View Full Version : info for customers in the CV5 8DP area!!!
This area is a big student area, my connection was fine for the first 2 weeks until it had pings up in the K, I at first thought it was my server, so I congaed it for a standard computer (2.6ghz) still the same problem, phoned ntl up,,,, (30 min later, zzzzzzz) nothing is wrong with your connection sir,we have pinged it,all is good...
Hummmm being a network engineer (cisco etc)for 1.5K connections on a network and I know pings only show problems at that time, which it wasn't all the time.
slowly it got worse, after looking on this site (but the .com one) and read about ubr etc, I phoned them up and asked them to check the ubr,,,, O yes sir your ubr is well over subscribed,we will credit you for the loss of service, ok no problem, how long will it be? he replied I don't know could be weeks months or longer (yrs, lol)
so I waited and waited and waited, after the connection got worse than a 56K the modem would fail to boot up and connect to the network, it would take over an hr to connect. phoned them up again, cooked tea while waiting, told them the new problem. They sent a engineer out the next day (which I was glad about, good move ntl). the next day came, he checked it no problem with it, he tested the speed wow he said that is very very poor, I'll report this and they should get a move on faster.
Ok no problem (by this point I was sending a pigeons out as emails)
2 months later still no luck, phone them up again (by this point I must of spent a shed load on phone calls as I had to phone from my mobile, no land line)
they have been re-balanced and it should be fixed, he then loooked at the ubr usage and said it is still in the 90% for both of them avalible to you, they will put a new one in and some more cable for the load,ok I said when will this be fixed? phone back Friday should have info by then, so I did.
The guy on the phone said they have no info of them putting a new ubr in and most like will not for just me, (but isn't this effecting other ppl, but then I remembered most ppl will get fobbed off with it's your computer, you must have the blaster worm or somate, blah blah blah )
So for you guys in CV5 8DP area (Coventry) ring them up and tell them you want some money off due to poor service, also I managed to cancel my 12 month contact, lol. adsl here I come.
Good luck all,
Mr.Moony
13-12-2003, 17:54
Surely being a network engineer (especialy for CISCO) you would understand, that some one next door could be on a complete different cable and upstream and not even feel the effects?
also I managed to cancel my 12 month contact, lol. adsl here I come.
Good luck all,
Good for you 'jsatan' :tu:
http://216.40.241.59/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=37 should be your next stop. ;)
The ubr have be re-balanced and therefore the loads should be equal, therefore every one should have the same problems?
Well either way its looked at there are 2 ubr therefore there is at least 50% of the ppl on the same ubr as me so in my book 50% of ppl with the same problem as me it not good at all.
Mr.Moony
13-12-2003, 18:05
The ubr have be re-balanced and therefore the loads should be equal, therefore every one should have the same problems?
Well either way its looked at there are 2 ubr therefore there is at least 50% of the ppl on the same ubr as me so in my book 50% of ppl with the same problem as me it not good at all.
Most of the problems will be Billy up the road on KaZaA, the problem is with the Ambit modems trying to find the cleanest upstream to lock onto, therefore you find hundreds of modems all stuck in groups (although this may have be changed with the 200 - where's BBK when you need him)
Yeah it most likely is "billy" up the road, but it still sucks that they don't do anything about it. :( sighhhhh
But I'm going to join silvermead they have a static ip for free so my DNS server will be running again, :).
th'engineer
13-12-2003, 19:26
Most of the problems will be Billy up the road on KaZaA, the problem is with the Ambit modems trying to find the cleanest upstream to lock onto, therefore you find hundreds of modems all stuck in groups (although this may have be changed with the 200 - where's BBK when you need him)NTL still need to provide the service if billy is up the road with kazza it needs to cope with that.
Its really monitoring that needs to be carried out luckily Bromley platform have these tools and they work.
Do not know about original NTL
Sense Q BBK required
Mr.Moony
13-12-2003, 19:33
NTL still need to provide the service if billy is up the road with kazza it needs to cope with that.
Its really monitoring that needs to be carried out luckily Bromley platform have these tools and they work.
Agreed. With over 300+ people on my upstream I was never a happy bunny. However they did do resegs on every UBR which was great.
NTL still need to provide the service if billy is up the road with kazza it needs to cope with that.
