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[jeffbb]

An eye opener for anybody . wish I had seen that site before going broadband with them. 

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=215

The interesting thing is that  most of the discussions appear to be about one thing VERY low Download speed. 
They do not appear to ever tackle the root cause.

[HPsauce]

I was with them about a year ago; it was just like that then. 
Dial-up speeds every evening and no admissions of cause or plans to rectify.

Since then I've been with PlusNet (no problems at all) and then Be (for over 20meg).
Be are having some capacity problems which seem to be related to mixing & matching with O2. They do seem to fix them eventually but the customer communication is "somewhat lacking".

(sits back and waits for a Blitz from Kitz  )

[jid]

Don't worry, the Forums team refuse to help me now.

Say there is nothing more they can do when I was reporting suspect congestion, which is seems they have because tonight is the second time they have reported problems with LLU on their status pages.

[HPsauce]

I got banned from the Tiscali forums, for a while anyway, and I was only telling the truth 100% accurately and politely!

[jeffbb]

I still have terrible congestion problems at peak time . I sometimes get round it by stopping PPP connection (st330 allows it ) without resynchronising my connection. With luck I can get from 200Kbps to 3or more Mbps but eventually will slow down. then by about 10 to 11 Pm everything seems to be OK.

[jid]

I got banned from the Tiscali forums, for a while anyway, and I was only telling the truth 100% accurately and politely!

I think they just give up trying to fix the more difficult issues in the end...

[jeffbb]

what's difficult about fixing contention . Its not rocket science if you have too many people using the service you buy more capacity. At least stop advertising for more suckers .Its about time OFCOM or whoever should sort out this problem .Can you imagine if you had a car that was advertised as doing 50MPG but actually only managed 5 MPG or less. That would be soon sorted out I am sure. Why is it that ISP seem to be able to break all the normal rules governing advertising ? I know they say "up to xMbps" but surely that figure should be realistic .
 

[jid]

Problem is for a cheap ISP like Tiscali they just don't won't to spend money on bandwidth.

Its just wrong

[kitz]

The interesting thing is that  most of the discussions appear to be about one thing VERY low Download speed.

Its pretty well known that if anyone complains too much on their forums that the posts are deleted, and poster banned

Unfortunately nothing much seems to have changed.  Even way back in 2003 when adsl was in its infancy and there was only IPStream, their Centrals were congested more than 'normal' ISPs back then. Theres some screen caps showing similar from 2005.

When I did the "capacity report in early 2006, I was told from a fairly reputable source that Tiscali were running their centrals at 150:1 at the end of 2005.  Since then things havent improved and due to the subsequent <8Mb speed increases, I would imagine that you could double that, because although customers now have higher speeds they havent increased their bandwidth in line. :/

LLU will have eased the burden for a short while as they moved more users over, but as they move more users over and also increase their speeds then that contention ratio drops way back down again

Its also a bit concerning that there have been at least a few offers of purchase, but as soon as they opened up their books, the prospectives backed down, which implies to me that it must be a bit of a mess.

I think Tiscali are scraping by the skin of their teeth.  Generally, the type of users they tend to attract are those that get suckered in by their false 'Unlimited' advertising.  Once in they either dont know much better,.. or if they do then the user is stuck on contract or LLU.   Admittedly there are a few on LLU who do seem to be ok.. but their IPStream and DataStream has always been a bit of a mess.  Unfortunately it seems like their LLU is now heading the same way

[jid]

Kitz didn't you say that Tiscali LLU was provided by Tiscali Wholesale who also provide to others.

Surely with the difference in companies they would manage the bandwidth differently on LLU than on IPStream or DataStream?

I would have thought that upgrading their bandwidth would be easier with their own network?

[jeffbb]

Hi Kitz

Very informative but also very depressing !.I have made up my mind to move at some time in the future ,unfortunately I am trapped with the contract . That said I will not wait till the last minute to leave them . I have given up trying to get anything done about contention as its obvious they just accept it as a fact of life and just waste peoples time with their "check this check that routine ". They are still pushing more and more people onto their already oversubscribed system.

Well at least I hope that having raised this issue ,and with the information you and others have provided it may save a few people from falling into Tiscali's trap.
Go to smile better than
jeff

[kitz]

Kitz didn't you say that Tiscali LLU was provided by Tiscali Wholesale who also provide to others.

Surely with the difference in companies they would manage the bandwidth differently on LLU than on IPStream or DataStream?

I would have thought that upgrading their bandwidth would be easier with their own network?

Yes it is.

But at the end of the days its up to the ISP to purchase more bandwidth whomever their suppliers.

With IPStream, they would need to purchase more central pipes from BT Wholesale.
With datastream, that could 'fall down' in 2 places - they need to either purchase more VPs from BTw and/or more backhaul from Tiscali Wholesale.
With LLU, the need to purchase more backhaul from Tiscali.

From what I can gather purchase of backhaul from Tiscali should be fairly easy, at it can be bought in flexible chunks -  eg if the backhaul is already in then you dont need to purchase more 'pipes' but you could say 'please increase the 300Mb to 350Mb' sort of thing.  On saying that I suppose their could come a point whereby that pipe is well and truly saturated to its capacity and then they have to install another brand new link.  That could cause delays.
With LLU, it will be down to Tiscali Wholesale to make sure that they purchase sufficient back links from the exchange, then up to Tiscali Retail (ISP) to make sure they purchase sufficient PoP links from tiscali wholesale. In a way they are kinda like BTw Centrals other than its a different supplier and the amount is more flexible. - more akin to what BTr (the ISP) purchase from BTw called Central Plus..  or sometimes known as RIN in the case of Plusnet.

[jid]

Thanks for that Kitz, very informative and interesting read

[kitz]

YW

[Floydoid]

I'm not even going to make any comment in this thread, on the grounds that many of the words I would use would get censored.