upc 20mb is next to useless

PotBelly

[DM]-TheDOC- wrote: »

interesting thread.

I'm living in swords and got a leaflet through the post saying i could get 20mb BB for 46 euro a month.

I currently give eircom 55 euro a month for a 2mb line. I have to say its a decent line for gaming, but downloads is horrendous, i rarely get over 150 k/bs a second.

I'm strongly considering getting upc. I know i wont get 20mb download, buts its the possability. I live close to the exchange so i generally get high speeds.

For 46 euro a month, its cheaper then what i pay for a faster service with no caps.

I generally download a heap load of stuff, play world of warcraft and surf the net. But download speed is my main concern.

What do we think folks? Should i do it?

I'm more concerned with dublin posters, helpful if near my area. A mate of mine got it in, has it gonig 6 weeks now and says its the bees kneews.

He lives 5 doors up and ive witnessed the speeds of 6-7 mb a second. (We live extremely close to exchange)

But hes not tech savvy, doesnt game, jsut downloads.

Some info would be great Solid reliable info aswell please. Im pretty in touch with tech stuff, and I know every provider has been having horribly lately.


Eircom isnt bad, just they are a rip off for a higher package, 250 a month for 20 mb, no thanks.

Amazing!

I was going to write this exact post. I am in exactly the same boat. I live close to swords ( beside the kinsealy inn),use BT BB DSL 8Mb(they said my line cant take 24Mb. There is a sync problem with my line which is giving me trouble.
I also got a leaflet through the door and was going to move to Chorus. They recently upgraded all the cable on the street.

I use Sky for my TV and will probably keep BT on the phone, so this cable will just be used for BB. I run my own business and have a home office so BB is important.

Have you moved over to chorus DOC? If so how is it?
Is there anyone else in this part of swords who has the 20Mb service from chorus?
Do you suffer from the crazy contention issues that the people in limerick are talking about?

DOTHEDOG

i'm in galway an have the 20mb connection/download speed great,sometimes i get 2.2mb d/load speed,upload speed in utorrent is only at tops is 185/kB/s,would that be right r should i be getting more......on the topic of wireless routers,you only get half the speed you would get on a wired...fact

whats the chorus/ntl sped site anyone..so i can do a test

http://speedtest.magnet.ie/

DOTHEDOG

thanks buddy for that speed test

anybody know how to throttle the utorrent 1.8.1??

Options > preferences > Bandwidth.

White_Wolf

Well one way is to make sure to upload while downlaoding alot of torrents work faster if you upload it allows you a bigger download speed but its really all up to the ammount and quality of the seeders with a connection like that 2560KB's is the optimum speed you should get but expect a 1 - 2mb drop when downloading expect alot less when using torrents. With speeds like that i would recomend getting a rapidshare account its well worth it at that speed.

youcrazyjesus!

The level of whinging is incredible, people moaning about getting 16mbps sayings it "appalling".

Contention is a fact of life, ISPs can't be funding your piracy at peak times, if they did there never
make any money. Its like buying a sports car and bringing it back to the showroom because you
can't do 120mph on the M50 at 8am. Its ridiculous.

I also suspect people don't know the difference between mb and MB. 20mb (ntls package) = 2.5MB.

Log on at 4am, go to FTP.heaney.ie and download a Linux distro, if your connection is 2.5MB then
you have no problem.

Anything above 7/8mbps is acceptable at peak times. If you don't like it pay for a more expensive
package with another provider with lower contention.

If you're getting lag on games, timeouts there MAY be a problem at NTL.

Sorry for the rant, just can't stand people whinging expecting NTL to walk
their dog and make them toast in the morning.

ow2h7nft1me9i4

Lately I've been having problems with ntl 10mb in waterford. I used to always get the full (or pretty dam close to) 10mb(even during the daytime), but lately i'm gettin less than 1mb during the day time, which really isnt acceptable, thats less than 1/10th of what I'm paying for.
Here is a speedtest I'Ve done just now, which is barely acceptable, but alot better than what I have been getting.


