I do not know for sure if the circuit fault problem from 18 Feb has been fully fixe. A few days ago, they supposedly recovered part of the bandwidth. We may see some improvement if it is fully recovered. But the different IP problem may still be there.

As we all know, some of us have been facing slow connections to certain websites, especially in the US when we are on certain IP ranges. We are all paying the monthly subscription fee and we should get a certain level of service and it should not be dependant on the IP which we get.

The issue here is the connections / routes that the traffic takes when you are assigned certain IP ranges. My own testing shows this clearly. For example:

When connected to 60 range, a route may be:
Outgoing: A -> B -> C -> D (good)
Incoming: D -> E -> F -> A (good)

When connected to 115 range, a route may be:
Outgoing: A -> B -> C -> D (good)
Incoming: D -> X -> Y -> A (bad)

This is why we have problems with download speeds when on certain "bad" IPs.

I spent about 2 hours on Tuesday with 2 Level-1 support and 2 Level-1 supervisors about the different quality of service we are getting from different IPs. I also got to speak with a Level-2 support and made a report which was passed on to the Level-2 manager and the Broadband Management Center.

On Wednesday, a TM technician came to my house to check on the slow connection issue. However, I only spoke to him at the gate as I told him this had nothing to do with my modem or wiring or my local connection. It was clearly a TM side issue. I don't know why TM is wasting their resources and the technician's time sending him over for a problem which is on their side and not mine.

A little while later, the Technical Dept from TM called me. I spent over an hour explaining the issues that we are all facing. TM is aware of this. There is clearly a problem with connections with different IP ranges. The newer 115, 118 etc are having problems. The older 60, 218 etc are not. However, since these IPs are distributed all over, it is not necessary that you will be in an area where you only get "bad" IPs. As we know, if you disconnect and re-connect, you may get a "good" IP.

I think these are some possible reasons. The problem could be that there are just too many customers for TM's infrastructure to handle. There may not be enough incoming bandwidth to cater for their customers usage. The routings being assigned to different ranges of IP is incorrect or not optimized. Their own local network is congested. Their network equipment as it stands cannot cope with the traffic.

It appears TM is in the process of doing upgrades and maintenance to their equipment and network. There are announcements about this if you call 100. How long all this is going to take we don't know. Perhaps they will shuffle or re-distribute the IPs to different areas to minimize these problems.

So if you are still having slow connections due to certain IPs, it is a problem on TM side, there is nothing much we can do about it. However I suggest that rather than all of us just complaining here, we at least make a report to 100, get a report number and request the report to be escalated to Level-2 technical dept.

Hopefully this will give TM more data on what users are experiencing. Perhaps they can focus on areas with lots of complaints and try to solve things there. I also think there needs to be lots of documented reports compiled and passed on to the higher levels so that they will do something about it.

Thank you for your reply biatche. I just want to clarify that my suggestion was not meant to bother TM. It was more so that they have documented reports for their own statistics to indicate the extent of the problem. It may also push them to find a faster solution.

However, it is up to each of us to decide how much we want to do to get this solved. Hopefully as you say, things are getting better.

See:
http://www.streamyx.com/whats_new/whats_ne...rticle_20090306