UPC acting weird

conzy

Getting similar problems in Kilkenny on and off, particularly over the past few days..

Youtube videos taking AGES to load, timeouts etc...

I thought it was a DNS issue as you could click a link and it would timeout, and you could click it again a few moments later and it would load instantly..

Just now I did a speedtest and got less than 1Mb/s but downloaded a file from heanet at 3.1MB/s ...

Tried switching to OpenDNS but it doesnt seem to help much

slave1

Same here, on the 100Mb line and various speeds previous to that, never had a problem before, always hitting the max speed, now am around 2/3Mb down and 0.17Mb up. I phoned support on 1908 and after 40 minutes on hold (on position number 1 in the queue) I hung up. Will be on to them in the morning again if this continues.

ryanch09

So this is obviously a countrywide problem...very disappointed that im not getting the speed im paying for...Might give UPC a ring tomorrow...although im not expecting any good results based on my past experiences with them..

Kintarō Hattori

In Balbriggan and I'm on the 20MB package. Download at the moment is about 1MB while the upload speed is just shy of 2MB. Downloading from heanet is running @ 45KB.

Dale Parish

On the 25mb package in Limerick City.
I'm yet to get the advertised speed on either UPC's own speedtest or speedtest.net, which is a joke :mad:
But the last 2 days have been seriously bad.
The router is restarting itself every second day

johnboysligo

murphp wrote: »

But weird thing is gaming on xbox360 is fine.

gaming is generally a different type of traffic ( udp ) than say youtube or a file transfer ( tcp ). could be wrong :P but that's how i remember traffic protocols being explained to me years ago and why some games would suffer if i was downloading files and other games wouldn't be effected at all

Home Theatre

A recent test on the 50 Mbps "fibre power", "Ireland's fastest broadband" connection. (Location is Sligo town)

bloke

There seems to be a number of different problems reported here. I would say anyone seeing slow speedtest results on the UPC page has a different (local) issue to those reporting streaming issues.

On the streaming issues and slow speeds downloading from some providers (itunes, apple), I have a theory:

(as background, I recently moved from eircom to UPC and in general delighted with performance. I am a network engineer by profession so hence aware of the following. Apologies if I am teaching people to suck eggs - not sure how to level this)

A large part (if not the majority) of internet content is served by a relatively small number of content providers who will cache content for a website/service and make it available to your end users at locations around the world. The actul website/service you are using does not have to worry about bandwidth or latency, they just pay the content provider.

The largest global content provider is Akamai (http://www.akamai.com/html/about/index.html). They are present in pretty much every significant internet exchange (IXP) around the world, including INEX in Dublin (www.inex.ie), where they will happily connect (peer) with any ISP who will do so. This helps Akamai (local content delivery = better performance = happy customers) and also helps the ISP (local content delivery = not paying a transit provider or paying for fibre to carry it across oceans)

Most ISPs (including almost all Irish ISPs) recognise the symbiotic advantage and openly peer with Akamai and other content providers - many go further still and will install caches directly within their own networks for large content providers. A minority of large ISPs take a more closed (read awkward) view that by peering for free they are helping the content providers generate revenue at their expense. They will refuse or restrict peering with content providers and/or demand payment for traffic on these peerings. This hurts their customers, but (in theory) helps the bottom line. UPC are (or seem to be) in the latter group.

As an example - I just loaded a random youtube video and the stream came from an Akamai IP (92.122.216.137). You can see below the path is via AMSIX in Amsterdam, 25+ ms away, despite a local peering available in Dublin.