My thought EXACTLY.
Mr.Moony
13-12-2003, 23:46
Imagine Billy is 155 Kazaa users.
Yehhh you heard.
Irrelevant. Kazaa is an allowed application. If ntl
a) can't support of 155 Kazaa users; or
b) think that 155 Kazaa users may sign up (any moron can see this from market data)
then they should either
a) ban Kazaa
b) stop signing up new customer to a network that is overloaded (kazaa or otherwise)
c) upgrade the network in line with customer demand.
Mr.Moony
14-12-2003, 00:03
Irrelevant. Kazaa is an allowed application. If ntl
a) can't support of 155 Kazaa users; or
b) think that 155 Kazaa users may sign up (any moron can see this from market data)
then they should either
a) ban Kazaa
b) stop signing up new customer to a network that is overloaded (kazaa or otherwise)
c) upgrade the network in line with customer demand.
For allot of what your suggesting they would need a crystal ball. For example a customer today who has an average ping for 20 had.......91% utilisation.......
Just goes to show doesnt it.
Even if billy is using his connection 24/7,in the real world this should not effect my connection if ntl do there network correctly, look at it like this if I'm using my connection and he (at this point using his connection in the correct way and not being a smtp relay for spammer, lol e.g up and downloading) starts to upload something to a friend over msn, bang there goes my connection out the window, this shouldn't be the case what so ever, there should be enough bandwidth on the ubr and line for all user connected to it to upload and download at the some time, just incase it happens. Its like buying a plane ticket and billy beating you to the airport so you get told NO you can't come on, planes full. would this be acceptable?
Mr.Moony
14-12-2003, 00:15
Even if billy is using his connection 24/7,in the real world this should not effect my connection if ntl do there network correctly, look at it like this if I'm using my connection and he (at this point using his connection in the correct way and not being a smtp relay for spammer, lol e.g up and downloading) starts to upload something to a friend over msn, bang there goes my connection out the window, this shouldn't be the case what so ever, there should be enough bandwidth on the ubr and line for all user connected to it to upload and download at the some time, just incase it happens. Its like buying a plane ticket and billy beating you to the airport so you get told NO you can't come on, planes full. would this be acceptable?
Well...CISCO limit the users per upstream to 200, and Cable is all shared so NTL's network management wouldnt be able to do much better than that anyway. Thats just the way cable works.
And before someone posts Yes NTL should limit people and load balance more often or even switch users from upstream at request (although the CM might not accept it). But they dont...dont blame me :(
From what I know of ntl typology, my modem goes down the cox to the ubr down the road, then fiber op from there, so from what i can tell they want some more ubrs which is what they told me they needed to do, I think they should stop takin ppl on in area that over loaded as this is a directly breaking there agreements, and they do have a habit of sayign one thing and meaning another, for example the 1MB was what they was advertizing, not 1Mb.
However, most people (Joe Public) dont notice if their connection is slow so ntl can keep signing up these people and get money from them, broadband is their biggest profit area, remember :)
If ntl loose all of the people that are "technical" like us on this board that are aware of ping times etc. but continue to fill broadband at the rate they are going with Joe Public then they will be making money quick ;)
Remember Joe Public prolly browses a few web pages a day and downloads his mail twice a day. That is ntl's most loved customer. Pays the same amount as the network hogging kazaa users (and myself) but uses about 10% of the bandwidth they do.
I know virgin stopped taking on ppl when they was getting over loaded,
Mr.Moony
14-12-2003, 02:48
Virgin do broadband? Ntl topology doesnt work quite as you suggested, this example is more to do with cable and upstreams. A UBR can have up to 6 (i think 6) cables and usualy 5 on each upstream. For example you might be on cable 4 upstream 5 which has 150 1mg users. Some one down the road might be on cable 4 upstream 2 which he shares with Ted on 150k who occasionaly checks his emails. NTL dont put, or cant even chose these factors, the modems themselves do when first obtaining their lock.
Yeah virgin do adsl. I have a good idea how cable broadband works, well ntl have made bigger work for them self lettign the modem pick the ubr, they should auto asign them when you subscribe, therefore they know where they are placing what speed user, but as for how much is used that should not make a difference as I said before they should have enought for every one be using it at the same time and not worry about others on the line, at the end of the day its ntl scimping on ubrs and man power, I couldnt careless if they are in doubt, that is not my concern, my concern is my connection and that it should be what I was paying for, not somethingI only get when every one else on my ubr doesn't want to use there internet.
