ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I have received a statement today from ntl Internet Team regarding the recently reported proxy issues:-

"ntl is aware that a small number of customers have trouble accessing particular websites as a result of caching. For the last 5 years, ntl has used caches to improve the speed of response for all web traffic. This is in line with a number of other ISPs.

When the cache does not have the requested pages stored, the cache will retrieve the page from the required server. The cache will present its own address when requesting the page, not that of the customer. Unfortunately some servers can misinterpret the requests from the cache as being a denial of service attack. The administrator of the site then blocks the request for information. To resolve this ntl actively contacts the administrator to have the block lifted. Customers are equally able to report issues in accessing a site to the administrator to expedite their particular issue.

Using proxy caches improves the performance of the network for all customers by supplying regularly accessed content from local servers. To put this into perspective, just 3 requests to have blocks lifted are processed each week from our 1.5 million broadband customer base. Even so, we will continue to monitor the situation closely and if necessary investigate other alternatives."

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

yep great statement

but as most who have problems have no idea what a proxy is how are they going to tell ntl or others sites what the problem is

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Hmm, this is probably accurate as most people just think the site they want is down or slow or broken, a lot more people than that complained about steampowered.com to NTL on the steam website alone in one day (or said they did anyhow)

A little ray of hope then..

Perhaps if they really are serious about monitoring closely then they could provide an email address to directly report (suspected) proxy problems ?

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Hmm, how about range of ip addresses at each ubr site that won't get intecepted, and the option for customers to use this range (for a small extra charge).

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Perhaps this is correct I have been using proxies from bagu and renf and move to these as soon as I have a problem. Many other customers just proxy dance until they find one that will connect them. I must admit that the time when Manchester had no proxies I found the website loading quicker and all sites worked first time..

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

That statement doesnt address quite a few issues.

1 - it only addresses site's that block the proxies but not sites that simply just not work and random timeouts.

2 - It doesnt address that when people report problems to tech support they are not escalated hence them saying 3 requests per week.

3 - "ntl is aware that a small number of customers have trouble accessing particular websites as a result of caching" should be rephrased to "ntl is aware that a small number of customers have noticed that there can be problems accessing particular websites as a result of caching"

4 - "This is in line with a number of other ISPs." The only other isp in the uk that uses transperent proxies is AOL but their's work properly.

I know this is negative but NTL are just avoiding the issues with that statement.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Another posting today also (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=35882), listing 2 sites that don't work here on Poplar, but do at other NTL sites, said poster also said it affected lots of NTL users, but presumably none of them contacted NTL because they just thought the sites weren't working.

Gamespy vids are not working here properly, Colchester proxy brings them in.

The proxies are crap, we are sick of words - how about actions to fix them ?

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I've just been running through the swansea caches trying to find one that will work with Intel.com and found that cache 1,2 ,3 are not getting through.

How who and where do i report this problem, i did try cs a while back re this constant problem but was told there are no problems with swansea poxies, but every day i try Intel.com and every day i cannot get there without resorting to faffing about with the proxy.
As usual it is everybodys fault except NTL

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Interesting........

http://www.dnsstuff.com/

I get this error on the first page.
DNSStuff

WARNING: You are using a web proxy that is currently being abused by malware.
Please go here for more details http://banned.dnsstuff.com/pages/abuse.htm. The web proxy IP is 213.104.***.***

Wondered what the problem was.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

It means either someone on the manchester proxies is being naughty, or most likely they're overreacting to having received a lot of hits from the proxy and treating it as one person, rather than a whole swathe of the country.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I would suggest using renf or bagu proxys as Manchester ones keep getting banned.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Probably a virused customer.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

lol nice Igni it happens so many times I just never go through Manc proxies anymore if I want DNSstuff I use my backup proxies and it works everytime.. Some bad ppl in Manchester supprised NTL let them lose on the net.... :rofl: :rofl:
:angel:

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Oh dear.

I don't use dns stuff that often, only when I am waiting for a domain name to be registered, that when I got the error page up.

Used to be on 'brnt' before somehow it changed to Manchester.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I have found this site works ok for whois and has never been blocked on a manc proxy. also Samspade has never blocked Manc proxies If they are any use to you.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

whats the best proxy to use as i am in manchester and find myself been on slow access to sites such as ebuyer.com unless i login to my VPN

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Thanks.

I sometimes use Whois. I forgot about Samspade, shouldn't have because the software is on every months cover disk in PC Pro mag and has some useful utils built in.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I find ebuyer slow on any ntl proxy, for some reason the ntl proxy technology doesnt work well on that site.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

i updated my proxy to a baguley proxy and its not working fine for ebuyer.com

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

ebuyer works fine for me on what ever Nottingham default is assigned to it.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I got a good reply from the ntl responsetek guy who answered my latest query he says he is going to send info I give him to the network management team.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Gamespy and one of my servers is back to terrible again, took about 4 proxy switches to get a semi decent speed :(
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/?con...section=Movies

Choosing any movie to stream is awful, AOL connection is fine again all the time.

Back to Reporting daily to NTL guy again :(

What a waste of time..

