Speed problems in Luton

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by Rik

And believe it or not, not all folks that are working in the IT world are experts on Proxy servers and Web Caches.

Just a shame, 2 members are no longer visiting the forum, thanks to your views and comments, which i take it are always right.
When members feel they need to leave and start a thread on a forum elsewhere, thats really good mate!

WELL DONE!

Perhaps if not all people aren't experts (though I'm no expert either) then they should listen to what people who may have more knowledge have to say rather than ignoring all advice given as they absolutely and completely just know what the problem is and refuse to be diverted from it.

Presumably these cache obsessed posters will throw a paddy on the new site and stop posting on it when someone tells them they have signal issues because that's not what they want to hear?

I just said it like it is, if that offends then tough to be honest. My tone changed due to the complete and utter ignorance being shown to what I was trying to say.

I consider it to be rude when someone asks for assistance then totally ignores the advice given as they consider themselves to know better. Everyone's an expert, few have actually worked on this stuff, and I'm one of them so would like to think it qualifies me to troubleshoot basic connection issues.

Incidentally a lot of people start threads on other sites, doesn't really mean that much they are just spreading their bets to be honest.

I thought the idea of these forums were to help and assist people, and if they arent technical eggheads, you try and explain in a friendly approachable manner? You might want to try it sometime.

Of course thankfully the majority of forums users do, do that, which is why this is such a great forum.

Unfortunately I and another chap tried that and were told we were wrong.

Originally Posted by Gizzy

I like talking technical, and I'm sure they would like to explain to me how this all ties in.

Yep I tried that too and got ignored.

Originally Posted by Gizzy

And of course it is a localised issue ... anyone who has as default the luton 2 proxy has gaming, secure and ftp problems.

I also repeatedly explained and backed up with links why this wasn't true but again got ignored.

Still as I've apparently been the spawn of Satan let's take a look back shall we?

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...3&postcount=39

I thought was pretty clear what I was trying ot achieve but difficult due to OP's insistence that traceroutes are proxied and apparently also go on port 80?

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...1&postcount=41

Reason I posted there is that OP is trying to be technical and is being incorrect, he's trying to tell TS that traceroutes are handled by web caches and wasn't interested in being told he was wrong. I thought I was pretty polite there.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...0&postcount=51

By this time I was losing my patience a bit with his ignorance of what multiple people are telling him and what he would have found had he researched this issue rather than continuing his ongoing obsession with Cache 2

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...1&postcount=54

I showed him why he was wrong with his assertion that the customer he was quoting had fine signal levels, namely that they were seeing disconnects which last I checked a proxy would struggle to do, and by that point had had enough of having someone who clearly didn't know what they were talking about but could tick the button to proxy everything telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about and absolutely REFUSING to listen to anything that disagreed with how they saw things. So yes I may have been harsh.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...5&postcount=57

I was curt with you because you simply ignored my posts which I thought were fairly clear that FTP isn't proxied, and also quite clear regarding how proxies were allocated.

Anyway anyone who has issues with gaming / FTP in Luton following this witch hunt against a web and just to emphasise again not FTP, not gaming, web cache as being the root of all evil in those areas is wasting their time with this. I've already said it's signal problems at least in the two cases I've seen, could also be congestion issues for those whose signals are fine as signal problems can also cause congestion due to extensive retransmission of upstream traffic which will obviously cause bandwidth problems as something retransmitted twice will suck up 3 times more bandwidth than necessary.

EDIT: Been busy! I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to anyone who was unduly offended by my tone of posting in this thread, it is as I'd hope is obvious not the way I normally conduct myself on this forum however exasperation does these things.

[huggy]

Why do you continue to post if being ignored angers you so much.

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by huggy

Why do you continue to post if being ignored angers you so much.

