Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Hi all,

My 1st post regarding Cable TW.
My problem with Telewest seems to be a problem with a few here for what i have been reading.
Been with Cable for around 5 years starting of with there 512k connection,
Buying faster speeds from them every time they up-graded.

On the 10mb conection now and only getting speeds of dail-up to 1.5mb
Ring cable customer services none stop to report my problem and hoping they can sort it out, and only being told the same old thing UBR 87% full nothing they can do.
On one phone call got told to find another ISP if i am not happy:shocked: :td:

After all we are all buying a servive that we are clearly not getting. Ringing there Customer support for the help and only being left were we started.

From: Bristol
OS: Windows XP Home
Network Set-up: Modem Direct to PC †¦ router off to eliminate problems.
Firewall: PCguard

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.131]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 14 ms 15 ms 27 ms 10.36.0.1

2 99 ms 37 ms 60 ms 195.188.230.225

3 35 ms 57 ms 79 ms 195.188.230.69

4 36 ms 28 ms 27 ms 195.188.230.18

5 28 ms 21 ms 54 ms 194.117.136.182

6 53 ms 29 ms 61 ms 194.117.136.178

7 22 ms 42 ms 22 ms tele1-know-rab.telewest.net [194.117.136.158]

8 26 ms 42 ms 29 ms 194.117.136.146

9 37 ms 77 ms 23 ms 194.117.148.171

10 17 ms 26 ms 34 ms 212.58.238.129

11 44 ms 60 ms 34 ms rdirwww-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.131]

Trace complete.


In fact on this Trace its came back pretty good but 80% of the time its much worst
with time out's so on...

Download speeds of around 24kbs to 150kbs and this was straght from blueyonder games site. http://gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk/blueyondergames/



Is there a tip to convince blueyonder cutomer services when ring them we have a problem that needs to be addressed ???

Or do we have to make do, pay the £35 for a 1 or 2mb connection when we all could goto another ISP for around £17:99 at them speeds.

Thanks
Tony.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Hi, WildSOD, :welcome: to Cableforum.

I personally find it amazing that Telewest are running any UBRs at 87% capacity, however, I am not in a telewest area, and don't know for sure how they run their network.


We do have some Telewest employees here, hopefully one of them will advise.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Cable is rubbish totaly...I am now Downloading at a speed of 38kbs..pings from bbc.co.uk any where from 30ms to 60ms..And NO i have no spys or viruses, Just cable overloading there UBR yet again, Really thinking of changing my ISP now, Not even AOL customs get theses pings i know of plenty on AOL, all UK based with 16ms ping all the time i know they have slower downloads like 1mb and 2mb but hey at least its at a stable rate.

I have the Phone and TV package too i will also move that else where giving my money where my custom will be for what i pay for. no rubbish like i have now.
Tony.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

87%? well i phoned them the other night and the guy said the upstream channel i was on was running at 94%, which just made me laugh.

the inconsistent ping times were varying between 100 and 1000ms (mainly around 200)

im in bristol too and it seems widespread across the city

he changed my upstream channel to one on 60% which was the lowest out of the 4 he had available for me (though 60% is still pretty high no?) - it's been a fair bit better since then but a few nights it's still been pretty bad

one of the telewest guys suggested they'd be able to send out a motorola modem so i could change the channel myself but it seems that's incredibly unlikely to happen. guess i'll just be phoning them up quite reguarly to switch channels...

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Hi hoofner,

I think Telewest will lose loads of customers at this rate i know of a few who are also thinking of moving on.

94% have had that too and also moved to other channel's...worked fine for a few days then back to square one :(
I have the Motorola Modem now and even with me swapping about from channel to channel only to find them all as bad as each other. When i ring them they goto second line for a while come back and say "I'll just have to put up with it its just busy"!!! what the hell we paying for here ??

Wonder if there's a way to speed thing up for all that are having trouble not sure on the law but came across this...
Link on a quick search on done.
http://www.dti.gov.uk/ccp/topics1/saleandsupply.htm

Maybe one here can point if the law has been broken or not..I'm not saying they have.
Somthing has to be done millions of ponds been made from us all and for a service we are not getting, Or thats how i feel.
Tony.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I went back to 2Mb and it runs better,at half the price.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I think the 2mb is much better and reliable then the 4mb
those who don,t download alot of things the 2mb is the best one
to go for and its cheaper too

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

dont really see how that could make a difference tbh. If the network is overloaded and telewest servers take half a second to respond to requests from your computer then it wouldnt make a difference if you were on half a mb, 10mb or even 100mb. You might get closer to what you're paying for in terms of download speed but the latency should be identical. Maybe they've put you on a different upstream cuz you're on 2mb...


