Problems with network-status
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As looks as if boss off smallworld looks over this forum thought post here.
Would like no if he plans on making the network-status more update as monday night there was net down time at 01.30 witch thought it was my modem at fault, as the lass at call centre said there was no problems that night and then this friday at 12.30 ish the net went down again for over 6 hours witch manage find out that even your web site was down at this time witch shows it was not fault this end.
As if you upgrading service or have problems be nice for us to now. most providers have 24hour number for status and update status on web site.
Also speeds started to drop over past weeks, so was hoping it was you upgrade to you bandwidth with you testing 100mb soon.plus after last night down time speed dropped even more even on basic test with speedtest to your it down by over 20mb
Plus not happy with topfield box ithere every time i asked about it to staff members they first said upgrade would fix it and when this did not happen asked again this week and they said they get some phone. the problem is it goes out sinc on audio and need turning off to fix, witch why i hardly used it as very not impressed with that box as not just it very slow to do any thing with compared to sky box and other cable tv boxs i had chance test at friends.
So was hopping you may be testing a better box . and hope you could get it sorted for me.
Thanks
Would like no if he plans on making the network-status more update as monday night there was net down time at 01.30 witch thought it was my modem at fault, as the lass at call centre said there was no problems that night and then this friday at 12.30 ish the net went down again for over 6 hours witch manage find out that even your web site was down at this time witch shows it was not fault this end.
As if you upgrading service or have problems be nice for us to now. most providers have 24hour number for status and update status on web site.
Also speeds started to drop over past weeks, so was hoping it was you upgrade to you bandwidth with you testing 100mb soon.plus after last night down time speed dropped even more even on basic test with speedtest to your it down by over 20mb
Plus not happy with topfield box ithere every time i asked about it to staff members they first said upgrade would fix it and when this did not happen asked again this week and they said they get some phone. the problem is it goes out sinc on audio and need turning off to fix, witch why i hardly used it as very not impressed with that box as not just it very slow to do any thing with compared to sky box and other cable tv boxs i had chance test at friends.
So was hopping you may be testing a better box . and hope you could get it sorted for me.
Thanks
0
Comments
Hi
I will talk to the tech team about making sure we post details of planned outages better - sorry. We are doing investigation on upgrading the core routers to address the rise in utilisation we have seen since we increased bandwidth for free last November.
It is also in anticipation of the new Motorola CMTS equipment we are awaiting as part of our broadband plans for this year.
The Topfield box does have some software bugs which we are urgently working with Topfield on to improve its performance - particuarly with regard to series link. We are also looking at our 2013 box options but that is a bit off at the moment - at the current time our priority is to get the Topfield box working as it was intended and promised to us.
Kind regards
David
Hi
Apologies, this was planned maintenance in the middle of the night to increase resources on our core routers. The Morecambe work has now been finished for the moment, and you should now be seeing the benefit in terms of faster average speeds. We will be replicating the work in Irvine in the next two weeks.
Thanks
David
Smallworld
Speeds have been really good up to end this year.
Expect drop in speed when lot online but there still after last update no back up to when speeds i expect from 50mb line closer to 30mb when get good speed and 10mb line on bad times.
Hope this get sorted soon.
Hi
We've replaced the core routers in Morecambe which seems to have addressed the issues there (other than the occasional specific house related issues that you get sometimes). This week we are doing the same in Irvine so hopefully you should see an improvement in the next few days.
The increased broadband speeds of last November, and developments such as the free trial for Netflix, have led to network traffic to surge in the past two months which we are now addressing. Over the course of the next year we are expanding our capacity very significantly, and this is the first stage in that.
Kind regards
David
Owner, Smallworld Cable
I thought it was just me (again).... I am seeing the same with bandwidth down in the low teens at times. Hope it's sorted soon as I am struggling to stream HD content in the evening peak on a 50Mbps line which is weird since theoretically it should only need a clean connection at 3.5Mbps. It was like this last year and I don't want a repeat. At least now BT is providing some competition, Killie goes live Q2 on FTTC so that always pushes incumbant providers to go a bit extra as there's now an alternative, as much as I hate BT.
Dave - 100Mbps service, still on for Easter? Any word on pricing or a try before you buy offer for existing customers? I'm interested even if I don't really need it tbh. But then most of the gadgets in my house fall into that one...
Hi
The core routers are in the process of being upgraded (tonight and last night) so you should see an improvement in the next day or so. We also have a lot of new equipment due to be installed in the next 2 months which will increase capacity still further.
The 100Mb is on hold until we get any network congestion resolved, since effective speed rather than headline speed is what counts. And of course BT is competition but our 50Mb is £19 a month unlimited, which I think is very competitive vs BT's fttc proposition.
I am thinking of doubling our upload speeds this September, which I am assuming will be welcomed?
