Flanders
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2003
- Messages
- 19,334
- Reaction score
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Can anyone help me or give a suggestion because I'm very near the end of my tether with this.
Telkom claims to guarantee 1mbit/sec download speed. Haha. What a TOTAL lie. I had a techie come over today (I've had so many of them come over it's a wonder I don't know them all on first name basis) because, after many calls and callouts, my ADSL is still a shambles.
My once perfectly-working ADSL has now become nothing but a source of stress and pure irritation. I simply cannot use it anymore for such luxuries as gaming or even for far less demanding things like, I don't know, checking my email...paying bills...you know...
Half the time the call center people and technicians are helpful and polite. The rest of the time they're rude and act as though I'm nothing but a thorn in their side for demanding what I pay for. They come up with every excuse under the sun as to why my line could be acting up (it's your router, it's this, it's that). I'm sure these excuses work wonders on the totally non-internet-savvy members of the public but when I let them know that it just won't fly with me they don't seem to like it very much.
Here's the deal. My ADSL (4mb) started doing this thing where it would become unresponsive to the point where it appeared as though I was capped (but wasn't). If I left a page loading for long enough, it would eventually load - sometimes after 20 minutes or more. Again, just to clarify - plenty of bandwidth in reserve. I could see the full effect when doing my antivirus updates or downloading email. I would be getting in the region of 100-150 BYTES per second downstream. I had a hunch this was caused by rain or moisture in the works somewhere because every time it rained this seemed to happen without fail. I'm not so sure anymore about this theory and I'll explain why further down.
My other problem is intermittency. This line USED to perform flawlessly. On speedtest.net, my ping was a constant 26ms (in fact, that hasn't changed) and I would routinely clock 3.5-3.75mbit/sec downstream. Local downloads would often hit 420KB/sec. My only "desync" would occur when my daily IP was assigned. Now I get disconnected many times in a day. I have a filter on the telephone. Can these become faulty by the way?
When a techie came the other day to fix the slow problem (which he didn't), he took it upon himself to drop my line speed to 2mb without my consent. I was cheesed off when I found out later, but in theory it should've helped stability on the line so I thought I'd give it a few days and see what happened. Well, nothing happened, especially in the sense that data certainly wasn't flowing through my line with any sort of regularity. The line was as intermittent as before and the snail-on-ritalin effect was still occuring.
I phoned Telkom and told them to put my line back to 4mb because their methods hadn't helped so I figured I may as well get an erratic 4mb as opposed to a just-as-erratic 2mb. At the same time I logged another fault and requested another techie. After the call, I checked my port status on the router and it said something to the effect of 511 / 2560 kbps'. WTF?!
So, today I got another guy in. I went through the whole story (again) and spent an hour following this guy around trying to track down the problem. He admitted that there was a problem on the line. Just what it was I have no idea because he couldn't seem to tell me (as helpful as he attempted to be). Eventually he was sure he'd located the problem which happened to be a defunct piece of extension sitting under the rafters. He said that "the data was getting confused" by this piece of wiring and that removing it should remedy the problem. Another yarn being spun no doubt but I was simply trying to be optimistic. I tested immediately thereafter before his departure and, NATURALLY, everything appeared to be 100%. He phoned HQ or the zoo or wherever it was he phoned to make sure the port was back on 4mb. They assured him it was.
I checked my port settings on the router after he left and what do I see? 511 / 3072 kbps. Again, a resounding WTF?! Where's the ol' 4096?! Anyway, that was the least of my problems because sure enough, at 6pm I was hit by the dreaded slow-down followed by a flurry of desync. Using the internet just became impossible. Even when it reconnected, it was transferring BYTES/sec (even minute) as opposed to KB. From 6pm until 9:30-10pm it was like this and then suddenly it was back to normal. Normal speed and stable.
So here's why I'm starting to doubt my previous moisture-in-the-works theory. This BS seems to be worse over weekends and early evenings. Now I'm thinking that my exchange is simply overloaded. Peak times when everyone gets home from work is when the trouble starts. On weekends when everyone is at home, the trouble is persistent. Could this be the case? I don't know but I have !%&#ing had it, that much I can tell you! Getting some real help from these guys is like trying to draw blood from a stone. You have to constantly check up on their service and babysit them every step of the way or you'll be shafted.
I was making some light banter with today's techie and I asked about the quantity of faults in my area. He said my area was generally ok but that Lonehill -JHB (not far from me) is terrible. When I asked why, he told me that the infrastructure is bad. WHY?? Why is the infrastructure bad in one of the most developed residential areas on the entire continent?! What is it that we pay these astronomical bills for? (rhetorical question)
This serves to back up my suspected claim that my own exchange is overloaded and T-scum, despite their "we guarantee you 1Mbit" promise, couldn't care a damn to upgrade the infrastructure when it is either outdated or overloaded by PAYING customers.
Sorry for the essay here, guys. But really, I feel the urge to vent and to express my problems so that maybe, by some slim chance, someone can relate similar issues or offer a solution. Is there by chance some helpful software that could monitor the line and give solid feedback by means of a graph for example so that I can shove it in the next techie's face with facts and figures? I could print out my router's system log but that would take a redwood forest's worth of paper to illustrate 24 hours worth of @&%-up on my line.