This is probably the only way they'll listen, though they'll probably think the cause was something completely different...

I also know a few people who intend on cancelling and switching to dsl after their 12 months are up. The thing for me is my landloard wont let me install sky or an external aerial so if I want a tv package I need to get telewest, and seeing as you cant get the tv package without subscribing for a net package or phoneline it would be a tad expensive to pay for 2 landlines a month when I only use a mobile... fortunetely since switching upstream iv had continued good service, though im not keeping my hopes up.

In terms of their contractual agreement, well I bet (..im not a lawyer) the only thing it'd give us would be the right to exit the agreement within the 12 months. One thing though, on the phone they did mention if it continues they may give you some compensation (e.g you pay less for your connection) which might be worthwhile - but who wants a net connection that's that slow, however much they charge you

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

i'm having the exact same problems.

what we need to do is all contact watchdog.

bad press is what they need cos they don't seem to be doing anything about it.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I'm just wondering if being uncapped is causing any of these connection problems? There are users constantly downloading 24/7.

Personally I think if other isp's can be uncapped with no problems than there shouldnt be a cap... have u seen this thread?

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=40672

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

That looks like upload congestion, why do you think TW only supply 384k on the 10Mbit not the 512k ntl supply, or the 512k+ that all the DSL operators supply on their 4Mbit and up products ;)

---------- Post added at 16:21 ---------- Previous post was at 16:19 ----------

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=40678 looks similar. We'll see if the chap's connection starts going Pete Tong as load increases.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

It is upload congestion and i think spenandrew is right, watchdog is probably the answer. I think if my connection goes tits up again (im presuming when the students are back from hols etc it'll be slow again) I might look into it.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

The higher that broadband speeds go, the more that contention will be an issue. You will not get full speed or anything like it with high speed connections unless you pay for a leased line, a very low contention line or are contended with users who hardly ever use their connection. I doubt that Watchdog would show any interest in the matter as contention issues are a feature of low cost, high speed broadband particularly when the ISP has little or no money to invest in the network.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Perhaps Telewest should consider some *shock* traffic shaping ;)

---------- Post added at 16:58 ---------- Previous post was at 16:56 ----------

They don't necessarily have to be a feature if traffic is handled properly, however following a policy of being totally unlimited with no traffic management and charging low prices isn't the best recipe.

Along with this I'm not convinced that Telewest will want to bust a gut to upgrade at this point anyway with the takeover coming up, companies rarely do.

Oh and those speeds are not acceptable, even for a contended network. That's going beyond congestion, 87% is far too high to run a DOCSIS upstream. These should be kept from getting congested by any means possible. Downstream can congest and not cause major problems, upstream congestion is a killer.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Traffic management means that some users will not get the maximum that they may be expecting however it is handled. Heavy users who do not get the maximum are the ones who are most likely to pick up the fact that they are not getting 100% and complain about it.

Low cost services by definition are probably not generating the income required to invest in the network and remove congestion problems.

The higher that average speeds go, the less likely that anything like 100% can be achieved

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Regardless maxing at 1.5Mbit on a 10Mbit service is totally unacceptable. That's the major question and the point I was trying to make. There's absolutely no defense for Telewest letting this chap's service get so bad.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Hi,

In Ref with WatchDog i have thought of that too...

I am sure even if they can't help improve our connection for what we have now, But pretty sure they can stop them from telling a few porkies

Example
Welcome to the Internet services page for blueyonder!
Do you want the freedom to go online whenever you like or surf the web at super fast speeds? Or do you want to download large files or watch video clips?
Either way, blueyonder has a range of award winning products geared towards your needs.
......................................
super fast speeds?: Hmmmm not true for some and not for thoughs i know on blueyonder.
download large files or watch video clips?: Yes True but you can with any ISP
award winning products: Another ward i seen for blueyonder maybe they should read here or contact all there customers to get a true result.

3 months on since the big change to 10mb and still no diffence with speeds being slow, peek times and weekends are unreal.