So that people in that area who might stumble across this thread actually call ntl and report the poor speeds, packet loss and intermittent connection rather than calling up and complaining about a webcache for causing their poor gaming and confusing the whole issue with 'science'. Who knows, if they report it in this manner rather than having an ill-informed rant against the webcaches they might get a tech support rep who will do the proper checks for signal issues, spot the issues and escalate them.

They could, as suggested by others in this thread, mess with proxies to get their web and maybe their FTP and not much else working, or get on the phone, get it logged and get it sorted properly. No brainer I think?

[CptCoatHanger]

Hello guys,

I'm not entirely sure whether I'm going to contribute anything to the discussion as far as a resolution is concerned, but I thought I should throw my experience of the current NTL slowdown in the knowledge pool for communal consumption.

I live in Brighton (all is well here on the NTL front) but my brother lives in Luton, Stopsley more specifically, and has been experiencing issues of very similar sounding nature to the ones detailed earlier in this thread. Changing the proxy server seems to have sorted out his browsing speeds, however, he is still experiencing slow down and packet loss through MSN and a verbal communication program called Team Speak. He's also an avid internet gaming fan but reports no slow down in performance during his games.

I’ve advised him to ring up and “report a slow speeds / intermittent connection issue and ask them to check out the flap list for your modem” which he assures me he will do tomorrow.

I’ll keep you posted on how things play out!

Originally Posted by CptCoatHanger

Hello guys,

I'm not entirely sure whether I'm going to contribute anything to the discussion as far as a resolution is concerned, but I thought I should throw my experience of the current NTL slowdown in the knowledge pool for communal consumption.

I live in Brighton (all is well here on the NTL front) but my brother lives in Luton, Stopsley more specifically, and has been experiencing issues of very similar sounding nature to the ones detailed earlier in this thread. Changing the proxy server seems to have sorted out his browsing speeds, however, he is still experiencing slow down and packet loss through MSN and a verbal communication program called Team Speak. He's also an avid internet gaming fan but reports no slow down in performance during his games.


Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve advised him to ring up and †œreport a slow speeds / intermittent connection issue and ask them to check out the flap list for your modem†ÂÂÂÂ� which he assures me he will do tomorrow.

Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ll keep you posted on how things play out!

hi

If I know anything about 'James Henry', I think he will be pleased someone has taken notice of one of his attempts to help out. If your post has contributed only that, it will have been worth it

- I will be interested in the feedback

[Laurence123]

Hello guys. I am the brother of CptCoatHanger. I rang NTL and quite frankly they are a bunch of people who know absolutely nothing about anything.(From my experiences with them). I've rang up 9 times in the past two weeks. 4 Times i've had the phone put down on me, I guess no-one does overtime :'(. The first 2 times that they didn't put the phone down was a mixture of things, they first did some random checks which then probably lied about since they CLEARLY is a problem with the NTL service, then they told me that it was that i had Spyware/Adware...I knew that i didn't have anything of the sort as i'm pretty nerdy and upto date with the latest PC protection stuff. But non the less when i told them this it was a "Ring back if this doesn't solve the problem" type of reply... (/indian_accent)
The second time i rang it was the usual check business, ofcourse nothing was shown to be odd. Then i was told it was probably my Firewall, funny that since i don't use a firewall... -___- So i said, Mate, it's clearly not my firewall since i don't have one.... Then they said "Do yo use a router" I use one so i said "yea" and they say it's definately a problem with your router... "Call back after you've bought a new one and the problem persists" Too bad other people in Luton are experiencing the same problem and my router is only 4months old or something like that ='( The third time i rang, i was put on hold for like 20mins whilst they "Ran some checks" which had previously taken 1min w/o hold... Then they came back saying saying open Run, CMD, check the ping to www.bbc.co.uk, (i'm sure you know the process) and it came back that i was losing packets and general lag. (This is before i changed the proxy) And we established that i was losing packets (No sh*t Sherlock) even though i'd told them that this was the problem. So then they said we're going to take you off the system then re-add you. They did this and nothing changed regarding my packet loss on Team Speak. They said give it an hour to sort itself out then ring back..... So i rang back saying can you just send a technician round to have a look. And they're like: Well it will cost you "a heafty amount" So i was kind of annoyed that we're paying for a 2mb connection and haven't been able to properly use it. They just said, i'm gonna do some checks... so i said, look your tests will return fine and its not spyware/virus's/adware/ i formatted my PC and the problem is still there its a PROBLEM at YOUR END. Not my end.... Then they just put the phone down and didn't want to help.

