[baldy]

Originally Posted by abailey152

Something could be done. If spam filtering is so haphazard, why does my filtering software work so well? And without much user intervention. No, I think most of the anti-spam-blocking group feel that way because they just know what a total pigs-ear NTL will make of it.

Hopefully when the MX6 system quoted in the article comes online a lot of the current problems will disappear. At the moment, I agree, the mail system is crap. As for SPAM, I would rather deal with it myself. If I delete a mail by mistake due to over zealous rules I have myself to blame. Until the government gets tough on SPAM we have to deal with it. First point of attack should be with the originators not the delivery system. How many people take it out on the postman or Royal Mail when they receive junk mail?

This is my third STB. Each time it has been replaced, I've spent the evening telephoning CS as they seem to lose half of my channels. A friend of mine has been on a STB which he used to reboot regularly, but now he's on a CM which he still has to reboot. Another friend of mine on a CM....same there! This seems like a problem in the area. Are NTL interested? NO!

I can't really comment on this as I have no idea what area of the country you are in. As I stated earlier some areas require substantial investment, you may be in one. Personally I would move to ADSL if it was causing me so much grief. Not much interest in TV myself as it's mostly repeated junk, the wife would probably want SKY though

The levels are a problem. Check out this thread,

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=7849

For someone on 160k, 1Gb is plenty but it doesn't take long to rack up that amount of usage on 1Mb. If the speeds increase, it'll be worse. Granted, there does perhaps need a cap of some sort, but the current "fixed" level across the range of speeds is totally wrong. The cap should increase as the speed increases.

Read most of it a while back as well as others and as I previously stated needs to be rewritten as clearly it is causing grief. I download well in excess of the CAP and have not been bothered, neither has anyone that I know. Its primary purpose is to use against the *very limited* number of *heavy* users. To be honest it was fine the way it was originally worded.

Every time NTL does "load balancing" I lose access to sites. I have to change my proxy manually to get access back. Why? I know of no other ISP who regularly have this problem. NTL shouldn't be working on this, it should have been fixed long ago.

Do you loose connection every Tuesday? I cannot think of any reason why a rebalance would affect your ability to use a specific cache apart from a firewall. Rebalancing just moves you to a different upstream if needed, your IP should stay the same and all routing is the same. Personally, I would like to see cache access restricted to a users local area. The ability to bypass local proxies as a quick fix results in longer down time as fewer faults are reported. I would also prefer direct access but that will not happen but I do understand the reasons behind this technology (please do not infer that I suggest that others do not ) even if it is not perfect.

Yeah, NTL are doing great on the upgrade side aren't they? They have an email system which has been almost useless for the last week, a Usenet service which I gave up on quite some time ago, and a set of "transparent" proxy servers that are anything but. Yes, I agree they need to make money, but other ISP's seem to do alright, and don't seem to have the wide-spread problems NTL have. NTL didn't inherit an aged and creaking system. It was supposed to be state-of-the-art, so why is it broken all the time? Getting repairs done is a joke. It takes almost a week to get an engineer to call. For nearly £100 a month for the package, I think I'm justified in expecting a little better.

Mail is crap, agreed. MX6 upgrade should have a dramatic effect on performance. The current system was not designed to deal with the amount of throughput that we see now. Sadly it has taken ntl too long to realise this and have upset quite a few of their subscribers.

Usenet had been crap for a while but since the initial hickups of the server upgrades it has been very good. 95%+ completion & 10 days retention on the binary groups I use and able to sustain 115Kb+ download rates is good enough for me. If I want better then I expect to pay extra for it.

I have no problems with caching servers.

Never needed to call an engineer out since install in almost 3 years so can't comment.

The only fault I see with TV is the crappy EPG & Interactive component. I don't use them so no problem for me.


As with most products and services there are people who are happy and people who are not. Forums like this (no disrespect intended) generally give the impression that everything is bad with ntl. Just like working at any support centre they only here the bad side. What some fail to realise is that there are many many satisfied customers, myself included, I just thought I should put some balance into this debate . Yes I have the odd issue now and then but nothing is perfect in life and I accept that.

If I had the problems abailey152 refers to and it affected my enjoyment so much I would not hesitate in looking elsewhere for service.

edit:
Just like to add that my primary reason for selecting an ISP is to provide access. Services such as mail, usenet are secondary. I don't use ntl mail simply because I have my own domains and manage them myself and use Sendmail etc. as mentioned by others. It's a personal thing Many others have different views and I respect that. Perhaps ntl should do what many other ISPs do and offer a bare bones service with no additional services at a lower cost, it may benefit many users.