2 109.255.253.190 (109.255.253.190) 9.475 ms 8.065 ms 7.666 ms
3 84.116.238.38 (84.116.238.38) 54.288 ms 26.714 ms 33.398 ms
4 84-116-130-237.aorta.net (84.116.130.237) 25.438 ms 23.285 ms 29.104 ms
5 nl-ams04a-ri2-xe-10-2-0.aorta.net (84.116.130.182) 24.852 ms
nl-ams04a-ri2-xe-2-3-0.aorta.net (84.116.134.89) 26.844 ms
nl-ams04a-ri2-xe-9-0-1.aorta.net (84.116.134.93) 31.370 ms
6 amsix-ams6.netarch.akamai.com (195.69.145.208) 26.513 ms 28.534 ms 26.194 ms
7 a92-122-216-137.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com (92.122.216.137) 25.326 ms 27.771 ms 33.726 ms

Youtube for me has been ok, but undoubtedly it slows some things down - particularly considering the amount of Ads, software downloads, images and video hosted by Akamai for a huge array of sites. The Amsterdam node, aside from being further away in latency terms may also not be optimised (pre-populated) for Irish demands and content, meaning the content may not be there already and get pulled from still further afield.

Akamai are not the only content provider with which UPC have restricted connectivity. There are others - another example would be Amazon who provide Cloud services used by a large number of companies in addition to DNS and content provider services. Amazon host much of their European content in Ireland and are present at INEX in Dublin however a traceroute from UPC will go via London and at least one intermediary network.

Not sure how to get this fixed - I'm aware through some contacts that UPC are somewhat intransigent in their peering policies. Seems unfair though that at least they have done *some* kind of deal with Akamai (and maybe others) on their home turf of Amsterdam but not bothered doing something here in Dublin when they are already in INEX ready to connect.

Maybe if enough people make enough noise they will reconsider... Any UPC people around here?

aspasp1

Mine is down too in limerick goes on and off.

dregin

In Dublin 7. Connection dropped Saturday morning. Didn't have time to look into it and finally got it back this morning after the cisco modem had reverted to factory defaults of its own accord... Been up and down all day today

eco2live

Same here. Youtube is really crap. Its strange as its been fine for the last 6 months. I have 50mb BB.

Follow these tests and let me know what you get:

Test 1
http://www.upc.ie/broadband/speedtest/
UPC webite (irish)

Ping 13ms
Download 3.49
Upload 2.98

Test 2
http://www.upc.nl/internet/snel_internet/speedtest/

Download 13.14
Upload 2.93

Test 3 (I choose the Dublin server)
http://www.speedtest.net/
Ping 25ms
Download 21.43
Upload 2.99

I know these tests are always different but I only check them when I have an issue. Its never as bad as this. I usually have between 22 to 48mb download speeds on the upc.ie speedtest. :mad:

Spunog UIE

Kildare UPC 25mb...

Test 1
Download 2.42
Upload 2.00

Test 2
Download 13.05 - 17.10
Upload 1.99

Test 3 (Dublin Server)
Download 19.7
Upload 2.01

murphp

johnboysligo wrote: »

gaming is generally a different type of traffic ( udp ) than say youtube or a file transfer ( tcp ). could be wrong :P but that's how i remember traffic protocols being explained to me years ago and why some games would suffer if i was downloading files and other games wouldn't be effected at all

Ah right thanks

omg a kitty

Im in D11, and my download and upload are both around 2Mb, Im on the 20Mb package.
But whats more annoying is that i get disconnected at least once everyday. All my computers would be connected to the modem but but it will say "No Internet Access"
I dont think its my modem.
When I was disconnected for the first time about 2 UPC networks in my area was open, theyre usually locked, I reckon they tried to reset their router and couldnt finish it. I connected to them both and it was just like mine, and then few mins later i could access the internet on them, So I rebooted my modem and it was fine.
UPC Customer support said an engineer will be here tomorrow but by the looks of it, there are hundreds of other people whos waiting to for an engineer tomorrow

CelticGibson

In Kildare on the 30Mb package. Speedtest results:



Crazy. :mad:

CelticGibson

I wonder does it have anything to do with this...

http://www.worldipv6day.org/

They are running a test on the new IPV6 protocols on that day. They might have mucked with the old IPV4 while they were getting ready for this..

http://www.akamai.com/ipv6

Just a theory.

CelticGibson

It's definitely TCP traffic. I am able to p2p at full speed...

cml387

Seems a bit better here in Clonmel.

eco2live

Its a joke that 50mb gives you 2mb and 100 gives you 4mb at the mo.

