Intermittency

I had a return of the horrendous posting problems that afflicted me in June. they’re caused by an obscure fault in an NTL cache server, and mean that no http requests over a certain size can get out. This breaks web-based email, posting to blogs, and large chunks of eBay and Amazon. Yippee. The cure is to use a proxy server, as I was told by the very helpful and clued up NTL tech support guy in June. But which proxy server? You will search in vain for a list of them on the company’s site.


So I spent half an hour on the phone, being lied to by a robot at 30 second intervals until a woman picked it up. I started to explain my problem.
Had I applied the latest MS security fix, she asked.
Yes. I said.
Was I sure?
Yes.
Would I look in the control panel and tell her?
OK.
Thank you, yes you have. I’ll mark that on the database and put you back in the queue.
[hangs up]
???
Another 30 minutes passes.
Finally, I get a list of proxy servers; the last one works.

Then the wireless card inthe laptop goes on strike …

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2 Responses to Intermittency

  1. Simon says:

    I am sooooo thankful that I decided to abandon NTL when going broadband…

  2. muninnhuginn says:

    Robin Walker’s pages (often recommended on the ntl braodband newsgroups) have a regularly updated list of the ntl proxies (here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/trancache.html#ntl), if you ever feel like swapping around.

    That particular bug’s a right pain.

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