UTV Broadband Problems

zemphis

Hi, I have UTV broadband but am having problems and am not getting any signal. I rang UTV support who claim that there are on problems on all the exchanges in Ireland. I'm in Dublin 13 and was wondering if anyone else is having any problems?

Thanks.


Edited: I meant to say I rang UTV support.

reduct101

Yeah, I've been having trouble since lunchtime yesterday. First it got flakey and then it was fine again until about 4pm yesterday (Tue 8th May), when it went down and STAYED DOWN

I tried a few power cycles, turned the router off and left if off for at least 10 minutes, tried a new microfilter, new phone cable, re-entering the settings and so on.

I just get a green power led and a green DSL led - no green internet led.

Troubleshooting fails at connection to ppp server - so there's no chance of authenticating.

I think the router is operational because I have full LAN and Wireless LAN connectivity - my home network is fine. It's just the old t'Internet that's unreachable

I contacted UTV support and they assigned me a ticket number and ignored me after that. The only reason I pay their high prices is that they are normally extremely reliable - I've had no more than 8 hours downtime in two years on Clicksilver ROI. You can get that with some providers in a month ;-)
However, this experience is extremely frustrating, and with Smart offering the world for a few quid I'm more tempted than ever.
If UTV start off by blaming my hardware, I'm off.

kaizersoze

reduct101 wrote: »

If UTV start off by blaming my hardware, I'm off.

No, you'll be ok. First they'll blame Eircom, then they'll blame viruses, then they'll blame your hardware.:pac:

zemphis wrote:

I rang BT support....

dub45

kaizersoze wrote: »

No, you'll be ok. First they'll blame Eircom, then they'll blame viruses, then they'll blame your hardware.:pac:

UTV blame Eircom for everything. Its a reflex with them. I once rang them about a billing problem and they blamed Eircom I kid thee not!!!

ardmacha

UTV blame Eircom for everything

For anyone reselling an Eircom product this seems a reasonable place to start.

dub45

ardmacha wrote: »

For anyone reselling an Eircom product this seems a reasonable place to start.

It would be reasonable if it had not become reflex for them over the years.

For example in the early days of bb UTV had regular problems which they used to blame on their 'upstream' provider. They were quite happy to allow everyone believe that this was Eircom when in fact it wasn't. (I cant remember the crowd now but I am sure someone can provide the name) UTV have regular dns problems which have been going on for years and they have not solved them.

And for a long time UTV promised to improve their ping but never managed to do it (at least while I with them!)

And to their eternal shame utv were the first isp to insist on their customers signing up to new contracts to avail of the benefit of reduced pricing (nothing to do with the Eircom issue but they deserve damning for it anyways!:))

And is it not strange that the customers of the other resellers don't seem to report on such a regular basis that their isps routinely blame Eircom?

Aepos

Hi All,

I lost connection on Sunday at around 4.00pm all things look normal , adsl light on, router says the signal is present but bo connection.
Have made loads of calls to UTV support each with a wait of at least 30 mins the constant reply is "its a widespread Eircom problem". It is now Thursday and still the system is down with me.....is this a crap service or what?


I passed on my complaint to Comreg yesterday but I really don't expect that to make any difference at all to the situation, it just makes one feel abit better!

I just thank god that I am not trying to run a business from home.

Having to get into work at 7.30am to get private emails and ebay stuff done is not great but at least I do have that option.

Rant over for the moment, but will continue if I get home this evening and I still have no connection.

Cheers

Aepos

MarkR

My UTV connection in shannon has been rock solid, so maybe it's down to the exchange(s).

Aepos

Hi again, Well they (UTV) have now changed their story and it would appear the problem is now with UTV. Not all UTV customers are affected however.

It has taken the best part of 5 days to get that info and they have been telling everone that it was an Eircom problem till now.

I don't think these folks no which end is up.

Still we wait and wait etc.

Aepos

kaizersoze

MarkR wrote: »

My UTV connection in shannon has been rock solid, so maybe it's down to the exchange(s).

If the DSL light is solid but you're failing ppp, then it's the ISP problem and not the exchange/Eircom/whatever.

wintear

I have contacted UTV Technical support this morning. The issue is with a particular exchange and an issues with authentication.

They don't have a timeframe for a fix could be a few minutes, a few hours or a few days (hoppefully not).

Onikage

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055269922

Another thread on this. In fairness, this is not normal for utv.

