UPC Issues

johnc24

Hi Folks

I signed up for the 30Mb "fibrepower" connection with UPC a few days ago.

Had the Installer around and everything was fine, speeds of 20-23Mb over the wireless.

I hooked up the ethernet cable and it was hitting 28-29Mb.

Alas come 1800 and onwards and UPC take a huge nose dive in speed, the first night down to between 0.5 and 1Mb.

Tonight 2-3Mb. They claim a contention ratio of 17:1 so I cant see that being the problem, but I am not sure.

Also I ran a test on pingtest.com with the following results

pingtest - packet loss 60 - 90%, Grade F Line Very Poor.


I found a UPC installer in my area this morning and asked him to have a quick peep at it. He replaced the cabling in the house and the outside underground cabling also. (He done what he could, but the very slow speed in the evening's still persists).He reckons the engineers should be able to boost my signal from the underground cabling somehow....

I had a very bad customer service experience with some dude at UPC, rude and hung up on me...that a story for another day.
The result being an Engineer is being dispatched on the 19th to have a look.

Anyone having similar issues? Any ideas on what may be causing it?
What can / should I be saying to UPC ( although I don't think it will matter, they seem so young, unenthusiastic and have little or no knowledge).

Please help.

Thanks
John

***Any Clarification needed on anything please ask***

Bodhan

John, I don't suppose your in Laois? I have the exact same problem in the evening here. There are contention issues, we are to have an upgrade complete in a week or so.

The reason ping test says the line is grade F is the Flood protection on the modem, if you turn it off and run ping test again you'll see Grade A (hopefully)

I doubt there's anything wrong with your end, too many people on. UPC customer support tell you what they want you to hear with contention issues.

jolter

i have signed up for the 30mb deal myself, done a speed test on speedtest.net and only maxing 10mb tops if im lucky, havent tried the cable direct to modem yet.

bryaner

First thing to do is turn off the firewall on the router 192.168.1.1
that will sort out your packet loss

I was on the 10 meg pack and all was good, then got the free upgrade to the
15 meg and all went bad, so after many calls to upc the lady downgraded me
back to the 10 meg telling me that there are issues with the 15 meg and I will be upgraded back to it when there sorted, I have not had a problem on the 10 meg since..

bryaner

And that's wireless .

IrishTonyO

bryaner wrote: »

First thing to do is turn off the firewall on the router 192.168.1.1
that will sort out your packet loss

I was on the 10 meg pack and all was good, then got the free upgrade to the
15 meg and all went bad, so after many calls to upc the lady downgraded me
back to the 10 meg telling me that there are issues with the 15 meg and I will be upgraded back to it when there sorted, I have not had a problem on the 10 meg since..

Same for me here, when I was upgraded to 15 MB had terrible trouble with really bad speeds, now I am back on 10MB no problems at all.

johnc24

Bodhan wrote: »

John, I don't suppose your in Laois? I have the exact same problem in the evening here. There are contention issues, we are to have an upgrade complete in a week or so.

Hi Bodhan

No I am in Swords, Dublin. It's scandalous, 30 down to 2-3 is just plain wrong.

Bodhan wrote: »

The reason ping test says the line is grade F is the Flood protection on the modem, if you turn it off and run ping test again you'll see Grade A (hopefully)

Correct that did sort it out. Thanks

disco girl

Hi John,

I'm in Swords too, I only joined UPC at the end of January....all was well until mid March when my speeds started dropping and in some cases no Broadband or phone, I have rang them almost every 2nd day....tech lads were to ring me back twice..they never bothered. So 2 engineers called out on Monday checked everything here, all grand, however I was told there was "noise" on the line from the exchange (Rathbeale Road).

According to one of the customer reps the lines in Swords are being upgraded (should be finished this weekend) and the Network lads have found the cause of the "noise" and that should be sorted soon too.

When I asked yesterday was it contention I was told that the lines hadn't reached near it's peak capacity, but she wouldn't tell me what the ratio was. I had asked one of the other customer service people yesterday morning (lucky upc got 2 calls from me yesterday!!) and she let slip it was 500 to 1 that I was more or less sharing with everyone in Swords...! Would that be right?

For the last 3 days the speeds have been crap...speed at night drops from about 0.7 to 2.6. I'm on the 15mb down, 1.5 up.

It's really starting to piss me off now....come 6pm the speeds are useless!!

Were you told about "noise" on the line by anyone? Or that the lines in Swords are being upgraded - supposedly to be finished by this weekend?

Phibsboro

Same here in Phibsboro yesterday and today, 15Mb line down to 2/3Mb. Tried to call them yesterday evening but gave up after 5 mins on hold. In fairness this is my my first trouble since I changed from Smart in Jan so fingers crossed it is just a glitch. Looking across this forum it looks like UPC are having some pretty major issues across their network over the last few days...

c

johnc24

disco girl wrote: »

Hi John,

I'm in Swords too, I only joined UPC at the end of January....all was well until mid March when my speeds started dropping and in some cases no Broadband or phone, I have rang them almost every 2nd day....tech lads were to ring me back twice..they never bothered. So 2 engineers called out on Monday checked everything here, all grand, however I was told there was "noise" on the line from the exchange (Rathbeale Road).

