[Merged] Birmingham Area. [Archive]

poolking

17-03-2004, 19:40

Hi,

I'm currently going through the following proxy server:

cache4-brhm.server.ntli.net

The browsing has been really slow, I'm on 1Mb in Stafford.

Anyone else experiencing the same problem?

Its getting really annoying waiting nearly a minute for a page to load. :td:

Neil

17-03-2004, 20:28

Have you rung Tech Support & notified them of the problem? (you need to)

paulyoung666

17-03-2004, 20:49

nothing showing on server status , maybe a call to C.S. might be in order , personally i would always ring them first even if it is just to save you the price of a phone call ;) , there has been occasions when i have rang C.S. to find out if there is a local problem that hasnt appeared on the server status and i have been informed that there is , this has saved me the cost of a call to c.s. , @ neil , i dont want to sound funny , but why are you so insistent that ppl ring t.s. first ??????????????? , it annoys the living daylights out of me that ppl have to pay to find out it isnt there problem when they already pay there subs for the service :(

Flip

17-03-2004, 21:28

Youa re quite right mate it's very bad tonight averaging 20 to 30 secs a page load even GOOGLE....:rolleyes:

Typically a couple of pages I post on are not even loading.

So much for all the promises of the recent upgrades to the system in our area.:td:

th'engineer

17-03-2004, 21:49

Have you rung Tech Support & notified them of the problem? (you need to)
Just to repeat NEIL dont complain ring TS

Weltmeister

17-03-2004, 21:56

I'm using one of the Birmingham proxies and I've got the same problem.

Neil

17-03-2004, 22:17

neil , i dont want to sound funny , but why are you so insistent that ppl ring t.s. first ???????????????

Because it is a technical issue, & not a customer service related one.

it annoys the living daylights out of me that ppl have to pay to find out it isnt there problem when they already pay there subs for the service :(

Not disagreeing with you there Paul, but that is a totally different arguement. ;)

Most companies today do not run a freephone faults number, there is however a freephone number for Server Status-did you know that?

Neil

17-03-2004, 22:18

I'm using one of the Birmingham proxies and I've got the same problem.

Ring Tech Support on 0845 650 0121.

mr-b

17-03-2004, 22:37

Ring Tech Support on 0845 650 0121.
I go via Bham and was having intermittent problems too on google, register.co.uk and others.
I then specified cache1-brhm.server.ntli.net and it didn't make any difference. cache2 seemed to work OK, 3 definitely didn't.

And yes I did let TS know so someone can hopefully build a picture of what may be going on.

Chrysalis

18-03-2004, 04:42

is tech support available on 150, not been funny but most people are not going to remember that number if they do ring up they just ring 150. Why cant customer services forward people to tech support when they realise its not the end user fault?

Neil I can understand the motto tech's cant fix an issue they do not know about, but I feel I already waste enough time and money on this problem then to be ringing up again on a 0845 phone number.

Neil

18-03-2004, 06:25

is tech support available on 150, not been funny but most people are not going to remember that number if they do ring up they just ring 150. Why cant customer services forward people to tech support when they realise its not the end user fault?

How hard can it be to remember a number? People can easily write it down/put it in their mobile phone/look it up on here! (it's on our 'Useful Info' page.

Neil I can understand the motto tech's cant fix an issue they do not know about, but I feel I already waste enough time and money on this problem then to be ringing up again on a 0845 phone number.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but various ntl associates have asked for this to be done, so why not do it?

th'engineer

18-03-2004, 06:28

As Neil says ring up TS that should sort it also ring your local franchise info here (http://www.nthellworld.co.uk/?page=info)

Remember you have a choice of provider

toytown

18-03-2004, 10:09

Im also seeing extremelly poor performance on the birmingham proxies, although to be honest its easy to skip that and use another one.

My biggest problem is, it looks like a router or something is failing again, because i cannot upload to my FTP servers in america (more than 3 different isp's), i start to upload the file, it registers the first 8k and then timeouts the connection.

I cannot send email that is any bigger than about 8-16k through my email server relay (different servers to the above one).........or again it timeouts.

And i have major problems playing any online related game such as everquest where zoning can cause me to be kicked outta the game ............because it timeouts.

Of course going on BT dialup solves all the above issues immediately, this problem only started occuring yesterday.

Is it really worth a call to CS/TS? As last time it took them almost a week to fix the problem...........or is this a sign that i should bite the bullet and move providers.

Thanx in advance
Toytown

Neil

18-03-2004, 10:18

Is it really worth a call to CS/TS? As last time it took them almost a week to fix the problem...........or is this a sign that i should bite the bullet and move providers.

Even if you 'bit the bullet & move providers', there are still plenty of other peeps who will be suffering 'proxycachehell', so your phone call should be made either way.