At the end of the day ntl fall short of the mark imo.
The general user (joe public ) wouldnt know a thing and will just get fobbed off with "its your computer" blah blah blah, for example if this was electricity you would have dim lights most of the time till every oen went to bed for the night, then maybe you could boil the kettle.
I know what you saying about the amount of ppl on the ubr for different connection, but I get an average speed of 500kbps, I'm on 1mb not 600K, 10% doesnt make much difference to 56k but it does to high speed(did i realy say that about ntl, wow).
Mr.Moony
14-12-2003, 12:16
Yeah virgin do adsl. I have a good idea how cable broadband works, well ntl have made bigger work for them self lettign the modem pick the ubr, they should auto asign them when you subscribe
The UBR is based on location. The modem picks the cleanest upsteam, not the UBR. They cant chose any upstream because it might not be 'clean' enough for the modem to operate on.
At the end of the day its ntl who arn't keeping there network in working order, so doesnt matter how it work, or in the case why it doesnt work. There has got to be a way for them to know which ubr/upstream to go on, if the little modem can think of it then i think they need to add some extra rule to it. but end of the day they don't cut it no matter what way they are looked at, blam it on the modems blame it on c/s its ntl as a whole that fall short.
If you buy a car you don't expect it to just stop working down the road and them telling you its cos of this tech problem, you couldnt care lee why it isnt working just the face that it isnt and it should be. plz dont feel like im getting at you it just seems like you defend ntl to the end.
You have some good points Mr Moony, but as jsatan says, it is up to ntl to give the customer what they pay for, by whatever method they so deem best.
If the customer is technical and knows that the connection isn't working properly, then it's ntl's responsibility to fix it imho. Relying on the fact that, say 90%, of customers aren't technical and so are happy isn't really an excuse imho.
Mr.Moony
14-12-2003, 18:18
Yehhh im just trying to give an outline reason why it seems that we dont do enough.
And its Moony.
Yehhh im just trying to give an outline reason why it seems that we dont do enough.And good points they are too. If ntl were as straight talking as you then I think many customers would be more understanding. I doubt that will happen anytime soon though.
And its Moony.My bad ;)
Well I was told my contract was cancelled but they lied as they have done before.
I asked them to look at the notes which I requested they stat that I am getting disconnected due to ntl not providing the service I pay for, they looked and no it wasnââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t there, first thing that came into my head was they have done as they have done before and lied to just get me off the phone, luckily I keep everyoneââ‚ ‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s first name and extension number. :)
Well as a recap of what has been going off, ntl said they had re-balanced the ubr in my area and all should be good, nope nothing was different. Ring ring back on the phone to ntl, it still not fixed, yes it is sir it says here on the notes that it has been.
Well I was fuming by this point so I went down to there call centre and spoke to some women regarding this she said someone would be in contact within one hr, he rang and told me he had rang the department that should of done this and they hadnâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t even received anything regarding my area to be balance, so where did this note come from????
Well they still will not let me out my contract even tho it has been I think 4 months now with the same problem, its not just me it the whole area, now Iâ₠™m told it will be done within in the month (yeah right).
By the time they have got it fixed (if should I say) it will of been 5 month, how on earth can ntl think that 5 months to fix an entire area is acceptable?
Well Iv writing a letter or 2 into bbc watch dog also Iâ₠™m taking legal action (section 19.4 I think, if you want to look) but they are still going on about there hasnâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t been 3 engineers out to have a look at it, but there is nothing wrong at my end that 3 engineers can fix.
Just waiting to see what happens now, you move ntl, lol.
poolking
25-01-2004, 22:36
jsatan - Didn't you say you attempted to cancel your account and them not finding any record of your request, did you not ring them to re-iterate that you wanted your account cancelling?
Or am I missing something here? Did you change your mind simply because they had no record of your request to cancel?
So why go through all of this hassle with engineers when you decided over a month ago to cancel?
Ignition
25-01-2004, 23:41
Yikes. A few points here to pick up on.
