Slow UPC speeds

GalwayKiefer

I had the problem recently where it was up and down like a yo-yo for about 2 weeks then I started being unable to connect during the day. Rang them and they sent out a technician (I'm in Galway btw) and it was working when he arrived so he pretty much hopped back in his van straight away. Few days later it was back to on/off all day so I rang them again and a different guy came out and did some tests on the line coming into my house with his own equipment. Turns out we are the last house on our line and were getting a very weak signal, he got another technician to do something over the phone and from then on I've had no trouble. Its *much* better as the speedtest.net test shows below. He was saying that they're in the process of doing an upgrade for their 20meg customers to 30meg but it really does seem to depend on where you are located as to the speeds you get.
Keep hounding them until they send someone out to sort it, its unacceptable to be getting the speeds some people are getting here considering how much upc bb costs (20meg in particular)

DrivingInfo

HI again

I think you would like to know that i rang and they are flat out with calls, I tested with 2 laptops and still the same But the guy on the phone said that i MAY be charged €50 when the tech guy calls, as it depends on where the problem is "Even though" i tested with 2 laptops! but he said it could still be on my side hmmmmmmmm????

We'll SEE!;)

coldfire1x

Not sure why its slow for everyone but I am in Dubin 8 with 10mb line and here's what sppedtest says:

FloatingVoter

I sent a registered letter to upc yesterday complaining about this bull****. Not even a mention of sending out a techie yet. It was 19 Mbs this morning.

DrivingInfo

Has anyone got their UPC BB Fixed yet.

Still getting 2.6mg when it should be 20mg

FloatingVoter

DrivingInfo wrote: »

Has anyone got their UPC BB Fixed yet.

Still getting 2.6mg when it should be 20mg

Check out the UPC tech support nightmare thread for my lack of progress. It seems to be congestion in my case. UPC say everything is perfect at their end.

Irishpimpdude

Mines been bad too lately before this i was getting my full 20mb



Magnet speedtest

Download Speed: 10439 kbps (1304.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1387 kbps (173.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

debian-live-501-i386-xfce-desktop.iso 934.0 kB/s - 12.8 MB of 472 MB
http://ftp.heanet.ie/debian-cd/5.0.1-live/i386/iso-cd/debian-live-501-i386-xfce-desktop.iso

What i find weird is this, downloading with usenet i get full speed
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/2659/usenet.jpg

lafors

I'm in Dublin 9, been having the same problems as the rest of you since last week. It was that bad this morning that the connection was dead altogether.
Tried to ring them twice and after 15mins on hold, I was taken off hold and then they hung up, both times.

When it works its great, but when there's a problem they are a disgrace!
:mad:

FloatingVoter

It seems as if they can't support the 20 Mbs package during peak hours.

As for IrishPimpDude...wouldn't Usenet use different DNS servers than UPC ?

Automan

For the last few weeks my speeds during the day have been between 2 and 6 meg (At about 2am will get 10 meg).
Before this I would very rarely get bellow 10 meg during the day, just seems to be getting worse (on the 10 meg pack).
Over in Blanch.

probe

Both cable and DSL have big problems. Cable can't handle demand when everyone in a neighbourhood is online - the available bandwidth gets saturated. Or if your neighbour does some digging in the garden it could mess everything up for the area you live in. DSL has a speed/distance limitation over a few km.

The only real solution is fibre. High speed. Upgradeable to multi-gigabits/sec. Low maintenance for the operator. Long reach in rural areas (100 km+ from the local village type range). Inexpensive to install in rural areas if you don't put it underground and mechanise the installation process. Very economic in urban areas with a multi play scenario - HDTV, internet, phone, video on demand. Nobody wants to rent DVD/BDs and have to take them back to the rental location if they have the alternative of getting the same quality online.

Fibre has the spare bandwidth to allow service provider competition over the same line. There is no alternative. Any other infrastructure spend is a waste of money.

