Average Clicksilver Speeds?

dub45

I would be interested in hearing from Clicksilver users as to what the average speed they are getting is?

Say based on www.bandwidthplace.com or http://www.giganews.com/comps/test_connect.mhtml

or indeed just your general experience so far.

dahamsta

I only got it last week but I was getting pretty shoddy speeds, about 180Kbps on BandwidthPlace and the same or less on the other speed test sites I tried. On FTP transactions, the connections were starting out at 30KB/s but working their way down very quickly to about 20KB/s on my server in Dublin, and 16-17KB/s on a server in the U.S.

I contacted UTV about it this morning and they sent me some info on connection tweaking and a little app that BT provides them with, presumably for their customers in the North. All the app does (as far as I can see) is set the MTU on all your interfaces, however I noticed that it was setting it to 1458, and not 1452 as has been suggested as the ideal figure down here.

After a reboot the speeds did seem to improve, although it was a little hit and miss; so I manuually adjusted the MTU for all the interfaces to 1452 and that does seem to have improved it appreciably. Connections to my server in Ireland are a bit off, but an FTP transaction with a server in the U.S. is definitely better and I'm getting nigh-on full whack on a download from UTV's webspace, which hints that my Irish server is just a bit overloaded at the moment. The speed test results are inconclusive though, I think I'll try them again tonight.

[I had done this already, but not for all of my interfaces.]

adam

Valentia

I got CS on Thursday last.

I notice that on normal browsing or doing a straight download through HTTP the speeds average around 180 to 250.

If I use Download Accelerator or multiple connections on a newsserver then my speeds will jump to 440-480 and stay there for the duration of the download.

Dowloading the articles on a newsserver also happens in the 180-250 range.

I asked on another thread if there was any tweak to get HTTPing up to those speeds.

There is no doubt that the bandwith is there it's just how to maximise it.

It's flying as we speak. Took a day off to play with it (away for the weekend)

silent

just got CS package today - so far not bad
pings are nice (ok, it's day so not contended at all)
downloads - single threaded download (vie IE for example) jumps between 20-35K/s
I need to open 2-3 simultaneous connections (per reged) to max out the pipe but then it stays stable
will check tommorow night how it is during the 'peak' time for broadband - 6-11pm

Valentia

I need to open 2-3 simultaneous connections (per reged)

Exactly what I need to know

How do I do that?

silent

use a download manager to open multiple http connections per file
I use reget as I find it the best
http://www.reget.com/

PiE

Originally posted by dahamsta
I however I noticed that it was setting it to 1458, and not 1452 as has been suggested as the ideal figure down here.

After a reboot the speeds did seem to improve, although it was a little hit and miss; so I manuually adjusted the MTU for all the interfaces to 1452 and that does seem to have improved it appreciably.

I did the same and it didn't help at all, still getting a max 18k/s from HTTP/FTP downloads.

Told them about it on the newsgroup over a month ago and nothing's been done

dahamsta

I'm getting mixed results so far, but I'll let it run a few days. If your connections are consistently below 250/25 though, you should give them a ring. RADSL isn't guaranteed to provide 500, but it should be providing 250 anyway.

[EDIT: I have an ethernet modem coming in the next day or two as well, so we'll see how that goes.]

adam

Boston

had utv broadband a few months now, speeds are ok during the day and pretty decent at night, main problem is those damn cut off and i have to restart my modem, note prblem is probably my end

_Kaiser_

Ran the Bandwidth Place test a few times - earlier (around 5pm) I was getting 108 kbps and a second test yielded only 101 kbps.. Now (7:45pm) I'm gettin even less - 91.8 kbps!!

I tried changing the MTU settings on both boxes here to those suggested above (I use a NAT/proxy setup) and ran the test again from both PCs (this one and the one the modem is directly connected to), but same thing.

Dublin 15 area btw if anyone cares to compare..I think a call to Support is in order tomorrow, but like PiE, I posted this on the Newsgroup last night and other than an initial reply asking what modem I'm using, the only other feedback seems to be from users with the same sorta issue.

ando

whats the pings like on weekday nights to clarity.jolt.co.uk?

Boston

Pinging clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 50ms, Average = 50ms


Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 60ms, Average = 52ms

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=55
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 60ms, Average = 52ms

_Kaiser_

Here you go....