All quotes from Mr. Moony:
The UBR is based on location. The modem picks the cleanest upsteam, not the UBR. They cant chose any upstream because it might not be 'clean' enough for the modem to operate on.
Actually the modem takes the upstream the uBR operates on, they take the first upstream that is lockable the uBR offers them. They can't choose any upstream because in a number of places the upstreams are physically split as well as the cable interfaces, so a modem will only be offered certain upstreams, not the full range.
Virgin do broadband? Ntl topology doesnt work quite as you suggested, this example is more to do with cable and upstreams. A UBR can have up to 6 (i think 6) cables and usualy 5 on each upstream. For example you might be on cable 4 upstream 5 which has 150 1mg users. Some one down the road might be on cable 4 upstream 2 which he shares with Ted on 150k who occasionaly checks his emails. NTL dont put, or cant even chose these factors, the modems themselves do when first obtaining their lock.
Virgin offer ADSL using the ntl network.
A uBR has up to 4 'cables' and 6 upstreams per cable. NTL can only segment the network and limit the upstreams available to a modem, there is no control over which they lock to, that is entirely dependent on uBR and upstream conditions.
Surely being a network engineer (especialy for CISCO) you would understand, that some one next door could be on a complete different cable and upstream and not even feel the effects?
Being a Cisco certified network engineer and knowing about CMTS and cable modems are very different things. 99.99% of network engineers don't know about cable networks because they have no reason to - there are thousands of Cisco certified network engineers in the UK, probably less than 100 that are IP technicians who know cable networks.
Most of the problems will be Billy up the road on KaZaA, the problem is with the Ambit modems trying to find the cleanest upstream to lock onto, therefore you find hundreds of modems all stuck in groups (although this may have be changed with the 200 - where's BBK when you need him)
Addressed in first comment.
For allot of what your suggesting they would need a crystal ball. For example a customer today who has an average ping for 20 had.......91% utilisation.......
No chance in hell - 91% is basically absolute maximum that an upstream will tend to run to, average ping of 20 is very very unlikely, pings suffer at c75% utilisation, and by 91% are pretty hairy to say the least.
Well...CISCO limit the users per upstream to 200, and Cable is all shared so NTL's network management wouldnt be able to do much better than that anyway. Thats just the way cable works.
Cisco's guideline is a recommended value, and is quite irrelevant really, utilisation is a more important measure.
And before someone posts Yes NTL should limit people and load balance more often or even switch users from upstream at request (although the CM might not accept it). But they dont...dont blame me
Load balancing is done on original ntl areas on a weekly basis. Switching users from upstreams at request is a bad idea - those with the access to do this are generally dealing with larger faults and simply don't have the time to spend all day changing users around, and inevitably there'd be quite a number of users wanting to be moved if one user were moved at request and word spread.
CMs accept upstream moves, they don't have much choice, uBR forces it ;)
Jsatan
I have a good idea how cable broadband works, well ntl have made bigger work for them self lettign the modem pick the ubr, they should auto asign them when you subscribe, therefore they know where they are placing what speed user, but as for how much is used that should not make a difference as I said before they should have enought for every one be using it at the same time and not worry about others on the line
Clearly you don't. Auto assigning a uBR is impossible, as resegs and house moves where customers retain the same kit would make this difficult doing the same with an upstream might be an option though, however placing users according to their speed won't really work as well as you might think as it still takes no account of utilisation. There is certainly not enough for everyone to be using it at the same time, to do that would require 1:1 contention bandwidth, and would push the cost of 600k over £250 a month. Please PM me if you want some more info, Cisco and a number of other sites are quite informative on this.
Rgds
JAN00b :)
'200 on an upstream' is too broad-brush an approach when you have multiple service levels on your network - just as an example, adding a few hundred non-broadband STBs to an area will not raise the usage significantly, adding 50 1Mb SACMs to an area will.
Therefore capacity management has to be partly iterative, in other words starting with a guess and refining in the light of sales figures (can't predict them that accurately) and monitored trends, then feeding all this back in and so on.
Ambit clustering I don't think is related to upstream cleanliness. 200s I'm not sure about yet, have to refine my analysis now there are enough about to be statistically significant.
And there's been a hell of a lot of work done in the months before Christmas on this. Note the lack of people complaining in Leeds lately compared to the huge angry thread on .com around October/November.
