Another slow speed thread
 

Like others, my 10 Mb has slowed down to 56k dialup speeds for the past few days, making browsing the web painful, watching streamed video impossible and downloading files of any size brings me to tears.

It's not just browsing that's affected either. Newsgroups are screwed too. Was maxing out my Giganews connection till this week, but right now it's connecting at 11KB/s :crying:

Here's a speedtest result, and this is roughly the same for all tests I've tried...

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2006/12/26.png

Note it's only my download that's buggered, my upload seems fine :confused:

The only thing that seems unaffected is tracert and my ping to Counter Strike servers.

I've just spoken to some friendly but unhelpful chap in India who checked my stats from NTL's side, and said as far as he can see there's no problem, so there's nothing they are going to do, because they don't even think I have a problem. When asked if this kinda of service was normal, and what he recommended I should do to fix it, he had no response.

Can anyone suggest anything before I go completely nuts. This isn't what I pay £35 p/month for.

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

After seeing some other threads, does anyone think changing my modem from the rectangular silvery thingy to a 250 would make any difference? If so, I'll have an accident with this one

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

I'm contemplating it myself :p

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

Dunno, but would a silvery thingy look nicer in your lounge? ;)

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

its no better with a STB my "" four meg is like back in the day dial up

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

Hi,

I had the same problem, when I spoke to CS ( the second time). I was told my Tereyon modem was not working as it should, so it was replaced with an NTL 250 modem, no problems now....

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

I had 'issues' with my old silver CM100. Kept rebooting all the time, when the engineer came out to change it, he couldn't believe I still had one as they never worked with 10meg apparently, just couldn't handle it.

Since then I was getting dial up type speeds. I logged another call and they said that my cable and UBR was 'oversubscribed'. If I manually specify a proxy near me, it speeds up for a few days, but then slows down again and I have to change it again.

Only seems to happen in the evenings though.

If only it wouldn't cost me £125 to get a BT line installed, I'd be off!!!

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

A quick update on my issues, in case anyone's bothered and to help me keep my sanity.

After getting home tonight and realising that my downloads were still only of dial-up proportions, I got on the phone to NTL's tech support again, and ended up speaking to a girl in India.

After running through countless inane tests, she put me on hold to go and speak to her supervisor. I kinda figured she might have been out of her depth when she asked me to read out the code printed underneath my modem - "Oh, you want the MAC address?" I asked, to which she replied that she already had my address but could I read out the long number printed underneath the modem :doh: :rolleyes:

Anyway, after yet more tests, disabling of firewalls, adding and then changing of proxies, pinging, tracert-ing, downloading from this site, rebooting of modem, etc... etc... etc... she claimed to have miraculously found what the error was. When I asked her to enlighten me, she said that "my cable modem was configured on the wrong server" but that she'd change it over for me. When I asked what she meant by the 'wrong server' she was unable to explain it... apparently it's something I'd not understand :shrug:

So, she said her change was going to take 2-3 hours to update... and so far nothing's changed *sigh*

However, I did get a call reference for this call, so hopefully when I call them tomorrow, I'll be able to avoid 45 mins of wasting everyone's time, and can cut straight to the chase.

If anyone knows a way of getting through to NTL's 2nd-line support people, please let me know... or do they all clock off at 5, and route their phones to Bangalore?

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

Sounds like a standard Tech Support response "I've got to make a change which will take 5 minutes longer than I am on duty for, therefore when you phone back I'll have gone home and you'll have to go through the whole rigmarole of tests again" When I managed to get an engineer out to look at my dial up speeds, he insisted that the problem was with the cable end I had put on when I ran the cable through my attic, instead of round all the doorframes in the house! He recrimped and left, still no better... Unless I manually put a proxy in. I still can't figure that one out...

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

sounds like the classic sound oh i need to turn on the DFA that will sort it much then shout is that better and sit smugly back knowing you were right all along




note DFA stands for does f#*k all

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

If,like Leicester, the network has been upgraded to 256 qam fron 64qam, you will probably need to get an ambit 250 modem. All other modems are going down, either no connection, intermittant connection, or slow d/l speeds (in the dial up region,i.e 56k). This is affecting Teryons', Surfboards and ambit 100/120/200s'. 250 swap out cures this. Techs have no means of testing/fixing d/l speeds apart from the obvious as already stated. Hope this helps:waving:

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

How do you tell if your area has been upgraded?

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

I just checked the modem config page and saw this...

Downstream Modulation : QAM64

So presumably my area's not yet been upgraded. Might still try and get the 200 modem I'm currently using swapped out for a 250 to see if that changes anything, even we're not 256qam (heh, that almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about :D)

---------- Post added at 22:01 ---------- Previous post was at 21:59 ----------

Oh, and here's tonight's abso-f'kin-lutely brilliant speed...

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2006/12/22.png

:cry:

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

http://192.168.100.1 downstream status will be 64 qam if not upgraded.

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

I have an ntl:home100 modem

our area has been changed to QAM256

My ( 4meg) speeds didn't alter, I'm still limited by ZA to around 2.7 on a speed test, though ;)

Re: Another slow speed thread
 

Well, time to update this thread... the NTL engineer arrived today (earlier than scheduled too :tu:).

Had one look at my connection with his kit, said I needed an attenuator and promptly installed one. He also kindly swapped out my Ambit 200 for a nice, new 250 just cause it's a better model :)

My connection is now completely back to normal... just downloaded a 650MB file from Giganews in about 12 minutes :cool:

Took the engineer a total of about 7 minutes to resolve my issues, and 2 of that was him moving his van as he'd parked in my neighbour's space. He was a nice bloke as well - even explained to my nipper what he was doing and how it all worked.

So, respect to the engineer :nworthy:

Just a shame the Indian call centre insisted for so long on trying to resolve things via their scripted responses instead of getting this guy on the case straight away.