All day today I've had some difficulties with certain aspects of my web experience, specifically updating my weblog, posting to forums, submitting forms and uploading via browsers. This happened a week ago and a little research led me to understand that it was increased traffic on my node (or whatever it's called), possibly due to the Blaster worm. A call to NTL support seemed to confirm this as the automated message said there was "degraded service" in my area. Anyway, it cleared up the next day and I thought all was OK.
At the time I noticed that my IP address appeared to have changed - it has been the same IP address for many months and so this seemed odd but I figured it was probably fairly normal. Today, however, I noticed that it happened again and the timing along with the "degraded service" seemed significant so I decided to call NTL to see if they were having problems again.
This time, however, there was no notice of issues with the service so I stayed on the line to try and talk to someone. If you have ever had any dealings with NTL, you'll know that their customer service is quite appalling. I wasn't surprised, then, to find myself waiting for a good 20 minutes to talk to someone.
Incredibly, the guy at the other end seemed to know immediately what the problem was and instructed me to enter in details of the proxy server (coincidentally my same "new" IP address) at NTL - something I'd never had to do before.
This sorted my problem and you'd think that would be a happy ending, but it's not.
The problem is that I can't set the proxy on my router, but only on the individual machines. When a proxy is set up, the machines then appear unable to obey the "bypass proxy for local addresses" which is rather a pain in the arse. I'm also unable to access RealPlayer stuff anymore.
As it turns out, NTL is having a lot of problems with their DNS and proxy services and a lot of people are having this problem if the NTHellWorld forums are anything to go by. What's even more frustrating is that they've not mentioned or acknowledged this problem.
Bastards.
Posted by Lisa at September 26, 2003 08:56 PM