Virgin Media Discussion Thread

[R3X]

Are the speed drops constant all day or only at peak times?

For myself the speed drops almost felt random, for example I tried @ 1-2am and was still stuck @ 2-3mbps on speedtest and torrents without a vpn.
peak times its feels normal to see an almost 30-50% drop at times especially 6-9pm zones well in my area at least before all my issues.

Well. Knowing VM, can be months/years to fix!

Yeah I read some guys on VM forums had been waiting 6 months for his utilization issue to be fixed but its sometimes a mine field on their forums a great deal of people seem to complain they are fed up of the lieing from vm it is also possible the customers fault though !

 

[HEADRAT]

What are the chances of VM coming out (due to a fault) and redoing the cabling in my house if it’s an awkward route? It’s nearly 20 years the original cabling and it comes up the drive and then up and over the roof dropping down into the garden / back if the house but this is the only way to get the cable into the part of the house with the network/TV etc...

Rip it all out and blame vandals

 

[R3X]

Rip it all out and blame vandals

I once had a road construction crew digging up a road patch next to my green VM cabinet literally standing on top of 1000s of black VM cabling, when my bb and tv went down I confronted him and told him the entire street has no tv or broadband, his reply was 'its not me' I said your standing on top of wiring that says CATV.

The engineer in the VM van blocked their van before they drove off and took their details down and then spent the entire night tented up fixing their mess

 

[tedrodgers]

hi guys

VM have just finished expanding into our area so the whole area now has brand new VM cables and cabinets and its very tempting to move when you see the speeds being advertised, specially with their sale on at the moment.

however, im currently with BT, i get around 35mb average d/l speeds which tbh is fine and touch wood the reliablity is very good. I also play PC games (CSGO mainly) and my ping is usually pretty good, but ive read and been told by some people that the VM network isnt as good for latency in games compaired to adsl.

does anyone have any comments on what VM is like for latency(low ping) in games?

thanks!

Ted

 

[moogle]

VM is good for pings but BT is better. I was on the FTTH with BT though so that could be why but I'm now on the 350MB package with VM and whilst pings are higher they're still good.

 

[Robzere31]

Think it depends on the area your in & how high subscription is
I don't really do much on line gaming but when I've run speed tests it usually reports between 6-13ms this is in area 04

 

[beachBOYken]

I normally get around 9ms ping, my area also used to be a highly subscribed area about 7 years ago, but they eventually improved the infrastructure here and its been fine for years (touch wood).
I occasionally play online games such as COD or BF and its always fine mostly, yes I have had some lag in game at times, but I have never felt it was my connection causing the issue rather the dodgy game servers I have been playing on.

 

[tedrodgers]

thanks for the replies guys. as i say ours is brand new in terms of cabling and infrastructure as weve never had cable around here before. I would imagine the usage would be fairly low in the area unless everyone is like me and decides to move from their adsl provider to VM

I may get them in to install it and cancel it within 14 days if its abit ****.

 

[russ9898]

Hi all,

I moved over to Virgin from FTTC approx. 6 months ago, in that time I havent done any gaming due to time constraints however I have done some gaming over the Christmas period and found my games to be very laggy/suspected packet loss, the connection was so bad last night that I setup a TBB monitor on my connection which has now been running a little over 24 hours. Any thoughts on why my minimum latency is so high even during the early hours of the morning? I'm suspecting the issue could be more than over utilisation although I do think that played a part yesterday afternoon where you can see ping spikes on the graph.

A quick overview of my setup:
Superhub 3 in modem mode, direct connection to Asus AC66U Router, majority of devices within my house are hardwired on gigabit ethernet including my Xbox One and gaming PC. The only devices to use WiFi are mobile devices/tablets.

Thanks,

Russ

 

[Avalon]

That is my main concern you say they have a code freeze policy for dec/jan but 2 VM staff members confirmed to me they are doing a major network upgrade in my area and it won't be done till end of jan and they started it during the Xmas holiday peak.

Also my VPN issues, yes I understand their is so much variation, but the issues are still there even without the vpn or torrenting, but torrenting and certain vpns almost triggers the performance drop oddly. Still one VPN provider works much better across the day and I max out the line off peak, so you could be very right and its some issue my side or VM really does have a utilization fault in my area.

Finding the needle in the haystack is a challenge but will keep trying, maybe VM are telling the truth and it all gets fixed in 2 weeks time

To be clear, the code freeze and reduced new construction/network upgrades over end of Dec/start of Jan are two separate issues with separate timings. Code freeze was an absolute, it was virtually unheard of to push any update during that period as the call volumes/fault calls would spike and that reduced holiday availability. Network build was just scaled back, as network tech's were in short supply and construction tended to be outsourced if required.

 

[chroniclard]

Hi all,

I moved over to Virgin from FTTC approx. 6 months ago, in that time I havent done any gaming due to time constraints however I have done some gaming over the Christmas period and found my games to be very laggy/suspected packet loss, the connection was so bad last night that I setup a TBB monitor on my connection which has now been running a little over 24 hours. Any thoughts on why my minimum latency is so high even during the early hours of the morning? I'm suspecting the issue could be more than over utilisation although I do think that played a part yesterday afternoon where you can see ping spikes on the graph.

