CYTANET-Mandatory purchase of more upload- Experiences?

[tsadapeter]

I, I am new here aftre quite many years on one of the boards that have closed.
Maybe I can "suck some honey" from members´ experiences here....

I wonder whether anyone has come across a similar thing.

I have been a Cytanet Customer for a long time, my package is for 8mbps down and 0.6 Mbps upload.
Connected to my Cytanet router I have been been running the same set of equipment for probably two years:
That is one older (Siemens VOIP System, connected as LAN), one android box, one internet radio.
All of this did fine all the time.

As of recently my speedrates dropped dramatically to as low as 1.1 Mbps down and 0.08 up.
I´ve had numerous conversations with customer support, did (perceived) hundreds of tests, swapped routers twice in the Cytanet shop and had two visits from engineers (although, the latter one I did not notice,
They did not come to the premises).

Always after restoration of contracted performance , load rates fell off again.

Now I am being told the following:
One of my devices (they don´t say, which) demands more upload and regularly touches/exceeds the upload limit (0.75 Mbps).
Because of this their system automatically reduces my available bandwidths for downloads and uploads below what I have contracted.
They say I must buy an upload extension package allowing 2Mbps upload for more than 8€/month. This would be the only cure….

Is that just a smart way of trading customers up?
I cannot possibly imagine that a configuration which has worked just fine suddenly exceed upload limits….

Any knowledge or similar experience anyone?

Many thanks

[tsadapeter]

Quite,

no we don´t play online .. And indeed I wonder why I should need it....

Thanks

[2QuarterPints]

This is a long shot but, if you are suddenly using a lot more of your upload allowance, there is a possibility that your email has been hacked and you are being used as a mail relay service without realising it. On a much larger scale this happened in a firm I worked for some years ago. Would not hurt to change your passwords just in case.

[Dominic]

The only time that uploads would be an issue is either when you are uploading stuff, or doing something like Video Chat. Standard VOIP shouldn't hit that limit.

You could try turning off the VOIP unit, and seeing if you still get throttled though.

Another possibility is that one of your units has been compromised. One old trick was to utilise the hard disk drives on office printers. The security on these is often terrible. People would hack them, and store files used by illegal download sites on them.

What you should do is audit your I.T equipment. Get a list of IP addresses and MAC addresses for each item you use. Then speak to Cyta, and ask them for the IP address and MAC address of the offending bit of kit. They will have this info somewhere. You will then be able to tell which bit of kit is misbehaving.

Don't underestimate how many network aware devices you will have though.

[Lofos-5]

You will then be able to tell which bit of kit is misbehaving.

Someone soon will say "you should have a bought a Mac"
(OK, sorry, do not want to get Pete and Lloyds debate to be continued here as well...)

[cyprusgrump]

All Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have a Fair Access Policy (FAP) which allows them to throttle your connection if you use 'excessive' amounts of data.

However, I would have thought it unlikely that you would hit the FAP without running some form of commercial operation (a website for instance) over your connection.

It may be worth asking them what the FAP limits are for your plan (and if they have changed it recently). You could then log-in to the modem and check if you are actually using more than they allow.

You could perhaps disconnect items from your network (the VOIP unit for instance) and see if that makes a difference.

The VDSL upgrade (to the 2M upload service) involves replacing all the cheap telephone cable that your builder installed with CAT 5 network cable. It may well be that after eliminating all other options (new modems etc.) they suspect a wiring issue and this would be the way to resolve it...?

In which case, you could upgrade to VDSL, get the new wiring and modem... and then cancel it...

I have VDSL here and it makes a huge improvement to overall web performance... but I am quite a large data user both for uploads and downloads...

[PaphosAL]

This is what I'm getting in Luton UK from Virgin Media 'Vivid 200' fibre broadband service today...

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/6462618420

£20 a month. Eye watering, or what? Sorry if the graphic doesn't show, just right click the link and select 'Open in new tab' if that's the case.

Cheers- AL

[Lofos-5]

Eye watering, or what?

It is indeed eye watering - especially for what you pay for it!

In Central Africa, Borneo or the Middle East, the places I most recently lived at, such speeds can only be dreamt of. Even here in well-developed Doha where I am on fibreoptics I pay 2.5 times more for 1/20th of the speed you get. How fair is that? But at least I get to use it on Mac - couldn't resist to mention it ...

[PaphosAL]

Same service works fine on my Ubuntu 10 server under Firefox as well...

[PhotoLady]

We don't have the fibre for Virgin in our area, although I'm registered to receive updates if it becomes available to us....
We're with BT for the next 15 months with a little over 48.5mbps download and just above 7.2mbps upload - we have telephony included with free weekend calls and our monthly cost is currently £35.49pm.

