Weird NTL Broadband proiblem in D15

Keyzer

Got a weird problem.

NTL apparently upgraded myself and a host of other people in my area recently.My broadband performance since the upgrade has been crap - specifically, my speeds are as they should be early morning and very late at night but during the day or evening my connection drops to that of a 1MB/2MB connection.

Running tests on various speedtest sites showed me that the quality of service was awful and speed was that of 1MB. Tests were carried out while connected both to a wireless router and directly to the cable modem supplied by NTL.

Called NTL and got the usual spiel - yada yada, blah blah. I personally think their network couldnt handle the increased capacity after everyone was upgraded. I have an engineer coming onsite to replace my modem next week but I doubt that will resolve the issue.

Anyway, here is where my noodle is really baked in all of this.
While testing last night, I was seeing the usual crappy performance, then I tried downloading an iso file from http://ie.releases.ubuntu.com/hardy/ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso. I was amazed to see the download running at 1.2 MB/S when everything else I try to connect to or download runs so slowly.

So I kept testing the download from http://ie.releases.ubuntu.com/hardy/ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso over the course of the evening, at one point the download was running at 3 MB/S. Everytime I downloaded this file the speed was running ridiculously high.

What the hell is going on?

cdb

Seeing the same performance since the upgrade. Too many users on at peak times?

pavelpro

Have same problem - at peak times speed 0.5-1 supposed to be 10

Keyzer

How come I'm getting 1.2 MB/s download speed with this one download though?

So strange....

seamus

I would imagine it's because the ubuntu ISO is hosted on HEAnet. As INEX members, the connection is going directly into HEAnet to get the file, instead of being transparently proxied or throttled by UPC.

Or I could be talking crap.

Get0fix

Yeah I'm pretty sure its something like that. You might find that UPC has a dedicated link to whatever network that file is hosted on, meaning that you get great speeds from that particular site.

I also have the exact same issue, where my speeds are useless at peak times (around 95kb/s -> 200kb/s) but great when offpeak. Just like you, I have tested via wireless connection and cabled to the router.

Believe me when I say, that new router they are sending you will not help one bit. The UPC network either cannot handle the current load of high bandwith users, or they are throttling any traffic on particular networks (for instance all international traffic)

BostonB

Sorry to drag this up. Also in D.15 and again peak time is usless for say gaming. I also find i get better speeds with UK game servers than Irish ones. Whats with that?

neacy69

BostonB wrote: »

Sorry to drag this up. Also in D.15 and again peak time is usless for say gaming. I also find i get better speeds with UK game servers than Irish ones. Whats with that?

UPC always seem to have a better connection to english sites and servers....they must have a direct connection for all traffic to their UK hub and then the traffic is routed from there...

You can see this yourself by using speedtest.net and running a speed test with dublin as your local server and then using london. The london results will usually be faster and will probably give a more accurate indication of your connection speeds.


easiest way to get them to solve the issue its to take screenshots of the speeds you are getting every time you have a problem and then report it upc every single time....if you don't get a satisfactory response then every time you have an issue demand a refund for that day and see if they can help then!