Poor Speed Since Upgrading.

[KenK2]

I have always praised Telewest and their reliability but I have lost hope since the famous upgrade to 10MB.
It seems that things have gotten worse since the upgrade to 10MB and I am incapable of getting some consistency with their speed.
If I call their tech support they generally run a few tests (ping modem, etc.) and then blame my PC (even if it is Spyware and Virus free).
Occasionally, they cliam that having Skype, Messenger and a couple of other application in background will affect my bandwidth, even if the applications are NOT in use and NOT using bandwidth (according to X-Netstat Pro) but just listening to connection.
Further more I can hardly believe that few applications in background could affect my bandwidth to the point that the total bandwidth I get is 200 kBps.
Blueyonder suggests that I should be getting speeds between 1100 and 1200 kBps but I don't seem to be able to enjoy them.
If I connect ot their game server I can manage to get decent speeds when downloading however, the general internet usage is very low and, when I try to surf the web I get time out issues and a slow experience (and yes I have cleaned the cache, hystory, etc and got rid of tempo files if you ask as I use ccleaner).
This gets painfully bad weekends where I get a total bandwidth of 200kBps if lucky.
They way I verify it is by using an application called NetworX which, not only monitors bandwidth by the second but record the highest peaks.
Weekend, with some applications in background and me surfing the net (slowly and painfully) it harldy managed to get to 200 kBps top averaging 50-60.
I can also check each individual connection and bandwidth usage using X-Netstat and it does not show any major loss of bandwidth due to spyware or an application in background.

When you call them you get as much help as I could personally give to novices and does not solve the issue.
I have written to them twice to complain about it and requested them to clarify what bandwidth do they guarantee I should have at peak times and what is the contention ratio in my area.
Twice they failed to reply, let alone addres my complaint.
I have now managed to get a list of board of directors and I am now thinking of writing to each adn every one and cc my complaint to CISAS, ISPA and OFCOM as I am sick and tired of this lethargy. Things seemed better when I was on 4MB and paid £50 a month.

Basically, if applications in background are using 50 kBps shoudl I not be able to have the rest of my 1200 available for anything else I want to do? If so why the surfing experience is so bad and slow, no matter which webpage I visit?

Am I the only one that feels I am not getting enough badwidth to allow several applications to work at the same time?

Any suggestions?

[cadman_96]

KenK2 i feel your PAIN!!!!!!!

I am still on the 4Mb but every since telewest annouced this upgrade to 10Mb my connection is crap. Simple Web pages take ages to load never mind gaming, streaming or any P2P service.

Currently i am thinking of getting a BT line and going ADSL as this telewest connection is now useless and for £35 a month its not worth it as a dial-up account would be FASTER and more cost effective.
Maybe telewest blueyonder should rename to slowyonder

SlowYonder... to nowhere!

[KenK2]

Cadman

Have you thought about reporting this to CISAS, ISPA and OFCOM?
Ideally, if we all do it we may begin to see some changes.
I have posted links and steps in another thread.

It is an absolute disgrace that we have to put up with this atrocious service.
The reason why they failed to reply to my complaints is because I have demonstrated, in any possible way, that the fault is at their hands and not mine, because:

- I have scanned my machine for viruses and spyware using THEIR software suite.
- When they claimed that some spyware cannot be eradicated I have scanned the machine using SPYBOT, MICROSOFT ANTISPYWARE and EWIDO. The worse that they have found is some harmless cookies.
- When they blaimed the applications in background (they claimed netstat should only show max 5 connection established or listening at any given time. No matter if they are using very little or no bandwidth at all. It makes me wonder what is the point in having a 10MB bandwidth) I installed NetworX and X-Netstat Pro and monitored each and every connection (established and listening) and the bandwidht usage and demonstrated that they are using little bandwidth.
- When they blamed my machine I connected 2 other machines, one of which had just a fresh and complete installation of XP pro.
As they have run out of excuses and cannot blame me anymore they are pretending I do not exisist by not dealing with my complaints.

Mind you I love it when I call to complain about speed, they do some checks, go away for few minutes and come back and tell me to try again.
Miracously I get speed back and they claim that I just had to be patient and wait (no reference to me being moved to a different upstream channel).
Some of the people working at technical support are extremly incompetent and think they are dealing with idiots.
On one occasion the so called engineer had to consult with his colleagues on contention ratio and network congestion (and still could not provide me with an answer)
When I tried to discuss the horrible response I got when pinging www.bbc.co.uk I was told that no one can ping the bbc!!!
I claimed I could and he had to go away and consult again with his colleague.
Then he insisted that in order to measure the real speed you must start a download (from their game server) and then start another one at later time and combine the two speed together and divide by 12.
Obviously, to him it did not matter whether the two download had to start at the same time or not.

You tell me if I should not be mad.

BYW I changed the upstream channel and things seemed better now. But for how long?

