Is ntl disabling routers?
 

About 2 weeks ago my ntl cable 2 Mbit service started playing up. Speed dropped dramatically, to the extent that email client timed out while waiting. I am using a Belkin F5D6231 router, wired via ethernet to the cable modem and 2 PCs. Speed suddenly drops to as low as 40 Mbits/sec, so I connect the modem directly to one PC and it comes up again. Back via the router and it's OK, only to drop again later on. I have replaced the router with new Belkin ones - twice! Still getting the same problem. Can so many routers be faulty? I have been running this setup for 2-3 years without problems. ntl tech support is of course pretty useless as they are not remotely interested in routers. The cable modem was replaced last week but speed problem is the same.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

short answer - no, ntl aren't disabling routers.

may well not be a router problem, what are you doing (if anything...) when the speed drops out?

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

NTL are not blocking routers. Mainly because they do actually allow up to three PCs on your connection, and partly because they can only really guess you have a router (unless the engineer sees it).

TBH, it sounds like you have a faulty network card in the PC, or possibly a faulty network cable.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

And why should they. When customers would not listen to any answer they would give anyway. Lets face it you have made you mind up that NTL are somehow disabling your router anyway and if they said they have not would you believe them. :rolleyes:

Question to you. WHY would they disable just your router and not mine as well for instance. I have a router that is working fine and i am using it now ?.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

I have not made up my mind, I am just curious. And the question was slightly tongue in cheek, as I don't think ntl would bother to do such a thing, even if they could. To answer the other replies (for which thanks), the problem is exactly the same for the 2 PCs. If I disconnect one the speed still goes down for the other, and vice versa. I have tried a cupboard full of ethernet cables, and nothing makes any difference. I have just done a download speed test and watched as it started at about 500 KB/sec and dropped to 50 within a couple of minutes. If I wait longer it goes down below 10. Rebooting the router always restores speed, but as I said replacing the router makes no difference. Very puzzling.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Does the problem occur wthout the router?

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

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It appears to be OK without the router, yet replacing the router (twice) made no difference.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

So if your BB performs well without the router then that surely answers your question?

The only thing to do is run it wothout your router for a set period of time (say 1 month) to narrow it down further.

Incidentally, are your uploading anything when this happens-P2P/Torrents etc?

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Hi mate
Sounds similar to my problem, get some good quality virus software i.e mcafee or suchlike. AVG didn't pick up anything that mcafee did.

Also download adaware se to check for spyware and all that crap

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Well this is brilliant. I installed Zone Alarm Pro and the speed has come up, but only to 0.7 Mb/sec when I should be on 2 Mb. What's more, it has disabled Firefox so I am forced to use IE. The ZA settings for the 2 browsers are identical. I suppose at least I should apologise to ntl for suggesting it was their fault, but at the same time they need to be told that this is becoming a not uncommon problem. I have spent about 4 hours on the phone while they pursued one blind alley after the other.:mad:

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

I'm sure ntl might have better things to do like maintaining their network before (if it was possible) 'maintaining' your network.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Ive noticed mines been slow since ive put on the antivirus and firewall, not had over 180 kB download on 2 mb

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

I don't blame you mate, its natural instinct to think its the ISP due to the nature of the problem, i spent a week phoning NTL up thinking it was my modem, line etc

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Zone Alarm appears to have rendered the PC virtually unuseable. It's now extremely slow, all applications take ages to load, and it frequently crashes. Is there no other way of getting protection from criminals? I didn't have all this when I was using McAfee firewall. What's the AVG one like? Maybe it works better with the AVG antivirus which I have.

BTW does ntl issue fixed or variable IP addresses?

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Variable assigned by DHCP

AVG is IMO ****
Anything free isn't up to much, my theory is you spend x amount on broadband you might as well spend a little more protecting your pc's so you can use it. This is coming from someone who didn't use any firewall or AV 2 days ago for the past 10 years
Im using McAfee security center and its brilliant

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

So if I am on a variable IP address why has someone latched onto my computer and flooded me with spyware? Transfer rate down to 10 Kb/sec again today so something will have to be done.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

It may not be a case of someone latching on to your computer as such as installing loads of dodgy spyware on it (although people do this). It may simply be a case of someone using your PC, going to an infected site (by accident) and acidentally infecting your PC that way. Viruses and Trojans can also be delivered via email, usually as attachments, but there are ways to use an HTML email to infect certain machines.