NTL are a joke in my oppinion and still 3weeks after i've started having this packet loss problem, nothing has been fixed....

I use a program called ventrilo or TeamSpea(Its where people can communicate whilst playing games) And i can't go on there as i have so much packet loss that i don't hear what people are saying and i just crash from there... So thats my story. Thanks for reading

[James Henry]

Oh look.... The problems with Luton were issues with the local networks, they are aware there are issues with noise and power and are working on them.

I'll take one order of 'I told you so' with a side order of patting myself on the back.

http://www.chetnet.co.uk/portal/foru...ead.php?t=6725 has more information.

I have as little tolerance for a smart **** or smug git as anyone but in this case I'll allow myself some smugness.

[Luke Gibson]

Hello to one and all and my word am I glad to have found a group of suffering gamers, for a moment I wa fearing for my sanity.

I work in IT and basically know what I am talking about. I have tried EVERYTHING that can be done with my PC, down to changing the MTU size. I have been on the phone to NTL on no less than 7 occasions now over the last month and am getting sharper on the phone each time as they attempt to talk me through the usual "safe-boot" pants.

I KNOW that there is some form of signal degredation issue somewhere along the lines within Luton. But it is rather specific as I have a good friend using the same settup around the corner 'in Luton' who is not seeing a problem with Gaming latency at all. I argued with a 'gent' from some foreign shore for the best part of an hour about Webcache being a port 8080 work-around and not a solution. He basically told me that "NTL does not support gaming", suffice it to say, I went mental at him...he basically hung up on me in return. Bravo to him!!!

So the short of it is kids, the guy I just spoke to says that it IS up their their Technical SUpport Intranet as a problem with "Gaming in Luton". So you can all call of the hounds for the moment. However, keep the hounds ready as the 'again foriegn speaking gent' basically said that I have to "bear with NTL" while they resolve. He even mentioned a 'recabling program', but I could have mis-understood is thick-accent so apologies. I said to him "should I leave NTL?" (to test the water). He replied, if you think that you can get a better service elsewhere it is up to me, "so Yes then..." I replied (I bet he smiled ).

So, the short of it is. All the phone calls from all of us have paid off and they are finally starting to investigate the causes if they haven't identified them already. I very much doubt that it is throttelling as I play games from dawn til dusk on some days and have seen the problems all through the day('s). Maybe they have a nasty bottleneck on a local exchange but my gut feeling is either a routing of traffic problem of infrustuctural cabling problem. Lets prey for routing!! as that should just be some routing changes and then its fixed, but I bet it is far nastier and is a re-cabling job.

The guy on the phone said to give it a week and try again, he did say he would note it on my account and that the Faults department could be contacted about re-imbersment. James mate, this may be a better strategy of attack. If we all ring up the Faults department and complain about gaming asking for money compensation I garantee that someone will start to care when they realise that lots of people are demanding money back!! Obviously they wont give any back but the point is that their Fault Manager will chase up the Problem/Investigation team manager('s) to see what the eta's are and what cost implication may be occured. I think that this would be a wiser move that TS.

Take care all and hope to lining up in some distant battle-filed with some of you in the not too distant future....

Best regards,

Luke

[James Henry]

Hi Luke. The cable modem technology isn't digital, its' analogue and the signals can be degraded, noise can get onto the cable network (it's kinda like a giant aerial) and cause problems, corroded joints, badly seated cables, loadsa reasons. As the noise gets worse the error correction systems become unable to compensate so you end up with retransmits happening at lower levels which causes latency and packet loss. Latency and packet loss equals slow speeds.