If you have a fiber optic connection between an HDTV and a Dolby Digital sound system (AC3) you will know how simple fibre is compared with messing about with an old fashioned cable connector.

FloatingVoter

With the 20 Mbs package and I'm off Cork St. in Dublin 8. Not exactly rural. What annoys me is upc say its my computer. Dead funny given it was clocking 19+ Mbs this morning around 8 AM.:rolleyes:

Irishpimpdude

FloatingVoter wrote: »

It seems as if they can't support the 20 Mbs package during peak hours.

As for IrishPimpDude...wouldn't Usenet use different DNS servers than UPC ?

It has nothing to do with DNS servers all a dns server does is resolve a server ip from an address

Probably because it makes 20 connections at once instead of just one

hightower1

probe wrote: »

Low maintenance for the operator..

What? Are you serious? Its notoriously difficult to maintain! Its very fragile and incredibly hard to repair without removing an entire line if there is a break.

probe wrote: »

Inexpensive to install in rural areas if you don't put it underground and mechanise the installation process.
.

And as I have stated above you would have to install this underground, over ground fiber lines would be a disaster, the slightest storm and you'd have massive breaks and to make it worse it would be in the middle of no where dragging multi pal repair crews away from the major centers.



Its a fantastic medium for data transport for both quantity and quality BUT its expensive, difficult to maintain and is complete over kill in light of the competitors in Ireland. Why spend that amount of money to triple your rivals speeds when the average consumer will change provider if you supply only a marginal increase and costing the ISP a whole lot less.

FloatingVoter

Hardly the actions of a 20 Mbs connection making 20 connections at once.;)

Snake Plisken

I'm still waiting for a supervisor to ring me 2 weeks on, I rang again last week and was given the same answer, well I won't be paying my full bill again this month as if I'm only getting less then 10 meg speeds, why should I pay for the 20 meg service? Recommend you get the the number of the case open for your issues so you can reference it back to their accounts people.

Irishpimpdude

As its nearly 3 in the morning mine seems to be better which makes me think it is congestion.



Download Speed: 18481 kbps (2310.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1445 kbps (180.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

FloatingVoter

Just up on a Monday morning..Heres my uncongested speed.


Now for 5 PM and downwards.

bk

hightower1 wrote: »

What? Are you serious? Its notoriously difficult to maintain! Its very fragile and incredibly hard to repair without removing an entire line if there is a break.

It doesn't degrade anywhere close to how quickly copper degrades and isn't badly effected by water.

hightower1 wrote: »

And as I have stated above you would have to install this underground, over ground fiber lines would be a disaster, the slightest storm and you'd have massive breaks and to make it worse it would be in the middle of no where dragging multi pal repair crews away from the major centers.

This doesn't seem to be a problem for Verizon in the US, where they do this all the time, running fibre along poles in areas that suffer far more extreme weather then we have.

They have developed a variety of techniques to handle and simplify maintenance.

FloatingVoter

As predicted:rolleyes:

h2s

On upc 10 meg

I find problems with using Speedtest for testing my line, most times the result is crap, and yet I am actually downloading files at a nice hefty pace.

So I use several testing services to get a reasonable idea of how my line is going, this evening I did four tests including speedtest:

Speedtest - 0.78 down and 0.78 up - which is rubbish

Numion - 2.9 down and .090 up not bad,

Magnet speedtest - 2.2 down and .90 up

Heanet file download - 3.3 down

I find presently in the evening these are my normal speeds, not great for a 10 meg line, but no slower than when I was with Eircom.

Earlier today about noon the speed was hitting near 100% on all the above except speedtest.net which still gave crappy stats.

Sometime speedtest acts wierd where nothing seems to happen for a couple of seconds and then the speed dial hits the max giving me a false reading of a 50meg download speed.

DrivingInfo

Deleted by DrivingInfo

lafors

Now.....