ISOT

kaizersoze wrote: »

If the DSL light is solid but you're failing ppp, then it's the ISP problem and not the exchange/Eircom/whatever.

utv down in westport for the last 24 hours or so- back at lunchtime when i checked - same issue as above, failing ppp. The funny thing is that another UTV customer on the other side of town is having no problems. So I wonder is an specific exchange problem at all ?

nordenray

I'm having no problems with UTV. No connection problems in South Sligo. As UTV is a re-seller would Eircoms upgrading work for the forthcoming speed increase be having any effect

dub45

nordenray wrote: »

I'm having no problems with UTV. No connection problems in South Sligo. As UTV is a re-seller would Eircoms upgrading work for the forthcoming speed increase be having any effect

I am sure UTV would have thought of that excuse if there was even the slightest possibility of it being true!

PowerHouseDan

Mine is still down been 2 days now, eircom cant seem to fix the problem, i asked when they plan to find out how to fix it and the girl said eircom havent given them a DATE yet i was like date or time and just laughed. bit of a joke being honest.

Aepos

Hi,

UTV is still down with me (since Sunday) the support line has a message stating that some customers in the republic are having difficulty and UTV engineers are working on the problem and hope to have it resolved shortly. This has been the message since Tuesday, So I wonder what UTV's definition of shortly is?

This has got to be the worst possible customer support possible, they dont reply to emails they have no info on the UTV website and when you eventually get through to a rep he/she seems to know very little about what is going on.

Oh well, where did I put that old dial up modem?

Oh rats, I remember now I sold it on Boards.

Ae

kaizersoze

If my connection was down for that length of time I'd be gone from them like a shot no matter how reliable they've been in the past.

Aepos

I am thinking exactly the same at the moment, the only thing is they seem to be the only provider including free calls to the UK in the talktime package.

Perhaps someone out there knows of a comparable but reliable alternative.
If they do I'll bee gone like a rat up the proverbial S**thouse pipe!!!!

Sorry bout that but frustration is setting in big-time, & the missus is giving out yards over not being able to do her daily "mousing" and "googling".

Ae

wintear

My U.TV broadband is back now. Though from the past week I'm not sure for how long. This in the D13 area.

kaizersoze

Aepos wrote: »

I am thinking exactly the same at the moment, the only thing is they seem to be the only provider including free calls to the UK in the talktime package.

Perhaps someone out there knows of a comparable but reliable alternative.
If they do I'll bee gone like a rat up the proverbial S**thouse pipe!!!!

Sorry bout that but frustration is setting in big-time, & the missus is giving out yards over not being able to do her daily "mousing" and "googling".

Ae

http://www.btireland.ie/AtHome_bb_talkalot.shtml

Aepos

Thanks kaizersoze for that I didn't think BT were doing that.

I'll give them a ring later.

Aepos

Just got UTV back this afternoon. not bad 6 days to fix the problem!!

Must check out BT don't want to change my email address though

Ae

kaizersoze

Aepos wrote: »

Just got UTV back this afternoon. not bad 6 days to fix the problem!!

Must check out BT don't want to change my email address though

Ae

You don't have to. I still have my UTV address and I left them in 2004.:)

Aepos

kaizersoze wrote: »

You don't have to. I still have my UTV address and I left them in 2004.:)

Great Thanks

TPD

Is anyone elses still down? Mine hasn't been back atall, but my cousins in the same town is back. It'll be a week on monday I think.

DecTenToo

Has anyone noticed problems with the cache servers as well?

cache.utvinternet.com Port 80 not available
ni-cache.utvinternet.com Port 80 not available
ie-cache.utvinternet.com Port 80 available

The Sparrow

DecTenToo wrote: »

Has anyone noticed problems with the cache servers as well?

cache.utvinternet.com Port 80 not available
ni-cache.utvinternet.com Port 80 not available
ie-cache.utvinternet.com Port 80 available

Yep they are not working for me either... Which sucks because I use the NI server to access the bbc iplayer. Could they have blocked it from users in the south so that they cant access the iplayer etc?

I set IE to that cache server and now it isnt working at all. However firefox is working fine on the default settings.

GUIGuy

Still down... that's just over a week now. The 'Eircom' stories that they might push are rubbish... my next door neighbour uses Eircom and his is ok.

TPD

I wonder will they give us anything for the inconvenience - a month free or speed upgrade or something. Probably not though

Mines out a week tonight. Luckily my neighbours Eircom isnt.

