NTL users in Nottingham/Mansfield area and LDs

[Svartmetall]

How many other people are having this? I know myself, Cainez (a guildie who posts as Draypor here), Kagato and some others, all NTL users, are having this problem. Basically we're getting huge lag and then going linkdead all the time - running Pingplotter shows constant (as in, 24/7) spikes from the 3 NTL servers who the first part of our connection to Excal. The game is completely unplayable at the moment for those of us with this issue, you can't do anything at all - just now I was in Otherworld with 2 guildies, and went LD 3 times in 5 minutes. Last night I had been having a great time on my Thane around the Alb frontier, and after 4 LDs in less than 15 minutes had to give up in disgust. Utterly hopeless trying to get anything done in game (bye-bye tonight's planned ML action, for starters, all the gaming stuff I had planned for this weekend has been completely ruined), and incredibly annoying.

Yesterday I was talking to Cainez on vent when there was a massive spike from the fourth-hop NTL server, and every subsequent step on the route said "ERR"...and guess what? Right then, Cainez went LD, which clinches it for me. Every time I've gone LD, I've fired up Pingplotter again, and guess what? Massive spikes from the NTL servers again. We know it's NTL's servers causing this, even though they claim when they run ping tests to these servers that the results are fine. Running tracert in the command window has shown lag times of up to 450 ms on the third hop, and sometimes "destination net unreachable" on the third or fourth hop too.

So, if you're on NTL in this area or near to it, and having this terrible LD problem, sign in here to let the rest of us know it's happening to you too (strength in numbers and all that) and make damn sure you phone NTL to let them know. We can't let this go on much longer, as it's completely ruining the game...they've got to fix the problem, and they'll do it faster if we make them do it faster by hounding them until they do.

 

[Svartmetall]

 

[Brite]

lol thats hardly that bad compared to what ive had to put up with

oh and btw with ping plotter u can save images using that ;p

 

[Castus]

had the same problems going ld hell of alot but i thought it was something wrong with my wireless network.signal strength keeps dropping on all pcs..rang ntl for help and they say everythings fine their end(im in central Nottm)

 

[Svartmetall]

lol thats hardly that bad compared to what ive had to put up with

Look at step 5 on the tracert.

 

[Svartmetall]

had the same problems going ld hell of alot but i thought it was something wrong with my wireless network.signal strength keeps dropping on all pcs..rang ntl for help and they say everythings fine their end(im in central Nottm)

Run Pingplotter for a while, see if those first three NTL servers keep showing constant spikes.

 

[Kagato]

I have no idea how to interpret the numbers but this is one of the 3 samples I got:

Target Name: N/A
IP: 193.252.123.33
Date/Time: 15/10/2005 16:05:12 to 15/10/2005 16:08:54

Hop Sent Err PL% Min Max Avg Host Name / [IP]
1 11 0 0.0 6 11 7 [10.153.31.254]
2 11 0 0.0 8 122 28 nott-t2cam1-b-v110.inet.ntl.com
3 11 0 0.0 7 205 49 nott-t2core-b-ge-wan74.inet.ntl.com
4 11 7 63.6 8 11 9 nth-bb-b-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.37]
5 11 7 63.6 9 28 16 nth-bb-a-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.117]
6 11 7 63.6 21 28 23 so-2-2-0-0.loncr2.london.opentransit.net
7 3 0 0.0 21 23 22 po3-0.loncr3.london.opentransit.net
8 11 7 63.6 20 131 49 po7-0.pascr3.paris.opentransit.net
9 11 7 63.6 21 49 28 po9-0.pascr1.paris.opentransit.net
10 11 7 63.6 20 48 28 wanadooportails-1.gw.opentransit.net
11 11 7 63.6 22 30 24 [193.252.117.254]
12 11 7 63.6 21 23 22 [193.252.122.10]
13 11 7 63.6 22 32 25 [193.252.123.33]

Basically soon as it hits the NTL routers in Notts it goes downhill from there.

So far I have spoken to one half decent customer service guy out of the lot of them, the rest havent got a brain cell between them.

 

[Svartmetall]

Was just online, reduced to standing at the SCing table because the risk of LDing means I can't take part in anything meaningful. Guess what? Yet another HUGE lagspike, and Cainez got kicked out of the game again. 30 seconds later I LDd as well.

It is 100% certain NTL's servers causing this crap and I am going to shout at them tomorrow, this is totally unacceptable.

 

[Shagrat]

bummer

Hope it gets fixed, I could here how frustrated you were getting on vent the other night

 

[beags]

Myself and Cilit both on NTL both getting the same shitty problem!

Had same prob with em about 6-7 months ago! Tried making out it was my computer and shit!! NTL are just arse full stop!

 

[Svartmetall]

Right, so take tracert and Pingplotter logs and get NTL to fix it.

 

[Starwind]

Same shit here.

But on the website it says they are doing national upgrades from 12th of October, and are aware of the problems what people are getting now.

Same shit everware, that is nothing gets fixed at the weekends in a hurry.

