UPC offering 30Mbps broadband and problems with upgrade

IrishTonyO

Thought after today it was sorted as got speeds of 12+ Mbps after the modem rebooted but now it has gone terrible.

IrishTonyO

Jesus I have never had speeds this low!!!

John2009

Hey Tony those speeds are woeful, if its any news to you but when i was put on hold for a few minutes today while speaking with tech support i heard a pre-recorded message stating that UPC were aware of the fault in Clondalkin and another neighbourhood and that they had dispatched technicians to the area to investigate the problem.

kamin99

just got the 30mb today horrible speed 12-14 DL and 1.3 UP load

Daithi07

Dload speed is absolutly woeful in caherdavin, limerick. Anyone know if it will be fixed soon or should i get onto upc myself? Upgraded from 10 to 15 and i am now at only 1.5 mb if im lucky :mad:



just made 2mb! Woohoo

IrishTonyO

John2009 wrote: »

Hey Tony those speeds are woeful, if its any news to you but when i was put on hold for a few minutes today while speaking with tech support i heard a pre-recorded message stating that UPC were aware of the fault in Clondalkin and another neighbourhood and that they had dispatched technicians to the area to investigate the problem.

Yeah John my modem went offline a few times today and came back and the speeds were up to 13Mbps etc but since then they have gone downhill

Snake Plisken

here's my current speeds since upgrade been on the phone to them sunday and Monday night was told to give it 48hrs for them to sort me out so I'll be on to them tomorrow night

NothingMan

I was getting decent speeds connected directly to the modem but not so good with the netgear router. UPC had me call Netgear, who answer their phones immediately and they got me to upgrade my firmware, do a full reset and change my MAC address of the router to my computers MAC address (Not sure why this mattered). But it seemed to have worked. I am now getting full speeds through my Netgear.

Those full speeds are still only about 22Mbps but I will wait a while before getting back onto UPC as I know there are some issues.

So if you are having issues and are using the Netgear, try plugging directly to the modem. If that seems ok then give Netgear a call on 0818 904 000. They've no wait time and although they are obviously following a guide book they seem to know what to look for.

ronkmonster

F1ngers wrote: »

Try turning off the firewall in your router before contacting UPC about the packet loss.

Worked for me too. I had 99% packet loss sometimes before.

Bu11et_Proof

I've had endless hassle with getting the 30mb from UPC. After the usual waiting on hold for ages getting transferred without being told, then being told by the agent they don't do a 30mb product, I got talking to chap who said that the network doesn't support 30mb in my area but I'm in the Waterford City which has always be one of the first to get the new packages. After the doing troubleshooting with tech they decided to sent out an engineer.

Engineer openly said I was fobbed off and there was no issue with the network supporting 30mb which I suspected already and said the issues most be something account side.

Waiting on callback this evening and will prob have to jump through the usual hoops again, doing speedtests from speedtest.net which never give an accurate result.

I've had 20mb before in the past and have always maxed out my connection downloading from usenet even getting 22mb most of the time but when I went to 30mb I was getting worse and the upload never improved.

The most annoying thing is when your getting told BS from the agents and being passed around like pass the parcel all your hear on hold is how good they have done in customer service and how many awards they have won.

UPC Fail at customer service big time.

Leiva

+1

The customer service has gotten better , but still alot to do ...

My previous 10mb connection never got near that figure , but the upload was always around the desired 1mb mark.
3 Tech callouts , no fix , usual boll*x and conflicting answers .
I could also not get the phone in my area , never got a straight answer why ?

Well i decided to go for the free 15mb "fibre" upgrade , to see if it helps ...
Asked the customer service girl .." Now can i get the phone with this new speed ? ..You mean you never had the phone ? .. No i was told not available in my area ....Sure it is I will get sales to call you . 6days later no call !
Still not getting near the desired 15mb (usually maxs out at 6 or 7mb) but my uplaod has gone to the dogs , should be getting near 1.5mbs but am getting 256kb ?

