Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

You've got more stamina than me, I'm kicking NTL into touch, phone, tv and broadband.

The last straw for me was a telephone billing issue which, coming on top of waiting over a week for a call back from tech services (which hasn't materialised) and still having these crap upstream speeds, has finally finished me off.
NTL can obviously afford to lose the £100 a month that I pay them so things must be good.

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

Bingo! That's most likely why my connection's gone and screwed!

Take a look at this thread...

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=16757

Guess what? On the morning of the 26th I had a modem reboot, new IP address and I noticed the UBR IP address had totally changed (it's now a 10.x.x.x address), and ever since I'm getting *major* packet loss! (all on the upstream, thus causing stalled/failed web requests and bad upstream traffic when uploading, this includes making my web server run at a crawl, though 256kbps was never speedy anyway) :(

I've been told this may be down to my 58 upstream power level (at that level it would be readjusting power and that causes the packet loss), but I've been living with a power level of between 56 to 58 for a year now with no problem. The problem only started when NTL "fixed" things :(.

So now it could be down to me to chase up NTL, get engineers out, wait in for them, etc, to sort it :(.



P.S. Can you guys do a quick test?

Do a traceroute to www.ntlworld.com and find the UBR IP address on the list. It will be the first or second hop (depending whether you've got a router or not), and probably a 10.x.x.x address. Then do a ping to that address to check on packet loss ('ping -t' for a continuous ping on Windows and CTRL+C to stop it, and it will tell you how much packet loss if any).

I'm interested to see if anyone getting upload problems is getting packet loss too (as it would probably explain it, and is what I'm getting).

Also are you getting problems with web pages where you sometimes have to refresh to get the page to load?

In addition to that if you can check your upstream power level too that would be great (browse to http://192.168.100.1 on most modems).

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

@Ashover: I don't give in that easy, if I did then NTL win! They can then sit back and afford to lose customers without doing a damn thing about the problems. I intend to make sure I'm not going to get messed about with lame excuses and ensure someone knows it!!

@DeadKenny:

Traceroute through deafult proxy:

Using 'ping -t 10.175.71.254' seems OK though:
Upstream from Surfboard 4100:
and a 'netstat -s -p tcp'
Not sure if this info helps but I do know I have to use the refresh button on web pages more than I used to. Trying to preview this message has also resulted in several time outs causing 'The page cannot be displayed' error! I'm having to copy the entire message before previewing in case the page craps out!!

If this were Southpark it would be "NTL!! OMG they've killed broadband!!" :)

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

Hmm, sounds like it's similar to my problem, though you're not getting packet loss. In your case it looks like a slow connection to the UBR with high ping times (and in my case the connection just fails). Your upstream is close to the limit like mine, though netstat isn't reporting failed connection attempts, but some retransmits.

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

I pinged all 9 hops on the trace route and no packet loss.

You obviously have an additional problem on top of the existing problem to compound it.

I still can't upload to Yahoo briefcase, send attachments via my NTL e-mail and ftp uploads still time out! So it's not purely a packet loss issue, you're just one of the 'lucky' ones to be gifted with 'extra' problems at no additional cost courtesy of NTL!

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

I'm thinking maybe if the signal is 'over' the limit then you get the packet loss. Maybe when it's near you don't but perhaps could see some performance problems? i.e. not enough to drop packets but certainly to cause serious delays which I guess could make things time-out.

Or it's two separate issues.

I don't know, I find these upstream hassles so frustrating. I went through a year of hell with them before but that was with the connection dropping and the modem rebooting endlessly.

:(

I've said it before that it would be much better if NTL did the same as BT and refuse to install if the line quality is too poor. I think the problem with NTL is they just hook you up and assume because it's cable it will work first time. When I got mine installed no one bothered to check the signal at all. It was, drill the hole, plug the cable in, clear off to next job. The result in loads of call outs wasting my time (and money) and theirs.

I even get the impression that the network just can't handle broadband and digital TV. It wasn't designed for that when it was put in and dodgy signal levels weren't an issue with analogue cable TV I guess (and they usually were dodgy in my experience).

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

Well, the engineer should come tomorrow so I can show him first hand the problem and then see what he says. Then again, I could be on the phone asking why he didn't turn up.

Upstream signal level is still 57 dBmV, downstream is 2 dBmV today.

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

I've been there before :(

Worse was one where they turned on the wrong day and had the balls to accuse me of not being in and promptly cancelled the call out!! (meaning I had to re-arrange and them saying it would be another week before they could come out:mad: ).

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

<snip>

If there is no apparent packet loss (or very little packet loss) when doing ping tests, you might find you have a similar problem to me in that small packets (eg. those of default ping size) get through with much less packet loss than larger packets.

Try opening up a command prompt window (if you're using Windows) and do this:

ping -L 2000 -N 20 www.bbc.co.uk

(ie. ping www.bbc.co.uk with 2000 bytes 20 times)

If I do that test, I get 50% packet loss.

If I ping the same site with the default size of 32 bytes, I get little or no loss.

Steve.

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

OK Steve:

This is with no Adblocker or Firewall running, but going through the default Notts proxy server (which to me is very slow and causes slow browsing and time outs).

May seem a silly question but I thought 1500 was the biggest packet size that ethernet uses? That's what WinXP's MTU is set to, so I did the same test with a packet size of 1500:
Looks like pinging with lower values until one works 100% and use that as the MTU value?

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

I think (and will be corrected if I'm wrong!) that only web traffic goes through the proxy server. So your ping tests are making a direct connection between your computer and the server at the other end (without any proxying going on).

I thought that and did try lowering my MTU value to 300 bytes. Didn't seem to help very much :-(

My brother has an NTL broadband connection in his flat (he lives in London, same modem and connection speed as mine). I took my laptop and doing that same test with 2000 bytes to www.bbc.co.uk resulted in zero packet loss. My laptop is running XP Professional. So the fact is that in your area and my area, there is something wrong with the network that is causing this behaviour. It seems to me that the more data you send at once, the more chance there is that it won't get delivered.

Don't know whether any network experts out there can come up with a diagnosis or any ideas based on this information, or just tell me that I'm barking up the wrong tree altogether.

Steve.

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

We shouldn't have to be altering MTU values anyway! Would Mr and Mrs Smith who bought broadband for their daughter be expected to know how to set MTU values, reconfigure network settings, how to diagnose packet loss or slow ping times to their UBR just to convince NTL their own network is at fault?

It does seem certain areas are affected and others not. I have a friend in Mansfield, the next town to me, who runs WinXP and he can send 2 attachments of 700kb each to me using NTL's mail but I can't Forward the same mail back to him with the same attachments, the mail server just chokes! Maybe they rotate the problems around different areas to hide the problem?

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

OK, I'll wait and see what the engineer (if he appears) says tomorrow.

I have a friend who lives near Sutton junction and she has absoloutely no problems sending me email attachments, so the problem seems to be very localised.

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

Will keep you posted, but you now not to hold your breath where NTL are concerned :)

Re: Can't send attachments - V poor upload problem
 

I just tried the same test...


Better times, but still loads of packet loss :(


and to the UBR...

:eek:


or at default packet size...
:(