We have a section here (http://forum.nthellworld.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=37) to help you move if you decide to do so.

Either way-make sure you call Tech Support on 0845 650 0121, & get the name & extension number of the person you speak to for any future reference.

jizz

18-03-2004, 12:30

Stuartbe

18-03-2004, 12:40

Hi Jizz and :welcome: to the site :)

There are no reported problems in your area on the NTL service page. It sounds like a signal loss problem.... Check all the cables to the modem. Try powering off the modem and then powering it back up.

If this does not resolve the problem then you need to call NTL to have this investigated.

jizz

18-03-2004, 12:43

tried numerous times powering it on/off to no avail, and all the other lights are solidly lit (pc & power) Guess im gonna have to give the ntl guys a ring in my lunch at work :)

anyone know which number is the best number to ring? and what would be the likely solution to fix my problem that the engineer will have to do?

p.s thanks for the hi!! :D

Stuartbe

18-03-2004, 12:45

tried numerous times powering it on/off to no avail. Guess im gonna have to give the ntl guys a ring in my lunch at work :)

anyone know which number is the best number to ring? and what would be the likely solution to fix my problem that the engineer will have to do?

p.s thanks for the hi!! :D

I would call 151 from the NTL phone and follow the boring old scripts..

jizz

18-03-2004, 12:46

i dont have an ntl phone, just the BB service :)

Stuartbe

18-03-2004, 12:51

i dont have an ntl phone, just the BB service :)

O.K. - Call 0845 650 0121

HTH

Nikko

18-03-2004, 13:08

I would suggest you called when you are next to the affected connection rather than from work...

jizz

18-03-2004, 13:09

will they be open from 5:30 onwards tho on a weekday?

Nikko

18-03-2004, 13:14

Yeah they are there til late

Flip

18-03-2004, 13:27

Just got off the phone...Coventry and Birmingham and surrounding areas are currently having difficulty connecting to certain pages....engineers working on it...literally just put down the phone.

banjo

18-03-2004, 13:29

I live in Coventry and my 600k is running, sorry, walking, like a 14400 with two broken legs, and has been like this on and off for a fortnight if something is not done soon I shall be off to BT and ADSL :(

Les

Flip

18-03-2004, 13:30

Just got off phone engineers aware of the problem and are working on it.

Funny my game pings are fantastic at the moment, just the majority of web pages wont/don't load and I cannot d/load anything.

Weird.

Anyone know how long it will be before the Birmingham cache is brought up to date?

Am I right in thinking they are still inkomi or summat?

poolking

18-03-2004, 13:41

Jamman960

18-03-2004, 16:22

I'm currently having problems aswell, it seems to be the transparent proxies again! web pages/downloads via http often freeze half way through or load very slowly but everything else seems fine (newsgroups, ftp etc)

After changing my proxy to 62.255.32.5 (from 62.255.32.6) everything seems fine. I wish they'd just get rid of those f**kin transparent proxies!

Church Mouse

18-03-2004, 18:26

Hello,

Today, I am having terrible problems accessing sites. So slow. I live in Coventry, CV7 postcode, but come under Warwick.

I rang TS and they say that the Coventry problems should not be affecting me. I reduced items in my startups and entered a proxy setting as advised by TS. Accessing is a little better but still slow.

I have Broadband 150kb.

Can anyone in the Warwick area please inform me if they are having problems as well.

Also can someone tell me what is a 'ping' is it worth doing and if so how do I do one.

Thank you

Church Mouse

doolie

18-03-2004, 18:36

i live in Rugby and yesterday and today it's been dire (well, Rugby is always dire, but am currently referring to the CM service :)). Am going to change my proxy and see if that helps

doolie

18-03-2004, 18:39

yup, that helps, have set to same as Jamman960 mentioned

mr-b

18-03-2004, 19:05

Check Robin Walker's site with a list of proxies, I don't think they're inkitomis.
The VIA header below shows Traffic Server which is Inktomi.
Robin's page also lists it as Inkt.

D:\temp\wgettmp>wget -S http://www.ntlworld.com (http://www.ntlworld.com/)
--18:49:07-- http://www.ntlworld.com/
=> `index.html.18'
Resolving www.ntlworld.com (http://www.ntlworld.com/)... 62.253.162.30
Connecting to www.ntlworld.com (http://www.ntlworld.com/)[62.253.162.30]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
1 HTTP/1.0 200 OK
2 Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 18:49:07 GMT
3 Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) PHP/4.3.1
4 X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.1
5 Set-Cookie: NTLWORLD_USER=20040318184908622553262088; expires=Sat, 17-Apr-200
4 18:49:08 GMT
6 Content-Type: text/html
7 Age: 2
8 Connection: close
9 Via: HTTP/1.1 ntl-site (Traffic-Server/5.2.2-59134 [cMsSf ])
[ <=> ] 27,127 109.92K/s
18:49:09 (109.92 KB/s) - `index.html.18' saved [27127]

If I specify cache1-brhm.server.ntli.net or cache3 directly, perf is still poor.
However cache2 appears to be working fine.

