Another slow speed thread

Gareth · 05-12-2006, 20:38

Like others, my 10 Mb has slowed down to 56k dialup speeds for the past few days, making browsing the web painful, watching streamed video impossible and downloading files of any size brings me to tears.

It's not just browsing that's affected either. Newsgroups are screwed too. Was maxing out my Giganews connection till this week, but right now it's connecting at 11KB/s :crying:

Here's a speedtest result, and this is roughly the same for all tests I've tried...

Note it's only my download that's buggered, my upload seems fine

The only thing that seems unaffected is tracert and my ping to Counter Strike servers.

I've just spoken to some friendly but unhelpful chap in India who checked my stats from NTL's side, and said as far as he can see there's no problem, so there's nothing they are going to do, because they don't even think I have a problem. When asked if this kinda of service was normal, and what he recommended I should do to fix it, he had no response.

Can anyone suggest anything before I go completely nuts. This isn't what I pay ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£35 p/month for.

Gareth · 05-12-2006, 23:39

After seeing some other threads, does anyone think changing my modem from the rectangular silvery thingy to a 250 would make any difference? If so, I'll have an accident with this one

nufcfan123 · 05-12-2006, 23:41

I'm contemplating it myself :p

danielf · 05-12-2006, 23:43

Dunno, but would a silvery thingy look nicer in your lounge?

invisibleboy · 06-12-2006, 08:47

its no better with a STB my "

up to

" four meg

connection

is

regularly

like back in the day dial up

Fred_Smith · 06-12-2006, 12:20

Hi,

I had the same problem, when I spoke to CS ( the second time). I was told my Tereyon modem was not working as it should, so it was replaced with an NTL 250 modem, no problems now....

NoelT · 06-12-2006, 15:12

I had 'issues' with my old silver CM100. Kept rebooting all the time, when the engineer came out to change it, he couldn't believe I still had one as they never worked with 10meg apparently, just couldn't handle it.

Since then I was getting dial up type speeds. I logged another call and they said that my cable and UBR was 'oversubscribed'. If I manually specify a proxy near me, it speeds up for a few days, but then slows down again and I have to change it again.

Only seems to happen in the evenings though.

If only it wouldn't cost me ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£125 to get a BT line installed, I'd be off!!!

Gareth · 06-12-2006, 23:22

A quick update on my issues, in case anyone's bothered and to help me keep my sanity.

After getting home tonight and realising that my downloads were still only of dial-up proportions, I got on the phone to NTL's tech support again, and ended up speaking to a girl in India.

After running through countless inane tests, she put me on hold to go and speak to her supervisor. I kinda figured she might have been out of her depth when she asked me to read out the code printed underneath my modem - "Oh, you want the MAC address?" I asked, to which she replied that she already had my address but could I read out the long number printed underneath the modem

Anyway, after yet more tests, disabling of firewalls, adding and then changing of proxies, pinging, tracert-ing, downloading from this site, rebooting of modem, etc... etc... etc... she claimed to have miraculously found what the error was. When I asked her to enlighten me, she said that "my cable modem was configured on the wrong server" but that she'd change it over for me. When I asked what she meant by the 'wrong server' she was unable to explain it... apparently it's something I'd not understand

So, she said her change was going to take 2-3 hours to update... and so far nothing's changed *sigh*

However, I did get a call reference for this call, so hopefully when I call them tomorrow, I'll be able to avoid 45 mins of wasting everyone's time, and can cut straight to the chase.

If anyone knows a way of getting through to NTL's 2nd-line support people, please let me know... or do they all clock off at 5, and route their phones to Bangalore?

NoelT · 07-12-2006, 06:31

Sounds like a standard Tech Support response "I've got to make a change which will take 5 minutes longer than I am on duty for, therefore when you phone back I'll have gone home and you'll have to go through the whole rigmarole of tests again" When I managed to get an engineer out to look at my dial up speeds, he insisted that the problem was with the cable end I had put on when I ran the cable through my attic, instead of round all the doorframes in the house! He recrimped and left, still no better... Unless I manually put a proxy in. I still can't figure that one out...

invisibleboy · 08-12-2006, 16:33

sounds like the classic sound

engineer

oh i need to turn on the DFA that will sort it

Que

much

pretending

then shout is that better and sit smugly back knowing you were right all along

note DFA stands for does f#*k all

Smegfish1 · 08-12-2006, 18:34

If,like Leicester, the network has been upgraded to 256 qam fron 64qam, you will probably need to get an ambit 250 modem. All other modems are going down, either no connection, intermittant connection, or slow d/l speeds (in the dial up region,i.e 56k). This is affecting Teryons', Surfboards and ambit 100/120/200s'. 250 swap out cures this. Techs have no means of testing/fixing d/l speeds apart from the obvious as already stated. Hope this helps

richgm · 08-12-2006, 20:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smegfish1

If,like Leicester, the network has been upgraded to 256 qam fron 64qam, you will probably need to get an ambit 250 modem.

How do you tell if your area has been upgraded?

Gareth · 08-12-2006, 21:01

I just checked the modem config page and saw this...

Downstream Modulation : QAM64

So presumably my area's not yet been upgraded. Might still try and get the 200 modem I'm currently using swapped out for a 250 to see if that changes anything, even we're not 256qam (heh, that almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about

)

---------- Post added at 22:01 ---------- Previous post was at 21:59 ----------

Oh, and here's tonight's abso-f'kin-lutely brilliant speed...

Smegfish1 · 08-12-2006, 21:14

http://192.168.100.1 downstream status will be 64 qam if not upgraded.

08-12-2006, 21:39

I have an ntl:home100 modem

our area has been changed to QAM256

My ( 4meg) speeds didn't alter, I'm still limited by ZA to around 2.7 on a speed test, though