Pinging clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 40ms, Maximum = 51ms, Average = 47ms

Valentia

Originally posted by silent
use a download manager to open multiple http connections per file
I use reget as I find it the best
http://www.reget.com/

I know. Read my previous post

Most people seem to be getting speeds of around 200 or significantly less ( than ISDN) when using the net with one connection i.e. HTTP, ftp or downloading headers on usenet. I'm no techie but there has to be a simple explaination for this. Messing with MTU's & TCP Receive stuff doesn't seem to improve this situation. Could there be a hardware compatability issue?

With multiple simultanious connections the speeds fly. I see elsewhere that Eircon customers are not having this problem. mmmm :rolleyes:

dub45

Where would the hardware compatability issue be? I have used both a router and an ethernet modem and it does not make any difference!

As pings mean nothing to me and I am not a game player I prefer to stick with something I can understand:) when it comes to understanding the speed - so is it fairly safe to assume so far that say apart from the UTV speed test which usually gives me about double what bandwicth place or giganews gives me (and it has been acknowledged in the UTV support group that the UTV download test will always be pretty speedy) that very few people so far ever manage over 200 without a download manager?

dahamsta

It does seem to be a network issue, or at least the posts here seem to suggest that anyway.

adam

Dawg

Yeah, I've been on Clicksilver a few weeks and it's been like that since the start. Multiple source downloads fly along, but single source usually won't even hit 20KB/s. Browsing can get slow at times too, but that's probably more to do with time of day/congestion.
Ping times are generally fairly low and stable, so gaming is okay.

The last I heard from UTV was: "We have had several reports of low speeds in the Dublin area and Eircom management are currently investigating it" which I'm sure everyone will find very re-assuring

dahamsta

I'm in Cork. The idea of having to do multiple source downloads to get the speed I'm paying for has the potential for a high annoyance factor. Patience adam, patience...

adam

_Kaiser_

well I've just emailed Support now (mentioned I'd been looking thru the newsgroups and this forum too and see the same sorta story), so I'll feedback on anything they tell me.

mickger

Yeah i have Clicksilver a week now and as i have reported in a previous post the speeds for browsing are just not good enough. We are not getting DSL speeds.At times 56k would be faster. The next question is why?????? Surely we should be getting speeds as good as Eircon customers. Its the same line after all. UTV need to fix this and fast or alot of there customers are not gonna be happy.

Mike

dub45

Forgive my lack of technical knowledge but if as someone up above says they are only getting say 20kbs is that the same as saying they are getting less half of dial up speed on a 56k modem?

silent

i guess not, it should be 22K, some people just don't stick to the common way of either capitizing B when talking about bytes or writing it as 22K/s

pron

I hate to barge in on a non Netsource thread ), but Clicksilver seem to be suffering from the same problems that will plague most of the popular DSL ISPs as long as eircom deliver the wholesale product the way they do.

DSL is provided as an IP level link (L2TP) to the ISP ... effectively ruining any chance the ISP has of doing their own traffic shaping. They also seem to be refusing to sell bandwidth in larger chunks to the ISPs.

Effectively they're putting the contention on the backhaul, not on the exchanges. This is a lot of what causes poor download speeds ... (a 56kbps modem gives about 4KB/s BTW)
48 heavy users sharing a 512kbps link can each expect to get about 1.5KB/s at best.

As for pingtimes ... they'll suffer if your uplink is saturated ... so do yourselves a favour - and kill off that file-sharing app before you try to play games!

mickger

The 56k comment was a bit exaggerated:) Sorry about that.From what you are saying this means that only people getting there service from Eircon are getting the speeds they should be and we never will get good browsing speeds we should.This is not just a UTV problem then IOL have this too? Is there anyone getting good browsing speeds from UTV or IoL?

silent

to be honest, I'd love to see people abandoning the idiotic file-sharing apps alltogether

I think that for the next few months this radsl services will suffer for various reasons (as pron explained eircom refusing to upgrage isp's backhaul, people using their connection to the full - eg. file sharing crap etc) - but eventually in Q2 when dsl will be upgraded (eircom will have to do something as all telcos around the world - increase speeds, introduce multi-tiered products for residential dsl) then we might get better connections. sad but true
maybe then we will be able to get 1.5M links unlimited for 65E/m

edit: I thought I just do a test about ping speeds - 6:47p now and looks very nice
UK pings are averaging a steady 55ms to different servers
US pings are averaging 150-180ms
not bad, however I do not game anyway

rymus

so in other words... sign up for i-stream. Unless of course youre perfectly happy with 22k/sec for the next 400 years

