I dont think this will get any better

[sollp]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

sollp the answers to your question are scattered all over this forum.

proven peering issues are cogent (resolved sort of) and linx.
unproven are amsterdam congestion and kpn.

probably some more which havent been noticed by customer's as well.

What i mean also by this, who in your opinion is to blame for these issues. Obviously depends on what agreements any ISP has to carry traffic into there network from another ISP ect.

---------- Post added at 19:23 ---------- Previous post was at 19:21 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignition

Things have changed since I was there I guess.

While I know these things are monitored the upgrades themselves are far from instant depending on how complex the job is.

The whole RAG lists are good though, shame the upgrade schedule can lag behind a bit

No they aren't instant but, like most company's they will spend the money more wisley nowadays, not like it used to be when needless amounts of money was wasted.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by sollp

What i mean also by this, who in your opinion is to blame for these issues. Obviously depends on what agreements any ISP has to carry traffic into there network from another ISP ect.

I would say ntl is.

take the following which I know is true but I wont reveal my source.

Ntl LINX ports gigabit size which reach saturation levels, this causes packet loss, latency problems and dropped throughput. Other isp's have contacted ntl regarding the problem as they have ntl customers complaining to them about poor performance but ntl dont respond. These ports are maintained by ntl so when they hit full utilisation it is expected to either get more or upgrade to 10gig size to allow for future traffic growth, instead it appears ntl are just hoping traffic levels drop dispite rising customer numbers.

These are the ports that carry traffic from ntl's network out to the internet so someone may have a low utilised ubr but then hits saturation via the port, this person would then be tempted to blame it on external factors since the loss starts late in the route and it doesnt affect everything on the internet.

Now I ask you will you verify this issue? if yes do you think ntl should upgrade their capacity with traffic utilisation or is it the responsibility of others? how can other isp's be responsible for ntl's peering capacity?

[sav112]

I'd say so my 2mb connection is now pants! with high pings in my games. download speed is not to bad on the tests.

[hammered]

All my problems are happening within NTL's infrastructure, so yes it is upto NTL to pull their finger out of the backside and stop trying to buy up other companies (like they tried to do years ago, which got them into the sh1te that they're in now) and get their existing infrastructure sorted so that the network is capable of supporting what the needs of their current subscribers want and is also capable of growth of new subscribers. Let's face it, if this carries on and just gets ignored they are going to see people moving to their rivals, which as you know can be devestating in todays market...
NTL are making a mistake in ignoring people who play alot of online games, these are usually people who are loyal to who-ever they can get a stable connection out of. They won't care that it may not be the cheapest service available, they just want a stable connection...

COME ON NTL SORT THIS OUT AND STOP STICKING YOUR HEADS IN THE SAND WHEN PEOPLE ASK ABOUT THESE ISSUES!!!

[Chrysalis]

hammered I agree with your sentiments, they putting growth over stabilising the current service and its very frustrating for those of us with problems.

[sollp]

Originally Posted by hammered

All my problems are happening within NTL's infrastructure, so yes it is upto NTL to pull their finger out of the backside and stop trying to buy up other companies (like they tried to do years ago, which got them into the sh1te that they're in now) and get their existing infrastructure sorted so that the network is capable of supporting what the needs of their current subscribers want and is also capable of growth of new subscribers. Let's face it, if this carries on and just gets ignored they are going to see people moving to their rivals, which as you know can be devestating in todays market...
NTL are making a mistake in ignoring people who play alot of online games, these are usually people who are loyal to who-ever they can get a stable connection out of. They won't care that it may not be the cheapest service available, they just want a stable connection...

COME ON NTL SORT THIS OUT AND STOP STICKING YOUR HEADS IN THE SAND WHEN PEOPLE ASK ABOUT THESE ISSUES!!!

As i have previously stated the network is being upgraded where necessary. The point of which this happens could be reduced to trigger the work earlier i aggree.

[hammered]

Sollp,
I thought that the Leicester infrastructure was supposed to have been sorted out during the 10MB rollout, or so the NTL status page led you to believe... So what they really have done then was to just adjust to connections to allow the 10MB through, but leave the existing crap there for as long as possible...

[V3n0m]

Spot on Hammered.....I think us gamers are being ignored

Look at this speed test.....supposed to be 10mb connection

Also pings all over the place to uk servers and lag

Broadband Speed Test Results

Results from broadband speed test recorded on Sunday, 26 February 2006, 20:11.
Your Connection

Direction
Actual Speed
True Speed (estimated)
Downstream413 Kbps (51.6 KB/sec)446 Kbps (inc. overheads)Upstream417 Kbps (52.1 KB/sec)450 Kbps (inc. overheads)

'Actual Speed' is the amount of useful data that your connection can transmit/receive per second. The 'True Speed' figure includes an approximation of data overheads (non-useful data) and is estimated to be around 8%. 'True Speed' is for informational purposes only and is not used in any ISP rankings.
NOTE: Your downstream speed result is very low for the type of connection specified (Cable, 10Mbps). We strongly recommend that you check your Internet connection is not being used elsewhere during the test and/or contact your ISP to resolve speed issues you may be experiencing.

[Chrysalis]

Ok I have spent an hour or 2 on the phone with various people at ntl today, I got back to the person who helped me back in dec to manage to do this.

