Virgin Media are rubbish...

Amp34

Amp34

Amp34

Caporegime
Joined
25 Jul 2005
Posts
28,851
Location
Canada
So much for a 20Mb line...

Speed Down 834.73 Kbps ( 0.8 Mbps )
Speed Up 163.82 Kbps ( 0.2 Mbps )

(Taken from think broadband speedtest and backed up by speedtest.net)

Following on from the post I made in the "unlimited" thread these are the latest speed results I got, Is there any way I can check it's not the hardware at my end that is at fault?

Bearing in mind when it was first installed I could download at 2MBps pretty regularly when connected, the last couple of weeks the speed has been dire, this is with both wireless and wired internet tested on different computers.

Failing any performance increase is there any chance of being able to force Virgin to downgrade our contract? There is no point in paying for a 20Mbps service and getting less than 1Mbps, even if it is an "up to" service!
 
I've had VirginMedia for a long time (Since when it was ntl world) and havent ever had any trouble. Most of the people i speak to who also have 20mb like ourselves dont have a problem reaching the top speeds of ~2200-2400kbps, but complain about the traffic management policies. To test if it is the server, get a download manager like Orbit or Flashget and try to donwload something off a fast ftp like rapidshare etc. I find that when i do speed tests online i onlt get about 10-15mb performance as its coming in off one conection, but when i use a file manager it maxes me everytime. Good luck
 
Lol you are lucky - i have had problems the last week getting online so i called them up on monday and arranged for an engineer for today, after waiting in all day no one turned up so i called them back up only to be told they cancelled the engineer, but they could not even be bothered to call me on my virgin line to let me know.

They went quiet though when i told them to put me on to someone who could cancel my service.
 
I've been with cable 8 years + and I recall only one or two downtime and none since they have been Virgin.

Guess I've been lucky.


Do you have their Cable or ADSL option?
 
I've never had a problem with 20Mb either - in fact i've found VM's customer service to be pretty good as well (on the billing side of things anyway - not had to use tech support).

Plus, speedtests are pretty inaccurate ways to make any kind of measurement... i've never got more than a claimed '2Mb' on speedtest.net - but i know my connection is working at full 20Mb seeing as i top out at about 2.4MB/sec when im downloading from good sources, plus my ping times in games have always been pretty good.
 
i'm very happy with VM now :) i have 10mb line and i get 1.2MB/s download... my pings in games are very low... 5ms in tf2 on good servers :)
 
Getting away from "it's fine for me", what hardware have you got between your machine and the modem? You really want to get that down to as little as possible (single machine attached directly to the modem ideally).
If you know anyone locally who's on VM, it might be worth checking with them too.
 
Yep, Virgin media aint bad for me either. Got a 10meg connection and works the same as everyone elses above.

I'm using a router and I get the above speeds through that.

Is it connected through usb?
What modem do you have?
 
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Last few days have been bad for download - big files come down at 500k instead of the max 2.4Mb.

Today seems a bit better but not full whack - wonder if they are messing with the network to sort things out for the upcoming 50Mb package?
 
Ive had VM for just over 11 months now and its been fantastic, broadband has never gone down yet, tv same, speeds are always great just did speed test.



I got no complaints at all phoned up with a box that the on demand never worked at 11am they sent a engineer round in the afternoon, phoned up another day to see what deal i could get and got a free V+ box on my current package which is now 2 V+ boxes, 1 standard box, XL tv, broadband, phone all for £65 more than happy with that.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
I've been with cable 8 years + and I recall only one or two downtime and none since they have been Virgin.

Guess I've been lucky.


Do you have their Cable or ADSL option?
Click to expand...

Cable

OCdude said:
I've never had a problem with 20Mb either - in fact i've found VM's customer service to be pretty good as well (on the billing side of things anyway - not had to use tech support).

Plus, speedtests are pretty inaccurate ways to make any kind of measurement... i've never got more than a claimed '2Mb' on speedtest.net - but i know my connection is working at full 20Mb seeing as i top out at about 2.4MB/sec when im downloading from good sources, plus my ping times in games have always been pretty good.
Click to expand...

Well when added to the fact I can't stream BBC iPlayer, youtube or any other video service I have tried without interuption every 5 seconds and the fact any file try to download comes in at around 30KBps it's pretty damning:p

tolien said:
Getting away from "it's fine for me", what hardware have you got between your machine and the modem? You really want to get that down to as little as possible (single machine attached directly to the modem ideally).
If you know anyone locally who's on VM, it might be worth checking with them too.
Click to expand...

From my laptop it is a wireless router (the standard Virgin one) into a switch (I think) which goes into a router, and my Desktop is wired straight into the switch. Both have problems with speed, as well as everyone elses computers. There are 8 or so ethernet connections, hence the switch and that hasn't been touched in 4 years when our landlords installed it. We have been with virgin for the last 3 years (although on the 4Mb package) and never had a problem, we didn't have a problem with this connection until about a week ago.

There are 6 of us in this house but none of us really download anything massive (a couple of us have checked to see if that was the case).

I'll see if i can connect directly into the modem with my laptop in a bit and see if i hape problems with the speed, thanks for that suggestion.

EDIT: Just did another one

Speed Down 265.15 Kbps ( 0.3 Mbps )
Speed Up 193.77 Kbps ( 0.2 Mbps )
Click to expand...

Whoo! Go me! No wonder it took about 20 seconds to download a page a minute ago. :rolleyes:
 
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Check if anyones using torrents.

Get a decent router and sort QoS. We have 20mb virgin in a house of 13 students and it does us great. The traffic management is a pain but when we're not capped we get full speeds and abuse the service.

We've clocked up over 520gb so far this month and no letters :D.
 
Chris1712 said:
Check if anyones using torrents.

Get a decent router and sort QoS. We have 20mb virgin in a house of 13 students and it does us great. The traffic management is a pain but when we're not capped we get full speeds and abuse the service.

We've clocked up over 520gb so far this month and no letters :D.
Click to expand...

As I said we checked that, no one is using P2P.

At the moment we have a Linksis BEFSR81, any good?

EDIT: with regards to QoS I have just had a look

img.php


I just enabled it and set it to http, I assume that would sort it if it was a problem with torrent?

EDIT 2: That made a lot of difference...

Speed Down 394.39 Kbps ( 0.4 Mbps )
Speed Up 147.45 Kbps ( 0.1 Mbps )
Click to expand...

:D
 
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I'd check at different times of the day and see if that makes a difference.

I used to live in a student area and had all sorts of problems during peak times with slow connections.

If your in a peak oversubscribed area there's not really a lot you can do.

You could have a look the virgin support newsgroups and see if other people in your area have similar problems.

It's also worth ringing up and having a moan that your not getting the full service I got a discout of 20 odd quid off each monthly bill.
 
I have virgin, a year ago I had the same problems, now I get a few meg, and one time I recorded 18 Meg! what you need to do is go into the registry editor, because microsoft with their QoS steals 20% of your speed! there are also other tweaks you can do to make it faster, such as more connections per server, not sure how to do it, you'll have to google it
 
I'm assuming you've rebooted the modem? If not, unplug for 5-10 minutes and reconnect. Might pay to check the modems config page, just type the modems IP into a browser, there's a few pages to check including a log.

Try cutting everything else out, connect the modem via the supplied network cable directly to a Pc, reboot the modem and then test.

If that doesn't work give Virgin Tech Support a call, it's possible the modem is nackered. Did you have it upgraded before the move to 20meg?

Also what operating system are you using? XP can have problems and need a TCP patch, Vista should be ok though.
 
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