UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

I've had my shiny new 10mb connection since last night, and approx 3 hours ago the speed went from 650k to 7k and there it has stayed :(

I rang Tech Support and after 2 phone calls of approx 20 mins each in length he finally told me that the UBR I was on is completely full and I'm likely to get these slow speeds for some time - so basically I upgraded for a 10 meg connection and got a sub 56k modem speed - great job NTL.

To say I'm pee'd off after the week I've had with NTL (3 faults in this area over 3 days) a total failure to install my modem correctly and now this - utter crap :(

If you are in the Romford Area and getting sub 56k dial up modem speeds its because the UBR is full, the guy said it would be escalated to support but it may take a while to fix.

great....

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

your not having much luck with NTL IanUK

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Very True, they are really bad in this area at the moment it seems, I've had no service for TV or Broadband for most of the week, speeds are awful today, less than 2k everywhere, 10mb is just a joke, my service is completely unsuable, it takes about 3 minutes to bring up a page on this site, and it will probably take the same to post this with the 24k attachment..

utter rubbish, the power of 10 - what a joke, did they mean 10k ? (I don't even get that !)

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

I have had problems since last night and it has not improved at any point today. I too was told there is nothing they can do about it for the forseeable future if only my bill would reflect this i wouldnt mind so much.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Are you in the London area ?

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

I would assume that anyone on 10Mb ATM is subscribing to what was the 3Mb tier - the £37.99 service. I would have thought the best thing to do would be to move down to the lowest tier that meets the performance you're getting - at least it'll cost you less, and hopefully make it a little clearer to ntl that you aren't going to pay more than you have to for what you're not getting.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

ROFLMAO my **** will you go from 5Mbit to 64kbit immediately due to congestion :)

Try again tech support, this sounds more like the area faults that have shagged your service completely are continuing to degrade it.

Bet there's loads of packet loss and inbetween the loss fairly low pings too ;)

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Absolutely correct, massive packet loss (50%) on most hops, and the pings were completely normal, but speeds were terrible as you can see.

It has (seemingly) returned to normal at the moment, but I won't hold my breath....

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

thanx for the info ;), that explains why i might be getting slow speeds and i'm very near Romford

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Before you assume that is the reason, please bear in mind that although you live near romford, you may not be attached to a romford UBR.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

I was told by tech support that is was normal to have a 50% loss as so,e servers don't respond to trace routes

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

I think thats right, but I never normally see it on traces, yesterday there was 50% loss or the word 'Err' on almost every hop, it looked awful and there was no throughput, it cleared up, and today so far is ok, but I'll wait and see what happens, things have been very bad in this area for the last week or so.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Ya connection was bad due to noise on the network, so loads of packet loss.

When pings got through they were of course good as there was no congestion but there would be tons of them being lost due to the lower level protocols that carry your data being corrupted - the Err on your ping responses was where pings were returned, but corrupted.

Nice to see I can do better than tech support without any of their tools or even seeing your connection beyond a speedtest. Doh.

---------- Post added at 10:25 ---------- Previous post was at 10:22 ----------

No it isn't, you should never see that degree of loss. The servers that don't respond at all should give a 100% loss, some 'servers' will give high ping results from time to time however no node should show 50% packet loss, this is almost certainly a fault. A 'server' that's so busy it can only respond at all to 50% of traceroutes is pushing it.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Big slowdown again now, less than 60k from anywhere and big time outs :(
No packet loss though...and pings are still good.

Isn't 10 meg great, well worth the effort..NOT

I wish it was still 3 meg, that was good all the time....

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Ian try ringing tech support again and put it to them its noise on the network and you want it investigating.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Its back to normal again now, I'll call them tomorrow, I've had enough of ringing NTL for this week (having a nightmare with them over lots of issues this week, this being just one of them - when things go wrong they really are awful)

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Same here in NE Lincs area spent more time on the phone to tech support i think i might be invited to the staff xmas party ;) ,looks like i am going to have to do the same as the last time this plagued me. Keep ringing and evebtually someone will take notice last time they waived the bill for 3 months till the prob was sorted

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Leics is saturated pretty bad at ubr level here, ignition you have been mentioning how ntl have apperently got a better network then telewest but it doesnt show here.

