Very Slow Connection Again

[martinsmith99]

My connection speed is crawling along at worse than dial up speed again.

Is there a problem in the BS35 area?  

I mentioned it last week when there was no connection for 24 hours and it was claimed that there were none.  It's been okay for about a week but each page is now like waiting for teletext.

Thanks

[Retired-Wayne]

Hi Martinsmith99

Thanks for your post here, I'm sorry to hear that you are having problems with this and I'm sure we'll be able to get to the bottom of this.

To do this can you please provide me with your full postcode and we'll be able to take a specific look into your area.

Thanks

Wayne

eForum Team

[techmind]

Me too, in Cambridge area. Web traffic pretty bad. Very very slow (even BBC News pages take minutes to appear). Often seeing "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"
It's very rapidly variable though, as it can be okay for a few 10's seconds then impossibly bad again.

Raw throughput on big-file downloads has been very good though. Suspect problems in the "ISP" side of Vodafone's infrastucture?

In CB22, south of Cambridge.

[Jenny]

Hi techmind,

Can you provide us with your full postcode as requested by Wayne as we need a full postcode to check.

Cheers

Jenny
eForum Team

[techmind]

CB22 5BP
Web access has been generally extra flaky for the past week or so as described above, often being very slow on both http and secure https connections, and with a significant number of "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" failures (hit 'reload' and it mostly works on second attempt) - but performance can vary dramatically over very short periods with intermittent bursts of half-minute to several minutes where the responsiveness is 'ok' - or at least recent-normal (and the raw data throughput is frequently still very good >1Mbps for mp3 downloads) and my signal strength is between 3 and 5 'bars' in VMC.

Several times in the past few days even POP3 mail retrieval has got stuck "cannot connect to server" or somesuch (at the same times as when I get continuous "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" errors), but can mostly be fixed by several disconnect-and-reconnect operations.

[Retired-George]

Hi techmind,

Thanks for your reply, I've had a check on the postcode you've provided and can see that the three nearest sites to you are working correctly with no problems. Is this the only location that this issue occurs at? If it works elsewhere then we'll likely need to raise this to our faults team for an engineer to take a look.

If this is happening everywhere then it rules out any network issues as such. There's a few things I can suggest you try if you haven't attempted them already.

Firstly, I notice that your device is listed as an E220, there was a problem with these devices browsing websites a couple of months back, it may be worth having a look on our Page Cannot Be Displayed thread in regards to this.

Secondly, it might be worth connecting without using the software at all, this can done by going to Start > Connect To > VMC > Dial/Connect.

Thirdly, have you tried using a different web browser such as Firefox or Google Chrome? I'd certainly recommend giving these a try just in case this is Internet Explorer playing up.

Finally, I'd recommend perfoming a DNS flush if you haven't already to clear any browsing data. This can be done as follows:

-Disconnect from the internet and close VMC fully (File > Close)
-Go to Start
-For XP click on Run and type in cmd and press enter
-For Vista type cmd into the search bar, right click on the result and then click on Run As Administrator
-Type in ipconfig /flushdns and hit enter
-Unplug the modem and reboot the PC
-When PC has restarted plug the modem back in and try connecting again.

Let me know how you get on with the above.

George
eForum Team

[techmind]

I'm using my E220 with the full (not Lite) version of VMC, version 9.2.4.7868.
That said, the 'Lite' software on my E220 is still 3.0.3.112 (on the dongle drivename, and in the PhoneConnectorVMC.exe file on the dongle). (According to your instructions, the known E220 'Page Cannot be Displayed' problem applies to V.2 of VMC Lite.)

I've tried periodically tried Start > Connect To > VMC > Dial/Connect but it doesn't seem to consistently make any real difference.
I've also tried third party DNS servers and then back to Vodafone's auto-allocated ones - but it's not really making much difference.

I've been doing the flushdns, again with no consistent noticeable improvement.


The only thing I've not tried is Firefox.

This evening and yesterday, even the forum.vodafone.co.uk pages can take over 30s to open (variable).


Unfortunately I can't easily try different locations - certainly not at the same time of day as I'm using the dongle with a desktop PC. Although I could borrow a laptop from work. I've got a good signal though, 3-5bars on VMC, and get (large file) downloads at 1.1Mbps (or even more the past few days, peaking above 3Mbps in VMC, and sustaining 1.85Mbps actual data throughput in practice).

[Retired-Adam_V]

Hi techmind,

If you wouldn't mind giving this a try with a laptop in a different location (doesn't have to be far from your current post code) that would be a great. It'll certainly help us rule out whether this is a localised transceiver problem. Let me know how you get on with Firefox as well.

Thanks,

Adam
eForum Team.

[martinsmith99]

Mine is BS35 3TE

It was fine yesterday until about 9pm, but today has slowed again. It seems to just not respond when I click links or will just load half the page and stop.

I currently have 2 bars indicated on the 3G+ network.

[Retired-Jon_V]

Mine is BS35 3TE

It was fine yesterday until about 9pm, but today has slowed again. It seems to just not respond when I click links or will just load half the page and stop.

I currently have 2 bars indicated on the 3G+ network.

Hi Martinsmith99,

This area only has outdoor coverage according to our coverage map. It is normal to experience degraded service on 3G if the signal is less than 3 bars in strength. You may find your coverage improves somewhat during off-peak times (between 8pm and 8am). There are no errors showing on your serving cell site, so it would appear that your issue is largely due to coverage.

Jon

eForum Team