Sitecom Router Problems

[KevAmiga]

Result :-)

[Stu038]

While I can fully appreciate the need to sometimes do these things to protect the network, I have to say that an official announcement or pre-warning would have been nice if only to reduce the amount of calls into already stretched call centres.

When mine appeared to die the other day I didn't even consider contacting tech support after a little basic fault finding. As far as I could tell my router had failed so it was down to me to replace it.

Fortunately for my wallet I didn't have the opportunity over the weekend to go out and buy a new one. I wouldn't have been impressed to be reading this thread if I had done so, especially as I would have probably bought another Sitecom one and then taken it back and ranted at the shop when it too failed.

[Swansea-Jack]

Originally Posted by Stu038

While I can fully appreciate the need to sometimes do these things to protect the network, I have to say that an official announcement or pre-warning would have been nice if only to reduce the amount of calls into already stretched call centres.

When mine appeared to die the other day I didn't even consider contacting tech support after a little basic fault finding. As far as I could tell my router had failed so it was down to me to replace it.

Fortunately for my wallet I didn't have the opportunity over the weekend to go out and buy a new one. I wouldn't have been impressed to be reading this thread if I had done so, especially as I would have probably bought another Sitecom one and then taken it back and ranted at the shop when it too failed.

Thank you, at last someone who understands. When I bought the linksys yesterday the amount of studants who where looking at Sitecom routers, now all those must be on NTL because they are the only cable company down here. So guess all those would have been not working, and either taken back to shop, or they all would have phoned up NTL to be told they dont support routers.

Everything could have been avoided if NTL had just put on their service page that they where blocking them for a while.

[James_N]

ah joy. nothing is ever NTL's fault is it. it would of been nice for them to put something on their web page prior to blocking these routers.

im not sure what would be more annoying, going out and buying a new router for £50 or waiting on the phone to tech support and wasting £50 on a phone call to find out whats wrong. but surely an email to everyones ntl email would of been nice

edit: Hi all

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Swansea-Jack

Don't matter now, they have agreed to give me two months free BB, the girl on the phone said she has had loads of people with the same problem phone up today and they have all been given two months free.

Quite possibly worth more than the cost of a new router (picks up the phone to call NTL ).

[James_N]

Originally Posted by Swansea-Jack

Don't matter now, they have agreed to give me two months free BB, the girl on the phone said she has had loads of people with the same problem phone up today and they have all been given two months free.

they obviously dont think much. if they had put a notice on their main web page about this, then surely they wouldnt of had so many people clogging up their support lines. they are clogged up enough as it is without any more people ringing in :p

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by James_N

ah joy. nothing is ever NTL's fault is it. it would of been nice for them to put something on their web page prior to blocking these routers.

im not sure what would be more annoying, going out and buying a new router for £50 or waiting on the phone to tech support and wasting £50 on a phone call to find out whats wrong. but surely an email to everyones ntl email would of been nice

edit: Hi all

Hi James.

And while it would have been nice (and logical) for NTL to actually announce they are doing this in some way, even if it is part of the recording message for customer services, the way this has been done is more typical.

I do, however, understand why NTL did it, and agree they should have, they should just have said something about it.

Originally Posted by BBKing

That's a bit like buying a new motor just because your old one's failed it's MOT, then trying to charge the garage that failed it for the cost of the new car.

While (as stated above), I do agree with what NTL have done, I do think that if the garage had done something that cause my car to fail it's MOT, That is assuming that in your analogy, NTL is the Garage. I would expect the garage to repair it for free. However, it sounds like NTL are compensating, so well done NTL! (not meant sarcastically).

[zovat]

Originally Posted by Stu038

While I can fully appreciate the need to sometimes do these things to protect the network, I have to say that an official announcement or pre-warning would have been nice if only to reduce the amount of calls into already stretched call centres.

When mine appeared to die the other day I didn't even consider contacting tech support after a little basic fault finding. As far as I could tell my router had failed so it was down to me to replace it.

Fortunately for my wallet I didn't have the opportunity over the weekend to go out and buy a new one. I wouldn't have been impressed to be reading this thread if I had done so, especially as I would have probably bought another Sitecom one and then taken it back and ranted at the shop when it too failed.

I'm with you on this one mate...

I understand why NTL have done this, as it will have caused a loss of service to others in the same area, however, it is common sense to put some form of warning on their server status page, or to have Emailed those who were going to be affected.

As ever hindsight is 20/20, but surely NTL would realise that this would cause an influx of calls, and also that many more technical users would test without the router, discover that there was no fault with NTL, and then end up deciding that the router is faulty.

My test procedure would have been :

test with no router - works ok. = not a CM/NTL fault
test router at a mates (on NTL as all in the area are) - fails = duff router.
test mates router on my connection (not a sitecom) - works = duff router.

Only if my mate had a sitecom and said that his had failed at the same time would I smell the proverbial rat, and take the effort to contact support.

I would be mighty peeved if I then purchased a new router and it worked (assuming I changed brand) - only to discover that it was NTL blocking my router..

[Swansea-Jack]

Well just phoned back up to double check, and they have no record of me phoneing up, and they are now denying that they have blocked any routers.

I told them what was posted on here and was told as its not an offical webiste that the people are makeing it up.

So folks, all our routers that are of the same make and went off nearly all the same time must be broken.

[altis]

To quote the Sitecom website:

Q: NTL support are telling me they have blocked internet access from my router. Why is this and what is being done to resolve it?
A: This problem was reported 24-09-2004. Certain Sitecom routers currently request an IP address renewal more frequently than the NTL servers are able to issue. It is not a hardware fault with the router, but an issue that until now has gone un-noticed, it is creating bandwidth issues for NTL's network. Now that the problem has been reported Sitecom are endevouring to produce a firmware upgrade, which will alter this particular feature of the routers. This upgrade will be available for download from our website as soon as it becomes available. In the mean time your internet connection should work most of the time, NTL are manually controlling the connection state to give their customers with Sitecom routers as much "up-time" as possible

[Swansea-Jack]

Yup I told her that, and she said that the tech support people told her they cant block routers.

[broadbanddownloader]

I had exactly the same problem at exactly the same time, messed around with it, couldn't get it to work so I unpluged it, left it overnight, pluged it back in and now it's working. What can I say.

[BBKing]

the tech support people told her they cant block routers

The tech support people can't. The people who run the DHCP servers, and were on the receiving end of the broken Sitecoms, can, and did.

[broadbanddownloader]

Found this today at sitecom. http://www.sitecom.com/faq_showanswer.php?faqid=1037

[poolking]

Originally Posted by broadbanddownloader

Found this today at sitecom. http://www.sitecom.com/faq_showanswer.php?faqid=1037

If you read post #25 that has already been posted.