According to one of the customer reps the lines in Swords are being upgraded (should be finished this weekend) and the Network lads have found the cause of the "noise" and that should be sorted soon too.

When I asked yesterday was it contention I was told that the lines hadn't reached near it's peak capacity, but she wouldn't tell me what the ratio was. I had asked one of the other customer service people yesterday morning (lucky upc got 2 calls from me yesterday!!) and she let slip it was 500 to 1 that I was more or less sharing with everyone in Swords...! Would that be right?

For the last 3 days the speeds have been crap...speed at night drops from about 0.7 to 2.6. I'm on the 15mb down, 1.5 up.

It's really starting to piss me off now....come 6pm the speeds are useless!!

Were you told about "noise" on the line by anyone? Or that the lines in Swords are being upgraded - supposedly to be finished by this weekend?

500:1 I bloody well hope not, considering the sales rep specifically told me it was 17:1!!! Can that type of information be ascertained in any way,finding out out what the ACTUAL contention ratio is?

After 1800 it just drops to ****e, I have engineers calling out on the 19th. I will report back what the outcome is.

Funny I mentioned to the installer (who was a decent bloke to have a look without appointment) "these are fibre optic cables right" and he replies "so they say" It doesn't give me much confidence!

Also nobody mentioned to me about upgrades / works in the area, but I as say I will come to you all with how the engineers visit goes.

John

BostonB

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=65427457#post65427457

Same as everyone really...

douglashyde

Im in Drumcondra - Broadband speed is dropped to a ridiculious level!

sombaht

I'm on the 15meg package and it seems fine . . .

[URL="[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/784072042.png[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]

Cheers,
sombaht

Noxin

Same for me in Santry (Northwood to be specific) on 15mb line.

Last 5 tests taken at random times since last Tuesday:

DL: 0.91 UL: 1.46
DL: 0.99 UL: 1.39
DL: 0.77 UL: 1.40
DL: 1.60 UL: 1.41
DL: 1.31 UL: 1.31

Don't you just love it when your upload is better then your download? Fantastic

Each of these accompanied by a ping test gave back between 50-60% packet loss.
Watching a single youtube video for example is not even possible at the moment without loading the page and coming back after 10 min to see if the video itself has finished loading.
Everything was fine on Monday or so. Really beginning to get annoyed over it now though.

==edit==

@sombaht: Run the test again at around 7 or 8 this evening and reply.

johnc24

sombaht wrote: »

I'm on the 15meg package and it seems fine . . .



Cheers,
sombaht

It will be fine for me also at this time of day.

But come evening time the speeds slow to a crawl, which is not what UPC agreed to provide me or anyone else with.

johnc24

Noxin wrote: »

Same for me in Santry (Northwood to be specific) on 15mb line.


Each of these accompanied by a ping test gave back between 50-60% packet loss.

You might try disabling the IP Flood option as Bodhan suggests from within the router page @ 192.168.1.1.

Go to pingtest.com and run the test. I got a grade F line with up to 90% packet loss. Disable the IP flood and you should get a grade A.

Travors

Me: Hi, I'm having some trouble with my 15 meg line. For the last few days it's only been performing at 1, maybe 2 meg and it's not my wireless router, that's working fine.
UPC rep: Uh huh and do you have your own wireless router on the line?
Me: Yes I do but that’s working fine.
UPC rep: Yes but that’s your own wireless router?
Me: Yes it is but it’s working fine, all the devices on my home network are communicating with each other perfectly. It’s only when I use the internet that my speed drops.
UPC rep: Yes it’s probably your wireless router.
Me: But I disconnected my wireless router and plugged my laptop directly in to your cable modem and I can confirm that my speed was still only 1 to 2 meg when trying to use the internet.
UPC rep: Yes sir and are you connected to your own router now?
Me: Yes I plugged my own router back in when I confirmed that issue is with your line speed, not my internal network.
UPC rep: I see, yes, it’s probably your wireless router that’s causing the problem.
Me: FORGET IT (Hang up).

vibe666

lol, everyone knows the first rule of fight club using your own wireless router is that you don't talk about your own wireless router.

call them back and tell them you have permanently removed your own wireless router and are now using a cable direct to your modem and you intend to keep using it that way and that you still have issues.

also tell them that you've used more than one pc to confirm it's not a pc issue and have rebooted your modem several times, leaving it off for a couple of minutes before plugging it back in.

obviously i'll assume you HAVE actually done all this yourself already so you won't be lying to them.

incidentally, i've had a letter from upc saying they're having ongoing issues with the 30mbps upgrade and they're only going to charge me half price for the next 2 months until they have it sorted, so that's not too bad and tbh, i do most of my downloading in the early mornings (rss feeding my torrent client) with light browsing and a bit of youtubing in the evening so i don't even notice the problems that much.

