Cablemodem broadband in the Poole area

[steve_smith]

Hi all,

I've been having a nightmare time with my 600k cablemodem connection over the last month (based in Poole, Dorset).

Basically, it's been working intermittently. One day, it will be completely dead, another day it will OK. Although even when working OK, I see 5% to 40% packet loss if I ping an internet IP address (which is not how things should be).

NTL have sent three engineers out during the month. One changed the cable modem, which made things worse (the connection was so poor, we couldn't get through the registration process). The second engineer talked about digging up our front garden to replace the cable, but said that I would have to wait for two weeks. The third engineer adjusted something in the cabinet and put some kind of filter on the cable where it enters the house.

However, I read here that some other people in the Poole/Bournemouth area have also been having trouble, and that it could be down to the "degraded or loss of connection" problem in the Southampton area mentioned on the NTL status page.

However, nobody at NTL seems to be aware that this problem might be affecting my area. And the engineers who came out seem to know nothing about it either.

The level of customer service I received from them has been terrible. I've phoned numerous times. The diagnosis I've received have included "low signal level", "the signal level is too high", "it's an area fault", "it's definitely not an area fault"... the list goes on. I also had a few tickets open that NTL just closed themselves (because someone presumably told them it had been fixed) without bothering to contact me to check everything was OK. So I kept being promised an engineer would phone in 48 hours. After hearing nothing, I phone again only to be told the ticket had been closed and I would have to wait another 48 hours for another engineer to phone... grrr!

Just wondered if anyone else in the Poole/Bournemouth area are still having problems? Does anyone know how to get NTL to fix problems like this? I'm getting very frustrated, and thinking of trying to get ADSL instead. However, to get ADSL I have to get a BT phone line installed too (loads more delays and hassle I've no doubt).

Cheers,

Steve.

[carlingman]

:welcome: Steve,

Sorry this post seems to have been overlooked.

Second engineer seems to be talking about digging up the garden and re laying the cable which is more commonly known as a repull.

Customer Service with NTL is usually p1ss poor as you have endured.

I will probably get flamed for that but who cares so moving on to address the problem you are getting - what Cable Modem or Set Top Box do you have ??

It is unexcuseable that they have closed your fault tickets without a resolve.

All is not lost though as there is a certain Mod/Admin here that will have contact details for the MD of your region and will no doubt appear in here soon (Cough Neil).

As for moving to ADSL from mine and his perspective it will probably be the best choice you ever make.

:D

[Neil]

:welcome: Steve,

Sorry this post seems to have been overlooked.

Second engineer seems to be talking about digging up the garden and re laying the cable which is more commonly known as a repull.

Customer Service with NTL is usually p1ss poor as you have endured.

I will probably get flamed for that but who cares so moving on to address the problem you are getting - what Cable Modem or Set Top Box do you have ??

It is unexcuseable that they have closed your fault tickets without a resolve.

All is not lost though as there is a certain Mod/Admin here that will have contact details for the MD of your region and will no doubt appear in here soon (Cough Neil).

As for moving to ADSL from mine and his perspective it will probably be the best choice you ever make.

:D

Did someone call!? :D

Thanks CM, for bumping this thread. :tu:

Steve, that treatment (as CM says) is unexcusable (but typical of ntl in my experience when they don't actually know what they are doing)

As for a BT phone line/ADSL, it was the best/easiest move ever made where ntl where concerned!!

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showpost.php?p=89078&postcount=1 will shouw you just how easy it was.

As for getting your issue sorted, if you want to PM me your postcode, I'll get you details of someone who you need to speak to.

:welcome: to the site from me too!

[steve_smith]

Thanks for the helpful replies.

My cablemodem is the little NTL standalone silver box (NTL:Home 200 written on the bottom of it).

The main frustration is that each time you phone back after an engineer has called and say to them "no, whatever you have done, it's still not working" seems to reset the situation back the square one, and you have to wait another 48 hours before someone is supposed to contact you. However, 9 times out of 10, it seems that no engineer bothers to call you. So you phone back and they open a new ticket and tell you to wait another 48 hours.

This is how I've spent the last month. I wouldn't mind so much, but I work at home 2 to 3 days a week, and use the connection to pick up my email etc. from work. Hence not only personal frustration, but it makes it very difficult and expensive to do my job (having to go back to dialup when the cablemodem is not working). Something else I would like to discuss with them, the question of compensation (although I'm sure they just say "no").

I think we will be changing to BT. However, when we signed up with NTL it was only because BT couldn't do ADSL for us (to far from the telephone exchange). I just hope that situation has changed!

Steve.

