Virgin Media Discussion Thread

Type_R

Type_R

Type_R

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AWPC said:
Is there anyway to know before ordering what the congestion is like in your area?

I really want to switch to VM as BT FTTC are taking the absolute mickey @ £180 ish for 3 months & the speed keeps dropping due to all the new flats being built in my area. I have gone from 80 Down 20 Up to 56 Down 20 Up the price has gone up £40 in the last year alone its excessive for way less speed & service! BT say its due to contention ratio but still managed to raise their prices & despite twice moving me onto another port in the exchange its no different & ever since a neighbour (who has since moved away!) got BT its dropped to just above the minimum allowed before BT will fix for free (otherwise they want £200).

The thing which bothers me about VM is I have heard nightmare stories of people in London switching to them then finding its unuseable due to an over subscribed local exchange. My only choices are VM or stick with BT no-one else is offering any decent alternatives in my area right now (West London). I have tried googling for this but it does not seem to be publically available info!
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There is a cooling off period, so by law you are allowed to reject the service once you have signed up!
 

Ol!ver

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Bloke knocked on the door earlier - seems they're doing door-to-door for anyone who registered interest while they were doing the work in the street a few weeks ago. Install date is Friday 13th - 200Mbps, Fibre only. I might tell them to put the TV in yet, trying to decide how important Sky Atlantic is.

I'm hoping 350Mbps will be available at some point. The bloke reckoned they might be holding it back seeing as it's a new area.
 

brendy

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Ol!ver said:
Bloke knocked on the door earlier - seems they're doing door-to-door for anyone who registered interest while they were doing the work in the street a few weeks ago. Install date is Friday 13th - 200Mbps, Fibre only. I might tell them to put the TV in yet, trying to decide how important Sky Atlantic is.

I'm hoping 350Mbps will be available at some point. The bloke reckoned they might be holding it back seeing as it's a new area.
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I signed up last week, within 20 mins I had a text and email from BT saying they were sorry I was leaving!
Went VIP in the end as I want all the channels, 2 TV boxes, 200mbs (might even be the 350 now) and the phone package which wasn't available to me last month is included free, 70 quid credit and £78 per month for first year. This will be roughly a 30 reduction over my infinity 2 and sky subs.
 

Nick1881

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I'm on Vivid 200 broadband only and was paying £40 a month for the first year, then it went up to £53 a month, just called them up, had to go through to cancellations, then they offered me the same service for £37 a month, happy with that.
 

nwatson6

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So I am using the SH3 in modem mode, software version 9.1.116V and get a sea of yellow, I don't suppose there is anything more that can be done?

I have heard there is a "new" firmware but not available to all yet, does it fix the issues or simply hide them?

Is it worth moaning at virgin, from past experience tech support is provided from overseas and are simply reading a script and ask you to reset modem.

4ccd1db16b763653b35634a42f2330fbee3697c4-06-04-2018.png
 

SpudMaster

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nwatson6 said:
I have heard there is a "new" firmware but not available to all yet, does it fix the issues or simply hide them?
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Would also like to know this. If your on the new firmware have you actually noticed a difference in game or is it just a case of you see less yellow. Some people seem to think that the new firmware doesn't actually fix anything and just hides the issue by making the graph look better.
 

Kol

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I genuinely have to ask how Virgin could release a firmware which 'hides' something on a graph which is a third party pinging. It either responds in a certain time or doesn't.

No one has yet explained how Virgin are able to 'fake' a lower maximum latency with this new firmware.
 

Duke

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You'd think by now at least a few of the people raging before would post to say if its resolved or not. If it was so terrible it must be noticeable right away after the update?
 

Steveocee

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Kol said:
I genuinely have to ask how Virgin could release a firmware which 'hides' something on a graph which is a third party pinging. It either responds in a certain time or doesn't.

No one has yet explained how Virgin are able to 'fake' a lower maximum latency with this new firmware.
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First thing I said was does it fix the issue is just prioritise ping response so the graphs look better and people stop moaning about the graphs.
 

Rainmaker

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Kol said:
I genuinely have to ask how Virgin could release a firmware which 'hides' something on a graph which is a third party pinging. It either responds in a certain time or doesn't.

No one has yet explained how Virgin are able to 'fake' a lower maximum latency with this new firmware.
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The VM trial (of which I'm a part) hasn't finished yet; which might explain why there's not much detail floating around. Nobody wants to get their wrists slapped and get kicked off. What I can say is someone else has posted the following online that I can neither confirm nor deny nor confirm...

1/
The PUMA 6 CPU is of low spec (single core) and is thus heavily utilised because all of the traffic on a segment hits it and is filtered through by your own security key generated when the modem is switched on.

2/
The processor and associated memory is so overloaded that every 20 to 30 seconds it does an emergency interrupt to clear its cache and so on. This will stop some games in their tracks.

3/
Every second, the TBB BQM system, for those subscribing, makes an ICMP call (you can Google that) to your router. This call has to be handled hitherto by the Puma 6 chip.

4/
The yellow portion of the graph is very misleading. It is a maximum latency measure. So that in any 30 second period, you might get 25 of those ICMP pings being serviced in around 10 to 20 milliseconds; when the Puma 6 chip interrupts, the ping round trip time rises and it is this maximum that is recorded in the BQM as the yellow area. The blue average area remains relatively unpurturbed.

5/
The new firmware displaces processing of ICMP packets from the Puma 6 into the AR9382 chip. A clever dodge which shows a nice BQM graph, but isn't even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to load that remains on the Puma 6.
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I hope that helps clear up why the graph looks better but in fact the problem wouldn't go away. In theory. If this random person isn't lying or wrong... ;)
 

Kol

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Rainmaker said:
The VM trial (of which I'm a part) hasn't finished yet; which might explain why there's not much detail floating around. Nobody wants to get their wrists slapped and get kicked off. What I can say is someone else has posted the following online that I can neither confirm nor deny nor confirm...



I hope that helps clear up why the graph looks better but in fact the problem wouldn't go away. In theory. If this random person isn't lying or wrong... ;)
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V useful post. Thanks for taking the time to post that.
 

beachBOYken

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SpudMaster said:
Would also like to know this. If your on the new firmware have you actually noticed a difference in game or is it just a case of you see less yellow. Some people seem to think that the new firmware doesn't actually fix anything and just hides the issue by making the graph look better.
Click to expand...

Duke said:
You'd think by now at least a few of the people raging before would post to say if its resolved or not. If it was so terrible it must be noticeable right away after the update?
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Not enough people have it yet, a lot of the ones that constantly complain on the VM forums and spout that it just hides the issue don't even have the trial firmware or don't give any actual evidence to back up their theory.
Until everyone is on this new firmware, I don't think we can be sure if its fixed or improved the issue.

I have the new firmware but I'm not a heavy online gamer, only played some Sea of Thieves and thats been mostly ok bar some occasional lag but that could just be the SoT servers.
 
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