NTL is completely fecked

Fenster

I can't reach most sites located outside of Ireland. All services (IM, BT, FTP, POP, HTTP) are affected.

How do I cancel NTL?

Dariukas

same here...

MoSeS_.

Yup, having the same problem this evening, really frustrating.
Azureus seems to work, barely, and google talk, messenger is forked
can access about one in three websites at most.

plonk

Bebo adverts myspace youtube komplett are to name just a few I cant use wtf like any one know whats going on

landmonster

I think they've got some big problems. They're probably just unplugging everything and plugging it back in and hoping it works.

MoSeS_.

Now it's fine again

christophicus

FOr the most part browsing is fine again, although every few minutes I get a "page cannot be displayed" that shouldnt really happen.

Private Joker

How do you cancel Ntl/chorus ? ,

I'm with chorus about 10 months. i'm moving house next month and need to get rid of it anyway, but i have about 50 calls in with their service support all to no avail.

My problem is my connection keeps dropping. when i play cs, it'll stay up for about 20 mins then it drops , even though all the lights are on on the modem . I then plug out the modem and it takes 10 to 15 mins for it to come back and i do all this for just another 20 mins.

Its not just gaming that's affected everything is.

then when it is up my speed is pathetic , on speed test .ie my speed is never over 1 meg and i frequently under 12.8kb/s .

I know from reding here that a lot of you guys have problems with these cowboys , but is anyone as bad as that

PixelTrawler

I couldnt connect to xbox live at all last night either. NTL seems to be getting worse

paulm17781

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

I couldnt connect to xbox live at all last night either. NTL seems to be getting worse

I was on xbox live last night and anything I played worked ok. I know this doesn't help anyone but it makes me feel somewhat better.

Alun

The digital TV service appears to be completely borked in many areas of Dublin too, so that may be connected to the BB problems.

Noelie

It's a weird one alright, when using torrents i'm getting dialup speeds, but i can VPN into work and can get steady 300K download speed. so seems to be something unusual going on.

jor el

Private Joker wrote:

How do you cancel Ntl/chorus ? ,

Write a letter to your bank instructing them to stop all future direct debit payments to NTL/Chorus (that's if you pay by DD). If you pay the bill manually, then simply stop. Then write a letter to Chorus/NTL informing them that you're cancelling the service immediately due to their inability to provide it. If they bitch about contract and such just inform them that they are already in breach of the contract and hence it is null and void.

donal.hunt

If you have case numbers (automatically generated if you email them) list all of them in the letter. Also ring them on a daily basis and ask for updates.

I just rang them and got through to an operator in less than 2mins! That is a huge improvement since the last time I called and is hopefully a good sign. They are committed to improving support now (see http://www.ntl.ie/index.php?PageID=1053).

Anyway - I didn't get any updates on my issues but both issues have been pinged and I've been assured that I'll be contacted shortly.

But persistence is important. If i hear nothing in the next 24 hours, I'll be ringing again. If still nothing in 48hrs, it'll be letter time and I'll be looking for a refund.

Letters are extremely effective as they take time to read, time to write a response and time to put in the post. As a result care is taken and the issue is likely to be dealt with properly.

With the current network migrations that they are doing, they could be alot more informative about the plans and the current staus on their website. Leaving customers in the dark is never a good idea.

Friendly (and do mean friendly) letters to Niall McNally (NTL's Customer Operations Director) by folk here encouraging their commitment to customer service and noting their improved call answering would probably be useful ( I will be doing that later today and will post up a copy of the letter if folk want a template). We could also suggest some further improvements which would help (like a Known Issues section on their website and some network status information for us hardcore techies).

Donal (currently tunneling via HEAnet's network to avoid NTL's routing issues).

GerardKeating

Fenster wrote:

I can't reach most sites located outside of Ireland. All services (IM, BT, FTP, POP, HTTP) are affected.

How do I cancel NTL?

Nothing worked for me last night, from about 20:00hrs on, before that it was patchy, and was off for part of the daytime as well.

Gave up about 23:30hrs and went to bed, and it was working again this morning.

Noelie

donal.hunt wrote:

Donal (currently tunneling via HEAnet's network to avoid NTL's routing issues).

How are you doing that? and does it solve the issue of not being able to connet to .com or blogspot.com sites?

Private Joker

Went down to the house at lunch time and it wasn't working

Rang them again, Got through in less than a minute, at least that wasn't painful.

the girl i was talking to said that they are working on the line and it will be up at 3.30. I asked her will this solve the ongoing issue , she said they are working on resolving the issues withthe network. THis is the first time they admitted there was something wrong with the network, but still didn't answer my question.
Thank god i'm leaving them in a months time, moving to a town where dsl is the only gig in town , after 6 meg cable broadband you would think it was a step down, but i was with eircom for over a year and never had an issue, you even knew when maintenance was taking place and it was usually 3 o'clock on a sunday morning.

Going to write a strongly worded yet polite letter as suggested

donal.hunt

Noelie wrote:

How are you doing that? and does it solve the issue of not being able to connet to .com or blogspot.com sites?

i'm using the tunnelling feature of the ssh protocol to connect to a host on their network and forwarding all my http traffic over it. You could do it with any reachable shell server that is on another network (once you have an account on the shell server and the organisation allows tunnelling).

http://www.rzg.mpg.de/networking/tunnelling.html has a good overview. in my case i'm actually connecting to a proxy server on the remote network and avoiding the weird routing issue.

in the meantime i've learnt that UPC (aka NTL / Chorus) have supposedly put a workaround in place that should resolve the blogspot issue until they have a proper fix in place. i haven't checked this out yet but will this evening when i'm back home. ymmv.

