NTL 6Meg ? - Questions

NullZer0

Anyone who has seen my other post here about problems with my eircom connection will know why Im asking (either way I am interested in more speed).

Just wanted to know what can I expect from NTL 6meg connection if I was to get it?

Is it really that much faster?
What is the uptime like? - have you had any serious problems with it?

Are you on it now? - Id appreciate it if you ran a speedtest and posted the results if you have time!

Mencius

A few months back I would have told you to avoid NTL at all costs but I haven't lost connection in at least two months and a happy with the service for the first time in a year.

Ping in games has dropped quiet a lot and you will be D/l at 720 / 730 Kb/s most of the time.

NullZer0

Mencius wrote:

A few months back I would have told you to avoid NTL at all costs but I haven't lost connection in at least two months and a happy with the service for the first time in a year.

Ping in games has dropped quiet a lot and you will be D/l at 720 / 730 Kb/s most of the time.

Right so, Im getting it!

How much it it in total?

Gran Hermano

Speedtests will not show NTL/UPC/Chello/Chorus traffic shaping which
will mean if you use torrents your speeds be severely restricted.

NullZer0

Gran Hermano wrote:

Speedtests will not show NTL/UPC/Chello/Chorus traffic shaping which
will mean if you use torrents your speeds be severely restricted.

So those speeds would be more pushed towards http / web etc rather than anything else?

paulm17781

iRock wrote:

So those speeds would be more pushed towards http / web etc rather than anything else?

Torrents don't seem to work great though others have said they are fine. I don't use torrents so I would recommend NTL but others may disagree.

qwytre

I have had a 3MB line with NTL for 2 years. Up to last week the service was fully reliable and good. I had no issues whatsoever.

In the last week it was down for 6 days due to general area problems in West Dublin due to upgrades. Its been back for a few days now and no hassles getting credit on my bill for the downtime.

I would recommend NTL broadband no problem, 30euro a month for a 3MB line is very good. And speeds are always between 2 and 3mb when I test it.

tman

paulm17781 wrote:

Torrents don't seem to work great though others have said they are fine. I don't use torrents so I would recommend NTL but others may disagree.

Torrents work perfectly if you're getting them from somewhere with a decent seed/leech ratio.
They've been fairly crap in Galway ever since the UPC takeover, I definitely wouldn't recommend them anyway...
Too much random downtime and crazy packet loss at other times

Mencius

Gran Hermano wrote:

Speedtests will not show NTL/UPC/Chello/Chorus traffic shaping which
will mean if you use torrents your speeds be severely restricted.

Torrent work absolutely fine for me, I regularly get 400 - 500 Kb/s on well seeded torrents at most times including peak hours.

Mikey23

Are you in Galway Mencius?

I noticed fluctuating speeds from around February or so, regardless of whether private/public torrents. Happy out with NTL broadband aside from that, just would have appreciated some form of heads-up as to their new policies.

dub45

iRock wrote:

Right so, Im getting it!

How much it it in total?

NTL have their own website where such information is easily obtained!!!!:rolleyes: Boardsies are not slaves remember!.

NullZer0

Mikey23 wrote:

Are you in Galway Mencius?

I noticed fluctuating speeds from around February or so, regardless of whether private/public torrents. Happy out with NTL broadband aside from that, just would have appreciated some form of heads-up as to their new policies.

Of course Newsgroups will be fine anyway?

okcomputer

Mencius wrote:

Torrent work absolutely fine for me, I regularly get 400 - 500 Kb/s on well seeded torrents at most times including peak hours.

did you do anything special like open ports with a router or are you just downloading straight through the modem?
i sometimes get 200K+ but most times around 30K- - not sure if thats the poorly seeded torrents though

NullZer0

okcomputer wrote:

did you do anything special like open ports with a router or are you just downloading straight through the modem?
i sometimes get 200K+ but most times around 30K- - not sure if thats the poorly seeded torrents though

uTorrent have some tutorials on this (for the windows users)
There also some Azureus ones out there for Mac.

Worth trying

mollser

okcomputer wrote:

did you do anything special like open ports with a router or are you just downloading straight through the modem?
i sometimes get 200K+ but most times around 30K- - not sure if thats the poorly seeded torrents though

iRock wrote:

uTorrent have some tutorials on this (for the windows users)
There also some Azureus ones out there for Mac.

