Virgin Media Discussion Thread

Caporegime
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By "new install" you mean new area, rather than connecting a house. Copper coax is still used when connecting a property in a cabled area, and for in-fill when cabling new streets.
 

Stu

Stu

Soldato
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Not looking any better for me... need to check if I've received the update.

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Soldato
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I thought the latency issue was a hardware problem that couldn't be solved by a firmware update.

It is, but there are a few ways to mitigate the way it looks on tests, and some ideas about dealing with the part of the hardware that is having these issues processing packets. It's possible Intel has rewritten the code that was causing the big hitches, and by all accounts from the people that disassembled the firmware, that code wasn't well or efficiently written.

Tests do look much improved, but there are reports that there is still the occasional hitch, which may just be down to where the community's test servers are, and the general higher latency of cable over DSL. The SH3 issue may have been mitigated to make it 90 percent better, but there is still an underlying issue there that really needs a hardware redesign.

Even the Puma 7 exhibits the same hardware design fault, but its faster processor can deal with the issue much more effectively than the Puma 6 hardware.

So I wouldn't say the problem is fixed, but it's probably been fixed "good enough" and probably as good as we're going to get in the Puma 6 SH3.
 
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Soldato
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I thought the latency issue was a hardware problem that couldn't be solved by a firmware update.

I've had a good read through some VM forums and the bottom line is that it is a hardware issue and it won't be fixable by software patching it.

Granted the most recent firmware being rolled out is really transforming how peoples ping responses and average latency graph as well as mitigating some 3rd party Puma6 testing tool but "real use" is still reporting the constant TCP ping spikes. I guess VM figured if the graphs look clean then people can't evidence an issue to them.
 
Permabanned
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I've had a good read through some VM forums and the bottom line is that it is a hardware issue and it won't be fixable by software patching it.

Granted the most recent firmware being rolled out is really transforming how peoples ping responses and average latency graph as well as mitigating some 3rd party Puma6 testing tool but "real use" is still reporting the constant TCP ping spikes. I guess VM figured if the graphs look clean then people can't evidence an issue to them.
My first thoughts were that this might the case, in that they've made a fix so the BBQ meter looks more normal but the underlying problem was still there. Though to be fair I've definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt noticed great improvements in 2 areas.

· Uploading large files to filehost. Beforehand I would only ever get ~17Mb upload instead of the full 22Mb that I normally can get. Now I get the full 22Mb which it never did in the last year.

· When the upload was being fully utilised then the internet was very slow and Skype calls would be nearly impossible but now the missus can talk to her sister in Latvia via Skype without her shouting to me "are you uploading something..." and there is now hardly a difference in loading web pages.



The peaks are where I'm uploading something. Before, those upload peaks would saturate the whole of the graph in blue.

So while the new firmware might not fix the intrinsic fault of the Puma6 chipset it does seem to go some way to alleviate some of the issues associated with it.
 
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Soldato
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What's the best way to test my ping both wired and wireless. I ask because wirelessly with a new Asus router with sh3 in modem mode I get 150mb wireless now upstairs however seem to be lagging on my PS4 with ethernet in.
 
Soldato
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Sorry I'm not fully savvy with routers. Do I use a programme to read results or will this show in my router settings once I set up the QoS ?

Do a couple of speedtests, cabled in and to reasonably reputable speedtest providers will give you a rough idea of your speed, use 90% of those values as your QoS targets. All you are doing effectively is moving the choke point to your router but at least that will intelligently manage it (if it has QoS) where the ISP probably does not care.
 

B&W

B&W

Soldato
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This is getting ridiculous now. First two days at the start of the week with no internet or cable. Been working for almost two days, at first it was ok now it's a joke.

Now the latency is so slow I can't even do a speedtest from my phone. Despite rebooting the modem several times.

And for the last month or so ive had to randomly reboot the modern to get good performance.

I'm tempted to try sky. I can't see it being a hardware issue as sometimes it's perfect. Looks like it's messed up from the source.
 
Soldato
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The old software version was 9.1.116V the new one is 9.1.116.603

I have also noticed that some of the photo intensive sites that I frequent seem to be loading faster. Hopefully that is not just the psychosomatic side affect of finally getting rid of this bug. If I'd know it was coming I would done some stopwatch tests.

Where do you live (rough area) if you don't mind me asking? I wonder if they're live trialling it area by area? Just checked my HH3, still on 9.1.116V
 
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Where do you live (rough area) if you don't mind me asking? I wonder if they're live trialling it area by area? Just checked my HH3, still on 9.1.116V
I'm in the Midlands but I've historically got updates pretty quickly. I was among the first to get the now old .116V that fixed the port flapping (disconnect every 35mins) that was killing us a while back. Plus I was signed up about 7 years ago to beta test some Superhub firmware

There are some very informed users on the VM forums who say that the new firmware fix is mainly cosmetic and doesn't fix anything though my experience does not support that notion. My current BQM is looking fine and also the DSLReport speed test http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest shows BufferBloat as 'A'. From my understanding this was poor with the 116V firmware.



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