They also had issues with a problematic router over the weekend apparantly which may have caused one of the outages.

To be fair, merging networks is not an easy task and I'm guessing they are running into lots of weird issues during the various migrations (you can uncover the weirdest technical bugs when making such large changes).

Noelie

Yeah just checked, blogspots.com are working but still can't get into some .com sites. like the vegas casino hotel sites.

turbot

NTL used to be great.... but alas, having had a range of problems for 3 months, I've already signed up for an 8meg package from Smart.

Very simply, I need to trust my broadband connection will work.
It's not cool if I can't, and needing to use a Vodafone USB Modem so I can check my e-mail because I can't using NTL, just isn't good enough.

garlad

Just heard that they've also implemented some new QoS software to limit torrents.

christophicus

Where did you get this peice of info from?

Fenster

markpb

Funny... ntl.ie is working for me.

As are the blogspot.com websites. That was a bizarre problem but at least it's fixed now.

christophicus

yeah NTL .ie is working for me too.

wheresmybeaver

I cancelled Chorus in Cork simply by ringing them up and letting them know that the bloody thing just wouldn't work properly in my house (constant disconnections, appalling speeds, sudden refusal to work with my wireless router etc). They put me through to the smooth talkers at the cancellation desk but they pretty much understood my case and said fine. Some lad picked up the modem about a week later. Easy peasy really, and I'd only been connected with them for a few months.

Meanwhile, connected with Smart for their basic 4mb contract. I only get about 2.8mb due to my distance from the exchange / line noise, but it still kicks the arse off the Chorus cablenet. Highly recommended.

Dave

ps. I mention this Chorus cancellation because I undestand that NTL are now controlled by Chorus, yes??

dr.bollocko

Not really. NTL and Chorus are the same company, but both are now controlled by UPC Ltd. Which I think is Liberty Global in the states. So both our nice little Irish companies have been taken over by Evil George W. Bush. Reason? They are clearly looking for oil.

snaps

thought it was just my area the BB was down in Galway last night. was going to ring UPC today but after reading a few threads on here I can see that it wasnt just me that lost BB.

christophicus

My connection is still dodgy,not loading pages one minute and then loading them the next, its almost like different routes are being assigned on the fly.

by the way image shack isnt working either.

jor el

dr.bollocko wrote:

NTL and Chorus are the same company

Strange when NTL were only recently the very best in Irish broadband availability, and as soon as they merge with Chorus (or rather UPC buy them both) the very worst of Chorus' services seems to migrate and infect NTL like a virus.

Having been a dissatisfied Chorus customer for years I'm glad that I'll never have anything to do with them again. I only wish they'd stop sending me their damn spam letters for cable broadband. The estate I live on doesn't even have cable in it!

JNive

Chorus actually make up addresses and send out those 'The Householder' Letters to. I can verify this as i know someone in the post office that says he cant believe the amount of letters that they return to chorus cause the address doesnt exist. lol

dr.bollocko

jor el wrote:

Strange when NTL were only recently the very best in Irish broadband availability, and as soon as they merge with Chorus (or rather UPC buy them both) the very worst of Chorus' services seems to migrate and infect NTL like a virus.

Chorus is a teeny insy winsy tiny little ISP. Has about 1 tenth of the customers that NTL have. Its not problems with chorus somehow infecting the company with idiocy by osmosis, its problems with NTLs service due to separation from the English NTL and also setting up their own new Broadband monitoring services.

inforfun

After having no problems whatsoever for 22 months with NTL broadband i have now problems since Christmas. Mostly during the so called peak hours i wish i was on dial up because that would be faster.
Called their support line about every other day to get some straight answers. All i can get is promises for call backs. Well... that happened 3 times so far.

Then i get some idiot from bb support suggesting i should reboot the modem..... sigh. After telling him that that didn't exactly solve the problem the 100's of times i have been doing that he checked my data transfer over the last months.
Then you get comments that i am over the 40 gb a month. By an astonishing 1,7 gb .....
Since ntl doesn't provide any information about how much data you use i have to rely on a 3rd party application that showed i used 39.75 gb in February, against ntl claiming i used 42.

My impression is that they are connecting too many people at the moment and that they don't honor their contention rate at all.
After midnight till around 4 pm my connection is what it should. Exactly, the times normal people are either at work or sleeping.

All by all this is getting very frustrating. You would expect a little bit of service for 130 yoyo every 2 months.

christophicus

Eircom and BT seem to be having similar problems as us people on NTL( I tried to get onto o2.ie tonight and it didnt work, it didnt work for poeple on eircom either) . Im wondering is it possible that NTL are using some of eircoms network or something because it seems like too much off a coincidance that all of these problems are happeing roughly at the same time for each ISP. Or do both NTL and Eircom run their routing along the same lines at any stage?

landmonster

Loads of American sites not loading tonight.

inforfun

Just called again with NTL's "support" like i do daily.
Got to hear: " you have been logged yesterday for a callback, you can expect a call back before monday"

Really... someone should shoot those kunts