Allocating a user to a UBR and upstream at sign on is a total non-starter, one it's extremely difficult, two it's inflexible (what about house moves and resegs?) and three it wouldn't actually work any better than spending the money used to develop such a system on some actual new capacity.
@poolking
There is a department that cancels peopleÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s connection, and one person will think it is a good reason to have my contract chopped but another will not, does this make sense?
Iâ₠™m still in my 12 contract so I can not pick when I want to cancel I have to convince them why they should let me out of it, which is harder than you think, even though its been like this for all this time.
Every time I ring up they ask me to hold to check if it is still a problem even though they can look at my notes, god knows why they are like this but whatever the reason do you think I want to be with ntl with their network being like this?
NO, Iv been trying to get out my contract for a while now but ntl donââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t know what they are doing from one day to the next, ask some one on the phone next time you ring to tell you what has been happening with you account, they havenÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t a clue even the notes they leave are poor.
One person told me my contract will be cancelled by the end of the month, I ring up again check when my final bill will be and they said why is this your final bill? So I told them, they put me through to customer solutions and they said they would not cancel my contract.
Hope this has made it clear to you.
Jsatan
@JustAnotherN00b
Regard the †œhow a cable modem worksÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã‚ÂÂ
you stated it can not know what the utilisation is, well with most routers I have worked with they know what the average load is over a certain interface, also they could if they wanted build in a protocol to the router that will let the modem know which is better, routers do this all the time across network †œeigrpâ € for example is a far good one,
Why does everyone this forum seem so snappy, I came here not to complain but to tell people about the troubles in my area and to get something done about it and not get fobbed off, but all I seem to be getting a flack off you guys.
jsatan, noob is talking about cable upstream utilisation, which is an ntl-visible parameter related to esoteric DOCSIS overheads, timeslots and other fun RF stuff, not simple IP traffic. Your average router has no conception of any of this.
Admittedly it would be lovely if the modem could choose the least loaded upstream itself, but it would be even better if the UBR chose how to allocate modems in a balanced fashion.*
Putting ubr upstream load balancing into google finds some stuff I'm too tired to read.
* "Dynamic load balancingââ‚ ¬â€ÂÂThis is a form of load balancing in which cable modems are moved among upstreams and downstreams after their initial registration and they come online, while potentially passing traffic. Cable modems that are currently online are moved when the load difference between two interfaces exceeds a user-defined percentage."
Iv just thought of something, ntl would never do something like this because would have to set a max utilisation and not to pick the ubr, therefore modems like mine would never find a ubr, lol.
jsatan
ps no bad
Ignition
26-01-2004, 10:52
@JustAnotherN00b
Regard the †œhow a cable modem worksÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã‚ÂÂ
you stated it can not know what the utilisation is, well with most routers I have worked with they know what the average load is over a certain interface, also they could if they wanted build in a protocol to the router that will let the modem know which is better, routers do this all the time across network †œeigrpâ € for example is a far good one,
Why does everyone this forum seem so snappy, I came here not to complain but to tell people about the troubles in my area and to get something done about it and not get fobbed off, but all I seem to be getting a flack off you guys.
jsatan - the functionality just isn't there at the moment. Ideally of course the uBRs would self-balance all the time dynamically, and yeah eigrp or another protocol measuring reliability, bandwidth available, etc would be ideal, tho I think just utilisation would be nice.
On that score talk to Cisco, that's a case of 'would if could' for sure!
Apologies if I've given the wrong impression to you, didn't mean to appear rude just to say that ntl doesn't intentionally provide a below par service at times, there's a lot of other factors affecting your service and it's not as straightforward as it may seem.
Iv given up on ntl, but I have rang them today saying that I'm not paying till it fixed, :)
jsatan
Iv given up on ntl, but I have rang them today saying that I'm not paying till it fixed, :)
jsatanAny communication such as this should done in writing via recorded delivery. You will have no proof of what has been said and ntl will just send your account to their debt collection company. You will end up losing out in the end.
You need documented proof of sub standard service and documented proof of communication with ntl that you want the problem fixed.
You will also end up with a bad mark on your credit history, not a good thing :)
K, np I'll send it today, Ill do some tracert router etc as some prof that it Fooked.
Cheers,
jsatan
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