[space]

There are some older threads where I and a lot of other people have been complaining about the same thing.

My issues are still not resolved and I'm in a bind because no ADSL operator can give me more than 2meg where I am.

I had the 4 meg service which was flawless until about a month or two before the rollout of the upgrade...

Suddenly one morning without warning my service was lucky to go above 2 meg. I rang in, had the usual rubbish about spyware and what have you, jumped through the hoops and eventually they send a bloke out to test the line, replace the modem etc. All of which made no difference.

Then the upgrade came along with the price reuction.

No I have basically my 4 meg serivce back, and on a really good day I get 5 meg.

I've never once seen the speed go above 5 and stay there. I've complained. I've had 2 more tech people come out. All of them can't find the problem.

I did eventually get through to a great support bloke in Liverpool who told me that they've been bombarded by complaints. His investigations have led him to conclude that it's the cisco routers that Telewest bought in bulk. Apparently when they reach 65% capacity they start restricting bandwidth.

Now I know nothing about that side of things. that could have been just a line he was spinning me, or I misunderstood. But the upshot was that unless Telewest pulled its finger out and replaced the hardware, the problem wasn't likely to go away.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by space

I did eventually get through to a great support bloke in Liverpool who told me that they've been bombarded by complaints. His investigations have led him to conclude that it's the cisco routers that Telewest bought in bulk. Apparently when they reach 65% capacity they start restricting bandwidth.

Now I know nothing about that side of things. that could have been just a line he was spinning me, or I misunderstood. But the upshot was that unless Telewest pulled its finger out and replaced the hardware, the problem wasn't likely to go away.

Hmmmz..

He's kinda right. Looks like another upstream congestion issue though, 65% is the time when upstream congestion *can* impact on pings, but won't do that much to downloading.

When you start utilising more of the upstreams and they get to a very high level of utilisation they aren't restricting bandwidth it just isn't there to give.

Due to this upstream bandwidth being over used you end up not being able to acknowledge the data that is sent to you from the internet in a timely fashion and end up with slower than normal download speeds and obviously due to the congestion higher pings.

Downstream congestion is less likely. You can still get near enough full performance out of a downstream right until it gets pretty much completely full.

This is not a feature of the Cisco routers / uBRs that Telewest bought, it's a feature of the DOCSIS protocol that nearly all cable networks run on.

[Chrysalis]

ignition it seems ntl have caught the infection, bbking has confirmed my ubr segment has upstream congestion now

[senzer]

I was one of the first to receive the 10mb upgrade, before that I was on 2mb (after a 1mb-2mb from BY). I download from usenet and can tell there are real problems with speeds. Only on a very good day do i get over 1000 kb/s, many times it hangs around 200-600 kpbs. On computer game servers, my ping is erratic sometimes and can shoot up from say 10 in a game to anything above 100 (unplayable). I was intially pleased with the upgrade, thinking it good value for money. However, paying £35 for a less then great service is very annoying, I support every negative thing about the 'upgrade' in this topic.

So you were happy paying £35 for 250 kbps max, now you get upto 600 kbps for the same price, you are unhappy

[gar3th]

I had same problem with speed issue until I swapped from using the usb cable to the network cable. Doing this gave me my full bandwidth!

[KenK2]

Originally Posted by gar3th

I had same problem with speed issue until I swapped from using the usb cable to the network cable. Doing this gave me my full bandwidth!

I alwasy been connected via Ethernet

[senzer]

you don't understand. I am happy to receive a service I have paid for. But I am not receiving my full service am I? Think about it.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by senzer

you don't understand. I am happy to receive a service I have paid for. But I am not receiving my full service am I? Think about it.

You aren't guaranteed your full 10Mbit in any way, shape or form. Such guarantees are very expensive, so I'm afraid the 'Linux ISOs' not downloading at your full line speed isn't really a legit complaint.

You are absolutely justified in being irritated if you can't get decent pings to games servers though, this is something they should address.

[DaMacFunkin]

My download speed in the evenings and weekends is also terrible, sometimes it can be as slow as 30k, and that is to a premium usenet server site like giganews, early in the morning before i go to work i can get 1100k no probs, so hows that if spyware is supposed to be the issue?

[Dask]

I have a similar problem where I can get 1100 kb second from giganews for about 3 minutes then the conection speed drops to a maximum speed of 113 kbps across the whole blueyonder connection. The connection then stays at that speed for hours.

It happens consitently day and night.

It was better when we had a 2 meg connection.

For £35 a month that isn't acceptable IMO

I've tried to contact Blueyonder support but they are pretty useless. I'm running OS X so I don't think spyware is an issue.

[hobo]

I agree. Since my "upgrade" I've only on occasions managed 10Mbit. Usually about 4-5Mbit too.

Web surfing seems to be a lot slower. Even takes time for sites like yahoo and google to display images at times!

I hope BY can sort out their capacity issues soon