Just had a Virgin media engineer to my house

1337z0r

1337z0r

1337z0r

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Birmingham
So today I had a Virgin media engineer out to my house today to try and sort out the countless problems with my broadband. So he came and tested the speed and then said he would change the modem from a SB5100 installed a few months ago.

Then he had to ring up Virgin three times to try and get the modem activated. The speeds increased by 200Kbs and that was about it. He did not seemed clued up about the broadband most likely as virgin don't train engineers. He did not know about the speeds caps during peak time. He also agreed virgin were pretty crap and that they got rid of half their staff including engineers to save more money.

The guy was a nice guy and not his fault virgin don't train the engineers to a good standard but all I have to say is I am shocked about how bad virgin are. They turned a good telewest a very good company into such a bad one. I guess the tech guy only stays with virgin as he gets it with out tax.
 
I had a VM guy round this time last year, really nice guy. Seemed to know his stuff. I guess I might of been lucky to have one who has an interest in it anyway.

Just for the record, I've not had a single problem with them!
 
Ive already ordered them to put a cable in for the 13th. Why all you people posting this now!!! why!!! I asked about and no one really said anything bad about virgin. Now you all saying they suck. GEEZE
 
Never had a problem here. Only problems ive had were corroded cables/connections in the street, which he replaced straight away and their gateway going down in jarrow. Which happens.
 
What about 4pm speed throttling happening the moment you go over your alloance not the 5% and some saying it doesn't matter how much you download you get it anyway?
 
I dont download myself, i use it to play games. I download patches, programs and other odds and ends, but dont think i download that much.
 
I play games mostly with a few patchs etc.

I have been putting off downloading the medievil 2 total war patch at 650mb and a mod for it at 650mb because of being on 1mb.

Have u ever downloading something liek a one off like that on vm? did you get throttled back to hell in the process?
 
They do throttle you once you hit the limit of your line

2MB = 250MB
4MB = 750MB
20MB = 3GB

Then for each service your download and upload speeds halve. But on 20mb you go to 5MB when capped.

I am on 20MB and my issue has been in peak time when I have not downloaded 3GB I get slow speeds of around 800 - 1000 Kb/s which is slow for 20MB. Even after the capping stops my connection is still rubbish.

Plus the one thing which I found intresting was that the whole of Virgins internet comes from one place in the UK. And then the fiberoptic cables run from liverpool to a substation from which fiberoptic cables run to the green boxes on the street. So really the whole of virgin medias internet customers are connected to the same place.

You might be lucky you might not, I was talking for a forum member today and he gets pretty bad speeds on 4MB. Theres only the lucky few who get good speeds.
 
been with telewest for ~9 years, still using original modem that we was given back then and have had no major problems, only main outages we've had was when they freely upgraded our connection. Currently on 4mb and its still running fine, although if i ever upgrade to 20mb or they freely upgrade my package to a higher speed, ill need a new modem as i think my old one can only go up to around 10mb.
 
1337z0r said:
Plus the one thing which I found intresting was that the whole of Virgins internet comes from one place in the UK. And then the fiberoptic cables run from liverpool to a substation from which fiberoptic cables run to the green boxes on the street. So really the whole of virgin medias internet customers are connected to the same place.
Click to expand...

Heres a interesting guide to the layout of the network

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/draig.goch/Draig/cablemodem_files/frame.htm

Its old so a bit out of date and off course they've added Telewest to it, not sure how that ties in, but it gives a better idea.

TDF.
 
Only had one problem which was a year or so ago, all I had to do was get the connection reset.

Though I do think they cap connections, and that it is quite rude.
 
1337z0r said:
So today I had a Virgin media engineer out to my house today to try and sort out the countless problems with my broadband. So he came and tested the speed and then said he would change the modem from a SB5100 installed a few months ago.

Then he had to ring up Virgin three times to try and get the modem activated. The speeds increased by 200Kbs and that was about it. He did not seemed clued up about the broadband most likely as virgin don't train engineers. He did not know about the speeds caps during peak time. He also agreed virgin were pretty crap and that they got rid of half their staff including engineers to save more money.

The guy was a nice guy and not his fault virgin don't train the engineers to a good standard but all I have to say is I am shocked about how bad virgin are. They turned a good telewest a very good company into such a bad one. I guess the tech guy only stays with virgin as he gets it with out tax.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I call BS. I'd guess there are half truths in there somewhere.
 
1337z0r said:
They do throttle you once you hit the limit of your line

2MB = 250MB
4MB = 750MB
20MB = 3GB

Then for each service your download and upload speeds halve. But on 20mb you go to 5MB when capped.

I am on 20MB and my issue has been in peak time when I have not downloaded 3GB I get slow speeds of around 800 - 1000 Kb/s which is slow for 20MB. Even after the capping stops my connection is still rubbish.

Plus the one thing which I found intresting was that the whole of Virgins internet comes from one place in the UK. And then the fiberoptic cables run from liverpool to a substation from which fiberoptic cables run to the green boxes on the street. So really the whole of virgin medias internet customers are connected to the same place.

You might be lucky you might not, I was talking for a forum member today and he gets pretty bad speeds on 4MB. Theres only the lucky few who get good speeds.
Click to expand...

Is that 3GB being downloaded during peak hours or off peak hours and is it 3GB a day or a month your allowed to download on the 20mb service?
Also what are virgin like about downlding torrents as thats where i get most of my bigger game demos from.
 
Last edited:
how random said:
Is that 3GB being downloaded during peak hours or off peak hours and is it 3GB a day or a month your allowed to download on the 20mb service?
Also what are virgin like about downlding torrents as thats where i get most of my bigger game demos from.
Click to expand...

thats 3 gig a day

after you've had you're 3 gig peak time. they throttle your connection back to the stone age. not as much of a problem on the 20mb package. but considering some of the battlefield 2 patches got to 150mb, i can see plenty of innocent people being "throttled" on the lower packages.
 
MrLOL said:
thats 3 gig a day

after you've had you're 3 gig peak time. they throttle your connection back to the stone age. not as much of a problem on the 20mb package. but considering some of the battlefield 2 patches got to 150mb, i can see plenty of innocent people being "throttled" on the lower packages.
Click to expand...

It's 3gig starting after 4pm, if you hit it you get slowed down for 4 hours, then the counter resets.
Theoretically you could max out the connection between 00:01am and 15:59 and not get touched.
 
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