AOL 1mb users getting Pings 3x better than a 10mb connection....
Example AOL User Ping's to bbc.co.uk @ 14 to 16 on average.
Cable 10mb Ping's to bbc.co.uk @ 30 to 80 on average.

Blueyonder needs to listen for what we are saying and sort there act out giving the support they should be to us as customers.
A true saying the Customer is always right!!!

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

However, as Ignition says, no company should be running parts of their network at 87% capacity. That sounds like chronic underinvestment, and, TBH, if I thought NTL were acting like that, I'd be off to and ADSL supplier like a shot.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Hi everyone. Not trying to rub anybody's nose in it :angel: but I get a great service from Telewest and have done for many years now. I get 1.2Mb/s Download speed and about 45.7kb/s Uploads (average, Sometimes more)

I do say that between about 6pm & 9pm my online gaming pings rises between 60 - 110 (uk servers) Which is annoying as it decreases the quality of my play but thats my only grumble. I can live with that :rolleyes: :rolleyes: lol

Blueyonder Newsgroups are very fast as well. I get my full 1.2Mb/s and sometimes bursts up to 1.7mb/s :shocked: <---- (a few seconds) Damn downloading at 1.2mb/s and playing Call Of Duty online (MonkeyLuvver <-- GameName) with a ping of 50 - 70 is great and it's the way it should be :D

I do feel sorry for you's peeps who have problems. Move to Edinburgh!!!;) Hope ya's get it sorted.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

It's often running at 94%/95% in my area in Kent. :(

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

So your area is congesting as evidenced by the pings rising at night :)

BTW No way on God's green earth that you can download at 1.2MB/s and play online at the same time ;)

---------- Post added at 13:22 ---------- Previous post was at 13:22 ----------

That's as high as an upstream can go, it's impossible for them to go any higher due to overheads :)

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Well it might not have been 1.2mb/s exactly but it was more than 1mb/s - More like 1.1mb/s. I was playing Call Of Duty Online. In fact if you still don't believe me, try it? You'll be surprised. I was playing for about 2 hours

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I've tried it, pings go through the ceiling into the hundreds, the data packets get priority over the gaming traffic unless they are being shaped in some way ;)

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Agree been on Cable for years and you can't play on-line games and Download at top Speeds, Even Donwloading at good speeds you will be Laggy as hell in a Game.
More on the lines of Downloading @ 120K/Bs lol.

Point here is that Cable are overloading their UBR's in some Regions if not Most mainly Peek Hours effecting the whole internet experience, When Cable should allow for ALL users on at all times for the Speeds they should be. This way I would be happy and so would many others.

Eat me!!!!!!!
 

I'm not here to lie to you's i'm 24 years old not 14. I put the game to windowed mode and viewed it from there for 10 minutes before getting bored and put it back on full screen. I was downloading from newsgroups (NO UPLOADING at all) at between 700 kb/s to 1.1mb/s and was still getting under 100 ping easy.

I'm not here to mislead people by telling stupid immature stories of net speeds. When i've used torrents mind you I can be downloading at 10kb/s and get lag on games (100+ pings)

Just can't be arsed with people calling me a liar. I wouldn't lie so believe what you will.

Have you ever used Newsgroups????

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

jd speaks the truth

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Thankyou Senzer. Least someone has the knowledge ;)

If you want to try it out WildSOD & Ignition. I'll happily help you get Newsbin Pro and help set it up for you to try for yourself or just to use in general.

P.S I've only tried this with Call Of Duty Online so I can't speak for every online game but I'd like to think it would run pretty ok on most :) Dependant on the bandwidth used but is mostly small amounts

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Not getting into a protracted discussion with you over this but I'm not exactly a newbie who tried to download while gaming one day. :)

A simple HTTP download pushes pings into the 170+ range, and this is far less aggressive on bandwidth claiming than multithreaded newsgroups.

NPs not really an issue or relevant to the topic.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Hi J.D,

Sorry for missleading you not calling you a lier just thought you might of been missed reading the DL Rate, np's no expert in this filed, Never experienced donwloading at very high rates like you had and playing on-line games without getting the lag or very high pings...This is a 1st for me Sorry once again.

Back to the Subject...