Thanks
David
Smallworld Cable
At £19 I think your 50Mbps is very good value. I was looking today and saw BT are £18 but slightly slower headline speeds and usage cap. I'm happy to pay the extra £1.
As you suggest, quality of service is far more important than headline speeds. I'd be happier having an average of something like 30Mbps than peaks of 50 and troughs in the low teens. I don't do a huge amount of uploading, I work from home alot but our VPN servers have a throttled up/download of about 2Mbps so I'm quite happy where you are now.
I know you mentioned this a while ago about offereing an optional increased upload bandwidth service. I'd rather see this if it's a trade off against download capacity for everyone, I'd imagine for the majority download speeds are more important than up, especially now Netflix and Lovefilm are at war for subscribers.
I look forward to seeing the improvements in the next few days. I'll report back what it looks like at my end of the pipe.
Hi
Thanks for the comments. Over the last year or two in talking to customers I have come to the view that quality and consistency are the key. So latency, jitter and consistently high speed are critical.
Whilst we are keen on launching 100Mb plus speeds - and the network can handle it - my first priority is to ensure that people get their advertised speeds as often as is practically possible...given that uncontended guaranteed speeds are business products and many times more expensive than our home tariffs.
We have just bought a lot of new equipment which will be phased in this year to increase our capacity 2-4x across our different areas. The work we are doing between now and Easter will improve real-life speeds by reducing congestion in peak times on the network. We will then look to double upload speeds this Autumn - probably in September 2012.
After this we will turn our attention to download speeds, with a probable doubling of speeds either this Autumn or possibly Spring 2013- tbc
Thanks
David
Smallworld Cable
Now all we need is making use of some of this SWC owned empty duct network in Carlisle to increase coverage
Just tried to watch some HD content on Lovefilm, Youtube and BBC iPlayer and none of them are what you'd call fluid, I can't get more than a minute of viewing between buffering.
Sure I know speedtest.net isn't gospel but I reckon it's a reasonable indication. Connecting to Morecambe I can get mid 20s down and 5 up. Connecting to ALL servers outside of Morecambe I am struggling to get more than 4 or 5 down, up is solid at 5.
Obviously something is not working...
Hi
There is still further work to do on routing, and some fine tuning. This will fix the issues you describe
Thanks
David
Smallworld Cable
Smallworldmedias twitter feed mentions maintenance between 12-6am which was posted 21st Feb. Here is hoping that the maintenance improves streaming, as of late streaming from BBC iPlayer/YouTube/SkyPlayer has been dreadful. As mentioned before attempting to watch in HD is pointless.
Personally speaking as a long time Smallworld customer in Irvine for as long as the service has been offered I'm willing to see if improvements to the network over the next few months see any improvement on the reliability of the service before considering moving over to a more stable, albeit slower, ADSL2 connection; may even try out BEs line bonding see how that goes.
Fingers crossed, had little to complain about until the past few months.
Hi
The last planned maintenance was on Tuesday night...since then I would expect things to be better. Can you check on speedtest.net and see how things are now?
Thanks
David
Smallworld Cable
Hi David, thanks for the prompt reply. Just ran a few speedtests and the throughput is good, reported 22Mbps/7.9Mbps. What I did notice from previous tests was that the jitter graph has less dropouts than previous tests on the download. The reported upload speed seems higher due to upward spikes but as of yet I haven't performed a real world test to see how accurate this figure is.
So far, so good. The real test will be at the weekend when my Dad entertains my nephew with Thomas the tank engine on YouTube all day long while I'm watching space documentaries at the same time.
I'll report back to this thread in the next few days and let you know how I'm getting on.
Thanks,
Will Brown.
Did manage to watch Reymond Blanc in HD on iPlayer with only a few buffering interruptions. TBH I'm expecting none at all, otherwise there's no point paying extra for cable. I'm afraid to say ADSL was more stable. So I'd say things have improved but not enormously. I'll need to try Love Film at the weekend, that used to be a disaster between 6 and 11pm.
We're getting a different read on downloading files via newsgroups (where we see the full 50Mb) and on the speedtest site via Morecambe. Our peering traffic tends to go that route, so we think there may be something not quite right in the routing tables from Irvine to Morecambe on the new routers we've installed. We're doing some planned maintenance on Monday morning (3am to 6am) to investigate...
Thanks
David
Smallworld Cable
yesturday last for 4 hours and even was not working right this morning.
Plus any luck on topfield as every day now box is going out since on the voice.
been fibreoptic broadband user with smallworld for a few years, I was on the 10 meg speed, then got put up to 20meg for a few pounds extra which was good.