At 3am this mornin I was able to get a speed of over 8mb, which is all great except it isnt at 3am in the morning when i need to use the internet.....

jusk

I've been getting between 400 and 3000 kb/s on my 10mb UPC connection for the last few days.

Just did the Magnet.ie test, and it came up with the following:
Download Speed: 1934 kbps (241.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 979 kbps (122.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

Even doing something as simple as a google search is noticeably sluggish. . .

Lenny

yea my speeds at home there in my house were quite pants. this was between 6 and 7, was only getting about 4mb down
down in the gf's house she is the on 7.5 and getting full speed down here now..

DOTHEDOG

do a defrag on ur pc and a few scans is ur torrent set to it's highest level:cool:

Lenny

DOTHEDOG wrote: »

do a defrag on ur pc and a few scans is ur torrent set to it's highest level:cool:

To be honest I don't see what the point in defraging the computer and doing scans in torrents? never even heard of that..
how its going to improove speed.. I just use rapidshare..

DOTHEDOG

Lenny wrote: »

To be honest I don't see what the point in defraging the computer and doing scans in torrents? never even heard of that..
how its going to improove speed.. I just use rapidshare..

OK..it will improve your pc performance anyway

guil

DOTHEDOG wrote: »

on the topic of wireless routers,you only get half the speed you would get on a wired...fact

whats the chorus/ntl sped site anyone..so i can do a test

ur wrong bout that i'm usin the netgear ruter and dongle upc provide and i can get 16mb download with wireless

guil

Lenny wrote: »

To be honest I don't see what the point in defraging the computer and doing scans in torrents? never even heard of that..
how its going to improove speed.. I just use rapidshare..

somone doesnt know what they are talkin bout

padair

cahirhennessy wrote: »

The connection is absolutely cat today. It's normally very bad(a 20 meg "ultra" connection,lucky if I get 4/5 meg in the evening),but this evening I'm getting the princely download speed of 965 kpbs. Just phoned them and to my shock there was nobody available to talk to me. Abysmal.

I just swapped from Smarts 5 meg to the NTL 20 meg line. I have never went above one meg download and it is starting to piss me off. You would think you would get faster download speeds when they are advertising 20meg. Twenty megs my fecking arse.

AlmightyCushion

padair wrote: »

I just swapped from Smarts 5 meg to the NTL 20 meg line. I have never went above one meg download and it is starting to piss me off. You would think you would get faster download speeds when they are advertising 20meg. Twenty megs my fecking arse.

It's also dependant on where you are downloading from. If the server can't give you the bandwidth then the speed of your internet connection is more or less irrelevant.

Inquitus

Meh I am getting 3.5Mb at peak times on the 20Mb package, I am not accepting it any longer, I havent got the full speeds since I was an early adopter on the initial 10Mb roll out.

The letter writing campaign begins today. Dl Windows 7 beta - 356kB/s atm, not bloody good enough.

Inq

AlmightyCushion

Inquitus wrote: »

Meh I am getting 3.5Mb at peak times on the 20Mb package, I am not accepting it any longer, I havent got the full speeds since I was an early adopter on the initial 10Mb roll out.

The letter writing campaign begins today. Dl Windows 7 beta - 356kB/s atm, not bloody good enough.

Inq

Have you tried downloading something from heanet.ie? You are more likely to max out your connection on that then on most other sites.

Inquitus

Nah its just crap, you have a heanet hosted linux distro on the left and Win 7 64 on the right for a combined 500kB/s

Unacceptable. I am well savvy in this area, I am just very lazy, I should have complained mths ago when it started getting on my effing nerves.

Elessar

Inquitus wrote: »

Meh I am getting 3.5Mb at peak times on the 20Mb package, I am not accepting it any longer, I havent got the full speeds since I was an early adopter on the initial 10Mb roll out.