Some things dont add up. Regarding my ubr 2 different people checked the stats on it, they told me all the upstream utilisations were averaging around 30-40% the highest been 41% and this was around 6pm and again at 7.30pm. The downstream was utilised at 28megabit he told me the figure but I have no idea what the capacity is but I do know it is a QAM64 so if ignition,bbking or bill or someone else could translate that into a % it would be great but I asked him a clear question is their any type of capacity problems on my ubr and he said no. I was pinging the gateway and it was fluctuating wildly so I asked what about these pings they are not stable and he told me thats normal due to them been treated as low priority and went on to state they dont garantuee latency. (this is bad I dont agree with this I am just saying what he told me). We then went to http://homepage.ntlworld.com/testmyspeed/ and did some speedtests, I was initially on the 2mbit and the on net test gave me 240-250kB which is good, the off net was also good we tested #3 which is the debian ftp link. I found it unusual it happened to go good today but we then went onto putting my modem on 10mbit and he asked me to reboot. After the reboot and when the modem came back I reran the tests, the on net test came out at around 450kB he then ran it at his terminal and he said he had the same result, the #3 test came out a bit slower at around 300kB and he said he was getting under 100kB. We proceeded to do a download of microsoft service pack 2 and I got just over 150kB this is on 10mbit. He thinks the modem is a problem and I have an engineer coming this friday who will run tests from his own laptop and if needed swap the modem.

Now their was a discrepancy the contact I rang told me every upstream was high utilisation except mine and was telling me ntl wont schedule a upgrade until all 6 are full and that was when I asked her to get it rechecked after 7pm, this was when it was passed onto the tech guy who rang me back around 7.15pm. He was telling me all 6 were low and the highest was 41% and the downstream was at 28mbit. I have also been told by some other people that my upstreams are highly used.

Regarding the proxies I mentioned that I am using colchester proxies or my own because leics is either slow or timesout most of the time and his answer was leics and nottingham have large amounts of customers I was thinking then add more proxies but I didnt want to talk about the proxies a lot as they are easy to workaround anyway.

Right now I am on 10mbit still for testing and its been reeavualated this friday, if they can get it working right I will stay on it and of course pay for it otherwise back down to 2mbit.

The traceroutes and pings are still showing massive fluctuations although speeds are up and my upload runs at maximum flatlined download speeds however are not max but are slowly rising, I can now hit around 800kB to some sites.

I want to rule out my hardware and software setup, I have 3 lan cards on this pc and plan to switch between them between now and friday and format windows on a different hd so I have a clean operating system, I have played with rwin as well and it is currently at 256960 a multiple of mss 1460.

I am not a gamer so if speeds stay above 5mbit for most parts of the day I will be satisfied, for the gamers I do feel sorry for them as it appears their is little sympathy from ntl on this I did mention it but the answer wasnt good news, I can only suggest that when they start enforcing the cap we will all get a better service but the bottom 2 tiers are unmetered so I wonder if a big change will be noticed.

[hammered]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

I am not a gamer so if speeds stay above 5mbit for most parts of the day I will be satisfied, for the gamers I do feel sorry for them as it appears their is little sympathy from ntl on this I did mention it but the answer wasnt good news, I can only suggest that when they start enforcing the cap we will all get a better service but the bottom 2 tiers are unmetered so I wonder if a big change will be noticed.

I'm not a major gamer (but how the hell am I supposed to be on NTL's service!!!). But I do try and play online when I get the chance. The main problem that I have is that obviously we know that there is a problem, NTL know that there is a problem, but they are refusing to sort the problem out. Now... as far as I'm concerned the fact that NTL are not trying to sort this issue out tells me that they are not prepared to provide the service that we are paying for. At the end of the day, online gaming is just data flowing through their networks, so if there is a problem with this, then there is a problem with their service! If they don't try and sort this out then they are in breach of their own T&C's, as they are not trying to fix the issue... In theory, all online gamers that subscribe to NTL's service could take them to court to force them into sorting this issue out... I wonder is someone sorted out some sort of petition regarding this, backed up with legal representation, would NTL then do something about it. Just think of that negative press they would get...

---------- Post added at 09:37 ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 ----------

Oh and BTW, once the caps are in place, it's gonna get worse as all the P2P users will just switch to this to make sure they can keep their stuff flowing...

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

The downstream was utilised at 28megabit he told me the figure but I have no idea what the capacity is but I do know it is a QAM64 so if ignition,bbking or bill or someone else could translate that into a % it would be great but I asked him a clear question is their any type of capacity problems on my ubr and he said no.

105% or so, a 64QAM 6MHz DOCSIS (Langley) downstream maxes around 27Mbit. The optimisations that are shown on service status are quite frequently upgrades to 256QAM, perhaps someone still in the company can advise on when it's happening in your area, if it hasn't already. I know bits of Leicester are on 256QAM already.

Mightily impressed at a 64QAM downstream doing 28Mbit tho.

[hammered]

If it's running @ 105% no wonder we're having problems then...

[SOSAGES]

ahh gaming pings yes i spent 2 years trying to get mine fixed it eventually (ubr issues) i could still d/l at full speed (back then 600k) so no biggie and they did end up giving me free broadband after that until i moved house and now im paying again

[Chrysalis]

Ignition ok I may be wrong on the QAM64 I think I am on it because the modem status page says it is QAM64.

Downstream Modulation : QAM64

if that will still say same on QAM256 then I could be on that.

All those optimisations on the status page none were on my ubr, or if they were they did it without causing my connection to drop.

[Ignition]

Nah you would see your connection drop briefly when they switch to 256QAM.

Anyways there's your problem, if tech support don't consider a 64QAM downstream running at 28Mbps congested then that explains it