Concurrent Connections Observation. Forum Input Please!

[hooli]

Hi guys.

This is not a bitch and moan thread. I'm new to Cable (Used to be ADSL) i'm looking for some input to some observations I've made

Situation is.

I live in an area of Edinburgh that has Telewest and I'm on 2mb with TV and Phone. Things have been fine until recently when I've noticed dramatic speed reduction on downloads and poor performance from Streamed Radio and Video. Now I've got the fault raised with Telewest and they say currently that there is capacity issues in my area and its being looked at. Now this has got to be 3 weeks now. How long does it take for someone to look at a ticket? I've been told I am on the best upstream for the UBR I am on. I've noticed people saying they have had the UBR changed and its resolved the problem. Is this actually possible and also what the hell is a UBR? When the guy told me I thought he said Uber! LOL.

Now just yesterday I noticed that if I download this linkhttp://server2.armed-assault.de/ftp/...mA_Montage.wmv using my browser I get around 50KB/s, sometimes less, but never more.

If I use fresh download and tell it to connect to the server using 3 connections, I get 150KB/s and 5 connections gives me just under 250KB/s. Now simple maths would tell me that per IP connection I am restricted to around 50KB/s.

I put a short post on BY-Users and the response was that some sites can cap the data per IP. I already know this but, I've tried various other sites that I know per IP are not capped, one of them being blueyonder's gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk and I get the same results. This is affecting streaming video and also I use Ventrilo and that is one connection per IP whether I like it or not.

Now I've used Speedguide.net's TCP Optimiser, I've used this for ADSL and Cable and it worked fine. I've 10 connections per server on both HTTP and HTTP 1.1 so I know the browser has the ability to connect more than once to each site.

Now for my questions which I hope some of you will be able to answer.

Does anyone know of any problems in Win XP that might cause this and this whole issue is my problem and if yes, any ideas of a solution. I am one of the few that do actually download the windows updates and I am also aware how they can mess with your PC.

Does anyone know if blueyonder could be doing this as part of the contention issue in the area as a temporary fix to allow everyone some bandwidth. Surely not though since if I get a download manager it gives me full bandwidth.

Can you try a file from the blueyonder site and also that file which is a video I posted. Right click and save as as its about 200MB. Post your results. Preferably a few of you from all over and hopefully someone from Edinburgh as well.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Jamie

[Stuart]

to the forum. Just to correct one thing in your post: The only way you are likely to get five IPs from Telewest (or NTL) is if you somehow open five accounts with them. This would also mean you need five Cable Modems and five network card. However, if you are using a download manager (like GetRight), there is no reason why you can't connect to one server many times.

[dcclanuk]

http://server2.armed-assault.de/ftp/...mA_Montage.wmv

i am getting around 500KB/s on that... but i am on ntl...

[hooli]

Might be a bit unclear, sorry. But I understand that you can connect to an external IP 5 times using 5 different ports outbound from my PC. This is what I was refering to. On Netstat, I have 5 outbound ports to that video file I posted.


Can I ask you to mention whereabouts your downloading from and by what means.

Thanks again.

[Darrenp]

http://server2.armed-assault.de/ftp/...mA_Montage.wmv

And I'm getting around 250KB/s on a 2meg connection.

[Bengie]

I had 981K on Telewest in Plymouth but seeing as I am on 10mb thats still pretty poor.

[janipewter]

1180KB/s with single connection.

What you're asking about hooli is known as a Download Manager.

[hooli]

Originally Posted by janipewter

1180KB/s with single connection.

What you're asking about hooli is known as a Download Manager.

No need to be patronising. Your preaching to someone has been using the internet for 11 years which more that some people have been using PC's and I believe you'd be about 6 at that time. I believe I mentioned download manager in my first post so have a read again.

That is not what I am asking about. What I'm asking about is Telewest's habbits and practices which I am sure a lot of people in this forum are accustomed to, unlike myself who has used ADSL until July this year.

Anyone got any ideas about the UBR thing at the top, is this possible and if so how quickly did it change?

[janipewter]

Although Telewest have always insisted that they are never going to cap monthly download limits, they did recently admit that they shaped traffic when it was "absolutely necessary" or something along those lines.

Looks like you may have been a victim of this. Your best bet is to phone them and try get onto second line support (the guys who know what they're talking about) and ask what's going on.

[hooli]

Originally Posted by janipewter

Although Telewest have always insisted that they are never going to cap monthly download limits, they did recently admit that they shaped traffic when it was "absolutely necessary" or something along those lines.

Looks like you may have been a victim of this. Your best bet is to phone them and try get onto second line support (the guys who know what they're talking about) and ask what's going on.

Just came off the phone to a 1hr and 20mins session with Telewest Narrowband.

Basically the second line said I was lying and then when I asked him to justify his accusation he didn't have much to say so I said OFCOM. I've to phone tomorrow and get the ticket escalated for a call back after work. Hopefully I won't get someone as anally retentive as the person I spoke to. Swear you could stick a lump of coal up that boys **** and you'd get back a diamond.

[janipewter]

You were lucky to even get through to second line. Last time my UBR broke, I phoned them and asked to speak to second line support, the guy asked why so I told him there was a problem with my UBR and he was like "how do you know sir?" and I told him that I couldn't get on the Internet and one of my friends on the same UBR was having the same problem, yet someone I know on another one was having no trouble. Needless to say he didn't believe me (probably didn't understand) and decided to go through the whole "do you have spyware or virii, can you restart the modem, can you restart your pc, can you plug the modem straight into your pc, can you ping so and so, can you do this blah blah" so I did. Eventually when he couldn't remotely connect to my modem to see if there was anything wrong with it he believed me, and I finally got through to second line. Spoke to the guy for 5 minutes, he obviously knew his stuff because he understood what I was saying and put in a support ticket straight away. 2 hours later Internet was back online.

[volatile]

Im getting:

[usher]

Last modified: Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Is UBR Short for unspecified bit rate, or Class D quality of service, an ATM bandwidth-allocation service that does not guarantee any throughput levels and uses only available bandwidth. UBR is often used when transmitting data that can tolerate delays.

Or is it Universal Broadband Router ?

[Graham M]

Universal Broadband Router in this case.

[janipewter]

Originally Posted by usher

Or is it Universal Broadband Router ?