Riesen_Meal

Im absolutely fine in Santry area (near omni) this morning, you would swear it never happened! Not looking forward to the 6pm rush!

disco girl

Fieldog wrote: »

Im absolutely fine in Santry area (near omni) this morning, you would swear it never happened! Not looking forward to the 6pm rush!

Fieldog it's the same every day, the speeds go back to normal.....

I've already been on to upc today cos when I'm on the phone I keep getting cut off!!! :mad: :mad:

Riesen_Meal

disco girl wrote: »

Fieldog it's the same every day, the speeds go back to normal.....

I've already been on to upc today cos when I'm on the phone I keep getting cut off!!! :mad: :mad:

I had no problems on 10mb, ive been on the 15 about 2 months by filling that form out online, I hope to god its sorted over the weekend, if I download some movies I suppose I better do it now....



Oh and cutting you off in UPC is an artform, I became very good at it myself in my time there....

:P

disco girl

Fieldog wrote: »

Oh and cutting you off in UPC is an artform, I became very good at it myself in my time there....

:P

lol I meant I was on a phonecall and my broadband and phone went down.........again!

Noxin

johnc24 wrote: »

You might try disabling the IP Flood option as Bodhan suggests from within the router page @ 192.168.1.1.

Go to pingtest.com and run the test. I got a grade F line with up to 90% packet loss. Disable the IP flood and you should get a grade A.

Cheers for that. I'll test it out over the weekend.

vibe666

my favourite was someone being on the ISP end of a customer rant "this is totally unacceptable, don't you know who I am?" to which the response was "no I haven't a clue, do you know who I am?" "no, i don't but I..." >>*CLICK*<<...zzzz "hello? hello? that little f**ker hung up on me!"

Karmafaerie

vibe666 wrote: »

lol, everyone knows the first rule of fight club using your own wireless router is that you don't talk about your own wireless router.

call them back and tell them you have permanently removed your own wireless router and are now using a cable direct to your modem and you intend to keep using it that way and that you still have issues.

also tell them that you've used more than one pc to confirm it's not a pc issue and have rebooted your modem several times, leaving it off for a couple of minutes before plugging it back in.

obviously i'll assume you HAVE actually done all this yourself already so you won't be lying to them.

incidentally, i've had a letter from upc saying they're having ongoing issues with the 30mbps upgrade and they're only going to charge me half price for the next 2 months until they have it sorted, so that's not too bad and tbh, i do most of my downloading in the early mornings (rss feeding my torrent client) with light browsing and a bit of youtubing in the evening so i don't even notice the problems that much.

By the way, you do realize that a simple mac address test will tell them that you are lying to them right.
As the will be able to tell whatever devices are connected onto your modem.
If you log onto your modem, you can see what devices are connected to what ethernet ports.
So you're advising him/her to lie to UPC which the UPC agent will be able to see right through.
So how is that helping?
I'm sure things like that are the reason that call center staff never believe customres.


I love irony of you telling somebody to lie to UPC, as all we hear here is people complaining about UPC lying to them.

BostonB

Theres a difference between trying to find out what is going on, and just fobbing someone off with any old answer. I'd say a lot of people have changed their WiFi router on advice of the support staff, only to find out thats not the problem at all.

vibe666

Karmafaerie wrote: »

So you're advising him/her to lie to UPC which the UPC agent will be able to see right through.

well, for one, someone on a support desk who is dumb enough to think that his unplugged router is having an effect on his connection when his pc is directly connected to his modem (which it was during testing, maybe you should READ the OP's first post before commenting???) isn't likely to even know what a MAC address is so i don't think he's in any danger there. :rolleyes:

either that, or the support guy was fobbing him off because he knows that there are widespread problems since the 30mbps upgrades and either doesn't care, can't or won't do anything about it and was therefore already lying to the OP.

and for two i seem to remember specifically telling him not to lie.

vibe666 wrote: »

obviously i'll assume you HAVE actually done all this yourself already so you won't be lying to them.

Skittle

Also a lot of routers (mine included) allow you to clone the PC MAC address and send it onto the modem.

Riesen_Meal

disco girl wrote: »

lol I meant I was on a phonecall and my broadband and phone went down.........again!

Nasty, lucky our phone is from Eircom so no trouble there!

I wonder is it to do with the cabling in the area as I believe our DTV went down but the cable remained?

sombaht

I dunno if its a Dublin thing or not but I seem to be holding steady here . . .

[URL="[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/784508289.png[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]

Cheers,
sombaht

AnimalRights

I want to turn off my firewall as I am getting bad packet loss too, but my router wants a password, not got a clue what it is, I don't remember it having one.