Blow Dog

Ive had ADSL for over a year now, but since they have installed the Modem instead of the network card and router, I have have loads of problems. Almost every Sunday night (typical coz no tech supposrt is around) the service goes down. I.E. always gives my false messages in the status bar (Opening page, when it clearly isnt! a connection hasnt even been made)

I am pretty pissed off too mate, the service is **** poor and in the words of the instalation engineer that came to my house to upgrade my equipment :

<B>'The tech support team don't know their ***** from their elbows, there are 3 levels of tech support, you need to get put through to the top level otherwise you WILL NOT solve your problem, all they do is go through a check list of possible problems and if your problem is not listed, they can't help.'</B>

Bunch of **** mate

Cem

[This message has been edited by Blow Dog (edited 01 March 2001).]

Christian_Driver

I've had ADSL for about 3 months now (the 500k home account), and I have also had some problems.

I originally signed up with BT Openworld, but the customer service I received from them was utter sh*te. Eventually Freeserve offered me an installation date 2 months before BT so I went with them.

It seems that Freeserve have also been having problems with BT. All Freeserve customers had emails (copies below) regarding an outage that lasted for anything between a day or two... Seems Freeserve aren't happy, and are pushing BT to agree some Service Level Agreements.

My experiences mirror yours. Sometimes the service is available (and when it works it is good), and other times inexplicabally not! I've phoned Freeserve customer support, and quite often they don't know what is going on (i.e. they haven't been notified of work by BT). A few calls later, and you find out that BT have been fiddling with the exchange and (1) either are still working on it, or (2) cocked up the ADSL stuff...

My feelings are that BT are a bunch of idiots and most of the problems seem to be associated with ****-ups at their end. I guess things can only improve as BT gain more experience with this technology...

Cheers,

Christian

+++++

FREESERVE EMAIL 1:

Dear customer

Current outage

There has been a FreeservePlus service outage for most of our users since yesterday afternoon (Monday 26 February).

We are working with BT to do everything that we can to rectify the problem as soon as possible. The fault is network side rather than relating to individual user
connections.

Once the problem is fixed we will e-mail all users so that anyone using dial-up in place of ADSL is made aware.

We apologise for the inconvenience we know this will have caused you.

You are likely to experience difficulties in getting through to our customer service team due to the wide spread nature of the fault.

Unfortunately the team can't add anything to the information above at the moment (0870 6000 523).

BT upgrade outage this weekend:

This weekend BT are upgrading part of the network and there will be a ten minute outage for each user while this takes place. The outages will happen at different times for different areas.

Yours faithfully


The FreeservePlus Team

+++++

FREESERVE EMAIL 2:

Dear customers,

We apologise for the outage suffered by many of you over the last day.

If you have been using dial-up in place of ADSL the FreeservePlus service is now up and running again.

We are working with BT to try and ensure that outages like this don't occur.

In addition we are lobbying hard for BT to commit to a service level agreement.

Once again we sincerely apologise for this interruption to your service.

Yours faithfully


The FreeservePlus Team

XRS

You guys should post a message here:

GCollier

I'm trying to gauge whether I'm alone in the ADSL problems I've been having or not. I had ADSL installed last November, all fine until January. Then I had 4 days of complete outage. BT insisted that there was no problem with the exchange, then somehow after many phonecalls found a problem there and fixed it.

For the last week I've been able to connect to ADSL, but have varying periods of outage when I cannot access any websites. I just get the "connection with server could not be established" message, then after a while (maybe 5 mins, maybe an hour) everything is working again (though usually not for long). All the time the connection stays up. During these problem periods I cannot trace route or even ping any IP address. This happens from both of my computers, so I don't think the problem is there.

My ISP (Nildram) have run reverse traces to my IP address, and have found they can do so even when all my equipment at home is DISCONNECTED. This tells me that the problem lies at the BT exchange, which Nildram agree with. My first thought was somebody else had been assigned the same IP address, but Nildram say this is almost impossible.

The people at BT who Nildram have to deal with seem to be absolutely $hite - apparently they don't even know what an IP address is!!! Despite Nildram insisting its an exchange problem, BT are insisting they have to send an "engineer" (I use the term loosely) around to my house, which means time off work and lost money.

I know 4 people with ADSL (including me) and 3 out of 4 have had problems, including 3 weeks downtime for one person. I'd like to get an idea if other people are having similar problems. If anyone can shed any light on the above problem I have at the moment, that'd be great. Also, do I have and comeback for compensation from BT if (should I say when) they discover that the fault is at the exchange and the engineer visit is pointless?

