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[kitz]

Last week the had me convinced that this was all a problem in the phone exchange. I asked BT to have a look which they did. Nothing wrong here, they said, handing me a bill for £99 for an engineer   call out.

That sort of thing makes my blood boil for 3 reasons.

1) The ISP knows what is going on and its a complete waste of time for both yourself and BT engineers.
2) The cost involved to yourself for the engineers charges.
3) Its because ISPs that do this to try and pass the book wasting so much of BTs time, that BT have had to increase the call out charges for everyone - including those that genuinely need them

Your'e not the only one they are trying this tact on Im afraid:/


http://www.ispreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.cgi?id=EEAkZluZylOpxxxxXE

Eventually it has got so bad that my 56k backup dial-up modem is now faster then broadband during peak times. Complaining about this, I was told its a problem with BT.



---

Anyway, made up my mind to change ships again, to whom I know not as yet, but as I rely on the net, instant messaging and the web-cam

Any idea of what your normal monthly usage is?

and do you use p2p/usenet (if you dont know what they are - then you probably dont)

[guest]

Ah gateway "hopping" on BT Openworld all that time ago wasn't random - you used to be able to change the login "realm" at will. All you did was change the home gateway number - eg user@hg10.btopenworld.com to user@hg11.btopenworld.com. Took me ages to work out that sessions were the problem too. It was 6+ months after I left them that I started working it out

I'm afraid my thoughts about NTL (Virgin now) are pretty much unprintable. I think UK consumers would have had a better deal sooner if NTL had been forced to come out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy when the law said they should have. They simply wouldn't have existed now and someone would have put that network to FAR better use.

[tuftedduck]

Yes, you are quite right about the waste of time and resources occasioned by the ISP's corporate and endemic lying.

My usage is not all that great. No p2p/usenet.............downloads are in the main restricted to security updates/patches, occasional download of a new prog version ( small progs such as Spybot, Ad-Aware etc).......no uploads except five FIVE photos onto Photobucket over a period of a year !!!!
I must be on line about four to five hours a day, every day, having a read at sites such as this and contacting the family live.

About 10/12 e-mails a day.

Hardly a gigantic user, and If I remember correctly the cap on my VM package was 20Gb per month when I signed up......no idea what it is now.

Unfortunately it would appear that some of the better reputed ISPs such as Be* are not available here in this rural corner, and no cable services are available.

Am going to try, I think, Plusnet...........they get lots of wee green lights on your very informative page and, importantly, month-on-month contracts. Not made up my mind, there are so many and so many of them seem to be as bad if not worse than Virgin, but I have requested my MAC from VM, and by the time I get that I will have decided where to go. (Hopefully)

[Pwiggler]

wow - whats happened to virgin ..... when i lived in the other house 18 months ago I was with NTL, a month before I left I told em I was wanting to cancel my account.

they instantly gave me free phone line, half price calls, free TV and upped my 4 meg connection to 10 meg while I was on the phone !!!

rock steady 10 meg day or night on P2P, NNTP, HTTP and torrents.

now they're down the pan ..... 2 much contention and t t t t t t t traffic sh sh sh shaping

[guest]

NTL (VM now) have been up and down the pan more times than a plumber

[mr_chris]

t t t t t t t traffic sh sh sh shaping

Awww... Paul, you swore....

[kitz]

>> t t t t t t t traffic sh sh sh shaping

Do they traffic shape?  All the indications Ive seen over the past couple of months would seem to indicate they don't have the equipment to do so.   

They may perhaps do some basic port throttling but if they had ellacoyas I dont think that so many users would now be reporting extremely high latency and such very low speeds on all protocols.

[Pwiggler]

Chris - i'm so sorry m8, I just dont know what came over me 

My Bro who is on VM said a few months ago that his torrents would plummet from 10(ish) meg dl to 6 then 4 then 2 during an evening then  at fixed times they would go up again in steps.  Saying that, I dont know whether he was using fixed ports and whether HTTP was up and down as well.

BT seem to have lowered NNTP speeds from their own servers during the evening.  It used to be 1.5 meg down all day and night, I stuck a graph on over the last few nights and from 6pm get 60KB down, then at exactly 23:00 it goes to 1 meg, then at exactly 23:30 it goes back to 1.5 meg.  I dont know what time it goes back down again coz my d/l's have usually finished by then     ..... but if I grab something from astrawebs servers it comes down full speed.

Torrents still at 6k till 23:00 then 30k till early morning 

[kitz]

Powerful edge routers such as Juniper ERXs (which incidentally are also used as some exchanges as the dslams) have the capability to do a basic form of throttling into 3 priorities. 
Its the addition of kit like Ellacoya switches that do the clever and more intricate stuff supposedly giving the ISP far more control.
However the learning curve for Ellacoyas seems to be a very long and steep process, during which time things may not always seem to go the way the even the ISP had planned

[kitz]

>> Am going to try,

Difficult task I know - all we can really do is advise on how things are.  These days it seems to be much easier to say which ISPs to steer clear of rather than recommend a good one since things can change rapidly.

There's a couple of current "in vogue" ISPs that I'd be hesitant about going to myself as I have a feeling that things may change in the future :/

PlusNet are out of favour my many because they traffic shape. However if you dont p2p or use any of the protocols they shape then you should be fine.  Touch wood they seem to have come out of the other side of the Ellacoya learning curve and things are working as they say they should.
Theres a tool which easily helps you see which traffic they shape and when and on which products here.

[tuftedduck]

Yes indeed, a bit of a minefield encountered when deciding on an ISP, especially if you don't have the inside information and knowledge.
Just be my luck to sign up with a good little company only to find that they are immediately bought by one of the big boys ( VM in my case !!!!!!!)

Funny thing is that since I sent off my complaint mail to Virgin, together with my log of woe, and demanded my MAC by return ( of which there is no sign) the whole thing has been going like greased lightning.

 

[kitz]

>> and demanded my MAC by return ( of which there is no sign) the whole thing has been going like greased lightning.


 

[tuftedduck]

Put that way, it was a silly thing to say. 

I mean, of course, that my connection, surfing etc. is going apace.

I'll watch my phraseology next time.

[kitz]

sorry..  the rolls eyes meant
-  typical.. you phone up to complain and then everything works as it should.

[tuftedduck]

Sorry, it's just me being slow to twig     

All these pages are whizzing open at such a speed at the moment that am I going dizzy. Will be ok again after lying down in a darkened room.

This speed is as it used to be four years ago..............how long will it last is the question.