FloatingVoter

off Cork St, Dublin 8 on the 20 Mbs package. My practical download speeds are similarly shoddy. Still, good to know I'm not alone.:rolleyes:

FloatingVoter

......:rolleyes:

givyjoe81

Just did UPC speed test, dload 4.5, uload1.04.

As with others on here, crap speeds at this time, and fine speeds in the wee hours, clearly a congestion issue. Their customer support is a con, spent 40 mins talkin to a 'tech guy' on the 1908 number who couldnt connect to my modem for a good twenty mins, then said there was no problems with my modem so i would have to call premium rate number.

How on earth they are allowed to get away with such a scam, honestly i think this upgrading of speeds was just a big ploy to get us all to sign into a new contract in which we all get raped.

I argued and argued to no avail, i then asked for a call back my a upc account monkey and my plan is wear them down over the phone to get my contract cancelled,its sickening they are getting money for a service which they are at present, provding at about 20% of what we are actually paying for.



I was on a wireless network in my other halfs apartment complex last week, and even that was allowing me to download things quicker than this sham they call broadband.

Worst company on earth..

FloatingVoter

North Kowean Wireless Inc. might be slightly worse:rolleyes:

Boro

The last 4 mornings in a row at 11:00-11.20 my UPC broadband has gone down in Cork. Its pretty slow lately too (10meg connection) hovering around 4-5mbps down and <1mbps up. Havent got around to calling them yet.

plutoh

I have the OPC 20MB BB for a long time now without many issues, but it dropped to approx 2mb about 6 weeks ago. Got on to customer service who did the usual resets etc but eventually told me there was "work" going on in the area and it would be another month before it was finished and to grin and bear it and they would inform the billing dept to reduce my bill when it comes back to full speed.

OK not a lot I could do but wait, but my gripe with them is :

1. Why did they not inform customers this would be happening.
2. If i had not rang them would i have got the bill reduced
3. What about other customers in the area who don't notice a drop in speed (maybe not technically savvy) will they get the reduction.

I sent a complaint email to Comreg and copied UPC customer support.

The UPC automated reply said i would be contacted within 3 days. That was 3 week ago and still no contact from UPC.

Comreg are working on it now.

vibe666

plutoh wrote: »

I have the OPC 20MB BB for a long time now without many issues, but it dropped to approx 2mb about 6 weeks ago. Got on to customer service who did the usual resets etc but eventually told me there was "work" going on in the area and it would be another month before it was finished and to grin and bear it and they would inform the billing dept to reduce my bill when it comes back to full speed.

OK not a lot I could do but wait, but my gripe with them is :

1. Why did they not inform customers this would be happening.
2. If i had not rang them would i have got the bill reduced
3. What about other customers in the area who don't notice a drop in speed (maybe not technically savvy) will they get the reduction.

I sent a complaint email to Comreg and copied UPC customer support.

The UPC automated reply said i would be contacted within 3 days. That was 3 week ago and still no contact from UPC.

Comreg are working on it now.

if i were you, i'd be more concerned that i'd been paying for the 20mbps product since march when they rolled out a 30mbps upgrade at the same price.

particularly since they're supposed to be rolling out 100mbps either this month or next.

unless you are on 30mbps and just hadn't noticed the speed change, which you might not have if you were having issues anyway.

the thing is, you DO have to complain to get a discount. UPC can't just go around giving a blanket discount to everyone who 'might' be having an issue, because there's always a possibility that they're not even aware. so they rely on customers telling them there are problems so they know what needs fixing and where. sometimes it's a quick fix, but sometimes not and you have to wait around for a bit to get it fixed.

i've had a similar thing with them this spring as i was having problems with my upc phone for months and it took them a long time to get it sorted and until they did, they gave me a discount on my bill because i'd logged a heap of email complaints every few days and a couple of calls to back them up just to be sure.

its the whole tree falling in the woods thing, if nobody notices there is a problem and doesn't complain about it, is it even really a problem?