Flip

18-03-2004, 21:54

Leamington Spa here and man it's still dodgey...can't load many pages...this page loads very fast, ntl world not a chance (not that I' missing much :pp ).

Msn is working but not msn home page....site I link to (see below) takes a good 10 mins to load.

Weirdly in game ping are better than a long time...my rudimentary knowledge suggests dns problems...is that the correct term for the little guy in the pc who changes ip adresses to names...hehe...:dunce:

Tumble weed

18-03-2004, 22:38

Well currently I'm finding my ntl dial-up 56k faster than ntl broadband 600k! :td: :(

Stuartbe

18-03-2004, 22:46

Well currently I'm finding my ntl dial-up 56k faster than ntl broadband 600k! :td: :(

:LOL: Sprinkle some salt on the coax... It will help the signal :D

What proxy are you using ATM ?

progers

19-03-2004, 10:09

Hi,

For the last week or so i have been having brief random cut outs of my cable service. Yesterday tho, my cable service seems to have died completely (cable light dead, with brief periods of flashing). I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this in my area, or if anyone knows what the problem could possibly be.

Thanks in advance
Hi Jizz

There are horrendous problems in the area at present due to some proxies not caching pages - this was from tech Support this morning.

Try manually adding a proxy to IE. Birmingham proxy address cache1-brhm.server.ntli.net with port set to 8080 works well for me, others have reported that cache2-brhm.server.ntli.net works for them. This way I was able to access my (NatWest) home banking for the first time this week. Do remove the proxy in a few days when the issue is fixed (hopefully)

progers

19-03-2004, 10:18

I go via Bham and was having intermittent problems too on google, register.co.uk and others.
I then specified cache1-brhm.server.ntli.net and it didn't make any difference. cache2 seemed to work OK, 3 definitely didn't.

And yes I did let TS know so someone can hopefully build a picture of what may be going on.
Hi mr-b

Thanks for the proxy hint!!!! :)

Just confirmed that there are horrendous problems in the area at present due to some proxies not caching pages - this was from Tech Support this morning.

Like you, I tried manually adding a proxy to IE. Strangely, Birmingham proxy address cache1-brhm.server.ntli.net with port set to 8080 works well for me, but cache2-brhm.server.ntli.net remains a disaster!

This way I was able to access my (NatWest) home banking for the first time this week.

Tech Support said do remove the proxy in a few days when the issue is fixed (hopefully)

Nikko

19-03-2004, 11:55

This has just been flagged up on the Status Page - link from this site's homepage

zuke_duke

19-03-2004, 13:09

:shocked: I notice thas this one has now made it to the Service Status list :(

You might be able to find better useable proxies in Robins' list (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/trancache.html#ntl), until they fix it ...

Chimpy

19-03-2004, 14:02

I'm in Leamington too. I've tried various different proxies, none seem to be much better. I think it's more of a general fault than that. I seem to be able to get a few kb of data from any one source before it stops, and then I can't get any more after that.

I hope it's fixed by the weekend.

Neil

19-03-2004, 14:08

Broadband Service - Birmingham area

19 March 2004 11:38

ntlhome broadband customers in the Birmingham, Swindon, Coventry, Lichfield, Tamworth and Warwick areas may currently be experiencing a degraded service due to a technical fault.
Our engineers are aware and are working to resolve the problem as soon as possible.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

That's not bad, some 40 hours after the problem was mentioned, it has finally ended up on the Server Status Page. :rolleyes:

Perhaps I just expect too much from ntl......?

Church Mouse

19-03-2004, 14:45

Thank goodness,

TS, yesterday led me to believe that the problem was my pc, ( he said 'no problems with Warwick area' -living in Coventry postcode CV7 but come under Warwick) although I did set a proxy which made it a little better.

Yesterday I asked, on this forum, what was a 'ping' how do you do one and how are results interpreted. I would be interested to know, if anyone can please inform me.

Thanks

Church Mouse

poolking

19-03-2004, 17:29

Is there actually a reliable birmingham proxy I can use? Cache 1 has just started to slow right down.

