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I can't get it up, but I can get it down

Head Rambles Posted on by

I was going to write a post today.

But my Interweb connection is guntered again.

I can download like greased lightening. But I can’t upload to save my life. It takes me several attempts to even send a simple e-mail. So posting is out of the question.

I suppose this means I’m in for one of those nightmare phone calls where I speak to someone who can only understand Urdu, and who is going to blame me for everything anyway.

I’m taking bets on the following responses:

  • There is nothing wrong at our end. We have had no complaints. [evens]
  • According to our records, you are not a subscriber [evens]
  • I’m sorry but that is not a technical problem [5/4]
  • You have a virus [5/4]
  • Your firewall is preventing traffic [8/1]
  • Trees have grown up in the way of the signal [33/1]
  • There was an earthquake in Azerbaijan [40/1]
  • Sunspots [45/1]
  • Yes. There is a problem and we will dispatch our top engineers to your home immediately [1,000,000/1]

Maybe I should record the call and put it out as a podcast?

 

Comments

I can't get it up, but I can get it down — 12 Comments

  1. Grandad,

    Even worse than any of these is the customer service centre person who says, “Can I take your name and number and we’ll call you back”.

    They never do.

    At least you haven’t encountered the Rab C Nesbott clone who works for Sky.

  2. Herself has! I leave it to her to ring Sky as she is the one who demands chooses the films.

  3. I’m willing to bet that a podcast of that call would be very popular.

    In fact, I wouldn’t even give you evens on that…

  4. That is what they do these days to prevent people from running their own servers. Give people craptastic upload speeds so they only have enough upstream bandwidth to send out their credit card details making the interweb a much more one-way broadcast system.

    They sell bandwidth to ordinary home users 20-30 times more than they have, while most of their upstream goes to big companies that buy leased lines

    until recently i had a very bad upstream SNR, but that is gone now. it is strange usually if you can’t upload the whole connection sort of dies

  5. With my new technical expertise (I use the term loosely) I have learned the two definite reponses from helldeskers – “reboot” and “I have absolutely no idea . . .”

  6. Are you SURE you are living in Ireland? You have an internet connection that is “greased fast?” Perhaps you’re on a T3 line in Dublin, but in my county there is NO fast internet. ADSL is ancient technology.

    Even the Digiweb Satellite (which has upload problems) isn’t fast except to take your money at one hundred+ a month for measured service.

    When I see relatives in the Us who have 5MB internet connections, unmeasured all you can use, for $9.95 a month (EUR 7.35), I marvel at how the people of Ireland have been screwed by Eircom and the govt support for the oldest telecommunications infrastructure in Europe. Even former Soviet colonies have fibreoptics….not Ireland; maybe by 2025.

  7. I used 5mbit/2mbit verizon FIOS in the US. not quite $9.95 a month but cheaper than the 3mbit thing i’m using now. there isn’t really anything wrong with ADSL except the craptastic upload speeds. if they gave me the maximum 1mbit upload speed i’d be a happy camper

  8. When I say “greased lightening”, I use the term loosely. I am supposed to have 3Mb [?] up and down. Today, I’m getting around 2.8 down [no complaints there], but I either get no upload at all, or if I wait long enough I get a burst of about 2.5 up.

    So I sit here, waiting for mails to be delivered, and websites waiting to load, and suddenly – WHAM – everything works for about a minute. Then it’s back to the hourglass…..

    This is the first time I’ve had this problem [actually I blame our K8 as it only started since the holiday], as normally it is full speed both ways.

    I would like to try to record the call, but my technical expertise on these matters is a bit rusty and I’ve never done anything like that before….

  10. Strangely, that isn’t one they use very often. Maybe it’s too technical for them?

  11. What are you using to measure the speeds?

    One independent guide is:

    http://www.wugnet.com/myspeed/speedtest.asp

    (WUGNET has been around for 20 years: Windows Users Group).

    A cold boot (as opposed to ‘restart’) is good for lots of things, but with a network modem you shouldn’t have to do that. Turning the modem off for ten minutes, then back on should be just as effective.

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