I then got put up to 30meg when they done away with 20meg pricing which I thought, fantastic more speed at no extra cost.
ever since that upgrade things have never been the same, very slow speeds being received at under 10 meg as little as 3 and 4 meg, I was never one for checking upload speeds as I dont upload much so I thought the .98 I was getting was standard.
on making calls to the very pleasant girls at customer services I found that I should have been getting 3meg upload, they said they would pass on to technical team and someone would phone me and for the time being they would drop me to 25meg speed as that seemed to be more stable, and if i could send my speedtest results into the address blah blah blah @ smallworldcable.com
never received call back and after about a week of sending in the speedtests gave them a phone again, the girl couldnt see the test results and told me I should send them in to blah blah @ smallworldmedia.com
which over the next 3 days I did.
called them back and the girl said the results had been passed onto technical team and that they were looking into it.
a few days later and my speeds are really frustrating me, I get on the phone again and the girl this time arranges for engineer to come out in 2 days time and gets me to switch off, reset etc, she is keeping me on the line on hold as she speaks to the technical team, 30mins of holding and getting nowhere she says to me that I should hang up and that the technical guy would phone me back, (he didnt!!!!)
engineer comes to house and checks connection with his laptop, all seems fine, he orders a 50meg cable modem, which gets fitted 2 days later.
Ive got my speed back up to 30 meg and my upload up to 3mb, im all happy, but not for long.
back on the phone a wee while later and request that they drop my speed to 10 as i am so frustrated with it, I get a call from technical team a short time later. unfortunately I was not in the house so the tech guy arranged to call back when i was in the house.
explained the whole situation to the tech guy and he said he would work on the fault and give me a call back with an update the next day.
the tech guy called back and got me to check my connection, which was sitting at 20 meg and I am paying for 10 meg. I was ok with that.
so now its been about a month and i am still getting rubbish speeds, not all the time though, but I find that when I use the personal hotspot on my phone and connect through that I am getting a smoother service and a faster upload speed than what I am getting with SMALLWORLD!!!!
so I want 30 meg and want it nice and smooth, I want to click on a page and it opens there and then as opposed to thinking about it and then when it does open the page is all fragmented and weird and has to be reloaded, I dont think thats too much to ask.
Im in troon area, and am so frustrated with SMALLWORLD.
With my 50Mbps line I cannot do any of the following between about 7 and 10pm:
-stream BBC iPlayer in HD
-watch LoveFilm
-view You Tube in HD
-get more than about 10 or 15Mbps download direct from Smallworld server on speedtest.net
I'm sick fed up and been through this last year where the fault was my pc/my laptop/my tv/my cables/I didn't have cat 6*
*delete as appropriate.
Stangely I can do all of the above during the day with no problems at all. As much as I hate to say it roll on BT Infinity.
I just want a working product. I'd be happy on 30Mbps if I can get that most of day. Right now double figues is a struggle in the evening peaks.
They did a check on my modem and arranged an engineer visit for today.
Guy arrived and spent a good hour outside at junction box but never came to the house so didnt get an update on what was up .
Recieved call from technical support to say he has escalated the matter further for whatever he found. Also said they are doing planned maintainance tonight to address speeds in scotland.
Will give it a few days and call again for an update as its definately starting to become a problem, especially when im paying for 30Mbps and only getting 5 to 10Mbps down and 1Mbps some days. Could get they kind of speeds for free on adsl with sky.
2% Packet loss
Plugged straight into modem and confirmed on 2 laptops.
Downloads are slow as hell and having trouble streaming iplayer in hd if anything else is using bandwidth.
Seriously thinking of getting my BT line back in and moving back to ADSL.
Smallworld has seriously went downhill.
Hi
We're well aware that there is an issue since we upgraded everybody last November, but it is difficult to pinpoint. The network is showing plenty of capacity, and our private speedtest site is showing really good speeds, but the Morecambe speed test site is not from Irvine (we're looking at the link from Irvine to morecambe, which also carries the peering traffic). We have done a number of things to relieve congestion, and are continuing to upgrade further (we're quadrupling capacity over the next 3 months).
The situation has improved a lot in some areas, but there is more work to be done, which we are on with. It is a key priority to get this fixed, and we are investing a lot of time and money to get it sorted.
I'll keep you posted.
Kind regards
David
Owner, Smallworld Cable
speedtest is accurate as I know when I have got good speed, and then when its slow (almost all the time) then I need to go do a speedtest and that just confirms it, using various servers including morcambe.
quadrupling capacity, if your already showing plenty of capacity just now then im not holding my breathe that quadrupling it will help!!
regarding the issues, why dont you come clean when customers call regarding problems, all you get told is that everything is fine and no one else in the area is complaining!
I would appreciate a full report on the situation, as I am and it looks like others are, getting tired of waiting for results, all the promises of we are working on this and that, and carrying out maintenance here and there in the hope that it magically fixes something just doesnt seem professional.
past few days Ive been down at 4 and 5 Mbps download, anyway thanks for replying on this forum, It is appreciated and makes me feel like someone is listening, but the feeling that someone is listening can only last so long if there are no results.
Andy