[Chris W]

<snip>

Hi Steve :wavey:

PM me some details and i will have a look what is going on here for you... a housenumber and postcode/ mac address from your cable modem would be fine! :)

MB :monkey:

[Ignition]

Known issues in Poole with local network, not altogether dissimilar from those in Southampton. Southampton is pretty much sorted as far as I know, a lot of work went into cleaning up the local network (Thanks Videotron for the cunning idea of covering the taps with a wonderful insulator to interference such as... a metal plate. Nice one :| )

Don't have a timescale on a fix but be assured it's not just you and it's being worked on - these things can be an utter utter nightmare to fix, Southampton involved a lot of work from a lot of engineers.

*Crawls back under rock

[quadplay]

Yep. It is being looked at, however - it's now with the appropriate MDs...

[Ignition]

Poole isn't ex-Videotron monsieur, the SO postcodes should be behaving themselves muchly better now.

[quadplay]

Oops! oops:

Ah well, bits of it are still not up to scratch!

[MattyNeth]

Hi Steve - I live in North Bournemouth (BH9 postcode) and have had problems ever since the problems developed in the SO postcodes on 30th April. Exactly the same problems as you have explained on my 128k set-top box "service". Intermittent access - I was on the computer for about 4 hours last night and was able to access about 5 pages in that time.

I have virtually given up trying to get online now. I called last night and at last they are going to send an engineer out, though the rep said that she couldn't guarantee he/she would phone!

I just can't understand why the broadband helpdesk has no idea about the BH9 and SO region despite the taped message when you call? I also cannot understand why it has been 32 days now and the service has actually got worse (at least before when I got on it would be for a period of hours rather than less than 10 minutes before being dropped).

Last Wednesday I rang to complain about the service and the rep said "I shouldn't do this but I'm going to refund you for this month's broadband". That may be all well and good but all I want is access to my broadband.....
It may be worth a call to try and get some money back.

I am now right on the very edge of cancelling my broadband, and getting ADSL. Though I don't want a BT phone line as bizarrely the NTL phone and TV has been perfect.

JustAnotherN00b - unless NTL have not changed their taped message when ringing for Broadband support the issues in Southampton have not changed (and it's still on the ntlworld service status page). Taped message says "known problems in the BH9 and SO postcodes".

[stourwalk]

Hi Steve - I live in North Bournemouth (BH9 postcode) and have had problems ever since the problems developed in the SO postcodes on 30th April. Exactly the same problems as you have explained on my 128k set-top box "service". Intermittent access - I was on the computer for about 4 hours last night and was able to access about 5 pages in that time.

Last Wednesday I rang to complain about the service and the rep said "I shouldn't do this but I'm going to refund you for this month's broadband". That may be all well and good but all I want is access to my broadband.....
It may be worth a call to try and get some money back.

I am now right on the very edge of cancelling my broadband, and getting ADSL. Though I don't want a BT phone line as bizarrely the NTL phone and TV has been perfect.


I'm another BH9 broadband customer, using a stand-alone cable modem (one of the original trialists in the area) and like the rest of you have been having constant problems for the last 2-3 weeks. This weekend was a joke!

I also complained to billing and they've refunded me my broadband costs for the month.

I can't quite make up my mind whether to ditch NTL and go back to BT.. Since I don't have NTL TV, just the phone line, it's not a great problem.. But there was *nothing* wrong with the service until Southampton went screwy...

Chris

[MattyNeth]

Well touch wood the service over the last 3 days has been spot on. Typical as when I complained on Mon they arranged to send an engineer out this afternoon. He's clearly going to say there is nothing wrong with it:mad:

I'll keep you posted

[steve_smith]

Dear all,

Update from the BH12 post code area...

Well, just got back from a few days away, and I returned to find that the connection is at least working.

However, I'm still getting 5%-10% packet loss. Any packet loss is unacceptable in my opinion, my brother is on NTL Broadband in London and he can run the same tests to the same IPs as me and gets zero packet loss. The problem manifests itself as the occasional slow loading of web pages, and the occasional "page could not be found". I should imagine that this level of connection quality would definitely affect people who partake in online gaming etc.

Also, it's no surprise by now that the promised call from the NTL engineer never happened (they were meant to phone last Saturday, but didn't, and I have no messages on my answer machine since then).

We are in the process of moving our NTL phone line back to BT. I don't suppose cancelling our NTL phone affects our broadband, since that arrives in the house via coax cable, and not to the same box as the phone?

As soon as we are across to BT and I have ADSL set up and working, we can dump NTL completely.

Thanks to all those who replied with useful information and help.

Cheers,

Steve.

[SMHarman]

Dear all,
<snip>
We are in the process of moving our NTL phone line back to BT. I don't suppose cancelling our NTL phone affects our broadband, since that arrives in the house via coax cable, and not to the same box as the phone?
<snip>
Steve.

