Tiscali woes, what can I do except leave SL forever?

/me is in tears. For a week I have been in login hell each evening, and also at weekend - in turn I am

- stuck at "Connecting to Region"

- logging in and finding myself sitting underwater at 10,10,10, Sitting (apparently, with a Stand button that doesn't work), no Search, no Map, etc

- logging in as Ruth and finding it takes literally an hour or more for the sim and all the residents and avatar to rezz

Usually the bandwidth is somewhere beteen 1 kbps and 50 kbps. Because of the times of day, and because of their reputation (crap) I have narrowed it down to my ISP (Tiscali). It just cannot be anything else - they have done what they did with iTunes earlier this year, and must have placed SL on their list of "bandwidth throttling apps". They are not responding to my desperate pleas to sort this out.

I'm now so depressed I am thinking of leaving SL altogether, I just can't go through this night after night. Is there any alternative ? I can't bear the hassle of changing ISPs, waiting for new MAC code, losing all my email addresses, etc etc, but I just don't know what else to do.

/me breaks down and sobs uncontrollably.

There have been a few posts about Tiscali this week.

I would think that if a bunch of you threatened to leave because of their practices, they'd stop it. I don't know what you pay a month, but I think there's at least five of you on this forum. Maybe it's time to team up and make a point to your ISP

I had a really similar problem some time ago. I'm with Tiscalli and it seemed like they were the issue, but actually we found out it was a port we needed to open up on the firewall. It was an odd issue though because it was intermittent. However opening that port sorted it out.

I'm afraid for the life of me I can't remember the port numbers and our wireless router is so unstable now that it locks up if you go to the port page o_O

A search on ports in the Forum or Knowledge Base should find it though.

Good luck!

There is not much that can be done short of ditching Tiscali. It's a pain, I know, but some of the inconvenience can be avoided (next time) if you use a third party to host your e-mail. Internet service is a classic "pig in a poke". We pay our money for whatever the provider decides is "fair and reasonable". The only optimistic note is that Tiscali have done this before and relented. I believe they said it was an accidental side-effect of trying to restrict P2P file-sharing, last time.

In case is has not become apparent yet, the "throttling" happens during peak times. So, if you are terminally antisocial (like wot I am), you might also consider adjusting your day. If you work a 9 to 5, go to bed when you come home in the evening and get up in the middle of the night to log in.

Change ISP and tell Tiscali why.

Ummm, why would you need a new MAC address??? It's the hardware address of your network card? And why would you lose your Emails? Or is your only account through Tiscali? Even then, you can have an account with Tiscali (I still have one somewhere...) and not use them as your ISP.

No, MAC is Migration Authorisation Code you have to have when switching ISPs.

As for emails, yes I take your point, but it's a bit late now - I could get a third party provider like GMail, but would still have to lose all my existing Tiscali email addresses first.

And the firewall issue is not what this is - its happening 5pm to 10pm weekdays, and afternoons and evenings weekends. NOT intermittent, but predictable.

Maybe I will mount that "let's all leave Tiscali" campaign here after all...

Never heard of that kind of MAC before...in Germany, you just quit with one ISP and choose another, no big deal. Pity about the emails-I didn't know they wouldn't let you keep them (I have several addresses with other ISPs that I am not even a customer of, such as T-Com, who insist that if you're a landline customer with them, you also need an email address *with them* to check your bills on line...)

I just hope enough Tiscali customers raise their voices so this cr*p will stop.

There's a TV show in the uk called 'the gadget show', they've started a campain to sort out ISP speeds. You could go to there web site and sign up?

They have a speed thingie there, i should be getting 'upto' 20Mb on my virgin conection but i'm lucky if i get 1Mb, shocking.

It's not a hassle to change ISPs. Request a MAC code. Contact new ISP. Sign up and provide them with MAC. They will give you an activation date. Changeover will be seamless. In theory.

I've changed ISP twice in the past year. From Pipex to Demon. From Demon to Be*. It was easy, both times. No downtime was involved.

There's no chance of that. This has been going on for years, and Tiscali are really just the worst of a bad bunch -- all reselling the same wholesale product (BT IPStream), trying to outdo each other in the pricing stakes, but the service they're reselling is _not_ unlimited, so they're forced to use some kind of traffic shaping (throttling excessive downloaders, closing certain ports, etc.). Of course, there are obvious ethical questions here with regards their 'unlimited internet' advertising campaigns, but annoyingly, the Advertising Standards Authority appears to be on the side of these ISPs, saying their use of the term is acceptable...even though their products have limits.

My best advice to anybody suffering like this in the UK is to go with an unbundled ISP like Be* Unlimited (http://bethere.co.uk). Unfortunately though, their service is only available if they've installed their equipment into your nearest telephone exchange. (This is how they manage to offer a genuinely unlimited and relatively uncontended service - by not having to resell BT IPStream).

Yap yap yap. I'm yapping.

