Reply to: Bizarre broadband problem

[AtW]

I have business Telewest cable account - they are unlimited on consumer grade connections, and certainly so on business one, pricey but well worth it.

[hyperD]

I use BT Broadband business 8Mb - not had any problems with dropout or restrictions so far. Have static IP and use a Draytek router.

Bit concerned if BT would restrict bandwidth useage on business account, not that I would ever exceed any limits with my clients, unlike you Mr C and SKA.

[AtW]

I think business account is actually fine - I had it for 3 months and I used it pretty much up to the max, ~2 Mbits all the time, I then canned it as it was trial. Careful though - they have some "light" business accounts, but proper one (I paid 29.99 for it) should be fine, a loopwhole IMO, not sure how long will it last, they probably afraid of bad publicity that may affect businesses so let hoggers do it.

[hyperD]

Is that business as well? I hope not, I've got a porn empire to protect.

[AtW]

BT now kicks out people who exceed their ridiculously low traffic limit on "unlimited" broadband connections. Swines.

[hyperD]

PS Except from hyperd - typical process engineer!

Hey xogg - you know us process engineers, always fiddling with our equipment at any opportunity!

Hope you get it sorted.

Another thought - if you are on BT Home for instance, the contention ratio is around 50:1 for the bandwidth compared with business which is 20:1. In other words, evenings when the kids are grabbing the bandwidth it may cause problems?

[AtW]

Noise is also Signal.

[DaveB]

Signal To Noise ratio. How much the modem can hear of the data over the background noise. In the evenings / night the SNR will raise (its just a natural thing) so when this raises the modem has a harder time hearing the data that is sent.

In the case of CUK the SNR is bloody awfull

[sasguru]

Hey! some sensible comments!!! That makes a change!
PPS What's an snr sockpuppet?

Just to redress the balance.
I'm guessing snr sockpuppet if the father of jnr sockpuppet. Or perhaps the spanish version, senhor sockpuppet.

[Sockpuppet]

PPS What's an snr sockpuppet?

Signal To Noise ratio. How much the modem can hear of the data over the background noise. In the evenings / night the SNR will raise (its just a natural thing) so when this raises the modem has a harder time hearing the data that is sent.

[VectraMan]

I had similar sort of wierd tulip a couple of weeks back: it'd be okay, then some sites would be slow, others would return not found instantly. I was about to resort to Pipex tech support, but tried my laptop out and everything worked fine, but pinging from the laptop to the desktop and vice versa was flakey.

I realized eventually that the aerial was loose on the back of my PCs wireless card. Not enough for it to report that the wireless connection had failed, but obviously enough for a lot of packets to go AWOL.

[xoggoth]

Hey! some sensible comments!!! That makes a change! Cheers chaps, have a look at that tonight.


PS Except from hyperd - typical process engineer!
PPS What's an snr sockpuppet?

[AtW]

Install this: http://www.simpledns.com/

And put your localhost as DNS server in TCP/IP config, if all becomes quick then it was definately a DNS server issue.

[DaveB]

Fine until about 7pm and then utterly useless, almost every site gives not found, although CUK always works and my own contractor site page does sometimes. Possibly cos' they have few or no pictures so are small?

Sometimes it seems better for a very short while if I reboot the modem although mostly it makes no difference. What I can't follow is that I get not found instantly on sites, it is not timing out.

Will ring bb suppliers tomorrow. Any other ideas what might be wrong?

Cheers

Sounds like a DNS issue rather than connectivity.

Try running nslookup from the command line and see what happens. Try pinging a couple of known IP addresses as well. If they respond ok but pinging the corresponding domain name times out then it's definately a DNS issue.

[Sockpuppet]

Fine until about 7pm and then utterly useless, almost every site gives not found, although CUK always works and my own contractor site page does sometimes. Possibly cos' they have few or no pictures so are small?

Sometimes it seems better for a very short while if I reboot the modem although mostly it makes no difference. What I can't follow is that I get not found instantly on sites, it is not timing out.

Will ring bb suppliers tomorrow. Any other ideas what might be wrong?

Cheers

Whats the SNR like? At night the background noise rises so if you are borderline could result in a dodgy connection.