Now that my 12 month contract is finally over, I've decided to go back to ADSL with BT, as the 600k "service" I received from ntl has been awful. This week has been especially bad, with slow surfing and very high pings. This is a tracert I took just now, at an off-peak time:
Target Name:
www.ntlworld.com
IP: 62.253.162.30
Date/Time: 12/12/2003 14:38:51
1 59 ms * 3047 ms 2188 ms 2365 ms 2093 ms [10.36.176.1]
2 138 ms * * 2221 ms 2455 ms 2106 ms wapk-t2cam1-a-ge-wan43-107.inet.ntl.com [80.1.170.29]
3 161 ms * * 2299 ms 2581 ms 2159 ms popl-t2core-a-ge-wan61.inet.ntl.com [62.255.81.13]
4 314 ms * * 2464 ms 2631 ms 2236 ms pop-bb-a-so-320-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.65]
5 529 ms * * 2535 ms 2647 ms 2287 ms win-bb-b-so-500-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.202]
6 597 ms * * 2564 ms 2697 ms 2401 ms win-bb-a-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.161]
7 615 ms * * 2608 ms 2731 ms 2347 ms win-dc-a-v902.inet.ntl.com [62.253.187.222]
8 612 ms * * 2803 ms 2730 ms 2322 ms
www.ntlworld.com [62.253.162.30]
As you can see, that is very bad, and it's been close to this all week. I've been having this problem on and off for at least the last 6 months. 2 Engineers have come round so far, and the last time I got the guy to put me on a new UBR, and it was fine for a couple of weeks. But again it has deteriorated. I'm in the Greater London area, (ex-C&W) and I have the STB 4000 modem.
I've lost count of the number of times I've spoken to tech support, or the number of hours I've wasted listening to their hold music, and they usually conclude that it's a problem with my computer setup. I had to email the director for my area to get a proper engineer to come round. I'm a CS player, and I've had to forfeit several matches due to my connection.
So, I have given my one months notice. Now I'm just praying that my connection will be usable for this last month, but from what I've experienced this week, this looks unlikely. I'll give tech support another call tonight, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
Goodbye ntl. It's been a blast.