Any word from employees about capacity issues?

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by Redwolf

Yes but if their infrastructure can't cope with this struggle for maximum speed then they will only lose customers at the rate they are now, which seems to be rather quickly

"they will only lose customers at the rate they are now"

not true. the last results appear to say the total broadband customers of NTL has increased from 1,330,000 (last quarter of 2004) to 1,823,000 (last quarter of 2005).

http://www.ntl.com/locales/gb/en/inv...rts/2005-4.pdf
see page 15 - see line 'total broadband customers'.

approx 37% increase in broadband customers in 1 year unless I am misunderstanding the figures.

[IanUK]

The broadband market has to change and I think will change massively over the next couple of years, caps will go, as transporting data will come down in price due to the new TV over Broadband products.

The Mix06 conference currently underway in Las Vegas has had the BBC stating its aim to radically alter its way of broadcasting a lot of its content over the next few years, the internet features heavily in their plans.
Sky are already streaming their movies, as are some of the major film companies, video blogging is taking off in a big way.

NTL will need to get their network into shape or die out as customers leave them in droves, by that stage if the latest episode of Eastenders doesn't stream correctly due to foobared peering, then customers *will* notice and leave, caps will be irrelevant - TV cannot be mass streamed over the internet with caps in place, we'll probably look back in a few years and wonder how we ever put up with the current system - much like we look back at 56k dialup and see how far we have come.

The only question is which companies will be left standing ?
My guess is that NTL will have a tough fight ahead unless they are prepared to invest heavily in their network, and experts to keep it running properly.

---------- Post added at 12:10 ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 ----------

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

"they will only lose customers at the rate they are now"

not true. the last results appear to say the total broadband customers of NTL has increased from 1,330,000 (last quarter of 2004) to 1,823,000 (last quarter of 2005).

http://www.ntl.com/locales/gb/en/inv...rts/2005-4.pdf
see page 15 - see line 'total broadband customers'.

approx 37% increase in broadband customers in 1 year unless I am misunderstanding the figures.

That was before the 10 meg fiasco for many customers, it will be interesting to see those figures in a years time.

[etccarmageddon]

only a minority of customers are on the top tier.

---------- Post added at 12:17 ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 ----------

partly due to the laughable price when you compare it to what MAX dsl suppliers will be offering their products at!

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

.

approx 37% increase in broadband customers in 1 year unless I am misunderstanding the figures.

But no corresponding increase in network capacity by the looks of things

[IanUK]

Originally Posted by Bill C

But no corresponding increase in network capacity by the looks of things

You are wrong, wrong I say !

I'm sure I read somewhere that an extra proxy was put in in Huddersfield.

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by Bill C

But no corresponding increase in network capacity by the looks of things

it didn't need to be increased, when the network was initially built there was plenty of spare capacity in place.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

it didn't need to be increased, when the network was initially built there was plenty of spare capacity in place.

I hope you're talking about the national network not the local ones.

Although the national network was supposed to be getting upgrades a while ago as well, at least some of which haven't happened by the looks.

[TrancerSteve]

Originally Posted by IanUK

You probably go into the Seven Kings UBR like me
I get the same as you, UK sites are great full speed, but any peering involved and nine times out of ten its crapola time after about 3-4pm.

NTL know, but they don't care.
Whoever looks after the network needs to go on some courses to see how to do their job.

Haha small world! Yeah id imagine u are on the same one bein so close! It sucks dont it after 4pm!

Well thats a shame I got my hopes up that these upgrades are new pieces of hardware being installed and rolled out to increase capacity.. . My upload is always pretty solid!

They must know about this... it doesnt take much to notice that routers and central pipes are struggling to bare the load. I dont expect to have 10Mbit all the time... NTL have alot of customers, I was expecting to see a slight drop in speed during peak time.. but for a drop down to 2mbit is just a joke.

Email support about it and they blank you about what your saying with NTLs network overloading. Instead ramble on about speedtesting whats the best sites and how NTL dont support speedtest sites... hmm i didnt ask about speedtesting. Im not silly... i know that not every site/download will fill ur 10Mbit of bandwidth available it depends on on the source. But when you have 6 different downloads from around the world and ur still getting 2mbit.. something is wrong. Then after midnight comes and boom.. full speed.

Very true.. how on earth are they gonna be able to supply all these new and up coming streaming media through their network if such poor performance is how things are at present.

Ive only been with NTL for less than a month, and already im not happy how things are, the thing thats alarming is that theres no word form NTL about this massive problem they have.

Im grateful that during the small hours I do get max speed. But hmm I wanna use my internet to the fullest in daylight hours like any normal person.

[Toto]

Originally Posted by TrancerSteve

They must know about this... it doesnt take much to notice that routers and central pipes are struggling to bare the load. I dont expect to have 10Mbit all the time... NTL have alot of customers, I was person.

It could come in the form of traffic shaping, whereby ntl networks Identify the network intensive services that are throttling the network at peak times, then shape that particular piece of traffic.

It's a model that I think will cause some frustration, especially the peer 2 peer fans, but given the lack of a consistent download speed at 10MBps per sec during peak times, it may well happen.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by IanUK

You are wrong, wrong I say !

I'm sure I read somewhere that an extra proxy was put in in Huddersfield.

---------- Post added at 06:44 ---------- Previous post was at 06:39 ----------

Originally Posted by TrancerSteve

They must know about this... it doesnt take much to notice that routers and central pipes are struggling to bare the load. I dont expect to have 10Mbit all the time... NTL have alot of customers, I was expecting to see a slight drop in speed during peak time.. but for a drop down to 2mbit is just a joke.

I think ntl's monitoring system is fubared or their upgrade threshold is set too high, I have had my ubr been investigated over the past few weeks and been told their appears to be no capacity issue they have also done some work on it but unfortenatly hasnt helped. The symptons for me remain the same, good performance after approx 2-3am upto early afternoon weekdays and upto around 10am weekends, after 3 or 4 pm massive speed drop to 2meg and below. Latency is stablish during the quiet hours as well and then spikes up during peak hours. This is signs of something been saturated between me and the ubr and considering it happened to my sister as well same ubr I would guess the ubr.

I do wonder that if their is a lot of cloned modems on a particular ubr it fools ntl and they think they using less then whats been used.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

I do wonder that if their is a lot of cloned modems on a particular ubr it fools ntl and they think they using less then whats been used.

Hrm nope whether legit or cloned they all use the same bandwidth.

NTL's monitoring tools are excellent, far superior to Telewest's OSS systems.

[Chrysalis]

Ok so it would be the case they have a high threshold then where what is seen as unacceptable by the customer is deemed fine by ntl.

[BBKing]

You probably go into the Seven Kings UBR like me

Which one? There are now twelve, four put in relatively recently (within about the last six to twelve months I think).