A quick overview of my setup:
Superhub 3 in modem mode, direct connection to Asus AC66U Router, majority of devices within my house are hardwired on gigabit ethernet including my Xbox One and gaming PC. The only devices to use WiFi are mobile devices/tablets.

Thanks,

Russ

Hmm thats pretty bad! Done the usual reboot/powercycles? SH3 got latest firmware? (Dont know if you can make it force check for an update).

Worth registering on the virgin community forums and making a post about it. They can check the line and various things to see if there are issues.

Heres mine for comparison.

 

[russ9898]

Hmm thats pretty bad! Done the usual reboot/powercycles? SH3 got latest firmware? (Dont know if you can make it force check for an update).

Worth registering on the virgin community forums and making a post about it. They can check the line and various things to see if there are issues.

Heres mine for comparison.

Thank you for you reply, unfortunately yes, I've powered the SH3 down, left it powered down for 30 minutes or so and rebooted but to no avail. Have just completed a quick google and it would appear that I'm on the latest firmware so at abit of a loss.

Coincidentally, I registered on the virgin forum shortly after posting here and have posted all my router stats for someone who is more clued up on DOCSIS 3 than myself to have a nosey at, fingers crossed someone can spot an anomaly.

Your min latency is more where I would expect mine to reside, not 30 that is for sure.

 

[R3X]

To be clear, the code freeze and reduced new construction/network upgrades over end of Dec/start of Jan are two separate issues with separate timings. Code freeze was an absolute, it was virtually unheard of to push any update during that period as the call volumes/fault calls would spike and that reduced holiday availability. Network build was just scaled back, as network tech's were in short supply and construction tended to be outsourced if required.

Cool good to hear, I think VM staff were back at work today considering my bb connection went more yoyo today, but will sit tight and be patient

 

[Stretlow]

Hi all,

I moved over to Virgin from FTTC approx. 6 months ago, in that time I havent done any gaming due to time constraints however I have done some gaming over the Christmas period and found my games to be very laggy/suspected packet loss, the connection was so bad last night that I setup a TBB monitor on my connection which has now been running a little over 24 hours. Any thoughts on why my minimum latency is so high even during the early hours of the morning? I'm suspecting the issue could be more than over utilisation although I do think that played a part yesterday afternoon where you can see ping spikes on the graph.

A quick overview of my setup:
Superhub 3 in modem mode, direct connection to Asus AC66U Router, majority of devices within my house are hardwired on gigabit ethernet including my Xbox One and gaming PC. The only devices to use WiFi are mobile devices/tablets.

Thanks,

Russ

Hmm thats pretty bad! Done the usual reboot/powercycles? SH3 got latest firmware? (Dont know if you can make it force check for an update).

Worth registering on the virgin community forums and making a post about it. They can check the line and various things to see if there are issues.

Heres mine for comparison.

Mines somewhere between these two, although im not 100% sure whether its acceptable or not? Any help?
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broa...8128cb3f9c23d9b70eb1b1bf0bc43c4a67-07-01-2020

 

[peige]

Cancelled today, I was offered a slightly better deal by the final person I spoke to but nothing that made me want to stay. Hopefully get a better offer by retentions in the next 4 weeks, if not then new account I guess or I could shift to sky or just go freeview and add broadband/phone.

Crazy money, I was paying £888 a year for M200, fun TV and weekend phone. They offered £708 a year for the same. New users get £623 (49x12 + 35 setup) a year for Bigger bundle which is more or less the same.

 

[joelk2]

£48 a month for me, existing user. 350mb broadband, weekend phone and big bundle with kids tv.

 

[peige]

£48 a month for me, existing user. 350mb broadband, weekend phone and big bundle with kids tv.

Thats what I'd be happy with, £50 a month and i'll sign up for another contract. Infact i'm M200 and you have 350 there so that would be even better.

First offer was 50p extra a month with sports that I don't want, I don't know which part of "I want a better deal" that conformed to!

 

[joelk2]

Thats what I'd be happy with, £50 a month and i'll sign up for another contract. Infact i'm M200 and you have 350 there so that would be even better.

First offer was 50p extra a month with sports that I don't want, I don't know which part of "I want a better deal" that conformed to!

is so frustrating that
A. New customers often get better deals, loyalty means jack turd.
and
B. existing customers get wildly different deals offered.

in fact. when i renewed i got 2 months free and the 3rd half price also.

i just went striaght to retentions and told them im happy with my previous service and price and that they needed to match it or i was gone. they ended up going better by the free months

 

[russ9898]

A quick update, I made a post on the Virgin Community Forum and included my TBB BQM and router stats as discussed. A fellow forum member and member of the virgin team have confirmed that my upstream power levels are too high and outside of acceptable levels. They have arranged for an engineer visit to take place tomorrow who will hopefully rectify. I suspect they will simply add an attenuator to reduce levels but we will see.

Thanks again,

Russ

Hmm thats pretty bad! Done the usual reboot/powercycles? SH3 got latest firmware? (Dont know if you can make it force check for an update).

Worth registering on the virgin community forums and making a post about it. They can check the line and various things to see if there are issues.

Heres mine for comparison.

 

[chroniclard]

Hopefully get resolved! I have had more useful info over the years on the community forum than with phone support.