Overall, I'm pretty pi$$ed off with the whole thing. I spent nearly £1000 on ADSL installation and a years subscription, and am starting to wish I'd just gone for a modem/surftime arrangement instead.

Gary.

sgould

Like many of us on this site, I am in IT. Most people in IT I know, would not touch ASDL at all. The old story, wait for a while till it settles in, or in this case, wait till you can go to anyone else but BT.
You will find that you have problems almost every weekend. BT will deny this, but the system just cant cope.

GCollier

Thanks for all the replies so far, it seems I am not alone.

What annoys me most is BT's seeming bloody incompetence. Speaking to Nildram, the reason BT "need" to come around is to "resync my line with the exchange". According to my Alcatal Modem info, the 2 solid green lights indicate that its fully sync'd anyway. The support guy at Nildram says that line syncing isn't the problem, but seeing as BT won't do anything else until they've done this pointless site visit, both me and Nildram are pretty powerless.

I've found this useful site that most of you probably know about anyway

Chris L

It does sound to me that we are going through exactly what they did in the States. There was an initial burst of excitement, which lead to a surge of requests for ADSL connections. The service provider then realised that they didn't have the capacity on their network to route all the data and then go through a hurried program of upgrades (any of this sounding familiar to you?). It ended up at one point where the ADSL connection speeds were worse than a 56K analogue modem!!

As regards the problems you have experienced, these are almost certainly at the exchange (the bullsh*t about resyncing lines isn't even worth commenting on - ADSL is either on or off it is as simple as that - line quality will ultimatley effect the speed you get, but you shouldn't need your line 'resynced').

The biggest issue for ADSL is when it reaches the exchange and enters the DSLAM, which multiplexes the incoming DSL data lines onto the backbone ATM network. If the DSLAM is overloaded, then you will experience congestion problems similar to those that you see on a congested LAN segment (i.e. unable to connect, dropped packets, collisions, slow connections etc)

What is also very annoying is that DSL technology is not new - it has been used in various forms on the carrier networks for the better part of 15 years. The ADSL home service is new however and it does sound that BT's technical support is next to useless.

I was considering replacing my ISDN line with ADSL - think I might wait now...

Chris

ptholt

I've had adsl for about 8 months now, the only problem i had was with BT not my isp (freedom to surf), BT were slow, unwilling to help and generally a pain in the you know where.

But after the first month were we had probs, its working swimmingly now and have had no probs whatsover.

Its in use 5-8 hours a day plus loads more at weekend.

GCollier

I had the BT engineer around this morning, who did the stuff I knew he would do first - change the "manta-ray" modem, redo the line test, everything fine.

He then starts liaising with people at the broadband support centre, running some routing tests. We unplug my equipment, they can still trace route to my IP address. It turns out the bl00dy ISP (Nildram) have assigned the same IP address to someone else as well. The broadband support guys even tell me the username of the other user.

I phone Nildram, they deny it to start with, then phone me back admitting it is "a routing problem at our end". This is extremely annoying because I suggested the duplicate-IP address thing to them on Tuesday, but they just discounted it as "almost impossible".

So, my service should be back up when I get home tonight, but in the meantime I've lost half a days pay (yes I am an IT contractor, and yes I can afford it, but that's not really the point).

Gary.

GCollier

Duplicate post.

[This message has been edited by GCollier (edited 02 March 2001).]

dsmith

GCollier

I trust you mentally apologised to all those BT people you suggested were not doing their jobs properly when in fact it was your ISP at fault

Having worked on the customer and carrier side of large scale Networks (not ADSL) I understand the frustrations. One of the problems with support people is that as soon as someone is properly trained and shows any sort of ability to understand and fix problems, they become more employable and rapidly move jobs up the support Ladder away form the front line.

Al least you get to try ADSL. I work out at Adastral Park (large BT research/development centre) and live just a few miles away. When are our local exchanges getting ADSL ? No seriously if you know tell me 'cos no-one else does

Dean

GCollier

Dean,

My sense of humour is slowly returning, but I haven't apologised to BT yet This could easily have been sorted out quickly, and without an engineer to home callout. BT would, apparently, only follow up the problem if an engineer came out. What was very annoying though was that I waited in for half the morning, the engineer called me, asked me to describe the symptoms, then asked if he still needed to come out because it didn't sound like a problem at my house, GRRRRRRR.

Gary.