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:08:38 UTC

1st 512K took 3219 ms = 159.1 KB/sec, approx 1311 Kbps, 1.28 Mbps
2nd 512K took 2531 ms = 202.3 KB/sec, approx 1667 Kbps, 1.63 Mbps
3rd 512K took 2500 ms = 204.8 KB/sec, approx 1688 Kbps, 1.65 Mbps
4th 512K took 2078 ms = 246.4 KB/sec, approx 2030 Kbps, 1.98 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 1674 Kbps, 1.64 Mbps

I did it 3 times and only had 1 out of 12 spike to 7mbit.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Pretty sweeping statement. Have you checked every single CMTS in Leicester, at up to 8 CMTS per UBR and 12 UBRs in Leicester now (six more in the last year , by my reckoning).

If it's affecting TV it isn't UBR congestion. Period. PM me your modem's MAC address and I can take a look at it.

There are no UBRs in Romford, incidentally.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

As part of the ongoing project to maintain and upgrade our Broadband network, there is a requirement to carry out maintenance and upgrades on components which may result in a loss of service for the duration.
The following work will be taking place during the week commencing Monday 14th November.
On the morning of Tuesday the 6th of December between midnight and 6 AM,
Network optimisation will result in a loss of service in the Poole, Leicester, Cambridge and surrounding areas.
Network updates will result in a loss of servie in Belfast, Leicester and Manchester.
Network rebalancing across the country will result in a brief loss of service for all customers.
On the morning of Wednesday the 7th of December between midnight and 6 AM,
Network optimisation will result in a loss of service in the Leicester, Waltham Park, Lancing, Bromborough, Coventry, Lichfield, Warwick, Stafford, Glengormley, Bishops Stortford, Coventry, Basford, Guildford and surrounding areas.
On the morning of Thursday the 8th of December between midnight and 6 AM,
Network optimisation will result in a loss of service in the Leicester, Lancing, Rochdale, Baguley, Londonderry, Norwich, Poole, Rochdale, Coventry, Lichfield, Warwick, Stafford, Bishops Stortford, Londonderry, Coventry, Basford, Renfrew and surrounding areas.
On the morning of Friday the 9th of December between midnight and 6 AM,
Network optimisation will result in a loss of service in the Leicester and surrounding areas.
We thank you for your understanding and apologise for any inconvenience these planned works may cause.




That might explain it <_<

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

LOL, they could probably word that better !

I've PM'd you as requested BBKing - thanks.

---------- Post added at 19:02 ---------- Previous post was at 18:45 ----------

Uhm, I just read Ignitions post about Cable modem signal levels here:
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=26006

and mine seem to be way out of whack, (unless I'm reading them wrong)

NTL250 modem

Downstream receive power: -23.0 dbmv
Downstream snr: 22.8 dbmv

Upstream Transmit Power: 55.0 dbmv

Is that bad ?

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Er. Yes. I saw the same myself on your connection and I can honestly say that's about the worst downstream stats I've seen in a good while.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

bbking I mean just my ubr I dont know what the other 11 are like :)

The speed was to paul's speedtest site and it got faster a few hours later so if it wasnt the ubr I dont know what else would make it just speed up.

BBking if you know could you answer this please.

Almost every day during the past month or so Leics has "Network optimisation" and the "Network updates" once as above, is this actual upgrades or just tweaking juggling heavy users around etc.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

I'm back to sub 5k again this morning, at least I now have a clue as to why :(

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Chrysalis:

You're only on a small part of one UBR, which I can take a look at if you like. Drop me your MAC address via PM.

Network optimisation stuff is generally automatic in turns of juggling users between upstreams to even things out and happens nearly everywhere now fairly often. As I said, there have been six new UBRs gone in recently, and plugging them all in and resegmenting takes a bit of effort too, so you'll see that come up every few weeks too, with consequent interruptions to service for *some* people (many, of course, will see no impact).