This is a right kick in the nuts. It's bad enough I had to get an eircom line installed, now its seeming that to get an anyway decent dsl service I'll be going back to eircom!

dahamsta

Quick update: I tossed the USB modem aside a few days ago and plugged the UTV connection into a Netgear DM602 instead, which plugs into my LAN router. The Bandwidth Place and Giganews speed tests still return woeful results but FTP and WWW connections are noticably better. Which is all I give a toss about really. Could be a coinkadink, but if it stays like this I reckon I'll be happy enough.

adam

silent

I too switched the supplied zyxel 630 for an ethernet based bridge - speedstream 5360 - no change
Martin Lyons (UTV CTO) posted yesterday in the utv support group, asking for some details of those people who were having problems so he can chase it up, I suggest everyone who has dismal single threaded speeds (which can't be down to contention) to email him as he requested with your name and landline number, subject DSL Speed issues

Keltik7

Totally uninspired by this Clicksilver - we have Esat BB in work and DL's are upto 60KB's - I'm getting 6.63KB's DL'ing "Reget" as recommended elswhere in this thread.

Results from the two test sites are:

Speed
81.1 kilobits per second

Communications 81.1 kilobits per second
Storage 9.9 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 1.7 minutes
Subjective rating Slow

Explain results
Info
Date & time Saturday, October 25, 3:10PM*
Test type IDT4 Free
Connection type ADSL
Region Europe
Data size 605KB
IP address 194.46.84.137
Provider RIPE Network Coordination Centre

* CDT (-0500)
Start a test
ADSL connection in Europe

---

©2003 Bandwidth Place Privacy policy






Test Your Connection Speed
The following page will send a large datafile to your browser and time how long it takes.

This should closely approximate the download rates you will get from the Giganews

news servers.

97kbps


I'm beginning to wonder why I bothered getting rid of ISDN nearly the same speed - not even going to get into network cable unplugged errors and error 734

Any ideas on how to make this work would be appreciated

Thx

in Ballinasloe, Co. Galway btw

MagicBusDriver

The IOL BB seems to be the best RADSL at the moment. People should stick to that. As a comparision NTL BB gives me ~550Kbps. When I had Eircom ADSL I got full speed and stable pings all of the time. That was Eircom istream Solo.

ando

Originally posted by silent
Martin Lyons (UTV CTO) posted yesterday in the utv support group, asking for some details of those people who were having problems so he can chase it up, I suggest everyone who has dismal single threaded speeds (which can't be down to contention) to email him as he requested

see this is exactly why I went to Eircom instead of any other ISP. First of all, I had Indigo subscription Isdn, which was excellent for gaming and browsing (excellent for Isdn anyway).. then I went to UtvIP which was ok for browsing but $hite for gaming... I complained and complained and every so often I got a little hope by seeing the guys from Utv trying to 'chase up' problems with bad pings. After months of chasing up and getting nowhere, I gave up and when Dsl became available I dived right in with Netsource, which looking back now was a bad mistake as their Dsl service was basically crap. I had unstable high pings (sometimes like 56k standard) plus slow internet speeds for 5 bloody months... 3 times I taught "Yippee, they've finally fixed the problems", but low and behold within a few days the service was back to normal. Finally I gave up and left, was back on indigo Isdn for a few weeks which wasn’t to bad at all except the paying by the minute thingy
I decided to go back to Eircom as in my experience they have been the most reliable and lowest pings. I'd rather accept the download limit, then wait for people to chase up my problems. And now here I am on Eircom's Dsl, enjoying having really low pings all the time and full download speeds all the time, no problems to report

_Kaiser_

Ando has a point... I went with UTV based on my prior experience with UTVip (XL) and their responsiveness here and elsewhere...but - when I signed up for ClickSilver I expected broadband speeds, not just a (relatively) slight increase on what I was already getting..I'm starting to regret my decision to be honest. As much as I hate to admit it, I would've lived with the higher price and lower cap if it meant I was gettin what I was paying for - example: right now Im downloading the 91MB Matrix Revolutions trailer from whatisthematrix.com - using GetRight, multi-source/accelerated (4) download..STILL only 15.4K/sec

I've contributed in the newsgroup and mailed UTV Support (and Martin) directly and while - in fairness to him - the guy I've been dealing with has been very nice and suggested various things to try, they seem to be treating this as isolated/rare problems (which I suppose they HAVE to do..can't very well admit to the entire customer base that there's serious problems) and I'm still no closer to a resolution.. maybe I'm wrong, but I think that from judging the posts here and on the newsgroup, this seems a lot more widespread than just "here and there" - given the various areas affected and taking into account that for every person that bothers to post about it, there must be several who dont?