The cable from the street cab to the house is Siamsese coax, it is coax, plus an attached 6 core phone line type cable.

Cancelling one shoudl not cause problems with the other, except that somone incompetent might cancel the whole account!

[steve_smith]

Just to revive my own thread ... :-)

Generally speaking my cable modem is working much better now (although there was an outage over the weekend).

However, I'm still getting some packet loss.

For example, if I ping our office router (on a 2Mbit leased line) 100 times, somewhere between 2 and 5 packets will always be lost (although just occasionally, it's 0 packets lost).

Same story if I do the same test to www.ntlworld.com (http://www.ntlworld.com).

At the same time, I get pretty good ping times (around 10ms), but then a few in a row will take much longer (eg. 200ms).

I assume that this is not right ... is it an indication that there are still problems in my area, or could it be that my modem is faulty?

Thanks for your help!

Steve.

[Tristan]

My STB broadband service has only just started working after two days outage. I'm in BH18. To be fair to NTL, it's the only significant loss of service I've had in nearly two years of broadband, but I'm still less than chuffed.

What's been wrong with it? Why were the technical support people unable to give me even an estimate of when it would be fixed? I was told once that Nynex networks (of which the Wessex franchise is one) are the highest quality of the ex-CWC regions -- is this not the case?

And most importantly, can I expect many more outages in the near future?

[steve_smith]

Hi,

My recent problems have also been the first occasion in over a year to question the quality of the broadband service too.

We now have a BT phone line (changed that over from NTL in desperation, and to give us the option to move to ADSL). But, when the BT engineer came out to install it, he told me that we are right at the very end of the reach from the exchange (so only 512k, and with no guarantees on quality). I also need to buy an ethernet router, micro filters, install an extension to plug it in to, pay an activation charge... so I really want to stay with NTL to save all this.

However, although the connection quality has improved over the last couple of weeks, I am still concerned that it is not fixed completely (and I still don't know if it's my cable, or an area problem).

I'm not that bothered about minor amounts of packet loss (running at about 5% this morning) most of the time. However, on occasion it seems to badly affect uploading using FTP.

An engineer did tell me at one stage that he was going to see about moving me to a different UBR (I think that's what he called it), because he thought that might be causing my problems (something to do with over subscription?).

However, no one ever contacted me.

If anyone can help, then it would be much appreciated!

Steve.

[BBKing]

I'm not that bothered about minor amounts of packet loss (running at about 5% this morning)

Hell's bells, I would be. Shouldn't be seeing any packet loss at the IP layer.

I doubt it would be upstream congestion, which is probably what the engineer was talking about, but I'll check if you send me your modem MAC. You can't actually move between UBRs individually, only as part of a resegmentation.

[steve_smith]

OK thanks for the offer. Have sent you a private message.

[MattyNeth]

Well NTL never did send out an engineer last week despite a planned visit - my wife even took the afternoon off work to stay in:mad:


The BH9 region, touch wood, seems to be ok. The taped message on Broadband Support mentions BH11 now?

I actually built myself a new PC, and since then BB has been running superb:)

Matt
BH9 region
North Bournemouth

[Tristan]

Out again for several hours this afternoon, BH18. Only just come back on.

Could somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?

[zenmaster]

I'm in BH14 and can't say that I had noticed a lot of problems - some, but infrequently.

Anyway, an NTL engineer came yesterday to install a new STB (SMT-2100C). He told my wife that 'the main connection to the internet' (whatever that means) is faulty and causing intermittent failures. It is, apparently, due to be replaced on July 6th.

However, I can't get access AT ALL with this new box. I hate it already. It doesn't appear to have an 'internet led' like the old one (or if it does, it's not on). No manual for the STB, of course, so I am clueless.

[BBKing]

Hmm - didn't the engineer check it had a connection before leaving? Do you have your PID and password?

If you drop me a PM with the smart card number or STB mac address in I can check it's got broadband enabled.

[steve_smith]

I see from the NTL status page that at midnight tonight for 6 hours some scheduled maintenance is going to take place on the network in places including Poole.

The message is slightly cryptic when it comes to Poole (other areas mention UBR upgrades).

Do any of the NTL techies know whether Poole is having UBR maintenance, and if so whether it will affect (and hopefully) fix problems for users in the BH12 area (although Bournemouth postcode, actually in Poole).

Have been having what are thought to be UBR related problems for the past 2 months (download is fine, upload is intermitently poor or very poor) and will be so very happy if it finally gets fixed :-)

Thanks,

Steve.

[Ignition]

Out again for several hours this afternoon, BH18. Only just come back on.

Could somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?

Will try.