Edit: Scrap that its just started to speed up again. :confused:

Weltmeister

19-03-2004, 17:59

I've been switching between proxies trying to find one that works - when I do it only lasts for about 10 minutes and it's back to square one again. :mad:

You'd have thought ntl would have this sorted by now eh? :rolleyes:

flea

19-03-2004, 18:16

<<<PHEW!>>> well in one sense thank the lord for that! ..... i've been booting, rebooting, cleaning, AV'ing, AntiAd-ing for two days now!
Yeah.... nice to see super efficient NTL on the case..... guess we can look forward to service reinstated around christmas?
For the record.... i can surf fine for about 5 mins or so, then pages only load so far before stopping and seeming to freeze my pc. Is that what everyone is suffering too?

susie r

19-03-2004, 18:51

Flip

19-03-2004, 20:33

Yep its the same here too.......only managed to get this site up now cos I've used the bham2 proxy.wont last for long tho, it'll start slowing down again any minute!!! :mad:
I've been skipping between the Birmingam2 and a couple of the Northampton ones...I get the feeling we are all jumping from one to the other 5mins after each other...bit like musical broadband connection chairs!

Man until this was confirmed to me by tech I was a particularly bothersome fellow on the spyware and hijack this forums...hehe!

paulyoung666

19-03-2004, 20:34

I've been skipping between the Birmingam2 and a couple of the Northampton ones...I get the feeling we are all jumping from one to the other 5mins after each other...bit like musical broadband connection chairs!

Man until this was confirmed to me by tech I was a particularly bothersome fellow on the spyware and hijack this forums...hehe!

do me a favour and leave the middlesbrough ones alone , i have been running quite nicely for a while now :D :D :D , dammit there goes me connection :D :D :D

Chrysalis

19-03-2004, 21:01

no probs here with my own personal proxy :D

Chimpy

19-03-2004, 21:13

Yay it's back up as of about 9pm!! :)

td444

20-03-2004, 00:56

Yay it's back up as of about 9pm!! :)
Hmmmm did wonder why my latency to gaming servers was better during the peak time :D

Anyway, ive found better luck with web cache's that are NOT inktomi based, the Bham one's are, hence all the trouble people get.

Im using cache5-nott.server.ntli.net:8080 myself for weeks on end , via Proxomitron (so I can switch it on/off with a flick). Makes NTL bareable :P

Church Mouse

22-03-2004, 14:30

This has now been ongoing for about five days. Browsing is so slow even when using a proxy.

Still showing as a problem on the server status page, do you think we have been forgotten??

Maybe ntl will give us a reduction on our next Broadband bil??????

Church Mouse

Stuartbe

22-03-2004, 14:36

Maybe ntl will give us a reduction on our next Broadband bil??????

Church Mouse

If you look out of your window to the right you will see a pig flying past !

Church Mouse

22-03-2004, 14:44

I wondered what that pink thing was!!

Church Mouse

td444

22-03-2004, 18:26

If you look out of your window to the right you will see a pig flying past !
On a serious note, they will refund some money back, you just need to make sure tech services leave a note on your account then goto customer services on 150/0800 etc and they can sort it.

Bham area has always been bad , they know it...

Neil

22-03-2004, 18:44

On a serious note, they will refund some money back, you just need to make sure tech services leave a note on your account then goto customer services on 150/0800 etc and they can sort it.

Bham area has always been bad , they know it...

Knowing it, & acknowledging it are 2 very different things. :rolleyes:

banjo

22-03-2004, 18:50

Why can't they fix this problem, it is an ongoing thing with poor service and a damn nuisance, it has been at least 4 days now.

NTL get your finger out. :(

Les

td444

22-03-2004, 23:24

Knowing it, & acknowledging it are 2 very different things. :rolleyes:
Maybe so, Coventry did it for me ok.

SB3100

23-03-2004, 11:51

TS told me that the problem with the Coventry Staff Birm War area's is that the service has been over subscribed and they are in the process of balencing the distribution, but do not think there will be much improvment untill towards the end of April, they suggested that I reduce my 1Mb service to the lowest option available, then I am not paying NTL for a service I am not getting.

As of Friday last I have cancled my service with NTL and moving onto BT (line installed 27th) Maybe ADSL a week after that, I know that BT's ADSL dont have a good rep, but as far as I am concerned now NTL can stick their service where the sun dont shine, after 5 years of at time diabolical service I have decided enough is enough, even now with arranging things with BT, their CS was unavailable to take my calls, given an option to either hold or leave a contact number for then to ring me back on, no word of a lie they have rang me back within 10 min of hanging up, what do we get with NTL a frikkin engaged tone, the amount of times I have tried to contact NTL CS and just had to give up, they say they have started to make a profit, maybe they should invest some of that profit in making it possable for their customers to make contact with them.

Crashedfiesta

23-03-2004, 11:56

Well I'm using the Birmingham proxies (cache1 I think) which seems to be working ok for me. I'm on the 600K service.

I've (dare I say it) had virtually no problems with broadband until this problem arose. Seems that I could be one of the lucky ones. :)

Oh, yeah, forgot to say I'm in the Coventry area...