Also (referring back to dahamsta's post), if a new modem helps then great - but he/we shoudn't HAVE to replace the supplied hardware just to get a better result I think.

I think UTV need to clearly state their position on the matter and keep us up-to-date on the progress. I'm willing to be patient if I can see evidence of improvement but "we're looking into it..." isn't really good enough for the money we're paying and the fact that we're tied into a 12 month contract on a product that is thus far completely failing to meet up to its description

The way things are now they're just prepping eircom's next set of customers.....

mickger

Well said Kaiser i agree totally with everything you've said. They are treating it like its isolated but its spread over a wide area, Dublin,Cork and i'm in Waterford to name a few places. Your right not everyone with problems is gonna post. This is not DSL we are getting. I must admit my download speeds using Flashget are good but we are missing out on so much by getting such poor browsing speeds. Its just very disapointing. Can someone who is getting good speeds while browsing post some of there speedtest results if you are with Clicksilver.

Mike

dub45

And now here I am on Eircom's Dsl, enjoying having really low pings all the time and full download speeds all the time, no problems to report

I would be very interested to hear/see what sort of speeds Eircom and Iol customers are getting.

I am very disappointed with UTV´s very slow response to this problem - it has been going on for ages and they have been blaming people´s lines and the weather (this at añ time when we were having the best spell of weather for years!) and so on - just see previous threads in the newsgroup and in fact several complaints about the speed of Clicksilver were ignored completely while other relatively inane request were acted on straight away.

It is very difficult to fathom UTV´s attitude and even in the current situation it took UTV over a week to respond to two very irate threads and then the claim was that the thread had been overlooked!!!!

I suppose their response is in line with the speed that the Clicksilver product is offering to a lot of people!!!

Keltik7

just to add I'm in East Galway so regional spread of the problem is very much N. S. E. and W.

If buying a new modem will help I would gladly buy one - can someone confirm /deny this - thx

mickger

Don't waist your money on a new Modem. Ive tried the one they gave and my Netgear Wireless Router and it did'nt make any difference. The speeds are still crap.Yes it seems it is a widespread problem all over the country. Utv seem to have there head in the sand and denying there's a problem. For example on the Newsgroup yesterday Charles (from UTV) said that nobody rang there supports lines about the problem. I think its time that we bombard them with complaints. They might sit up and take notice then.

jackbauer

hi all,

at this stage i feel i have to agree with what has been said in this thread.have had clicksilver since july and although i can and do get 50-55k when using flashget to pull down a game demo or movie trailer eveything else is crap.browsing is little if any better than 56k. other downloads just dont happen.period.the main problem i find with browsing is that you get a burst of speed then it stalls and so on.

i have called support at least 20 times in the last month on this matter and they just fob me off.emails have been totally ignored.this is not the standard i expect from utv at all.this is their flagship product so this sort of attitude is crazy. i have sent an email saying i wont be renewing my contract.naturally it was ignored.i even referenced this thread in an email.ignored. i use my own router but have reconnected the utv hardware which has no effect at all.i do feel that it is not a contention issue as at 7am this morning it took 5 minutes 2 pull down 3 plain text emails.the utv speedtest has told me everything from 12k to 11.5Mbps.if only.

sorry for the rant but its been building up in me for ages lol.

jack.

mickger

Thats the same for me intial burst of speed then the page stops for a while and starts again. We are all having the same problems it seems.

Martin-UTVi

We are currently chasing this as a priority. I will post an update as soon as possible. Certainly within our own network we are nowhere near saturation

Martin.

_Kaiser_

We are currently chasing this as a priority. I will post an update as soon as possible. Certainly within our own network we are nowhere near saturation

Martin.

