Why does NTL broadband suck

kalebris

Welll.... not sure where to start.

First I signed up for the 30Mbit package and as a new customer I have got a "shiny" 4 port wireless router thingy despite the fact that I wanted a normal 1 port modem that has no shiny features in it, just does the job well. Fair enough I thought and started to use this 4 port wonder. Soon I realized that my browser sometimes does not want to load pages etc. or if it does it makes it jerky so I started to troubleshoot. Have done a speedtest on the speedtest.net site and got 30M/3M as expected so it's not a speed issue. Went a bit further and noticed that Firefoxs status window was stuck in looking for <suchandsuch domain>. So thought what's happening behind the scenes. Soon realized that it meant DNS resolution. So I started my test and tried to resolve the top 500 websites as quick as possible. After about 20 lookups things started to time out and slow down signifcantly. So what to translate while opening this current page I have made about 4 DNS requests. If I or anybody else in the household just opens 5 other similar (not too ad heavy) pages things start to get crappier.
So I though that's not that hard to solve, I will use googles DNS servers (I know it's quite a bit like big brother is watching but that's still better then little brother not watching only limiting) and to my surprise I got the same results. Did the test as before and got the same results. I was thinking about setting up my own DNS server but that wouldn't help an awful lot since it would involve more DNS requests. I managed to got around this with complicated tunneling and pulling a few favors and managed to get arround this issue since I was hiding my DNS requests.
To my surprise the connectivity did not get better. This time firefox got stuck in connecting to <suchandsuch domain>. This means that I can not open more then X amount of new connections. So that sucks since I experience the same thing (I guess the number of DNS requests and the number of connections are roughly the same).

Thought this is the time to contact technical support (if only they were technical..) and started with the good old nice email form that they provided on the contact us page. After detailing my issues and that I get 30Mbit/3Mbit when doing the speedtest I hit the send button and a friendly message awaits stating that "our aim is to answer your query in 3 working days" or something quite similar. I thought that's not a high aim but at least they're not lying.... well that was something like 4 weeks ago. They called about 1 week ago asking what my problem is. They asked me what DNS is... and after some painful explanation the technical support person was kinda able to understand what happens when you type in ntl.ie in the webbrowser. After some mumbling they claimed that my upstream power level is too high. Well... that might be but I have no issues with the signal quality. As far as I can see my signal is rock solid. the kind (not so much at this stage) person told me that he can see nothing wrong with the connection apart from this and a field engineer needs to be sent. So I said bring it on if I have no other way to get this issue escalated. So the field tech came and replaced all connectors and we did a speedtest and I told him that yes the speed is fine "IT'S NOT THE SPEED I'M HAVING ISSUES WITH" he left. And now I am stuck with this hellish broadband that costs quite a lot monthly and I can't even use it properly.

So went ahead and was looking for applications to remedy this issue and found a VPN service that they sell for $55 a month. so I signed up and now all is better. the speeds are not 30/3 but close enough and I finally can stop dealing with those muppets at NTL. If my contract expires I definitely won't have NTL again nor will I recommend it to anybody.

Please let me know if you go through the same type of hell as you do because it would be nice to know I'm not alone....

Spear

kalebris wrote: »

Welll.... not sure where to start.

First I signed up for the 30Mbit package and as a new customer I have got a "shiny" 4 port wireless router thingy despite the fact that I wanted a normal 1 port modem that has no shiny features in it, just does the job well.

Put it in bridge mode then. It'll avoid things such as the general crappiness of the Cisco router, including it's interfering flood protection.