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

IanUK out of interest I never got given the contact details for the exec so all I can do is report by the responsetek, wether or not that will reach enough up the chain is unknown. The last response I got was just about the only promising response out of about 20 replies.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I've given up, one of my servers has gone back to severe slowness after about 6pm using a variety of NTL proxies - some speed it up one night then are bad the next, I reported this to my contact at NTL along with a large list of all the sites that I know about that don't work with Poplar Proxies - but he said I would need to raise this as an issue again as he could not help me any longer :(

I told Mick thats it for me, I'm going to wait until I have more spare time then I'm going to look around for alternatives to NTL, the proxies are crap but they expect us to report each site *separately*, which is something I'm not prepared to do. They KNOW they are rubbish but ignore all the many complaints (3 complaints a week my ass - there are more than 3 a day on this forum alone sometimes).

I shall move to somewhere else when it suits me, I know the speeds won't be as fast as the proposed 10 meg, but I can't even get 3 meg with many sites using NTL so I guess it doesn't matter.

The only thing holding me back from making a move earlier is that apart from the proxies the internet service is good here, and gaming is excellent.

cheers

its been fun...sort of :)

Ian

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

You won't get 3 meg with many sites anyway, they simply don't have the capacity at the server end. :)

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

True, but some can (Easynews/fileplanet for two) the problem is with NTL proxies you need to keep changing them almost every day to maintain those speeds, FTP and POP provide 3 meg on NTL fine, its just the proxies than play up.

But as I said, I'll just start looking around...

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I beg to disagree, the average webserver now days will be on a 100mbit port and is more then capable of maxing out a 3mbit line, and I can fire up squid on a server and download at max speed of various sites around the us/uk/eu. It is only when using ntl proxies I hit issues, there are exceptions of course as there will be sites people run of T1 lines and their residental connections, a few 10mbit port servers etc. But when you hear of people downloading of microsoft at 20-30mbit in one thread and my NTL line struggles to top isdn speed you know its an NTL problem.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

The "average" webserver will be on nothing like a dedicated 100mbps connection.

A few large companies will have servers on 'real' 100mbps connections, but the majority do not. Even a 10mbps connection in a typical Datacentre will cost thousands per year - well out of the reach of the majority of companies.

Many servers may appear to be on 100mbit, but that's only because they have 100mbps NIC cards, they are throttled by the routers & switches they connect to in the DC. Many data centres only have a few 155mbps lines into them to serve hundreds of servers.

I suggest you look at places like fasthosts, memset, mailbox and the many other providers of dedicated servers in the uk (and us) and see just what you can get, and the prices. (here is an example from mailbox uk)

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Paul I know since I have several servers located in various datacentre's, the average datacentre will have many gigE's running into it especially ones in america, like theplanet has over 20gig of transit available for its customers, in the uk many providers will have multiple gigs of transit also. The 100mbit ports do tend to be shared but they are fully burstable and it is unusual for a datacentre to be not equipped enough to max out the burst, usually the limiting factor isnt transit it is hardware capabilities, eg. a celeron with a realtek lan card is not going to hit 100mbit it will more likely be around half that. A example provider from the uk is openhosting here is a list of their transit.

Level(3) Communications - 1000 Mbps Fibre
Teleglobe - 1000 Mbps Fibre
Enta - 1000 Mbps Copper (soon)
Euroaccess (backup) - 100 Mbps
TSN (backup) - 100 Mbps
eXpress long range peering - 1000 Mbps

The enta is in place as I see traffic going through it.

concerning mailbox they seem to be years behind with whats been offered on that page, fasthosts have a terrible reputation and I wouldnt go near them.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Hi

A friend of mine sometimes can't access my website with the NTL caches, which seem to have picked up an internal view of my DNS rather than an external view. Could this be anything to do with the issues discussed above.

The web address is http://www.webofcontradictions.net This should NOT resolve to 192.168.0.2.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Could be...

Some of my community sites in the Teesside area cannot be accessed by the communities they're directed at due to a proxy issue in the Middlesbrough area at the moment... nightmare!

www.inglebybarwick.com
www.thornaby.net

Are both largely unavailable to NTL users in their respective areas...

Does anyone know how long these proxy issues tend to last, I mean is there a regular update then will generally iron out problems?

cheers.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

my sister got ntl bb yesterday and we had windows update chugging along at 12kB, so I bookmarked the robin walker page and showed her what I did to change proxy to get the speed maxed out.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Both sites are inaccesible though midd-5 and both are on the EV1 so it looks like the network ops have blocked access by the midd-5 IP address.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

That problem appears to be resolved, although they now seem to be blocking brhm-cache-7.server.ntli.net instead.

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Amazon.co.uk not working properly on Poplar now :(

I've had to send an item back for refund and the refund pages give 404 and various other errors - specifying another proxy fixes it..

This is *AMAZON*, one of the biggest sites in the net - ho hum..

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

I have made a file .htaccess on my hosting but found that the hosting is only seeing proxy IP number so this means anyone using the same proxy as me can gain access.

What is the script I need to make the search go to the persons IP number and not the proxy

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

Try something like this?
Depends on what apache modules are available on your host.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=326713

--
Eusa

Re: ntl statement regarding recent proxy issues
 

www.beelinebandwidthtest.com uses proxy ip as I found out when hitting the 10 a day limit after my 1st test, it is an amazing tester to see fluctuations between different proxies. For weeks on end all leics proxies cannot sustain high speeds, and 2 of them are under 10kB/sec.