Hi Martin,

Thanks for that..I think part of our frustration has been a result of the lack of a clear response from yourselves - can we then take it that there IS indeed some issue beyond user setups/individual lines & exchanges as has been the suggestion thus far?

mickger

Hope its not a false dawn but my speeds have dramatically got better in the last half hour. I got 48.0KB/s at bandwidth place. At Adsl Guide got 51.8KB/s. Streaming video playing at 350k with no buffering at all.So this is what DSL is all about. Let me know if you guys are getting the same speeds. Did you do anything UTV?

jonski

Originally posted by dahamsta

I contacted UTV about it this morning and they sent me some info on connection tweaking and a little app that BT provides them with, presumably for their customers in the North. All the app does (as far as I can see) is set the MTU on all your interfaces, however I noticed that it was setting it to 1458, and not 1452 as has been suggested as the ideal figure down here.

adam

started a new thread on this as it might be helpfull.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=122202



John.

jackbauer

just ran the utv speedtest. 96k nuff said on that i think.

thanks for the response martin but i for one would like something a bit more detailed.

huh!

If people who had poor speeds can keep us up to date please, Im just about to join either utv or iol, would prefer to go utv so if this problem is solved now, I'd like to know, will wait a week or two.

dub45

We are currently chasing this as a priority. I will post an update as soon as possible. Certainly within our own network we are nowhere near saturation

Martin,

Its about bloody time and perhaps you would explain why it has taken so much posting to get UTV 'active' on this?

Perhaps you could also say what ´chasing this as a priority´actually means? It sounds a lot like politician speak to me!!

You have been aware that there is a problem with Clicksilver for months and yet only now are you chasiting it as a priority! Did you think that people were fantasising or something?

Are UTV as slow to pursue customers whose record on paying their monthly fees is as slow as Clicksilver is for lots of people. I bet not!!!

Hi Martin,Thanks for that

Kaiser I congratulate you on your courtesy and normally I am a great advocate of courtesy but I truly think we are being far too nice to UTV on this issue.

To be thanking somebody who tells us after months that they are áctively pursuing the Clicksilver problem is far too kind in my opinion. We should now be starting to think of demanding a proportionate refund for the very poor quality of product we have been getting!!!!

Would you put up with paying 47.5 euros a month for anything else that performed as poorly as Clicksilver?

dub45

Hope its not a false dawn but my speeds have dramatically got better in the last half hour. I got 48.0KB/s at bandwidth place. At Adsl Guide got 51.8KB/s. Streaming video playing at 350k with no buffering at all.So this is what DSL is all about. Let me know if you guys are getting the same speeds. Did you do anything UTV?

Buy a lottery ticket immediately and watch out for those flying pigs too:)

On second thoughts maybe it is possible to post during a great dream!

Valentia

Dog slow earlier.

Flying now. It might just be sorted

From bandwidthplace.com:

Communications 408 kilobits per second
Storage 49.8 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 20.6 seconds
Subjective rating Not bad

& it's getting better as we type!

Beee jay is this what broadband is like!!!

Deadly! Please don't touch anything Martin!

Martin-UTVi

Looks like some sort of throttling/rate limiting has been inadvertantly left in place by one of our upstream providers (that drops the DSL tunnels onto our network). This had been previously checked and doublechecked and we were assured that no limit was in place....but information this morning suggests that info was just wrong. We're getting this lifted asap. Will post more info hopefully in an hour or so.

Its about bloody time and perhaps you would explain why it has taken so much posting to get UTV 'active' on this?

Unfortunately because it wasn't affecting all our customers and certainly not the DSL circuits we had access to, when it was raised both Eircom and Esat pointed to contention within the DSLAMs. This, although unlikely, was semi plausible especially given certain recent circumstances such as Eircom not having any available DSL ports in Cork. We have been actively chasing these speed issues since the first one was raised with us and had our network thoroughly checked and were given a green light. Obviously this was not the case and we will be following up the circumstances surrounding this.

Martin.

Valentia

Checked again this morning before leaving for work and it is still flying. Getting a steady 438k/s on the giganews test.

It feels like a new computer.


Well done Martin, I knew you'd get it sorted!

rymus

hurrah hurrah... my faith is somewhat restored!

Now instead of you all disappearing with your newly sorted clicksilver account, can everyone that complained in the first place make another post to confirm that their speed is what it should be?

Purely for my own impending market research of course...

dahamsta

Kicked my Netgear last night for some reason, but back up and running now and flying. Thanks Martin.

adam