Cable Forum - View Single Post - [Merged] Ntl250 intermittant service

Skyclad72 · 11-07-2006, 15:45

This is quite a long post, so please bear with me.....

Back in May 2005 my wife and I moved to a new property about half a mile from where we lived before. Previously we had subscribed to NTL's 1Mb service and had one of those Terayon Modems (the black tall ones).

On moving to the new house we had a new cable installation and were given one of the little Ambit 250s (the square blue one), and all worked well for a couple of weeks.

We then started getting strange problems whereby the modem would appear to "hang" when transferring data (either by loading a webpage or d/l data). Sometimes it would 'catch up with itself' after 10-20 seconds or so, but most of the time it would hang and the only way to resolve the issue would be to unplug the modem and reboot it. This problem seemed to occur randomly - perhaps happening 4-5 times an hour or perhaps once every two hours or so.

Needless to say we called out an engineer who said our signal levels were slightly high, and a 3db attenuator should fix the problem - which it did before the problem manifest itself again. So we called out another engineer who stuck another attenuator on the back, went away and all was fine for a little while until the problem re-manifest itself.

Let me cut out the last 14 months and jump forward in time.

As of 10th July we have had 11 (ELEVEN) engineers come to our house. We have had 3 attenuators, 2 replacement modems, a new cable run, new splitter thingies on the box outside the house.

I have called NTL-India 67 times.
The longest our modem has been connected is 18 hours
The shortest time our modem has been connected is 4 seconds
Our modem "disconnected / hung" 162 times in the last 7 days
Our signal levels are fine

I have bought 4 new network cards
5 new pieces of RJ45
This problem re-occurs on 2 separate machines
It occurs on a clean "out of the box" Windows XP install
It occurs either patched to SP1 or SP2 and with/without VIA drivers
It occurs with/without a firewall
It occurs with/without anti-virus software
It occurs in IE6, IE 7 and Firefox

The last engineer who came blamed our hardware. Could this problem really occur from moving half a mile down the road. This was the same hardware we used at our previous address when we didn't have any problems.

I called Microsoft and have had 2 hours worth of tech support (to someone who has worked in IT for 11 years !) in case I've missed something. My hardware and Win XP Home install is fine - Microsoft blamed NTL.

Soooo I have MS blaming NTL and NTL blaming my hardware / Microsoft. I still have a modem that "hangs" all the time. The lights stay where they should - i.e. Ready, Sync, Enet - whilst the others don't do anything. I still retain my IP address when I do an /ipconfig. When it hangs 'permanently' the only thing I can do is reboot the modem.

Browsing to 192.168.100.1 the modem is fine, and the signal levels and power levels are fine. So WHY does it keep hanging.

I live in the Reading area and I'm on the Winnersh server although I have proxied through Bromley and get the same issue there.

Does anyone have any ideas?

11-07-2006, 15:45	#12
Skyclad72 Inactive Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 5	Completely at a loss sigh This is quite a long post, so please bear with me..... Back in May 2005 my wife and I moved to a new property about half a mile from where we lived before. Previously we had subscribed to NTL's 1Mb service and had one of those Terayon Modems (the black tall ones). On moving to the new house we had a new cable installation and were given one of the little Ambit 250s (the square blue one), and all worked well for a couple of weeks. We then started getting strange problems whereby the modem would appear to "hang" when transferring data (either by loading a webpage or d/l data). Sometimes it would 'catch up with itself' after 10-20 seconds or so, but most of the time it would hang and the only way to resolve the issue would be to unplug the modem and reboot it. This problem seemed to occur randomly - perhaps happening 4-5 times an hour or perhaps once every two hours or so. Needless to say we called out an engineer who said our signal levels were slightly high, and a 3db attenuator should fix the problem - which it did before the problem manifest itself again. So we called out another engineer who stuck another attenuator on the back, went away and all was fine for a little while until the problem re-manifest itself. Let me cut out the last 14 months and jump forward in time. As of 10th July we have had 11 (ELEVEN) engineers come to our house. We have had 3 attenuators, 2 replacement modems, a new cable run, new splitter thingies on the box outside the house. I have called NTL-India 67 times. The longest our modem has been connected is 18 hours The shortest time our modem has been connected is 4 seconds Our modem "disconnected / hung" 162 times in the last 7 days Our signal levels are fine I have bought 4 new network cards 5 new pieces of RJ45 This problem re-occurs on 2 separate machines It occurs on a clean "out of the box" Windows XP install It occurs either patched to SP1 or SP2 and with/without VIA drivers It occurs with/without a firewall It occurs with/without anti-virus software It occurs in IE6, IE 7 and Firefox The last engineer who came blamed our hardware. Could this problem really occur from moving half a mile down the road. This was the same hardware we used at our previous address when we didn't have any problems. I called Microsoft and have had 2 hours worth of tech support (to someone who has worked in IT for 11 years !) in case I've missed something. My hardware and Win XP Home install is fine - Microsoft blamed NTL. Soooo I have MS blaming NTL and NTL blaming my hardware / Microsoft. I still have a modem that "hangs" all the time. The lights stay where they should - i.e. Ready, Sync, Enet - whilst the others don't do anything. I still retain my IP address when I do an /ipconfig. When it hangs 'permanently' the only thing I can do is reboot the modem. Browsing to 192.168.100.1 the modem is fine, and the signal levels and power levels are fine. So WHY does it keep hanging. I live in the Reading area and I'm on the Winnersh server although I have proxied through Bromley and get the same issue there. Does anyone have any ideas?