I would recommend installing and running the following (all free):

Lavasoft's Adaware (http://www.lavasoft.com). This is a good spyware scanner. If it finds any evidence of spyware, it allows you to delete it.

Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/). This is partly a spyware scanner and remover (like Adaware), but also prevents known spyware installing itself (essentially, it tricks Internet Explorer into thinking the spyware is already installed, thus preventing IE downloading it again).

Javacool's Spyware Guard: (http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/). Similar to Spybot in that it prevents Spyware being installed, but it does this by monitoring the system for changes that Spyware is likely to make.

Microsoft's Windows Defender: (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/secu...e/default.mspx )

This is descended from Microsoft's AntiSpyware (which saved my PC on a few occassions), and works (again) by checking for actions likely to be performed by Spyware. The difference is that it checks for more actions that Spywareguard, and gives you the option to allow or disallow the action. It can optionally give a recommendation based on what other users of Windows Defender have done (so, for instance, if a well-known program needs to make changes to the registry, Windows Defender will look on it's network, find out that other users have allowed this change and recommend you allow it).

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Many thanks for your constructive help. I'm a bit embarrassed about the title of this thread now! I think I will ditch Zone Alarm for the time being and see how I get on with Adaware. How much does it degrade performance? Well I suppose I should suck it and see.

---------- Post added at 15:39 ---------- Previous post was at 15:35 ----------

Amazing! After crawling all day so far, it has just leapt back up to 1.9 Mb/sec! What does this mean? Watch this space :)

So all I have left to fix is Firefox which ZA has disabled.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Bear in mind that Adaware is not a firewall. You should use it in conjunction with a firewall.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Yes I realise that. I have turned on the Windows firewall for the time being, although I know it's not up to much. Speed is terrible again today. Are you saying that a spyware infection on the PC itself can slow the connection? In which case why is speed OK without the router? I am finding all this very hard to grasp!

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Sorry, didn't mean to be patronising. If you have installed all the software I have mentioned above, and made sure it updated itself, and run scans, the chances are you don't have any spyware.

How do the individual programs affect performance?

Adaware doesn't (unless you activate the "Tea Timer" System Settings protection setting), it requires that you scan the system from time to time.

Spybot, again, doesn't use any resources (it actually adjusts settings within the browsers to stop them installing spyware rather than preventing the installation itself. As with Adaware though, I would advise you scan your system regularly though.

Spywareguard and Windows Defender both do use some resources, but TBH, they will not impact your connection, and don't seem to use many resources (put it this way, I have them all installed on the Laptop I am currently using. The connection I have at work is far faster than 10 Meg, and network speeds aren't affected).

---------- Post added at 19:15 ---------- Previous post was at 19:05 ----------

I am not saying it is definately spyware, but this is one possibility.

The way that spyware slows down your connection is by literally flooding it with connection attempts. It's possible that this is causing the CPU in your router to overload, and effectively hang.

It can also be an incompatibility with the router. I know that networking hardware follows standard protocols (so you can mix and match hardware from different companies), but we have found at work that our machines with onboard intel NICS occassionally cause our 3com switches to do exactly what you have just described (slow down the connection). We ended up replacing the Intel onboard NICS with 3Com cards and all is well.

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Many thanks again for your advice. I really didn't think you were being patronising at all :)

I have temporarily given up and have ditched the router. Now sharing the internet connection between 2 PCs, with no probs except that I can't get MSN Messenger on the client to connect through the firewall on the gateway PC. But what I don't understand is that this router set-up has worked fine for 2-3 years, and suddenly went mad about 3 weeks ago. Something happened then, and we didn't change anything at our end. And 2 new routers behave exactly the same. It's a mystery which I must solve!

Re: Is ntl disabling routers?
 

Final (I hope) update. ICS was a total nightmare, so I have installed a SafeCom router and ditched ZA. No problems at all now after 3 days. Something very odd about Belkin routers. Just one of those unsolved mysteries.