What Walker said... mostly. I was with PlusNet for over 4 years and gritted my teeth as their service went from excellent to apallingly bad. The crunch came after I was forcibly migrated to an unbundled line operated by.............. Tiscali (surprpise, surprise). My connection to SL went down the toilet and after running a traceroute from my computer *and* Linden Labs we managed to pinpoint a Tiscali-owned switch where the transatlantic line came into London that was experiencing 30% packet loss. It took them a month to replace it.

I'm also on Be Unlimited. I get a 14mb connection using my 3Com router. I don't use the Thomson router they sent me as it does strange things to the shoutcast radio stream I run from home. Also I never trust a router that has a default setting of 'OFF' for the NAT firewall. The connection with Be is pretty good. It does flake out occasionally. Just hope you never have to use their customer support.

personally I use Sky .... ive heard pretty much terrible things about tiscali from everyone ive spoken to.

Best advice....dump them use somebdy else, prices are VERY competitive

Marty

I was with Tiscali - actually I was with Screaming Net, which became LocalTel, which became Tiscali ... and then TRIPLED their prices.

I tried to cancel and was told that as I had not been a customer for six months they would charge me for six months. I had been a customer for years.

So here is what you do, cos my line was released quick smart (within hours).

Email their customer service department.

When you get a reply and can see what their current email format is, go online and find the names of ALL their senior staff.

Reply to the email, ccing in all their board of directors, your local Trading Standards, their local Trading Standards and anyone else you can think of. This would work best if there was also a co-ordinated ccing in of other SL users similarly affected.

Be calm, polite but advise them that you can no longer use their product under the terms with which you started with them.

***

Mainly tho, just get a better ISP!

Hi,

I am also with Tiscali, and although I can get in SL and all seems to be fine, my connection speed has been a nightmare over the past couple of months, used to connect at around 7.8 , but now am lucky if I hit 5 !

Dont know if it something that Tiscali are doing or not

Hi Tid, as I am an ex Tiscali, couldnt wait to get out as they will never solve their technical problems as this was confirmed to me by their Higher Complaints Dept. Complain to the governing body over Broadband forget the initials. And they report to tiscali and tiscali willhave to solve your problem within 5 days, if they dont demand your mac code and they have to give it to you. Also if you have remaining months on your Contract get these waived. I did exactly that and got out within 2 weeks. And am pleased now I have a very good isp adsl24 and have never been denied access to sl whatsoever.

Tiscali have had these problems for years its not new.

Sounds good, but can you explain this in more detail? The only email 'route' to Tiscali is the final page of their "Contact Us" link on the website, prior to which they have tried to fob me off with a series of FAQs or other ways they can give a standard brush-off response. When I do get to send an email, the reply comes from India and there doesn't seem to be an apparent 'format' that could be used to email their directors? But this sounds like a good idea in principle, if I can make it work.

What would also help is if I can get an agreement here - in principle - from other residents who use Tiscali, that they too will leave for another ISP. No commitment - just let me know if you have had similar problems the last week or two, and are seriously thinking of switching.

My only problem with finding another ISP is that I am in the SW of the UK, a region that is very badly served.

I've been with BT for longer than I've been in SecondLife Tid. I've upgraded earlier in the year to their unlimited after about three months of emails saying I'd gone over the lower limit lol. I'm quite happy with their service still.

FWIW, I'm with BT Broadband getting a theoretical 8mb (which works out around 5 usually) on the "unlimited" 40GB/month package and have no problems.

Broccoli

I've been using BT's unlimited service for about a year. Although there is a "fair usage" clause buried somewhere in their TOS, I've never had a problem. For the last year I've been running SL for 50+ hours a week, and for 6 months of that my RL partner was also running it for around the same time on the same connection, plus running filesharing software, watching video over the net, using skype video, general surfing, etc. Never heard anything from them about limiting my usage, although I would have thought I was using far more bandwidth than the average domestic user.

Hi Tid - your location shouldn't affect your access to ISPs where the normal BT equipment is used. It'll only affect your access to the unbundled (LLU) services, some of which are only available in some exchanges.

Regarding email addresses, if you're going to get a new one now, then it might be worth considering getting your own domain name, so you can keep your own email address independently of any ISP.

123-reg for example have .co.uk & .me.uk domains for just £2.59 a year plus vat, with free domain name hosting, so you can just keep the domain with them and forward email to your mailbox at your next ISP.

Whatever you do, don't leave SL forever!

Wow. "Unlimited" and "40GB/month" so do not go together.

who was the bonehead that thought it would be a good idea to refer to some bureaucratic crap as a 'mac address'?
and let this be an example of why you should never allow an isp supplied email address to become anything other than an alt.
my gmx account has seen me through dozens of isp's over two continents. ive been able to retrieve lost passwords from sites i havent visited in over 8 years.

I hearby nominate you as evil advisor to the current evil overlord of SL (whomever that may be) because it's both simple and brilliant, and will likely cause their not so savvy BoD to think you are some scary uber-hacker (sheep)

Tid I am also in the SW of England and have no probs with adsl24