Wobbly broadband for several days

Heedyheed · 24-06-2006, 17:41

I've used NTL broadband since it was first launched in my area. I'm used to having the odd glitch, but things seem to have got a lot worse over the past couple of weeks. I'm seeing lots of 'page not found' errors and reliable sites like www.bbc.co.uk are failing to resolve - instead I get MSN search and the some uk.com site instead. The problem is the same on both the PCs on my network.

When the problem arises 'trying again' seems to fix it. I'm also seeing lots of slow-loading pages - again even on sites that are usually good, like the BBC.

Anyone else having similar problems? I'm using the standard 194.168.4.100 and 194.168.8.100 addresses for DNS. Do NTL have any 'secret' ones that are better?

Thanks,

Mike

staffie · 24-06-2006, 17:56

Phew, I thought it was just me.... I have been having a lot of trouble over the last couple of days with BBC (my home page) not loading and taking ages. I had checked for spyware etc - nothing, then I thought lets have a look on cable forum, and I saw your post.

Heedyheed · 24-06-2006, 18:07

I called support yesterday when I completely lost broadband service. I'd already rebooted the modem and ended-up with the 'cable' light being permanently out. We'd lost TV services at the same time, so I assumed they were related in some way. Support said thay had no reports of widespread broadband problems (the TV was out over quite a big area just as the footie was about to start), so they thought the faults weren't connected. They booked a visit, but then it burst back into life at the same time as the TV came back.

It really hacks me off to have to pay their 10p/min inflated rate for a call to report a problem on THEIR network. You'd think they had no tools to monitor what's happening, wouldn't you? Why oh why don't they include a network status announcement at the start of their call-taking process (with a 'press 1 to skip this message' option). Aaaagggghhhhh. Bloody NTL! Who'd still use them if there was any competition?

Mike

tymhestl · 24-06-2006, 18:32

I am suffering exactly these problems- through last week and still today. bbc.co.uk is my homepage- it is loading intermittently and links within it often leading to 'cannot find page' etc. Connection speed is fine. Problem occurs on both PCs in wireless network- when I switch internet access to work server all is fine- so definitely related to ntl. Ntl website suggest no service disruption and thought of trying to resolve on telephone leaves me feeling less than delighted- can anyone shed any light/has anyone received a credible response from ntl on this issue ?

king2001 · 25-06-2006, 18:08

Posted in another topic here but I'm still getting very intermittent connection to sites. Once connected there doesn't seem to be a problem with speed until it stops finding the site again.

Was working ok for a few hours this morning but this problem has been going on since Friday

susie r · 25-06-2006, 19:19

I've been having exactly the same probs here too!!! On Friday I'd had enough as the cable light on the modem kept going off.then on.then off again, the t.v was also playing up. Called broadband support & the indian lady got me to go thru all the steps I'd already tried.i.e turning off the modem, waiting a few mins then powering up again, she assured me that its not a "local" problem and has booked an engineer for tomorrow morning...............its worked fine all day today..........dying to see what the engineer comes up with!

Theodoric · 25-06-2006, 20:44

I'm in the Bromley area and my broadband is extremely slow at the moment. I only persevered to see what was being posted on the subject here.

The last time I was on, Friday evening, things were pretty poor. However, it is essentially unusable at the moment.

Theodoric · 26-06-2006, 07:02

And all now seems OK at 8 o'clock on this rainy Monday morning. I shall keep my fingers crossed.

Taf · 26-06-2006, 08:24

I was getting these same problems, and decided not to automatically blame NTL but to look at alternative answers.

One I found was a known problem with XP SP2 causing DNS errors... and a fix is to go into Admin Tools/ Services and stop DNS client from starting automatically. I did this and the errors did indeed stop!!

There is apparently a fix somewhere on the Windows site to sort this problem, but as yet I haven't found it. It should be an old fix going wayyyyyy back to the first days of SP2, but I read that a rebuild of Windows can cause it to reappear... though as with anything on the Net, it could be duff information.

Anyone got more info?

Heedyheed · 26-06-2006, 09:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taf

...and decided not to automatically blame NTL...

Why not? In my experience it's usually their fault

I found article 331880 on the Microsoft support site. Is that the one you meant? It relates to DNS client-side caching, and explains how to turn it off or change the cache time.

It looks like the client DNS cache is a mechanism that locally stores the results of a successful DNS query and reduces the number of DNS lookups that the client has to request because, having cached the results of a DNS query, it can just fetch it from memory instead.

The default cache time appears to be 86,400 seconds (1 day). I was seeing intermittent problems where a site would respond OK and then not respond a few seconds later. Given the short-term intermittent nature of the problem, I doubt that client DNS cacheing was to blame, but if the fault comes back I'll give it a try

Mike

Taf · 26-06-2006, 11:33

Ummm.. will have to dig to get the relative articles again, but it goes along the lines that XPSP2 would stop itself DNS cacheing due to another service running at the same time...

An article explaining cacheing tweaks here...

Articles http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/tune-24.html

Heedyheed · 26-06-2006, 12:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taf

...An article explaining cacheing tweaks here...
http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/tune-24.html

Thanks - that's a useful link. I can see that DNS cache could add an additional dimension to the problem if NTL were having one of their frequent DNS problems. Under those circumstances it would presumably be a good idea to reduce the default value for the TTL time for negative responses from 5 minutes to nothing in order to force the PC to have another go at getting the right answer out of NTL's DNS servers. Maybe you could argue that it should be done for positive responses as well - which, come to think of it, is what you effectively did by stopping the cache service.

Mike

bilal · 26-06-2006, 13:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theodoric

I'm in the Bromley area and my broadband is extremely slow at the moment. I only persevered to see what was being posted on the subject here.

The last time I was on, Friday evening, things were pretty poor. However, it is essentially unusable at the moment.

Yeah ive been having this problem too, changed the proxy server and its better but still not perfect. Now it seems to be back to normal and ive got my normal proxy server on again. Looking on the service status page the issue seems to have been fixed and my nets working fine again

http://www.ntl-isp.ntl.com/ServiceSt...px?FaultID=544

susie r · 26-06-2006, 13:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by susie r

I've been having exactly the same probs here too!!! On Friday I'd had enough as the cable light on the modem kept going off.then on.then off again, the t.v was also playing up. Called broadband support & the indian lady got me to go thru all the steps I'd already tried.i.e turning off the modem, waiting a few mins then powering up again, she assured me that its not a "local" problem and has booked an engineer for tomorrow morning...............its worked fine all day today..........dying to see what the engineer comes up with!

Engineer arrived at 10 am this morning, he's changed the modem to a nice little blue one NTL250, the old Terrayon one was on its way out apparently.He's also booked someone to come and have a look in the green box on the corner to see if anything needs doing in there.

Heedyheed · 27-06-2006, 10:13

Service went all crappy again first thing this morning. Major sites like www.bbc.co,uk and www.google.com weren't resolving intermittently and most sites were very slow to load. I ran a download speed test and got 86k bps

the first time and 320k bps the second. Now its back up to the normal 3.9 meg and all my regular sites are loading just fine.

Before I retired, I used to work a lot from home and was completely dependent on a good reliable broadband service. Just as well I'm a 'silver surfer' now and can afford to walk away from the PC when NTL throws a wobbly

Mike