Thanks for that info.

When that disconnect happened due to BT work, I saw that my 'location' had altered - before that, and for many months, Speedtest always showed my connection as in the London area and picked a speedtester around London. At the same time, if I'd updated my website and then looked at the stats later, I could see that my 'location' was London Westminster.
After that disconnect, the Speedtester showed my 'location' as somewhere in the Midlands/Leeds perhaps and picked a tester in that area plus one London one. Now my web stats just show me as being located in London.

Not sure what these location points are called ..servers, POP? - anyway, it appears I got reconnected on a different one and that's when I noticed things not running as smoothly.
I thought it may be some temporary measure to do with the Olympics, but nothing has changed.

A week or so ago, my connection dropped (unusual) and took longer than normal to re-connect then dropped again, and while talking to tech services, mentioned this 'location' issue but he completely missed my point and said Speedtest just picks a random area!
Anyway, he re-set something, tested the line and the connection seems steady again now (9 days)

Added to this, since yesterdays email troubles, I've suddenly got 3 phishing emails in my Zen email account - never had any junk mail in that account before as I use it very carefully, and never on the internet.

So - what is OpenDNS please ?

Also, could I not just ask Zen to put me back on the route/location or whatever that I was on before instead?

Yep same thing happened in my case, your connection has been rerouted to Manchester so traffic is staying on the BT network longer than it used to and I think is taking an indirect route.

A helpful guy in tech support put the question about whether connections will be rerouted to London to Zen's Network Operations team for me.

They could not say whether or not the connection will ever be routed back to London so I have now requested my MAC regrettably as have had lots of connection drops since this was done too.

The connection was rock solid before.

Its a shame.

Please see http://www.opendns.com for info on OpenDNS.

Edited by techguy (Thu 20-Sep-12 13:42:25)

Sorry you've had to request a MAC.

I've just tried Speedtest again and to my surprise, it shows my location as London again! I've had no disconnection either (It's actually been connected almost 14 days).
Not seeing the London Westminster location this time though, just London.

A little browsing hasn't produced any poorly connecting pages either, so we'll see - I'd like to think the problem has gone, and if so, hope it stays that way under normal circumstances. I may not have a short line but it's a very steady one.
My connection was also great before (when it showed London Westminster) and eveything worked fast enough for my needs.

Press the Windows key and R on your keyboard
type cmd
type tracert www.thinkbroadband.com for example and press enter.

1st hop will be your router.

If the second hop includes th-lon you are on the London POP, if it shows wh-man you are on the Manchester POP.

I don't think this is Zen's fault at all, I lay the blame squarely at BT's routing.

Don't know if of any use but running tracert here (Brighton) shows what looks like a new hop ahead of the London Zen node? Haven't had any mail problems though.

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 26 ms 25 ms 25 ms no-dns-yet-62-3-84-23.zen.co.uk [62.3.84.23]
3 25 ms 25 ms 26 ms ge-2-1-0-125.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.84.229]
4 26 ms 26 ms 25 ms linx-gw1.thn.ncuk.net [195.66.224.240]
5 27 ms 26 ms 28 ms gi0-24-10-star1.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net [80.249.97.9]
6 26 ms 25 ms 26 ms www.thinkbroadband.com [80.249.99.130]

There's no DNS for that hop yet so not sure.

Edited by techguy (Thu 20-Sep-12 17:04:52)

Thanks - didn't know how to do that

I get 3 hops for Manchester, then London before a thn.ncuk.net and a thdo.ncuk.net

Whatever, something changed and it's behaving better, at least for now - the change only happened after some planned BT work caused a disconnect not long before the Olympics.

I work at home so do rely on a good connection, and mostly that's what I've had until recently.

Spoke to soon - still having the "not found" problem. Zen?

Same here today! ..and last night I did a website update and found it couldn't connect to the hosting server initially and had to re-try. Never happened before.

Today I've had two pages not found or connection problems and one that came up in plain text - all ok when I tried them again.

Just had pesky oven have a hissy fit now and trip the power off, but it seems to have re-connected pretty much the same.

Thought I'd fixed it by adjusting the MTU on the router last night and so cancelled the request for a MAC but it appears not.

Might be best if everyone contacts support via the website as if they get reports from several customers they may have a look at the DNS servers which I think are not answering some requests.