Provisioning Screen

turkeytickler · 10-08-2008, 19:23

Hi all

I'm a farily long standing NTL/VM customer.

I have recently upgraded from 2mb to 10mb and all has been fine for a few days. This morning, when starting up, I had no connection.

Did the usual reboot PC/STB/Wireless Router, but on restarting, I got the provisioning screen.

- After much mucking about, decided to put the wireless out of the equation and connected by PC direct to my STB.

- Provisioned the PC, rebooted and restarted STB, and PC in that order. All fine.

- Put the Router back into the equation - connected to the router (with VM still on the wired STB > NIC connection), and cloned my NIC MAC address on the router.

- Reconnected STB to Wireless Router did the reboot dance, back to Provisioning Screen again! Countless attempts/reboots but I cant get past it.

I am using a Micronet Wireless Router from Maplin - its only about 1 month old so Im fairly sure its ok - besides the wireless signal is fine.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Your help would be much appreciated.

tt

Joxer · 10-08-2008, 19:29

On the basis that it shouldn't have happened in the first place, and certainly not the second time and it is also a VM issue I would recommend calling tech support.

turkeytickler · 10-08-2008, 19:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joxer

On the basis that it shouldn't have happened in the first place, and certainly not the second time and it is also a VM issue I would recommend calling tech support.

Hi Joxer - thanks for the reply - yes sorry I should have mentioned I did that. It wasnt very fruitful - the tech said it was because i needed a cable modem rather than an STB and put me through to cust services and to cut a long story short I had lost the will to live after 3 more transfers between departments...

I might be being a little hasty here - whilst I see your point, I cant help thinking its something my end since it works fine (im using it to type this!) when I am wired from STB > PC - its only when the Wireless Router is in between (wireed or wireless) that the provisioning screen comes along!

Do you think I should still be pursuing this with tech support and/or getting a cable modem upgrade?

thanks

tt

BBKing · 10-08-2008, 19:39

Quote:

I have recently upgraded from 2mb to 10mb

Quote:

connected by PC direct to my STB

We don't offer 10Mb through the STB, you should get a separate cable modem, so I suspect some screw up has happened somewhere. You probably ought to ring up and enquire politely when your nice new modem will arrive.

If you PM me the STB MAC address I can check to see if it's got 2Mb, 10Mb or nothing on it (yes, I'm staff).

turkeytickler · 10-08-2008, 19:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBKing

We don't offer 10Mb through the STB, you should get a separate cable modem, so I suspect some screw up has happened somewhere. You probably ought to ring up and enquire politely when your nice new modem will arrive.

If you PM me the STB MAC address I can check to see if it's got 2Mb, 10Mb or nothing on it (yes, I'm staff).

Thats weird - I am getting D/L speeds of around 3.9mb so its definately more than 2mb! Is that possible?

tt

Joxer · 10-08-2008, 20:00

Some STB will handle more than 2MB - but you need a modem for 10.

---------- Post added at 20:00 ---------- Previous post was at 19:59 ----------

Should have noticed that it was an STB earlier - toomuch wine.

10-08-2008, 20:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by turkeytickler

Thats weird - I am getting D/L speeds of around 3.9mb so its definately more than 2mb! Is that possible?

tt

You would be better calling up Customer Services and asking for an upgrade to a Stand Alone Cable Modem as with your present STB box you can only receive 2Mb/6Mb depending on which model, but with a SACM you can upgrade if you wanted to 20Mb, plus you would get a better connection.

The should be quite happy to upgrade you as the company would prefer all customers to swap to SACM.

Call Customer Care not Faults because they would have to transfer you as they cannot change your account.

Customer Care - 150 (Options 1 then 3)

eth01 · 10-08-2008, 20:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBKing

We don't offer 10Mb through the STB, you should get a separate cable modem, so I suspect some screw up has happened somewhere. You probably ought to ring up and enquire politely when your nice new modem will arrive.

If you PM me the STB MAC address I can check to see if it's got 2Mb, 10Mb or nothing on it (yes, I'm staff).

You should only be using a STB for broadband if you're on 2mb. Otherwise it's a job for the CM...

10-08-2008, 20:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joxer

Some STB will handle more than 2MB - but you need a modem for 10.

---------- Post added at 20:00 ---------- Previous post was at 19:59 ----------

Should have noticed that it was an STB earlier - toomuch wine.

You would be better calling up Customer Services and asking for an upgrade to a Stand Alone Cable Modem as with your present STB box you can only receive 2Mb/6Mb depending on which model, but with a SACM you can upgrade if you wanted to 20Mb, plus you would get a better connection.

The should be quite happy to upgrade you as the company would prefer all customers to swap to SACM.

Call Customer Care not Faults because they would have to transfer you as they cannot change your account.

Customer Care - 150 (Options 1 then 3)

Hatchet · 10-08-2008, 20:59

Thats funny when I had 10mb they left me on the stb aswell.
When we moved up to 20mb the engineer said that the stb would only get about 5 mb out of it at most which could explain somewhat slower speeds....

If I remember (was a good while ago) we even had to hassle virgin to give us the cable modem free with our 20 mb...

In the end for 10 mb you should be on a cable modem.

turkeytickler · 10-08-2008, 22:23

thanks for al the advice everyone - the thing that i still cant get my head around is that - although i can see that i am probably not getting the best speed out of my 10mb on the back of a STB rather than CM, the fact that I cam still getting _something_ means i dont have a fault?

My immediate issue is about getting past the provisioning screen when on wireless - can this be related to a STB issue?

BBKing · 10-08-2008, 22:49

Quote:

Thats weird - I am getting D/L speeds of around 3.9mb so its definately more than 2mb! Is that possible?

Quite possible, I used to crank them up to 10Mb easily back about eight years ago during testing. However, they're not especially reliable at that speed, and the general line of thinking is that if you can the broadband on the STB you have one less thing to test* - it's not like cable modems are anywhere near as expensive as they were in 2000.

* Hence new software gets through testing faster and we fix bugs quicker...

Quote:

My immediate issue is about getting past the provisioning screen when on wireless - can this be related to a STB issue?

As for the actual issue, I can only assume the NIC cloning isn't working in some way. I'd like a look at it remotely if possible, though.