On line games that I enjoyed pre the upgrade are now impossible to play due to Lag .

I , nor UPC have a clue whats going on , I made my 5th Tech call today and they are sending someone tomorrow afternoon (4th Tech call ,4th half day from work ) .

:mad:

IrishTonyO

Have to say am impressed with UPC support myself. Called them again today to update them on my speeds, am getting almost full speeds in the morning but then from about 1pm to 1am only getting 2 mbps down etc. The phone was answered immediately and the girl was very polite, and told me that the issue was still being looked into and my account was flagged for a phone call as soon as they resolve the problem and sorry for the delay. In total was on the phone for under 5 mins. Good on you UPC, far better than the support from anywhere else I have ever called.

bonoman66

IrishTonyO wrote: »

Have to say am impressed with UPC support myself. Called them again today to update them on my speeds, am getting almost full speeds in the morning but then from about 1pm to 1am only getting 2 mbps down etc. The phone was answered immediately and the girl was very polite, and told me that the issue was still being looked into and my account was flagged for a phone call as soon as they resolve the problem and sorry for the delay. In total was on the phone for under 5 mins. Good on you UPC, far better than the support from anywhere else I have ever called.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences with the speed issues - I've found it very helpful to be able to read what others were seeing.

My own situation is as follows (in case this helps anyone)..


I live in Celbridge. I had the 20Mb package for approx a year without any significant issues. It wasn't always perfect in terms of getting 20Mb DL & 1.5Mb UL but it was pretty good & fairly consistenly high, meeting my expectations.

Our house was built in 1996, & at that time, I'd asked the builder to ensure to put TV points in various places/rooms. When I had the 20Mb package installed, the UPC installation Engineers were able to setup 3 connection boxes in diferent rooms within the house as it was 'pre cabled with coax'. The main UPC BB feed comes from a point under the ground, near the grass verge outside the house, to a box at the side of our house, where its sent to multiple points within the house. (I know with wireless its overkill but way back then in 1996 I hadn't thought much about wireless N, never mind cable broadband - the coax cable & points were for TV etc..)


Anyway...I requested an upgrade from 20Mb to 30Mb, which I got on Jan 5th. I was able to get acceptable DL & UL from Jan 6th. I was told it would take maybe 48 hours for the reconfig / upgrade to reach full speeds for me.


However I'm experiencing similar speed problems to others on this forum. I can get approx full speeds from maybe 2am until 8am, but then it drops off & lowers throughout the day.

Example

6am daily I can get 26/27Mb DL & maybe 2.7 Mb UL (Very happy with that).

8am daily it may drop to 18 Mb DL & UL is about the same at 2.7 Mb


3pm daily it could be down to 13Mb DL & UL between 2.7 Mb & 1.34 Mb


6pm daily onwards until early hours of next morning its approx 8Mb DL & UL is between 2.7Mb & 1.2Mb.


So my equipment can get practically the full 30Mb service for several hours each day - usually the very early hours. To my limited IT knowledge (I know enough to be dangerous as they say :-0), it would appear to be a bandwidth / contention problem in my area at those times of the day - its repeatable each day ?



I did the usual stuff of monitoring this over the last week, logging various tests on speedtest.net & magnet speedtest (I know they are not really the most reliable & can vary widely in results but they are a general indicator over a period of days for me). I also tested ftp ISO Image Downloads.

After seeing the pattern, I contacted UPC Customer Care, whom I found very good, responsive, listened to my issue & seemed genuinely like they wanted to help.

I got a call out from an Engineer, who checked my modem & indicated that our speed issue appeared to be related to the transmit power being on the 'high side' on the modem. The solution offered was for the UPC Team to drill a new hole in the side of our house, install a new cable run on the outside of the house, into a new box inside an upstairs bedroom & relocate the modem from its current position downstairs in the kitchedn to the upstairs bedroom. The UPC Engineer told me that he was able to get a more acceptable & lower transmission power signal outside the house where the UPC Brodband Feed comes into the box at the side wall of our house.