What is the point going for over 25mb if it never reaches even that. I logged a complaint by e-mail with UPC support. Please all do the same thing so that they do something.

CelticGibson

Still crap...



:mad:

Nollog

Too many UPC users streaming e3 I bet.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

been terrible for me for a few days now. I can download from usenet at max speeds, but anything involving a web browser is ****ing terrible. speedtest showing around 1-2 meg down instead of the 50 down I was getting earlier last week


--edit

on the phone, the woman at upc told me that at 9am this morning they were told the problem would be fixed sometime in the next 24-48 hours, but that it was being worked on.

ryanch09

My speed tests are back up to normal but still web downloads and youtube terrible earlier my download speed for a file was 10kb/s ?! Just tried again (heanet) and its back to around 70kb/s...still disappointing..

Nothingbetter2d

dublincelt wrote: »

Having issues myslef here in Carlow. Supposed to be 50mb. In reality its only barely managing 2.6mb download with faster upload (5mb).

Called the helpdisk and the earliest an Engineer can call out is WEDNESDAY afternoon.

Not impressed.

i too am in carlow and im getting very slow video streaming though downloading files is fine. ALSO my thompson router gets very hot

patrickc

I've been having this problem in Carlow for the past month with them, I rang them on Sunday yet again and they said that there was a network area, but it should of been resolved , they said they would raise it to a level 2 engineer, whoever they are. Still havent heard from them in the 24hours they said I would.

I tried ringing there and they said there was an area fault in a recorded message and disconnected me.

supposed to be on upc 20mb, getting between 2 and 3mb for the past 4 days.

serioulsy pissed off with upc now, in 5 years with utv I had one outage, in 9 months with upc I've had 5/6 issues .

ridiculous.

omg a kitty

Most people in my estate had my problem, so theyre contacting the regional engineer who might look into it tomorrow. He said something about "noise signal" or something, oh well at least they arrived on time

dublincelt

patrickc wrote: »

I've been having this problem in Carlow for the past month with them, I rang them on Sunday yet again and they said that there was a network area, but it should of been resolved , they said they would raise it to a level 2 engineer, whoever they are. Still havent heard from them in the 24hours they said I would.

I tried ringing there and they said there was an area fault in a recorded message and disconnected me.

supposed to be on upc 20mb, getting between 2 and 3mb for the past 4 days.

serioulsy pissed off with upc now, in 5 years with utv I had one outage, in 9 months with upc I've had 5/6 issues .

ridiculous.

Suddenly that half price offer from Sky sounds good. Have UPC since December without any probs with the Broadband. The Missus HATES the TV compared to Sky+. Download speeds still crap, but Peer to Peer is okay. Very strange, dont think an Engineer is going to fix this problem "locally".

Upgraded to the 50mb a couple of weeks ago by the way.

Would seriously consider going back to Sky, however Eircoms overall services are appalling.

dublincelt

Back to full speed here for the past 20 mins. First time since Fri morning.

Hope I havent tempted fate by posting this! :pac:

Chosen

I called them again earlier, the lady told me that "it's not a nation-wide issue, just an area around Kilkenny" I told her that this is BS and made her aware of this topic. She immediately brought a "team leader" on the phone.
I told the guy that I am aware of the extend of the outage/issue and that I am not demanding to be fixed before anyone else, I just called to get a status update. I guess he appreciated the honesty and he gave me full details of the outage, he practically mentioned every area where UPC has a network on. He said that they do not know when this is going to be fixed, but all their onsite crews as well as their "data analyzers" are across the country working on the issue and their management is expecting a formal update with diagnosis from them at 6pm today.
He also said that due to the nature of the issue, a reboot of our modem will not be required; all we have to do is run a speedtest or open a streaming video page from outside of ROI (any Youtube video would do) to confirm that they resolved the problem.

That was a lot more information than the last 5 phonecalls I had with them since last Thursday, combined.

dunkelgrun

Youtube and SpeedTest seems to be okay this evening in D18