Rerouting generally isn't an option so the causes of the noise have to be tracked down and resolved which can be pretty tough.

[Luke Gibson]

Thanks for the info James. The reason that I was thinking it may be more of a 'traffic routing' problem through the NTL network is due to the fact that my HTTP browsing is working as expected. I appreciate that I shouldn't have to use a different webcache server but when I do it does work 'normally' (within the defined speeds of an expected 2Mb link).

So I can only assume that the physical links are fine and that it is something within the configs of specific customers setups. Either by our IP's being allocated addresses that route a certain 'wrong way', or by some local exchange being down and our traffic having to 'go around the houses' (excuse the pun) before reaching some local NTL server?

I understand some of the routing/cabling issues that can occur, but you may have more knowledge on the subject than me.

Oh, by the way. When I spoke to NTL earlier in the week the guy told me that they had (for some reason) set the config file on my 2Mb connection to be 56K!! So in addition to the problems with cables/traffic, you may wish to have your modem speed confirmed by NTL TS.

Best regards to all,

Luke

[EvilRix]

Originally Posted by Gizzy

Can anyone please test the following:

My default proxy is lutn-cache-2.server.ntli.net

If I try to download the following game client using this cache I get really slow download speeds, is this just me?

Address for client is: ftp://ftp.lom3europe.com/mir_install.zip

If I change to another then the downloads are fine. This is having an adverse effect on online gaming but NTL say that it should only make a difference to ports for browsing, ftp and mail.

The game uses port 7203 if that helps.

As another test if you change to lutn-cache-1.server.ntli.net the connection rockets along. Can I get NTL to change the default proxy server for my connection?

Sadly I also get lumbered with this proxy and, frankly, it's poxy!

[Gizzy]

A genuine letter to NTL:

Dear Cretins,

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office:

My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat **** waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website....HOW?

I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept. The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks my modem arrived... six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it.

I estimate your internet server's downtime is roughly 35%... hours between about 6pm -midnight, Mon-Fri, and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled ******* jugglers.

I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone
will call me back); that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman...and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustration's in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought BT were ****, that they had attained the holy ****-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of *******s you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of the highest order.

British Telecom - ******s though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver - any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage. I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees.

Have a nice day - may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of *****.

John

Brilliant

[Stuartbe]

I live in the LU2 area of luton and have not noticed any problems at all aside from the ocasional page hang that I have allways had.

On proxy 62.252.64.13 here and not to many problems

Have come to expect that the connection will never be perfect on NTL anyway

[Gizzy]

Originally Posted by Stuartbe

I live in the LU2 area of luton and have not noticed any problems at all aside from the ocasional page hang that I have allways had.

On proxy 62.252.64.13 here and not to many problems

Have come to expect that the connection will never be perfect on NTL anyway

It's great that you are happy with a substandard service and I'm sure that NTL are happy that you never have any reason to complain. I pay £35 a month for a service that I can replicate on dial-up, but I'm under contract so I'm obviously a complete fk wit and NTL can't give a sh i t cause they have my cash. ADMIN EDIT - COMMENT REMOVED

Quote from customer concern at ntl: "well im sorry but to tell you the truth you would be better with adsl in your area if you can get it, we have so much hassle in your area that it's not economically viable to fix it, it's a physical cabling problem"

ADMIN EDIT - (Russ) Do NOT attempt to avoid the swear filter thanks.

[Rik]

Originally Posted by Gizzy

NTL can't give a sh i t cause they have my cash. ADMIN EDIT - COMMENT REMOVED

I have to disagree there!

Some NTL Employees are very very helpful, I dont think calling them those kinda of names is gonna help anybody!

A bit harsh that post Gizzy, I take it you were on the Shandies when you posted that?