UPC's DNS have been crap for many years. You'll find OpenDNS are also a decent option, if you're not comfortable with Google.

kalebris

yes I have tried bridge mode still no difference. The same thing happens with OpenDNS, google DNS or any other DNS servers. It's not only NTLs as far as I can see.

oldmantime

I've had exactly the same problems time and time again. I haven't been able to figure out any working solution (the thought of paying more money for a VPN when already paying a not insubstantial amount of money already irks me).

blaz

Login to your modem at http://192.168.1.1. Select the "Setup" tab, then under Firewall click on Options. Remove the checkmark for all options there (Filter Proxy, Filter Cookies, etc. including Firewall Protection) and click on "Apply". Your connection should be working fine then.

kalebris

so after a period of somewhat calm and "working" broadband with relatively decent speeds hell broke loose on NTLs network again. Packetloss to my default gateway. So I call tech support, they tell me that there is some noise on the line and they need to send a field tech to my place to check out the wiring. I called on thursday morning tech was promised for tuesday. All good and fine. I called them about the packetloss a few times as it is intermittent and so they can see that it is a real issue (apparently they claim to record every one of my calls and link them to my account). So on monday a tech support agent calls if I want to cancel my field tech. visit for tuesday... well.... how about no. Check my account and see what's my issue and check if I have called over the weekend....

So field tech comes, replaces cables, things are looking up for a while then bam.. packetloss again.... so I call again, they say yes, it's an area issue upcoming upgrades will get this fixed, by the end of december...... Wohooooo it's only 3 months and my issue will be fixed??? and I'm supposed to be happy about this? So they finally log me an ET ticket, whatever that is, and they tell me the ticket number... Never-ever got a ticket number out of an ntl customer agent so I'm somewhat optimistic that I can check up on the status of my issue. Well.... optimistic me again.. the ET ticket number is for a different department, with which they have no contact with, they need to send an email to somewhere where it gets ignored or something similar. So I keep calling to show them that this is a real issue, and they seemed to care.... again optimistic me... Then this morning, no online light.. Finally it broke completly, so I can call and get a fix. This was 8:30, they're not open until 9, so call in at 9am sharp, they do confirm that there's an issue in my area... I said great what's the ETR.... well we dispatched a crew... excellent, so ETR??? in the next 24 to 48 hours..... great.... hoped that this is a safety measure and turned out to be so, by 3 pm it's back. I'm somewhat happy, they got something fixed.... but no.... packetloss again.. now I can't open a webpage. So here I am sitting with my prepay O2 3g dongle which outperforms my 30Mbit/s cable broadband currently in speed, and is way more reliable overall.

Is this me being unlucky or NTL is really this bad????

rebeve

kalebris wrote: »

so after a period of somewhat calm and "working" broadband with relatively decent speeds hell broke loose on NTLs network again. Packetloss to my default gateway. So I call tech support, they tell me that there is some noise on the line and they need to send a field tech to my place to check out the wiring. I called on thursday morning tech was promised for tuesday. All good and fine. I called them about the packetloss a few times as it is intermittent and so they can see that it is a real issue (apparently they claim to record every one of my calls and link them to my account). So on monday a tech support agent calls if I want to cancel my field tech. visit for tuesday... well.... how about no. Check my account and see what's my issue and check if I have called over the weekend....

So field tech comes, replaces cables, things are looking up for a while then bam.. packetloss again.... so I call again, they say yes, it's an area issue upcoming upgrades will get this fixed, by the end of december...... Wohooooo it's only 3 months and my issue will be fixed??? and I'm supposed to be happy about this? So they finally log me an ET ticket, whatever that is, and they tell me the ticket number... Never-ever got a ticket number out of an ntl customer agent so I'm somewhat optimistic that I can check up on the status of my issue. Well.... optimistic me again.. the ET ticket number is for a different department, with which they have no contact with, they need to send an email to somewhere where it gets ignored or something similar. So I keep calling to show them that this is a real issue, and they seemed to care.... again optimistic me... Then this morning, no online light.. Finally it broke completly, so I can call and get a fix. This was 8:30, they're not open until 9, so call in at 9am sharp, they do confirm that there's an issue in my area... I said great what's the ETR.... well we dispatched a crew... excellent, so ETR??? in the next 24 to 48 hours..... great.... hoped that this is a safety measure and turned out to be so, by 3 pm it's back. I'm somewhat happy, they got something fixed.... but no.... packetloss again.. now I can't open a webpage. So here I am sitting with my prepay O2 3g dongle which outperforms my 30Mbit/s cable broadband currently in speed, and is way more reliable overall.

Is this me being unlucky or NTL is really this bad????

I think you are just unlucky.I find upc very good .