Worth trying

I've never been able to get a straight answer to this question either :rolleyes: Have read the guides but they don't seem all that applicable to NTL - I've been told there's no way to forward ports with the NTL modem so that pretty much renders them all useless?? Encryption definitely doesn't work either.

christophicus

Mencius wrote:

A few months back I would have told you to avoid NTL at all costs but I haven't lost connection in at least two months and a happy with the service for the first time in a year.

Ping in games has dropped quiet a lot and you will be D/l at 720 / 730 Kb/s most of the time.

I would disagree with you. It is rarely i get above 500KB/s down. Alot of the time servers dont even upload as fast as 700 KB.


Anyway, to those that say their torrents are fine, can you please tell us which trackers you use?

Gran Hermano

I've configured several routers for friends with NTL.

All ports are forwarded correctly and uTorrent even with
encryption forced rarely exceeds speeds of 50kps during
the day or evening. I've tried numerous random ports right
across the ranges -even tried port 80 - and it's obvious
that in Dublin South NTL are using traffic shaping at peak
times.

Sidane

I love my 6meg NTL connection.

It is rock solid for me and I regularly get 700kbps when downloading large files (uploading server permitting of course).

I'm in Dublin 5, so like most internet connections your mileage may vary depending on where you are, but from my experience I would heartily recommend it.

NullZer0

Sidane wrote:

I love my 6meg NTL connection.

It is rock solid for me and I regularly get 700kbps when downloading large files (uploading server permitting of course).

I'm in Dublin 5, so like most internet connections your mileage may vary depending on where you are, but from my experience I would heartily recommend it.

I'm guessing that downloading NZB's with Usenet will be ok? <--- does this use port 80 or what?

When you go over your download limit I hear NTL will enforce... what do they charge?

christophicus

It is very rarely that they do anything, but when they do , they dont charge you anything, instead they threaten to dissconnect you if you keep up the over usage.

NullZer0

christophicus wrote:

It is very rarely that they do anything, but when they do , they dont charge you anything, instead they threaten to dissconnect you if you keep up the over usage.

Don't mind that at all... might aswell take the service and run them into the ground ..... Joking!

I'll give it a go anyway and see what its like.

Kintarō Hattori

I have the 6MB package from NTL in Dublin city centre and I have no problems in giving it a big thumbs up. I've experianced no down time since getting it about 4 months ago and download speeds are great (depending on the server). I have often gotten around the 600K mark and downloading with uTorrent I have often hit the 400-500K mark.

christophicus

can you tell me which trackers you use eo?

Freddie59

NTL 6 Meg 7:15pm tonight (Friday 31st):



(WATERFORD)

babyhack

iRock wrote:

I'm guessing that downloading NZB's with Usenet will be ok? <--- does this use port 80 or what?

When you go over your download limit I hear NTL will enforce... what do they charge?

Yeah usenet works fine full speed, NTL don't enforce their cap although if you go over it by a huge ammount you will get a letter from them asking you to download less.

Kur4mA

Does anyone have this in the Ongar area of Dublin 15? And if so, is it stable for downloads and playing games?

00sully

I have it in D15 (carpenterstown) not too far from Ongar. Service here is APPALING! it was fine for me last year tho, was on the max package and at one stage i was getting 10Megs, even tho I was only paying for 6.

Then UPC came in, introduced the cap, destroyed the service and took out all customer support.

as of tomorrow, I am moving to smart. If you are on the blanchardstown exchange I recommend checking them out

Kintarō Hattori

christophicus wrote:

can you tell me which trackers you use eo?

Ehhhhhh.... by that I guess you mean.....??????

NullZer0

eo980 wrote:

Ehhhhhh.... by that I guess you mean.....??????

I think he means where do you get them.

Moriarty

Remember that any mention of warez or how to obtain it will get you banned.

christophicus

Moriarty wrote:

Remember that any mention of warez or how to obtain it will get you banned.

Yes but can't they just say which trackers they get good speeds from??

And yes by tracker i mean which website you get them from. I use Isohunt as my main one too and I get dire speeds.

NullZer0

christophicus wrote:

Yes but can't they just say which trackers they get good speeds from??

And yes by tracker i mean which website you get them from. I use Isohunt as my main one too and I get dire speeds.

It'll depend on seeders/leachers. Anyway back to the topic of NTL.

Cabaal

christophicus wrote:

Yes but can't they just say which trackers they get good speeds from??

And yes by tracker i mean which website you get them from. I use Isohunt as my main one too and I get dire speeds.