We can get cheaper with Talk Talk and a couple of others but not the same speed.... so, we're staying with what works for us until something faster and cheaper pops up

[PaphosAL]

That's not a bad price, tbh, Photolady. Have you factored in the rip-off monthly BT line rental in that bill?

And surely you should be receiving some free BT channels on TV as well? Good news is that Virgin's new owner Liberty Media, is finally investing in spreading it's fibre network outwards to cover wider areas! With huge regions of Merseyside already long since covered, it won't be too long before they reach your posh area, trust me!

Cheers- AL

[holitec]

Hi Peter,

I would check your devices, because I just looked at how many customers are using more than .5mb upload, and it is in only a handfull, one is using up to 10Mb upload, but on checking they have CCTV. CYTA will not be able to tell which MAC/Device is using the upload, because it will be behind the router IP.

If something is using a lot of upload it will slow the download speeds considerably, because the acknowlege packets will be queued in the upload queue. Sometimes it can be as simple as a cloud drive syncing, which 0.6Mb is a bit slow to use for.

[Dominic]

Hi Peter,

I would check your devices, because I just looked at how many customers are using more than .5mb upload, and it is in only a handfull, one is using up to 10Mb upload, but on checking they have CCTV. CYTA will not be able to tell which MAC/Device is using the upload, because it will be behind the router IP.

If something is using a lot of upload it will slow the download speeds considerably, because the acknowlege packets will be queued in the upload queue. Sometimes it can be as simple as a cloud drive syncing, which 0.6Mb is a bit slow to use for.

Cyta will be able to access the router.

[holitec]

Yes they can access the router, but the router will not show how much each individual device is using. What I do is monitor the connection and then switch each device off in turn, then the rogue device will show up when the upload stops - not sure that CYTA will do that for you.

[bromerzz]

You mention an Android device - make sure you are not using any P2P add ons, as that might be a potential upload user.

[Dominic]

Yes they can access the router, but the router will not show how much each individual device is using. What I do is monitor the connection and then switch each device off in turn, then the rogue device will show up when the upload stops - not sure that CYTA will do that for you.

They (Cyta) do as it happens. But I would have thought that somewhere in the firmware there would be a low level diagnostics page too. Years ago I used to refurbish old BT routers as a sideline, when they still used Voyagers. Using telnet rather than the standard web interface you could do all sorts.

Ah, this brings back memories. I once took delivery of 15,000 Bt Voyager 210s, at £1 a unit. A couple of years later, when I had sold about half of them, nobody was really interested in them any more, as they weren't wireless, and tended to get rather hot. But they also came with the microfilters, which sold for £5 each on Amazon. That, and 2000 odd wireless Netgear routers I had to turn around in about a month, funded our business in it's early days. When we moved to Cyprus, I must have taken about 100 bin bags of cabling down to the scrap metal yard. About the only thing I wasn't able to sell from the 210s were the original instruction CDs. I turned a lot of them into targets for my catapult. The original aim was a bird scarer. But the birds would dance around them when the sun shon on them, so I practiced my catapult instead.

[tsadapeter]

Thanks for all those comments,

Let me try to answer:

- Email hacked: As far as I know such spamming from my email account would happen on the server of my email-provider, not from my outlook application on my pc?
- Uploads:
o We use our VOIP occasionally, not to any commercial extent. Since a typical VOIP call (using the G.711 codec) requires circa 90 kbps both up and downstream it is hard to see how that should hit FAP when the contracted upload is 750 kbps
o The only other upload is my cloud backup service which has been running at the given bandwidth for ever an a day and where the upload usage is limited to 700kbps. This service is “one way only”, not running device synchronisation
o The android box is only ever used occasionally to stream movies and does not participate in p2p addons
o Even now, after the 2Mbps upgrade the speedtest only shows1.6 Mpps
Are there any affordable pieces of software which allow me to monitor the upload usage of my devices continually?

Many thanks

Peter

[Dominic]

Your best bet is to do a bit of research first, so you know what you are doing. The software you need is all available for free, but you need to know how to use it.

This article had a few pointers and links to start you off.

https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-pack ... er-2487312

[humpinghummer]

You could buy a netgear pro safe managed switch for about £50 which will show send / receive traffic for each Ethernet port. If its a wireless device causing the problem, you could also isolate them. I don't have a cyta modem now but I thought you could see traffic per wirelss connection using the admin panel anyway ?

[geoffreys]

I would say disconnect everything from the Cytanet router. Borrow a laptop and connect it to the router via Ethernet cable (NOT WiFi).
Connect to the Cyta iPortal and do a speed test.
10 to 1 says it will be the speed you are paying for!
Assuming it is then what to do after that is obvious!!
Geoff.