Telkom claims to guarantee 1mbit/sec download speed. Haha. What a TOTAL lie. I had a techie come over today (I've had so many of them come over it's a wonder I don't know them all on first name basis) because, after many calls and callouts, my ADSL is still a shambles.
My once perfectly-working ADSL has now become nothing but a source of stress and pure irritation. I simply cannot use it anymore for such luxuries as gaming or even for far less demanding things like, I don't know, checking my email...paying bills...you know...
Half the time the call center people and technicians are helpful and polite. The rest of the time they're rude and act as though I'm nothing but a thorn in their side for demanding what I pay for. They come up with every excuse under the sun as to why my line could be acting up (it's your router, it's this, it's that). I'm sure these excuses work wonders on the totally non-internet-savvy members of the public but when I let them know that it just won't fly with me they don't seem to like it very much.
Here's the deal. My ADSL (4mb) started doing this thing where it would become unresponsive to the point where it appeared as though I was capped (but wasn't). If I left a page loading for long enough, it would eventually load - sometimes after 20 minutes or more. Again, just to clarify - plenty of bandwidth in reserve. I could see the full effect when doing my antivirus updates or downloading email. I would be getting in the region of 100-150 BYTES per second downstream. I had a hunch this was caused by rain or moisture in the works somewhere because every time it rained this seemed to happen without fail. I'm not so sure anymore about this theory and I'll explain why further down.
My other problem is intermittency. This line USED to perform flawlessly. On speedtest.net, my ping was a constant 26ms (in fact, that hasn't changed) and I would routinely clock 3.5-3.75mbit/sec downstream. Local downloads would often hit 420KB/sec. My only "desync" would occur when my daily IP was assigned. Now I get disconnected many times in a day. I have a filter on the telephone. Can these become faulty by the way?
When a techie came the other day to fix the slow problem (which he didn't), he took it upon himself to drop my line speed to 2mb without my consent. I was cheesed off when I found out later, but in theory it should've helped stability on the line so I thought I'd give it a few days and see what happened. Well, nothing happened, especially in the sense that data certainly wasn't flowing through my line with any sort of regularity. The line was as intermittent as before and the snail-on-ritalin effect was still occuring.
I phoned Telkom and told them to put my line back to 4mb because their methods hadn't helped so I figured I may as well get an erratic 4mb as opposed to a just-as-erratic 2mb. At the same time I logged another fault and requested another techie. After the call, I checked my port status on the router and it said something to the effect of 511 / 2560 kbps'. WTF?!
So, today I got another guy in. I went through the whole story (again) and spent an hour following this guy around trying to track down the problem. He admitted that there was a problem on the line. Just what it was I have no idea because he couldn't seem to tell me (as helpful as he attempted to be). Eventually he was sure he'd located the problem which happened to be a defunct piece of extension sitting under the rafters. He said that "the data was getting confused" by this piece of wiring and that removing it should remedy the problem. Another yarn being spun no doubt but I was simply trying to be optimistic. I tested immediately thereafter before his departure and, NATURALLY, everything appeared to be 100%. He phoned HQ or the zoo or wherever it was he phoned to make sure the port was back on 4mb. They assured him it was.
I checked my port settings on the router after he left and what do I see? 511 / 3072 kbps. Again, a resounding WTF?! Where's the ol' 4096?! Anyway, that was the least of my problems because sure enough, at 6pm I was hit by the dreaded slow-down followed by a flurry of desync. Using the internet just became impossible. Even when it reconnected, it was transferring BYTES/sec (even minute) as opposed to KB. From 6pm until 9:30-10pm it was like this and then suddenly it was back to normal. Normal speed and stable.
So here's why I'm starting to doubt my previous moisture-in-the-works theory. This BS seems to be worse over weekends and early evenings. Now I'm thinking that my exchange is simply overloaded. Peak times when everyone gets home from work is when the trouble starts. On weekends when everyone is at home, the trouble is persistent. Could this be the case? I don't know but I have !%&#ing had it, that much I can tell you! Getting some real help from these guys is like trying to draw blood from a stone. You have to constantly check up on their service and babysit them every step of the way or you'll be shafted.
I was making some light banter with today's techie and I asked about the quantity of faults in my area. He said my area was generally ok but that Lonehill -JHB (not far from me) is terrible. When I asked why, he told me that the infrastructure is bad. WHY?? Why is the infrastructure bad in one of the most developed residential areas on the entire continent?! What is it that we pay these astronomical bills for? (rhetorical question)
This serves to back up my suspected claim that my own exchange is overloaded and T-scum, despite their "we guarantee you 1Mbit" promise, couldn't care a damn to upgrade the infrastructure when it is either outdated or overloaded by PAYING customers.
Sorry for the essay here, guys. But really, I feel the urge to vent and to express my problems so that maybe, by some slim chance, someone can relate similar issues or offer a solution. Is there by chance some helpful software that could monitor the line and give solid feedback by means of a graph for example so that I can shove it in the next techie's face with facts and figures? I could print out my router's system log but that would take a redwood forest's worth of paper to illustrate 24 hours worth of @&%-up on my line.
. A techie came out, mumbled something about something about an exchange and left assuring me the problem would be resolved "sooner or later." My line was then reset to 4meg.
Luckily, my sanity is slowly starting to return
