would head to.

The reason the servers are rubbish is because they're overloaded, plain and simple.

Marlow

Moriarty wrote: »

UPC's peering has improved greatly in the past year, your information is out of date. They peer with most of the large members at inex and also peer extensively in london and the US where the vast majority of irish traffic would head to.

The reason the servers are rubbish is because they're overloaded, plain and simple.

Sorry. Wrong. I requested peering with them as late as September this year and they have no interest. Check your facts !!!!

Do you want a copy of the mail i got back ?

Half of their possible peerings on INEX are red !!

Yes, the lines are overloaded, but they are also not interesting in fixing this. The reasons for this are political. They are more interested in getting other ISPs to buy bandwidth of them before peering (which doesn't generate income). If they wanted to fix it, they could just start peering with every ISP in Ireland. It wouldn't help on contention, but it would make the overall experience for their customes better.

/Martin

White_Wolf

Netgear modem routers are terrible when it comes to wireless i have one from eircom it works fine cabled but wireless is unstable and dc's all the time. I would recomend a Linksys router and connect it to your netopia box and use wireless off that or buy a Linksys modem router and throw out the netopia box.

I dont use wireless for anything at the moment but if i do ill be going out to but a new modem router from linksys.

Also try get one that supports custom firmware such as tomato etc.