The Sparrow

ni-cache.utvinternet.com Port 80 is back working for me.

Fogmatic

I'm glad you didn't waste time looking out that old dialup modem, Aepos! I'm on dialup with UTV and having similar problems.
I'm familiar with that recorded message; checked again this evening but it was engaged...

I pinged UTV just now,, but 'unknown host' (when it doesn't time out). Same with Eircom, but all other servers I tried responded fine.

I gather from various forums that this stuff coincides a lot with an ISP bringing in new anti-spam measures, and discovered that UTV did this recently.

Guess where on UTV's site I found the info?
Nope.
It was in a FAQ I unintentionally reached, called 'What is spam?...'. Not the first FAQ most of us would head for.

Fogmatic

Forgot to mention I'm in W. Donegal. Wonder what exchange(s) are affected?
We're between Killybega & Ardara. Just to confuse things, our wires come from Ardara (074 95, Dungloe code) but when we moved here Eircom gave us an 074 97 number (Donegal Town area).

Maybe that's why Eircom sent me an individually addressed leaflet 3 years ago, congratulating me on being enabled for broadband. They were still insisting I could get it until just recently, though they couldn't seem to tell me where 'my' broadband exchange was...

byte

Maybe you're on Killybegs exchange (0749731xxx)?

patrickc

Onikage wrote: »

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055269922

Another thread on this. In fairness, this is not normal for utv.

i'm on utv 3 years and since ive changed my dns settings to open dns have only had one outage for a half a day, I can't complain with that really

EKRIUQ

I've been with them for over 4 years, 3mb no limit and to be honest they have been pretty solid except when they start trottling torrents.

Fogmatic

Killybegs exchange, Byte? Maybe - I just don't know (my number starts 074 9751...)
The wire comes from the opposite direction though; when we ordered the phone 15 years ago we watched the the poles coming up the valley from Ardara way.

When I first looked into BB a few years ago, I went to Eircom's website (my ISP at the time), entered my number on their 'check availability' page, and got a page stating 'Donegal is enabled for Broadband'.
Donegal Town? County Donegal? Some place in County Donegal, like Letterkenny? Who knows?
The only links from there were 'Order Broadband' (from a small choice of companies).

At the time (about 3 years ago), there was no BB in Ardara, my nearest exchange (about 5 km away). The local counciller was campaigning to try and make Eircom's community BB scheme happen there, and I wanted to get a vote in even if I turned out to be just out of reach. But Eircom's voting page blocked me - it required an Ardara phone number, which they hadn't given us for some reason (all the locals assume we have one until we tell them we don't).

Cue lots of call to Eircoma - sorry, Eircom, to try and make sense of it all, talking to a succession of people who didn't seem to know much about comms. During the last one, she said my broadband exchange was coming up as Letterkenny. I was curious to know how that worked, what with having to be within a few km of the exchange, and Letterkenny being about 50 km away. I wasn't convinced she understood the question, but anyway she said she'd find out and get back to me. I'm still waiting...

A couple of line checkers at ISP sites (BT & UTV I think) came up with a positive for BB a year or two ago, but not for long. They consistently say No now (even Eircom's).

Fortunately, we can now just see the top of a mast over the hill - the local wireless broadband scheme; a test got a signal, and I'm about to order it.
Maybe I'll finally be able to read that bells-and whistles council page, the one that boasts 'Made For Broadband' (so much for being accessible to all!)

Glad some people's UTV connections are now back in business. Light at the end of the tunnel maybe. The wireless BB will take about a month, and I'd still like to keep the my UTV dialup/talk

sesswhat

I'm on the UTV 2Mb package in Donegal and normally I get consistent speed tests of around 1717kb download and 212kb upload. Since yesterday the upload speed has dropped to single figures (7 or 8kb) where it is almost impossible to use the service for anything other than browsing. After making me jump through the usual hoops UTV said they have logged a fault but I've heard nothing since.

Anyone else notice a sudden drop in upload speed?

lmimmfn

sesswhat wrote: »

I'm on the UTV 2Mb package in Donegal and normally I get consistent speed tests of around 1717kb download and 212kb upload. Since yesterday the upload speed has dropped to single figures (7 or 8kb) where it is almost impossible to use the service for anything other than browsing. After making me jump through the usual hoops UTV said they have logged a fault but I've heard nothing since.

Anyone else notice a sudden drop in upload speed?