The letter writing campaign begins today. Dl Windows 7 beta - 356kB/s atm, not bloody good enough.

Inq

Good luck getting any kind of customer service from this shower. All I got, for calmly complaining about a cheeky attempt at them charging me for their mistake, was a CSR hanging up on me and complete lies from two others.

vibe666

you won't get your full bandwidth off a single heanet ftp download with a 20mbps connection.

if you want a more accurate picture pick one (or even two) CD image(s) from each of the following four heanet nodes:

ftp://gomez.heanet.ie/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/
ftp://mendoza.heanet.ie/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/
ftp://kokapetl.heanet.ie/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/
ftp://tao.heanet.ie/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/

and monitor the results for a minute or two in your bandwidth monitoring tool of choice to get your true download limit.

i get significant speed differences when downloading multiples iso's from different heanet nodes than i do from just a single connection but maybe that's just me.

Inquitus

I spoke to the support guy today, there was large uptake in my area from late Oct and the contention ratio went through the roof, causing 3Mb or less speeds during peak hours. Apparently this is not an issue confined to my area, and is widespread anywhere uptake has outstripped the initial infrastructure setup. Conveniently he told me very local cable should have its capacity increased this week to alleviate the contention issues.

Anyone who has spoken to UPC CS, knows they would say anything to get you off the line.......lets see what happens I guess.

4 diff distros from your links above give me about 700KB/s tonight, better than last night but still only 30% ish of what it should be.

El-Diablo

NTL broadband is a joke. My "20MB" delivers about 1.4MB. That's when it's actually working, which is rare.

L31mr0d

personally, I've noticed a significant increase in speeds and stability over the last week or so. I had been getting around 18Mb/s off peak with down to 9Mb/s peak. Now I rarely see it drop below 19.8Mb/s, regardless of if its peak or off peak. They must of fixed something in the swords area as a friend in work who lives on the other side of swords and who also has the 20Mb package said his speeds have stabalized also.

I'd say wait it out, they still offer a better deal than any other ISP and they have no download cap. They where probably caught on the hop and didn't realise so many people where going to adopt it.

daveharnett

Sixaside wrote: »

When I reboot the connection is usually ok again.......until the next time it goes. I rang Chorus and they reckon it's a problem with my PC and suggestied I contact their PC helpdesk - A premium number!!! Didn't bother as I don't believe that's the problem. Anyone else have similiar problems?

TBH sixaside, the fact that rebooting the PC fixes it points pretty clearly to a problem with the PC. There is no cause to be indigent at being charged extra for support with your machine. They are a broadband provider - anything on your side of the CPE is not their problem.

Update the drivers for your network adapter for a start.

vibe666

L31mr0d wrote: »

...they still offer a better deal than any other ISP and they have no download cap....

yes they do, i just got a letter saying I'd exceeded 250gb (combined up/down bandwidth) for January and they're either disconnect me or move me to their 'extreme' package for €80 per month if I keep exceeding 250gb.

that's on the 20mbps *unlimited* package btw. :rolleyes:

Marlow

It is fair use policy, so you never know what the cap is until they decide to get annoyed on you.

Definatly not unlimited.

/Martin

vibe666

Marlow wrote: »

It is fair use policy, so you never know what the cap is until they decide to get annoyed on you.

Definatly not unlimited.

indeed. i'e no problem with caps as long as i'm told what they are and i can keep within them.

advertising it as unlimited and then pulling a random number out of their collective backsides when they decide i've been doing too much is very wrong imho.

DOTHEDOG

i live in the galway area and ntl has never let me down,some sites give me a d/load speed of 2.2MB/ps and others give 1.4,you will get these speeds mostly on private sites cause most of the clients there have seedboxes,most public sites give a crap d/load speed,just done a speed test and here are the results

Download Speed: 19448 kbps (2431 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 500 kbps (62.5 KB/sec transfer rate)

from:
http://speedtest.magnet.ie/