There have been issues in that area with 'noise' on the network, where taps leading to people's houses degrade, people plugging things they shouldn't into the cable, STBs misbehaving and broadcasting nonsense, whatever it increases the noise floor (unwanted garbage on the HFC network on the same frequencies as upstream transmissions) and as that gets closer to the usable signal it lowers signal to noise ratio.

As far as what's going on with it not exactly sure but believe that network cleanup is being done, as was done in Southampton with some considerable success, and going by the outage expected will probably be replacement of some kit on the return (upstream) paths from the the affected areas tonight.

That's a guess on what's happening, I honestly don't know, but that makes sense and that's what the issue is. These things can be a complete PITA to fix, especially if the fix requires a loss of service to customers in the area.

[the jackel]

I see from the NTL status page that at midnight tonight for 6 hours some scheduled maintenance is going to take place on the network in places including Poole.

The message is slightly cryptic when it comes to Poole (other areas mention UBR upgrades).

Do any of the NTL techies know whether Poole is having UBR maintenance, and if so whether it will affect (and hopefully) fix problems for users in the BH12 area (although Bournemouth postcode, actually in Poole).

Have been having what are thought to be UBR related problems for the past 2 months (download is fine, upload is intermitently poor or very poor) and will be so very happy if it finally gets fixed :-)

Thanks,

Steve.

Quite a bit of work going on in Poole tommorow morning (finally! - relief for us as well as customers!). Don't know exactly regarding postcode areas who will be affected but one or two UBR's (in Poole) being resegmented and a new one put in as well. This should eliviate some of the congestion which is the problem at the moment.

HTH

[the jackel]

My STB broadband service has only just started working after two days outage. I'm in BH18. To be fair to NTL, it's the only significant loss of service I've had in nearly two years of broadband, but I'm still less than chuffed.

What's been wrong with it? Why were the technical support people unable to give me even an estimate of when it would be fixed? I was told once that Nynex networks (of which the Wessex franchise is one) are the highest quality of the ex-CWC regions -- is this not the case?

And most importantly, can I expect many more outages in the near future?

There have been quite a few electricity probs down in Wessex recently, also headend problems as well hasn't helped.

[Ignition]

Quite a bit of work going on in Poole tommorow morning (finally! - relief for us as well as customers!). Don't know exactly regarding postcode areas who will be affected but one or two UBR's (in Poole) being resegmented and a new one put in as well. This should eliviate some of the congestion which is the problem at the moment.

HTH

*Wonders what congestion this is? :confused:

There's no real congestion issues but yes you are getting a sexy new uBR.

[the jackel]

*Wonders what congestion this is? :confused:

There's no real congestion issues but yes you are getting a sexy new uBR.

Not upstream congestion (utilisation), just far too many modems in a particular area causing low SNR

[steve_smith]

There's no real congestion issues but yes you are getting a sexy new uBR.

Is this a completely new UBR, or an existing one being replaced? I'm on UBR03, so I don't suppose it helps me, unless the resegmentation work helps my UBR cope a bit better with demand (I should imagine demand is high in this particular area, because we are right on the edge of not being able to receive ADSL).

Since the beginning of May, I've been seeing at best 4%-5% packet loss when pinging known good hosts. Sometimes it's been so bad that I haven't been able to connect to anything (more than 50% packet loss).

Just hope they can sort it out soon! (I appreciate it's hard work, but it would be so nice to know when or if to expect a light at the end of the tunnel).

Steve.

[Ignition]

Not upstream congestion (utilisation), just far too many modems in a particular area causing low SNR

Gotcha, nodes too big.

[BBKing]

Is this a completely new UBR,

Yes, number four.

[steve_smith]

Quite a bit of work going on in Poole tommorow morning (finally! - relief for us as well as customers!). Don't know exactly regarding postcode areas who will be affected but one or two UBR's (in Poole) being resegmented and a new one put in as well. This should eliviate some of the congestion which is the problem at the moment.
HTH

Well (unless they are still working on it now), whatever they did in Poole last night has done nothing to solve my problem :(

In fact, I would say that if anything, it's got slightly worse (when I first switched the modem back on this morning, it couldn't even get an IP address).

Does anyone know when Poole should next expect some maintenance, and more specifically when UBR 3 is being fixed/upgraded? The problem in my area with low SNR has been going on since the beginning of May.

Thanks,

Steve.

[Gooch]

Steve

I'm pulling my hair out as well m8. I'm in BH12 and am seriously thinking of going to ADSL. Apparently our problems have been ongoing since Nov 03 although I've only been having major problems in the last month. When I first got NTL broadband a couple of years ago I did have a few teething problems while we were still on the Cosham Proxy. Since we changed to Poole 1 all was fine until a month ago.

Have a look if you like...

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=15204