My wife would not accept this (no drilling holes in the house :-)) so the work didn't go ahead. To be fair she raised what I'd consider a valid point in that we can get almost full speed for several hours each day, even with the modems transmit power 'at the high value' that the UPC Engineer indicated appeared to be an issue affecting our speeds.

Current status is that I'm waiting for UPC Tech support to call me back to discuss this. I really don't think its a problem with my setup & moving the modem from the kitchen to an upstairs bedroom (with an new cable from outside), could fix the issue - as I can already get full speeds but only at certain tiem of the day. Maybe I'm wrong but so many others appear to have similar problems, I know I'm not an isolated case & there may well be an internal UPC network config / bandwidth issue..

Hopefully we'll learn more over the coming weeks...

Leiva

Very clearly expained ... I am in agreement , if your speeds ( or lack of) were consistant and not spiking then yes I would agree with the UPC techie, but you can see a pattern which leads me to believe that UPC do have contention ( which they deny) or some other problem they have not planned for.

Only time will tell .

IrishTonyO

mixednuts wrote: »

Very clearly expained ... I am in agreement , if your speeds ( or lack of) were consistant and not spiking then yes I would agree with the UPC techie, but you can see a pattern which leads me to believe that UPC do have contention ( which they deny) or some other problem they have not planned for.

Only time will tell .

UPC don't deny they have contention they say their contention ratio is 17:1

ryball

IrishTonyO wrote: »

UPC don't deny they have contention they say their contention ratio is 17:1

It seems the connection ratio in my area is 300:1

dub45

IrishTonyO wrote: »

UPC don't deny they have contention they say their contention ratio is 17:1

Where do they actually say this? Is it on their website anywhere? I have emailed them about it and never succeeded in getting a reply. (Well I did get a reply but it actually had nothing at all to do with the question I asked!)

dub45

IrishTonyO wrote: »

Have to say am impressed with UPC support myself. Called them again today to update them on my speeds, am getting almost full speeds in the morning but then from about 1pm to 1am only getting 2 mbps down etc. The phone was answered immediately and the girl was very polite, and told me that the issue was still being looked into and my account was flagged for a phone call as soon as they resolve the problem and sorry for the delay. In total was on the phone for under 5 mins. Good on you UPC, far better than the support from anywhere else I have ever called.

I hope that you immediatly went out and boght a lottery ticket!

IrishTonyO

saw it on their website somewhere a few months ago and it was on www.callcosts.ie, plus the sales guy I spoke to in October told me. Can't remember where I saw it on their website though.

dub45

IrishTonyO wrote: »

saw it on their website somewhere a few months ago and it was on www.callcosts.ie, plus the sales guy I spoke to in October told me. Can't remember where I saw it on their website though.

Indeed thats the problem -its of no relevance it being on callcosts if it is not on the UPC website.

For a company who are so emphatic about customers' obligations they are infuriatingly vague about their own!:rolleyes:

Irish Gunner

Living on the Northside of Dublin and having major speed issues since upgrade from 20-30

Rang last night after an 50 minutes waiting got through to technical support and then the ******* hung up on me:mad::mad: Was going to drive out to their offices and run amock

Rang again another 40 minutes wait and told them I am only getting 10-11 in speeds. Did all the re-booting etc and still no joy and was told they are aware of issues and to ring back next week. They rang me again today in work, after me telling them I am not available between 9-5 and modem wont be on :rolleyes:, So have to test it again so another 40 minute wait on customer service. I asked them I want a refund as I am paying way over the odds for speeds I am not getting and can they note this. Got the huh yeah whatever kinda response.

There must be something better than this Magnet etc?

Leiva

IrishTonyO wrote: »

UPC don't deny they have contention they say their contention ratio is 17:1

Again ..Perfect example of the type of service i am getting...I specifically said to the girl that my speeds are dying a death between 5pm and 10pm , and it seems to be contention ? , her answer was that UPC have no contention :rolleyes:.