Squeeling youth!!!!!

 

[Starwind]

Keep track on it svarty here :

http://www.ntl-isp.ntl.com/ServiceStatus/

 

[Svartmetall]

NTLowned: these 3 were taken within 5 minutes of each other. The first of these kicked my guildie offline again, the third kicked me offline.

Conclusive proof.

 

[Kagato]

I've been using NTL for about 10 years when they first started, however if they don't fix this soon or at least aknowledge the problem them in seriously going to look at other providers.

Anyone know good alternatives in the Notts area? Tiscali and Bulldog are the only ones that spring to mind.

 

[Naffets]

I've been using NTL for about 10 years when they first started, however if they don't fix this soon or at least aknowledge the problem them in seriously going to look at other providers.

Anyone know good alternatives in the Notts area? Tiscali and Bulldog are the only ones that spring to mind.

Avoid bulldog like the plague and the same with Tiscali. See if Be are providing 24mbit in your area soon. (www.bethere.co.uk)

 

[Kagato]

Hmmm can't get Be here.


Sod it, lets all go hold a protest at the Salutations Inn and piss off the Vamp players.

 

[Naetha]

Bulldog is run by Cable and Wireless = NTL so only stay with them if you want the same great customer service.

I'd go for Pipex (been with them for 4 years, never had any problems) or someone like Wanadoo (even if they are teh devil)

 

[Aeris]

like i said in another post, i called NTL 9am saturday morning with this problem and when the guy finally admitted to it being there problem (after basically telling me it was my comp) he said they are aware of the problem, and it would take approximately 2 weeks to fix....

what gets me is the lack of consistency with there customer support. my uncle called about his and they said they have no problem, its his modem/pc/firewall. WHY WONT THEY ACKWOLEDGE THE PROBLEM !!

sooo....pipex anyone?

 

[Aeris]

Sod it, lets all go hold a protest at the Salutations Inn and piss off the Vamp players.

ill be there !

you buying?

 

[luribeauty]

never thought i would see a thread with mansfield in it been inactive quite a bit lately but other day i did get some huge lag spikes and went ld a few times.

 

[Himse]

Claranet!

www.clara.net

 

[Castus]

That the Salu Inn on Maid Marion way? Nottingham Rox

 

[cog]

Been having exactly the same problems, emailed Customer Support earlier today with several pingplotter screens showing the same results as yours Svart.

 

[Starwind]

Think im going to go with Coldseal windows.

Sings .... Coldseal windows FTW 22 11 55!!!

 

[Kagato]

The good ol Salu Inn home of weird caves and even weirder vamp roleplayers !

Good thing about all this is I finally got round to using my freebie cinema ticket for the showcase to catch a late night screening of Nightwatch, cool film

 

[censi]

I use clara net.

They used to be the rolls royce of ISP with real good customer service.

They always had superior customer service but were a bit more expensive.

lately though they gone done the pan imo.

--------

We all get connection problems from time to time and going to ISPs and explaning what you are seeing is always funny. You have to convince them there is a problem.

Take big captures on ping plotter and leave it running for days. What you will typically see is that your connectivity problem always occurs during peak internet traffic times. When you get this its usually a bandwith issue with their routers. ISP's are constantly trying to save network costs and chopping bits on their network away and moving things around. Also give them a start date roughly when this happened and ask them to confirm with you they made no changes to their network around that time.

It also helps if you can give the router name were u are seeing the problem occuring. Which is the first one in the hop to stop responding to the poll on pingplotter. Call their customer support and explain. If they are dick useless and dont know what a router is. Do a whois on the router address and call the adminisrative contact of the router. Sometimes u get lucky and get a contact for technical people that understand troubleshooting router problems.

 

[Dantares]

Think I read somewhere that NTL have, if not the worst, then one of the worst customer services in the whole country so I am not all that surprised at all. Live close to Kagato and getting similar problems. No ping plotter graph to show, but pretty obvious that we share the same problem.

 

[meerclar]

about 4 months ago i was having the exact same probs.
my pingplots looked almost identical to the ones shown in this thread except i am in northants so the server ip`s were different.
i called NTHell and someone with a poor grasp of the English language and a book of stock answers tried to tell me that my problems were due to spyware on my comp. i tried to explain to the commonwealth cousin in customer support that my probs were starting at the first ntl router i encountered but he seemed to have no idea of how a tracerout worked or even what one was.
i bitched at him and demanded that i speak to someone who knew their job and eventually got a chap named Hugh who listened to what i had to say and then checked things out for himself and confirmed that ntl had a problem.
the next day late in the afternoon everything was back to normal.
my conclusion is that the customer service you get from ntl is all down to how lucky you are in getting the right csr.

 

[Gear]

Problem with customer service is that with 6 quid an hour you can't really find proper personel for it. I've been in the NTL offices in east london in Blackheath and it's not really a place that would "inspire" work ethics.

In 98 I was using clara.net and had nps with them at all, but then again I was just using internet for e-mail and browsing.