I think i can clearly say Cable has overloaded there UBR almost every Region ?
I know of somone in the London area who has recently been put on the 10mb con from 4mb, and now he has troubles just like me and many others.
Examples for what i know... He use to ping bbc.co.uk around 9ms to 11ms
now since the 10mb has reached his area he pings from 30ms to 60ms this is a clear single to me Cable has overloeded most of there UBR's.
While gaming this person in the london area always Pinged far much better than me but now we ping almost the same, Out of order i call this... Telewest we want our UBR's at a stable rate like we all had once before.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Ignition was some sort of network engineer for NTL (not sure exactly what he did), so does know what he is talking about.

Anyway, back to the topic. If Telewest are operating UBRs at 87% of capacity, they need to spend some serious money upgrading.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Both companies need to dip their hands into their pockets and set about some upgrading by the looks of the threads on here.

That or work on other ways to keep the usage down a bit or control it.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

whats worrying is we hearing of mergers and then after a merger another company thinking of buying the whole lot ntl/telewest/virgin

so if you was a manager at ntl/telewest would you be wanting to spend money on upgrading ubr's which will ultimately make your annual/quarterly figures look bad in terms of profit/loss. Currently it seems to be all about marketing and profit, which is why I believe in the last 3-6 months we have seen service plummet on both sides.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I used to be on AOL and let me tell you, switching to telewest was the best thing I had done in a long time, It took a good while for me to get connected though as there was a lack of communication on their behalf like re-booking my connection time because of problems and not telling anyone, apart from that its been a lot better than that other crap.

---------- Post added at 21:03 ---------- Previous post was at 21:01 ----------

well you could still play on line but your ping would be **** poor

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Don't agree, service quality has only *appeared* to drop due to the upgrades in bandwidth and the issues that have arisen from that.

They don't have any choice but to spend the money required. With Sky's acquisition of Easynet now done Sky will in the not too distant future offer triple play. Either ntl/Telewest adapts and keeps up or they fall by the wayside, simple as. We know that the Murdoch's pockets are far deeper than the cableco's and now really isn't the time to be holding back on the investment, especially with the economies of scale, etc, that the acquisitions / mergers will bring.

Telewest managers might well be reluctant to spend right now due to being forcibly constrained, or may go the other way and spend like crazy, as they did last time just before Telewest changed ownership. We'll see.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

well I know in my area I have seen dropping performance since way back in july last year 4 months before the speed increases, the amsterdam routing problems and cogent problems were also both before the 10meg rollout. So the allowing things to saturate is a real problem, yes the upgrades made it worse but it was around before december.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

They are trying to tell me that the fact i have a router (Wrt54g linksys) in place, this could be a reason. is it ********. its been fine for the last 2 years ive been using it. sort it out telewest

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I'm not an expert, but my Telewest Cable connection speeds were dreadful: less than 1 kbps..

The first problem was that Windows XP made a new connection in adition to my Local Area Connection. Had to change settings to stop Plug and Play.

The second problem was that I had to reset my Local Area Connection from auto to 10.mbps.

Now I have 10 mb connection running at around 250kbs and upto 400+.

I have had to do the change to 10.mbps on 2 other people PC's to improve their speed.

Regards,

Mike

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Well yet again Slow connection had to call Telewest last night and tonight with slow connection, last night Pinging bbc.co.uk and getting 4 total losses and pings upto 160ms. Telewest being very honest telling me nothing they can do total loss i beleaved the words they said to me.

Tonight notice i was lagging in a game, checked the pings and a big wow mine 177ms which i normaly ping around 15 to 40 tops, check my ping on bbc.co.uk timed out on a couple rest being 100+ pings.
Took router off (Stops Cable blaming other things) rebooted PC and Modem
and no Connection ??.
Rang Telewest and told me a total overload caused a network failure :mad:
how long is this going to go on for...

my main topic title says it all Connection speeds is it Acceptable

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

let's be honest most the telewest advisors you phone don't know jack!

its always your computer not them.

but i have a test for you which i found interesting.

download 1 file from telewests ftp site always 150kbs, try 2 or 3 downloads from there all at the same time, all download at 150kbs for me, there or there abouts, hence 4mb speed in theory.

try it?

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Ya if the upstream runs too heavily you can't even get online.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

woken up this morning and i can download 4 files concurently from various servers, each leveling out around 400k/sec .. looks like telewest have fixed *something* in the bristol area, hope it stays like this now!