Look we are all in agreement that there is something wrong here ..anyone with a Tech background to such matters have any input on what might be going on .

I am getting into my end game here , gonna look to see if Magnet might be an option.

M

John2009

If only i had speeds like this or as close as possible at most times per day :rolleyes:



Also seems like my upload has been restricted to 2MB, i have done a few more test and all in the 26-27-28MB range but with only 2MB upload.

I'll post another speedtest later tonight and i'll bet that the result will be around the 8 or 9MB mark guaranteed.

To the techie heads on this thread, can i ask you a question.

Would it be possible that UPC have stretched their current network system and could that be a reason that theres a fair few people experiencing acceptable early morning speeds but come the evening it goes downhill rapidly?

kmick

UPC have recently extended their service to my area and I am going to trial it for a while but keep my BT/Vodafone Broadband while I do. I dont trust them one bit. 30mb though - things are starting to move and they seem to be at the forefront.

BostonB

Unrelated to the new products their offering. I've always had problem with I supposed was contention on my NTL connection. Ping is very inconsistent, and online games and VOIP are impossible at times. As it usually clears up after midnight and gets better from then, I've always assumed its a contention. I know a couple of my neighbours are big downloaders. I've never got NTL to look into it. They just say they can't see a problem and it must be with my own gear. Kinda their stock response to everything. I've just had to put up with it.

Issues like that I expect though its very specific to certain locations even streets and at certains times.

I'm guessing problems with the new products are probably not contention related but a technical issue. Considering its not time of the day or location specific. If it is then it would be contention related. Thats just logical I would have thought.

bryaner

BostonB wrote: »

Unrelated to the new products their offering. I've always had problem with I supposed was contention on my NTL connection. Ping is very inconsistent, and online games and VOIP are impossible at times. As it usually clears up after midnight and gets better from then, I've always assumed its a contention. I know a couple of my neighbours are big downloaders. I've never got NTL to look into it. They just say they can't see a problem and it must be with my own gear. Kinda their stock response to everything. I've just had to put up with it.

Issues like that I expect though its very specific to certain locations even streets and at certains times.

I'm guessing problems with the new products are probably not contention related but a technical issue. Considering its not time of the day or location specific. If it is then it would be contention related. Thats just logical I would have thought.

Did you turn off the firewall on the router? a few of the lads on here told

me to do it and hey presto ping and packet loss sorted

BostonB

bryaner wrote: »

Did you turn off the firewall on the router? a few of the lads on here told

me to do it and hey presto ping and packet loss sorted

No had forgotton, I meant to try that alright. Must give it a whirl at peak tonight.

ryue65

I recently purchased the 30MB package. I use Eircom 3MB and also have occasional use of a 7MB BT/Vodafone line.

Speedtest and Pingtest on all options confirmed that I was not getting the alleged download / upload speed on UPC. It varies between 3 - 12 MBs.

I e-mailed techsupport last week. I finally got a call back from tech support today. I expected to be fobbed off but instead, he acknowledged that there was a contention issue in the area and that the area was oversubscribed. They would credit my bill some % for the lack of ability to supply the speed promised. Also the person mentioned that it would be resolved in 2 - 3 weeks

The process of switching over ( order, installation ) was trouble free, and any person I spoke with was professional and punctual. However I am a bit disappointed with the failure to provide the service.

Im still hopeful that the anticipated further upgrades go ahead on schedule.

Chris_533976

Not sure if I'll bother upgrading

Hogzy

So pissed off, UPC came today to install the service and told me i couldnt get it done because our neighours would not allow the UPC guys into their house to upgrade their boxes aswell. Apparently it works like a chain, House 3 doors down will not allow UPC people into his garden despite the fact that he is blocking half the street from getting UPC services. Its not as if they have to dig the garden up or anything!

What an asshole!!!