I only got mine connected in February so it may not be the same thing, sometimes i can get 3Mb download and 384kb upload, that got rarer and rarer and now i get 3Mb download and 64kb upload no matter what i do, only thing i can put it down to is interference on the line as my SNR margin is crap when i get 64k upload( SNR Marigin will be 5 or even 1 ).
Theyre going to downgrade me to 1Mb connection for a day or two to see if that will fix my upload( should do as should gain 10db's for upload, meaning its >5 which should be stable )

sesswhat

These are the figures my modem is showing now but I don't know what they were before the upload speed problems. They don't seem bad so I don't think its the same problem in this case.

SN Margin (dB) 31.00 / 11.50
Line Attenuation (dB) 37.50 / 20.00

lmimmfn

sesswhat wrote: »

These are the figures my modem is showing now but I don't know what they were before the upload speed problems. They don't seem bad so I don't think its the same problem in this case.

SN Margin (dB) 31.00 / 11.50
Line Attenuation (dB) 37.50 / 20.00

no its definitely not the same problem as me( although youre remote SNR margin is only okish ), mine are:
Local Line Atten(dB) : 31.5 Remote Line Atten(dB) : 28.0
Local SNR Margin(dB) : 7.5 Remote SNR Margin(dB) : 7.0
After downgrade to 1Mb( still crap, but above 6 which is okish ), hmm, its weird, the DSL sync is with the switch, so its not UTV, its Eircom, when i had decent broadband last year, the odd time i would get crap synchs, i rang about it and they said it could be one of the slots on the switch was a bit duff and to try resynching 15 minutes later, that fixed it 99% of the time.

My current guess is that theyre all fecked in Mullingar and that its now a switch issue and not my line( although SNR margin for me is terrible ), but the odd time i get 384kb upload i get 19 for SNR margin values

ednwireland

just in case anyones having trouble in donegal town eircom have upgraded the exchange for the speed upgrades unfortunately theyve screwed the upload speeds its taken our business 2 daysto get eircom to admit that they have an issue its affecting anyone using an eircom line not just eircom customers we've lost three days work at the moment. (were on the top package)

-simon-

I'm in south donegal and for the last 3 days my download/upload speed has been no faster than dial-up. Anyone else having this problem?

Guess I better call them up again. :rolleyes:

byte

ednwireland wrote: »

just in case anyones having trouble in donegal town eircom have upgraded the exchange for the speed upgrades unfortunately theyve screwed the upload speeds its taken our business 2 daysto get eircom to admit that they have an issue its affecting anyone using an eircom line not just eircom customers we've lost three days work at the moment. (were on the top package)

Ah, that'd explain why sending emails has been a nightmare!

sesswhat

I'm back on dial-up at this stage in Ballybofey as my 2Mb service has ground to a halt. My neighbour on BT is also affected.

Not much chance of being kept informed unless there are any local Eircom Engineers out there?

EDIT: Just checked at 11.30 and broadband is back at normal speeds again!

ednwireland

both our office lines went at 11:00 am and when they came back up they were back to normal my home one is back to normal (i'm in donegal town)
wonder what major routing software issue they had ?
apparently 2 exchanges in donegal town and ballybofey were affected

halcyon-days

I've been experiencing problems with UTV for the last 2 weeks roughly. My download speed is fine but my upload speed is barely above 20kb/s. Dialup is faster at uploading than my 3MB connection i have with UTV. I've rung them and complained but they said there must be some issue with my telephone line even though its a new house and recently had my line put in by Eircom, after they stopped blaming my house they said the issue was with my router, i eventually just hung on them as i could only put up with so much BS.

Really considering cancelling my subscription now and paying off the cancellation fee and opting for a different ISP but in Donegal from what i've seen so far my options are rather limited. Most ISP's offer 1MB with 3MB considered fast and top of the range.... :eek:
Anyone know of a ISP that offers 8MB in Donegal (killygordon) or if Cable NTL/UPC chorus would be an option?

ardmacha

Cable NTL/UPC chorus would be an option?

Do you have cable, is there cable in Killygordon?

byte

Dunno of anyone offering 8Mbit in Killygordon! Smart offer speeds up to 15Mb, but Letterkenny is the only town in Donegal that has Smart broadband .

Bear in mind that any provider reselling eircom's broadband (BT, UTV, Perlico, etc) will have speeds upgraded in June. 3Mbit will be upgraded to 7.6Mbit (if line can handle it).

UPC/NTL don't have any operations in Killygordon, so they're out.