All Tiscali users - please read this

If your ISP is Tiscali, please respond to this thread - even if you are NOT having current problems, as it will help to solve whether the ISP is in fact the cause of the problem.

For the last week, logins - specifically rezzing sims, avatars, other residents, inventory - have been a nightmare, but only in the evenings on weekdays or at the weekend (UK times). During the day on weekdays everything is perfectly "normal" (as far as SL can ever be normal...)

Some months ago, Limewire users found they could not use the software at the times I mentioned as Tiscali had unofficially 'blocked' the bandwidth for this application at peak times. They even blocked iTunes for a week or two until the outcry was so great they had to backtrack fast.

I have eliminated most other causes. I have made no hardware or software changes that could account for this. The only other thing I could blame is the LL servers.

So please - if you use Tiscali, let me know if you have had problems the past week, in particular at certain times and not others. And if not, let me know anyway.

Thanks.

I did have experience of Tiscali as a provider although not for sl, they had to be dropped as the actual speed only sometimes reached the theoretical and at times it was a joke! It is a fact of course that a number or providers either cap the bandwidth (very bad news), or throttle certain sources. Defianately a case for reading the fine print, but I see no reason to throttle sl so it is most likely too little bandwidth shared among to many users.

Tiscali routinely throttle bandwidth weekdays from 6pm til 11pm. It's not just SL, it's everything. A friend was using them for a while and couldn't even use MSN.

Not sure what the answer is for you apart from to change ISP. It's not a fault, they do it on purpose

Here's a thread from Feb 07, mentioning Tiscali from Post 49 on.

/111/54/162772/2.html

Same problems.

There's afew links on that page on post 60 about Tiscali and SL.

I have major problems in the evenings on Pipex , now taken over by Tiscali, usually i cant TP and have no groups showing.

I am talking to pipex but they are not much help just now

Clags

xxx

There have been a lot of DNS issues lately, so it might not be due to Tiscali throttling performance in the evening.

I'm a total iggerant stupido when it comes to these things - can you remind me what DNS is and how it might affect this issue?

Thanks

DNS is Domain Name Service. The thing that converts names (like www.google.com) into IP numbers (like 64.233.183.104), which is what the machines actually use to communicate with each other. But in this case, it does feel like Tiscali are "throttling" again. IIRC, the last time this happened, they said that they were trying to restrict P2P networks and stopped (or at least reduced) the problem eventually.

So, to answer the OP, yes I'm with Tiscali and I'm seeing similar problems. It does not appear to be as frequent as long lasting as last time. Roughly 4pm to 8pm GMT, but variable.

what form might this 'throttling' take ?

might it involve being disconnected once in an evening and reconnecting to find reduced speed ?

I use Tiscali but haven't experienced any of the problems mentioned..

By the way - what do you mean by 'throttling'? it sounds very violent

Throttling is rather like lag.. except, it's ISP induced and on purpose, rather than people clogging the network. What happens is that the ISP decides that those who are using a lot of bandwidth are going to be 'reduced' in their loading speed and such. You might even suffer from disconnects a lot more if you are being throttled.

Frankly, if I were dealing with an ISP like that, I'd find a new one and tell the old one WHY I was taking my money with me.

What ISP do you use?

I'm not really sure what makes a good one! My mum was asking me advice on this as she is considering changing her ISP.

Any advice on this would be really appreciated (I know it's going off topic a bit!)