Talk Straight - Issues

[Alastairb25]

Hi,

 

Do any of you use Talk Straight?

 

We have been a customer for a number of years. However recently we have found the Netsweeper filter is causing us a number of problems.

 

The Customer support has also been poor.

 

We wanted to check to see if we are unique in these issues or if it is indicative of a wider issue?

 

 

Thanks,

Alastair

ICT Network Manager

Netherhall School, Maryport

[Jawloms]

We use them and I haven't noticed anything. Can you be more specific about the Netsweeper problems?

[IrritableTech]

We had a really odd firewall issue week before last which took us down for a few hours. It was isolated to our connection - our partner primary schools were not affected. That was the first issue we'd seen in months.

Level one support is now outsourced and isn't great in my limited experience. Once you get through higher I think they are very good.

Interested to hear what netsweeper is/isn't doing for you.

[Alastairb25]

The Status page details the issues - https://hub.talk-straight.com/serverstatus.php

 

"UPDATE 23/11/2021 00:10

 

Good Morning All,

 

The Netsweeper platform has been expanded with the aim of eliminating slow speed issues suffered by some customers over the last month. Additional servers have been added to our main inline proxy clusters as well as adding a further cluster to increase available bandwidth. We will be monitoring the platform closely throughout the morning and will be contacting customers with open cases to gather feedback.

 

Thanks,"

 

Locally speed fine

 

Internet speed yesterday was appalling, on various sites, barely get 1mb

 

Better today, however I have come from a setup of 1gb via LUNS (Lancaster University Network Services) and a Fortigate 101E

Much faster speed, often pushing into the 900mbps on speed tests, real world fast downloads

 

The real world speed of this link seems very poor, I suspect due to filter constraints

[Alastairb25]

Changes taking a long time to come into play, often 10 minutes plus

Does not seem to be a way of submitting changes, as an example we would rather submit a site abcd.com to be categorised than get into adding to Whitelists

Interface is very slow to use

[Jawloms]

@SchoolsBroadband ?

[IrritableTech]

Changes taking a long time to come into play, often 10 minutes plus

Does not seem to be a way of submitting changes, as an example we would rather submit a site abcd.com to be categorised than get into adding to Whitelists

Interface is very slow to use

I've just done a speedtest in the last couple of minutes run from one of our VMs. We're on a gigabit connection and got 916.41Mbps Down and 579.36Mbps Up. I'm not a big fan of speedtests giving accurate results, but there doesn't seem to be much wrong at our end.

Netsweeper might seem slow to react because of your slow connection? Clearly something somewhere is amiss.

Changes to lists will take a few minutes to deploy, but shouldn't take over ten. To request a recategorization use the URL Alert option in the URL Tools menu. Hope that helps

[Alastairb25]

On a Server to Server basis bandwidth fine

 

Bandwidth from one of HyperV hosts is fine (today..)

 

However from a Workstation its not great, Workstation is Cisco Edge Switch > Cisco Core > Talk Straight CPE

Bit slower during day so only pulling 800 ish to a HyperV host

 

Better but still not blinding, perhaps traffic shaping comes into play?

[SchoolsBroadband]

@SchoolsBroadband ?

 

Hi @Jawloms (thanks for tagging me) and everyone else too who has commented.

 

We've had an issue with a very small subset of customers to do with a certain Netsweeper cluster not performing as it should do and some customers have suffered slower speeds than normal due to that.

 

We brought into service an additional 8 x Netsweeper servers yesterday to enhance capacity as a quick fix which should have brought all those affected back to normal speeds as of last night

 

Thank you for your patience to those who were affected.

 

Dave

[SchoolsBroadband]

On a Server to Server basis bandwidth fine

[ATTACH=CONFIG]63746[/ATTACH]

 

Bandwidth from one of HyperV hosts is fine (today..)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]63747[/ATTACH]

 

However from a Workstation its not great, Workstation is Cisco Edge Switch > Cisco Core > Talk Straight CPE

Bit slower during day so only pulling 800 ish to a HyperV host

[ATTACH=CONFIG]63748[/ATTACH]

 

Better but still not blinding, perhaps traffic shaping comes into play?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]63749[/ATTACH]

 

Hi @Alastairb25

 

I can assure you we don't do any type of traffic shaping on our network for general Internet usage on our network.

 

Fast.com isn't the most reliable of speed test for big bandwidths. For best speed results use the speed test app from speedtest.net

 

Do remember that when doing speed tests other computers in the school will also be using the Internet too so you can't use the speed they are using which is why your speed will always be slower in the day time. you can check in the evening or disconnect everyone else and plug a computer directly into our router.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[SchoolsBroadband]

Changes taking a long time to come into play, often 10 minutes plus

Does not seem to be a way of submitting changes, as an example we would rather submit a site abcd.com to be categorised than get into adding to Whitelists

Interface is very slow to use

 

@Alastairb25 that certainly shouldn't be the case. Please do contact the support team to look into it for you.

 

We are in the process of developing a new reporting engine too which gives much faster search results and is currently in beta testing.

 

All being well that will be released Q1 / Q2 next year and will be for free for all of our customers.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Sonic007]

Been a customer for about 6 months now and very happy. Whenever we've had an issue tech support have been on it and resolved it.