Fast4/V21/Biscit (merged threads)

exprog

alared wrote:

Crap connections again this am.
Redialed about 25 times to get any site to load.

Same with me, but seems to have been ok for the last few hours.

GuessWho_2

Nix wrote:

I'm starting to get the impression that part of V21/Bisc*it's problem (apart from the very minor customer relations thing ) when we can dial up but are unable to access the internet properly, is DNS related. What d'ya reckon?

HaHa i have to smile at you still persevering with that crummy co.

but you could be right about dns probs.
Try these for a couple of days to see if you have any improvement.
I don't normally use these, but i just tested them on bb, and they are very fast with me

Primary DNS 158.43.240.4
Secondary DNS 158.43.240.3

G Luck...

Clock_2

Hi, there everyone! Haven't logged on here for over 2 months, just thought I would see how everyone is doing. Not much progress from the looks of it!

Like a lot of you, connection at Christmas was rubbish, as was January 19th, - couldn't get on the Web for love nor money!! I assumed the latter might be something to do with all the storms messing things up??

Anyway, I'm happy to report my money was not taken in December, and to date it hasn't been taken this month! I await with bated breath to see how much they take once they get the payment system and Members page back up and running! Until then I am putting off moving elsewhere and going on Broadband, because no one can beat no payments per month???

Clock

spud17

Clock

Well done on the zero payments I'm the same as you at the moment,here's hoping they have forgoten about us!

On a lighter note.

I've solved the dodgy connection problem ,everyone needs an old computer.

I've just been given a 10 year old Tiny for a nephew to play with (win 98) , some of the stuff is even Win95.

It has a modem (Rockwell c.1997) so I thought I'd try and see if it all worked and check the driver before formatting, I am now logging on and of at will (3 times) and never below the previosly unseen 48kbps!

spud17

This is slightly off the forum topic ,but perhaps a technical expert can help out.
This relates to the common situation with Biscit of a good connection,but pages load painfully slowly.
I regularly check a jobfinder website,after I enter my search criteria, the page typically takes over a minute to appear.
This week I tried the site but gave up waiting despite a connection speed of 45.2kbps.
I tried again about an hour later and the pages loaded faster than I have ever seen before.
I thought " I must have a really high connection speed",however on checking I saw that I was connected at the lowly 16.8kbps.
Can this variation in loading speed be down to how busy a site may be?

Nix

Simple answer to that is "yes" - a chain is only as strong as its weakest link...

GuessWho_2

@spud17

Hi Spud, i don't claim to be any expert, but if no one else is going to try to explain it, then i'll have a go.

When you dial in to connect to your isp, the actual connection speed will vary depending on a number of factors, particularly line quality,
That speed will limit the max speed for data transfer rate.

The actual download speeds you will see are affected by a number of factors, such as isp contention (basically, too many connections), webserver at website is busy and of course line quality again.

If all or most sites are affected (but does work ok on occasions), then this will usually be caused by line quality, or more likely congestion.

Do a google on contention ratio
basically, it's the number of users sharing bandwidth as allocated by the isp

The trouble is that isp s(not all) often take no notice of the figures they publish for contention ratios and cram in too many people, making it very difficult at peak times.


If it's just the odd site that's a problem, then that could possibly be a problem at their end.
(also worth trying a different browser, such as Firefox)

A good example of that problem has been this site here (MSE).
The past few months, trying to load portions of this site has been pretty dire! (yes, even on bb!)
However, i haven't seen any statements, but it is clear that some upgrades have been taking place because the performance is now much improved. But you get my drift!


To test your download speed, i don't know what you use, but downloading part of a file such as this one will give a good idea.

http://www.f2s.net/test8.zip

it's 8MB in size, so just let it run for a minute or so til it stabilises, then cancel. It's only a junk download file for test, it doesn't do anything (Thanks f2s, rubbish isp now, but great test file )

The download speed may be measured in bytes or bits per sec.
Rough conversion, multiply bytes X 8 to convert to bps

e.g. so a download of 3 KB/s
is the same as 24 kbps
(rough approximations, i just know someone's gonna disagree with that )



If you aren't sure if it's an isp problem or line/exchange then log into another isp and run the same test.

This thread suggests alternatives, but you may already have one?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=358645

One word of warning, if you are trying out any new dialup isp for test, be sure that any installation doesn't make them the default connection!
Otherwise you will be dialling them rather than the *free* Biscit number.
and that could mean a hefty 'phone bill!

carpy

still not been charged since Nov!!!!!

so considering it's free it's just about bearable....as bad as it is!!!

spud17

GuessWho -Cheers for that reply, all understood.

I already use the great Firefox,but have also been trying Opera which can be set to give a readout of how fast a page is loading , which can show huge variations.
Regarding mse being difficult to access,a couple of weeks back there was a message at the top of the page about upgrading servers (I think it was servers).

I take your point about contention but am not wholly convinced that things can alter so dramatically at what I would assume to be a busy time (9/10pm).
40% of original speed but loading approx 5x faster would surely indicate a huge change in the number of people using the site.(see my earlier post).

I made a jokey reference to an old computer with 10yo modem in another post,well this evening I logged onto the MS update site @46.6 with perfect unbroken connection.After updating Win98 ,I switched to this computer 3/4yo and lost the connection 3x in the first 5mins, and have not bettered 31.2.
I think this shows that old modems are more able to cope with noisy lines and dodgy connections from dodgy isps.
Cheers for now got to check bank statement to see if I've had another free month !

ps I have tried Tiscali (using https://www.18185.co.uk) to compare speeds but was unable to reach any conclusions ,sometimes both would be slow ,other times Tiscali might show a lower speed but load the page quicker-totally confusing!!

Nix

I too use Firefox on Windows 98SE but with an external Robotics modem (this modem excellent for Linux too!). Even though my processor is only a humble AMD K6 (401MHz) I'll swear it's faster than many modern systems using bloated IE on bloated XP!

Don't forget that browsers automatically cache pages recently visited and so can appear to load quicker even though the connection is slower...