Tiscali - so slow!

[Liz]

My ISP is Tiscali and for the last few days it has been really slow with my 56k modem. Current speed indicated in the little box at the bottom of the screen is 9600bps. Previously I used to get up to about 35000 or more. Another computer with a different modem on the same telephone line is almost as slow. I contacted FT who tell me there is nothing wrong with the line. I have plugged in at the nearest point of arrival for the phone line to make sure that there is no problem with the extended phone line we take off from there. I contacted Tiscali who admit to nothing.

I'm on Tiscali daytime (5am to 5pm). Anyone else had problems like this?

Liz (29)

[Cat]

Hi Liz

I'm on Tiscali, 5am to 5pm, like you.  The only time I had real problems with very slow connection was when an auto-dialler installed itself on my computer, and I was being connected to the internet via an overseas premium rate mobile phone number whenever I tried to connect via Tiscali.  Very, very expensive!

Do you have decent anti virus and something like Spybot or HijackThis installed, with up-to-date definitions? 

Also try checking in your network connections (control panel) to make sure that no new ones have been set up, and that the phone number on your Tiscali connection has not been changed to another number.

Hope this helps

[Miki]

We are on ADSL with Tiscali and it has been terribly slow here for the last few days.We have not been able to do much more than pick up our emails, looking at anything on the net has been very much a hot and miss as regards speed.

[Lizzie15]

How strange- we're with Wanadoo broadband and the last 4/5 days everything has gone so s-l-o-w.  I wonder what Gremlins are around?

 

 

[Clair]

I had a similar problem and blamed Tiscali for very very slowww speeds last year. It turned out that France Telecom had "split" the line and I was sharing it somehow. There was constant "noise" that could not be picked up on the telephone, but enough to disturb my modem.

FT were not admitting to anything until I called them and they could not hear me!!

They came to "check the line" (so they said!) and I have not had any problem since. I connect at speeds of 42000 minimum and do not get disconnected after a few seconds anymore.

Definitely Worth checking with FT again...

[Iceni]

I have to add that I often go to other peoples offices/houses and use their PC's (with their consent of course) and most are rural and on dial-in. The difference to my Tiscali dial-in connection is dramatic. To say that they are slow is not enough, slower by a factor of 2 to 5 is more like it. The only difference is that I have Onspeed (a graphics compressor) and they don't. The worst was AOL by a long time (I could have knitted a jumper in the time it took them to download their mails) and most people have modern PC's hence my presence.

Tiscali is a bit iffy at the moment, but as I am on-line 12+ hours a day and have been thrown off only once today (which is average) I think it is expensive but OK.

Get the phone line checked. We find the best bet is to go to the FT shop and ask nicely, if that does not work, go in when they are busy and take up their time, that seems to get the line sorted PDQ.

Hope that this helps.

[Jon 1]

I recently changed from Tiscali paygo dial-up to Wanadoo 25 hours dial-up.  I usually found Tiscali to be quite speedy.  Since I changed to Wanadoo and despite paying extra for the so called 'booster', I find my connection considerably slower most of the time, even though the speed is allegedly showing around 50.6 Kbps.  The booster was supposed to load frequently used pages more quickly, but it does not seem to do that.  All this has taken place over the last 3 weeks, so perhaps there is a correlation between this and the slower speeds that others have been mentioning.  Perhaps there is a general slow down on the Net at the moment.

[Liz]

Good News ! I have done nothing except read all your replies (thanks to all of you) but someone somewhere has tweaked something because all of a sudden today I am back to normal speeds, currently 45333bps which is about the best I can hope for on this particular modem and my 'end of the line' telephone connection. Long may it continue but how frustrating not to know the reason it went wrong in the first place.

Liz (29)