Given the content of many trackers, it could also very well lead to a ban.
Content being..copyright TV, movies, software, music etc

I suggest if you want to test speeds, there are plenty of trackers out there that only offer Linux ISO's...you'll find these trackers also have lots of seeds

Ferox13

NTL definally traffic shape/use some sort of disabling connections.

They weren't always like this either..

I get good speeds on private trackers with a good few seeder but often on the same trackers and there is just one or 2 seeds, i can't connect to them even though I know we all have ports forward correctly..

When I first signed with NTL this was never a problem..

Noelie

I don't see what the problem is with NTL shaping torrents at peak times.
other people want to use there broadband at peak times too, so why should someone downloading illegal movies be allowed destroy the whole system. A lot of people want to play games or use VOIP in the evening and the bandwidth should be allocated to them.

It's not hard to queue your torrents to download over the night or during the day when you're at work.It's probably an issue with the number of Seeds and Leachers also.

I VPN into work and anytime I do I get the full speed i should be, I've often downloaded 2 GB in about 2 hours on my 3Meg connection. This has happened at different times of the day and the speed has always remained constant.

I'd reccomend NTL

Infini

Only time when torrents work decently for me is if its overnight. I know NTL are traffic shaping cos its more or less reduced most decently seeded torrents to a crawl. End of the day i dont mind if i can average 40-50kb/s but not even gettin 10kb/s on a high seeded torrent off of animesuki.com (fansub anime site) is pathetic. I know theres a bunch of issues at hand but at the minimum what im payin for at the end of the day is a 6meg line im payin for and if i wanna download the occassional file with bittorrent there should be a decent amount of bandwidth speed for it and not havin to look at it completely nerfed -.-

donspeekinglesh

I think they're shaping off-peak too. I only ever torrent between the hours of 0100 and 0800, and recently speeds have been ****e. About 80mb in the 7 hours, with torrents from various sources, and plenty of seeders.

I don't mind shaping at peak times (in fact I'm all for it), but not in the middle of the night.
Will be cancelling as soon as my modem from my new provider.

Oh and when I rang to cancel I was told from October you'll be able to get broadband without needing to sign up for the TV.

Moriarty

There was a flyer in the NTL bill I got a few days ago saying that the rebranding to UPC will happen in October. I presume product lineups might be shuffled about a bit to coincide with that.

tonton-bob

Hi,

I'm thinking of taking NTL 6Mb offer since my line is not broadband capable.

So it seems that it gives a good connection but i'm really worried about gaming at peak times.

Will i experience problems

Mac daddy

Gaming doesn't use much bandwidth hell you could even play world of warcraft using a dialup modem.
Only thing you need to watch out for is your ping the lower the better, anything generaly over 500ms you will watch your characters run into walls ect.

I have the NTL dude out in the next hour to hook me up with the 6Mb package and Digital Tv not bad for 30Euro's for the first 6months and 65Euro's after that.

*** Edit ***
They just came see attachment

Anti

I had ntl out in tallaght. And the 6mb package was great. Line would drop maybe once a week. I would get 780kbs max. Not sure if the 6mb to 10mb trick is still availible though. If it is you will be getting 1.25MB/s download speeds.

Only thing i disslike with ntl are the pings. On irish servers (css) i would get 15-30 ping. Now im on bt i get between 5-7 ping constantly, even with a second pc playing on the same server. Also, take note that not all hosts will let you download at your full speed. i found i was usually capped at 500kbs from free sources. Though if you are a usenet or private torrent groups you will easill yhit your full speeds. Newsgroups will give you slightly more speeds upto about 800/900kbs

ixoy

I've been with them a number of months and have experienced no downtime on their 6mb package. Speeds, last time I checked, were fine but torrents can be a different matter - on well seeded ones, I've sometimes got as low as 8-10k/sec whereas others push up into 300k/sec (at the same time of day as well).

Anyone who has used their default router with it - does it have any issues with torrents? I've got a Linkysys router and, after awhile, it slows down and can't create any new connections. I'm forced to restart the router and it appears it's an issue a number of routers have - is the NTL supplied one one of those?

tonton-bob

Hum when i meant gaming i meant fps gaming not WoW
Ping is the most important thing for this kind of game.

Well from what i've read here, it seems that the connection is pretty good.

The only thing which i hate is the stupid 40GB cap :mad:
Do they provide a page or a way to monitor what you've used ?
According to their technical performances i guess that no