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I spoke to NTL BB support this morning, they aplogized for the dreadful speeds but there is nothing they can do as my "card" was oversubscribed. So I have to wait until they decide to purchase another card...

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

This is the Telewest section dude.

They'll have the cards there's a bit more to it than that sadly.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

speed has gone down again tonight, about to call 151..

---------- Post added at 23:16 ---------- Previous post was at 22:03 ----------

the hike in speed this morning was a bit of luck, apparently..

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

soooooo true, ive had many many problems with my upstream speeds on telewest, and im a new customer. ive never had a problem with downstream speeds, allways a consitent 240 KB/sec to 260 Kb/sec, never less, never more, im very happy with download speeds, BUT like ignition says, when upstream channels get so conjested, you cant even connect to the internet ATALL.. so download speeds are useless if you cant even connect.http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/6...ed2copy5yz.jpg
ive had to phone telewest 4 times in the past couple weeks due to ridiculus upload speeds, or simply not being able to connect at all, cable light just blinks.. and all i get on the phone (after waiting about an hour to speak to someone) is " oh sorry, there is an outage in your area, nothing we can do" im reading this forum more and more every day and more and more regreting switching to BY, but saying that i was on AOL 56k b4 so its no so bad, and like i said in another post, i can live with 256 upstream, if thats wat i get, well past few days its been spot on, apart and i live in bristol also (think bristol is bad for upstream congestion?)

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I live in Birmingham area and I say the CONNECTION SPEEDS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!!. During the evening time, I can't even view a web page at all, all I get is total ping lose on bbc.co.uk and CS login fail.

I have 1 mb line and paying 25 pounds for it. And all I get from BY is there is net work congestion so there is nothing they can do! Now , I have moved recently to this area, and therefore I had to sign another 12 months contract.

Is this bad connection mean that I can safely move to another ISP?

BY's 4mb upgrade promise is no where to be seen and I get no internet during the evening time when I want to use the internet.

Called BY oneday and they asked my IP address, then asked me to download some files from gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk When I tried , it downloaded at 102kbs !!! so I was happy and thought the it was fixed, upon disconnecting phone, everything went back to disaster state and does not work... very unstable BY...

I have run lots of different spyware and anti-virus program to make sure that my sides are clean. I had no problems with BY when I was at Sutton Coldfield area. So this gotta be the network problem 100% -- SORT IT OUT TELEWEST OR I AM GOING TO LEAVE , (if I can..) :shocked: :mad:

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Its down to the old age problem of BlueYonder being over subscribed,its always been that way,it depends on how many people local to you subscibe to BlueYonder broadband,if there are many then you can only have your share,but if there are only a few then its a much better service,liken it to water supply,if everyone local turned on their taps at the same time your water pressure would drop alarmingly, and as for evenings and weekends and school holidays forget it,as there are millions of kids online downloading everything in sight,for proof of this,try your speeds in the early hours and you will see such a dramatic improvement...BlueYonder dont really care all they want are the monthly subscriptions,and they will keep fobbing you off with all sorts of excuses,lets hope that someday soon technology will be able to overcome this situation of far too many people sharing a limited service ....am I right or wrong? you tell me.....

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I find when I switch to bagley proxy me speeds are fine.

getting about 1.15mb per download

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

Can you explain how you went about changing to the proxy?

I am not that fermiliar with that.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

This is the Telewest section! The clue being the bits above saying 'Telewest Cable' and 'Telewest Broadband Support & Discussion' along with all the comments in this thread regarding 'Telewest'.

Please ntl users be careful about discussing your own services in this thread as 99.9% of what you can say in this thread is about as relevant as me jumping in and commenting on how fast / reliable my ADSL is at home.

---------- Post added at 09:41 ---------- Previous post was at 09:39 ----------

You can't, the guy above is an ntl user who didn't bother to actually read this thread or note which section this is before posting. Telewest don't force customers through transparent proxies and you couldn't get at the ntl proxies anyway, so don't waste your time with it.

---------- Post added at 09:48 ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 ----------

It already can resolve just Telewest being unrealistic and stubborn as they get excited at the idea of being unshaped and unlimited even if it's screwing service.

Re: Connection speeds is it Acceptable
 

I have followed the complain procedure that were posted somewhere in this forum. I just hope the things do pickp better in the near future.

BTW, does anyone know if I can change my ISP if my Telewest service is crap like this now?