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Ok thanks for your reply, I will pm you the mac, I guess I havent been moved since during all these weeks of maintenance I have not had a single drop.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Ok sorry I have sent the mac yet but I was tired and now I am not at home, but please comment on this if you can thanks.

here are 2 traceroutes from other ntl user's

note there is hardly any spikes and they are small.

here is one from here (same ubr as my home connection)

1 16 ms 11 ms 10 ms 10.8.143.254
2 52 ms 13 ms 40 ms leic-t2cam1-b-ge914.inet.ntl.com [82.3.35.213]
3 30 ms 8 ms 22 ms leic-t2core-b-ge-220-0.inet.ntl.com [82.3.33.138]
4 15 ms 52 ms 24 ms nth-bb-b-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.114]
5 13 ms 10 ms 9 ms nth-bb-a-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.117]
6 57 ms 27 ms 16 ms gfd-bb-b-so-400-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.98]
7 41 ms 14 ms 15 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.174.138]
8 16 ms 20 ms 14 ms xchangepoint-gw1.aexiomus.net [217.79.160.25]
9 18 ms 15 ms 15 ms peer8.rbl-mer.aexiomus.net [80.82.128.46]
10 19 ms 17 ms 21 ms 84-45-244-6.no-dns-yet.enta.net [84.45.244.6]
11 33 ms 27 ms 36 ms mars.miniserve.net [195.62.28.9]

Note the massive increase in spikes, now I expect you will tell me that this is due to icmp been last priority but if that is the case then why is it not apperent on ther 2 trace's do they just happen to be lucky and they are going over idle router's at the time of trace. Also I would expect the last hop doesnt have icmp on low priority if its just a unix or windows server and all 3 are spiked (should be around 18ms).

Also the upgrade work in leics if we have say the ubr capacity at 100% in jan 2005 then what is the new capacity now in proportion to that or you cant say due to NDA? Because I feel that the upgrade work in Leics was just catchup work the ubr's were previously saturated on the now very old 1.5mbit service and all it achieved was to make that useable and things were good up until around july this year where it started declining again, and in nov/dec there was a sharp decline in latency. From here it looks like downstream is filled since I can usually max upstream or it could be we at something like 80% where that level might start to affect latency? If my ubr isnt saturated I would at least like to know if its load is higher then ntl's average load around the country. I will try to get the mac to you tonight when I am back at home if not it will be tommorow. Thanks for the help.

---------- Post added at 09:24 ---------- Previous post was at 09:20 ----------

another one which did improve, but still not near the other 2

1 29 ms 9 ms 11 ms 10.8.143.254
2 23 ms 10 ms 9 ms leic-t2cam1-b-ge914.inet.ntl.com [82.3.35.213]
3 14 ms 13 ms 11 ms leic-t2core-b-ge-220-0.inet.ntl.com [82.3.33.138]
4 12 ms 15 ms 12 ms nth-bb-b-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.114]
5 14 ms 10 ms 11 ms nth-bb-a-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.117]
6 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms gfd-bb-b-so-400-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.98]
7 28 ms 17 ms 21 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.174.138]
8 20 ms 18 ms 15 ms xchangepoint-gw1.aexiomus.net [217.79.160.25]
9 20 ms 15 ms 15 ms peer8.rbl-mer.aexiomus.net [80.82.128.46]
10 18 ms 29 ms 17 ms 84-45-244-6.no-dns-yet.enta.net [84.45.244.6]
11 19 ms 18 ms 24 ms mars.miniserve.net [195.62.28.9]

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

you should be seeking some kind of compensation for this mate, I had 8/9 months of problems when my local UBR (at the time in Cheshunt) was overloaded, I used to get an upstream of about 10 max.... used to be great, people on the forum will remember well how arsey I used to be, with reason though :)

The real bugger was that the UBR is based at the bottom of the road from where I work, I felt like going down there and waiting for the next engineer to turn up so I could threaten them :P

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Well im hoping all these new UBRs Leicester is getting means we are going to get a better service and a more stable speed, anybody know a date when all the work on installing the new equipment will be done.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

The ubr's hes reffering to are done, I have no idea if any more are scheduled.

The mac should be with you in pm by the time you read this bbking.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Thanks to the guys on the board my fault has been fixed, had 2 engineers come over the last 2 days and they have returned my voltages etc back to normal levels, so everything is working ok again now.

Re: UBR saturated - nice job NTL
 

Ian has provided me with exemplary data on how a bad modem behaves under close engineer interest :) I'm keeping those data to show people next week...