Blasted Virgin

MagicBoy · 6 Jul 2009 at 23:31

Cat sitting for the parents while they're away. Couple of hours of web surfing, listening to Spotify and a couple of podcast downloads from the web and they've bleeding capped me. I expected a bit better since the upgrade to 10Mb. Are they taking the mick? It's running worse than the old 512Kb service we started off with when they were C&W back in the 90s.

Utterly terrible, especially in comparison to the 16Mb Sky at home which I can abuse as much as it like and still get the line maxxed out at 12Mb.

Virgin suck.

cobuk · 6 Jul 2009 at 23:35

MagicBoy said:
Cat sitting for the parents while they're away. Couple of hours of web surfing, listening to Spotify and a couple of podcast downloads from the web and they've bleeding capped me. I expected a bit better since the upgrade to 10Mb. Are they taking the mick? It's running worse than the old 512Kb service we started off with when they were C&W back in the 90s.

Utterly terrible, especially in comparison to the 16Mb Sky at home which I can abuse as much as it like and still get the line maxxed out at 12Mb.

Virgin suck.

i know how you feel, ive got the 20mb package and after a few youtube vids iam stuck on 5mb the rest of the day, its shocking i pay for 20mb so how the hell can i get 5mb at times

Speed · 6 Jul 2009 at 23:48

MagicBoy said:
Cat sitting for the parents while they're away. Couple of hours of web surfing, listening to Spotify and a couple of podcast downloads from the web and they've bleeding capped me. I expected a bit better since the upgrade to 10Mb. Are they taking the mick? It's running worse than the old 512Kb service we started off with when they were C&W back in the 90s.

Utterly terrible, especially in comparison to the 16Mb Sky at home which I can abuse as much as it like and still get the line maxxed out at 12Mb.

Virgin suck.

I'm also on the 10Mb Virgin package and it sounds like something is wrong with yours. It takes an awful lot more than that for them to cap you. If it's the recent upgraded 10Mb then the limits are lower than the normal 10Mb service, but still you must have downloaded at least 500Mb to a 1Gb for them to cap you. See: http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

cobuk said:
i know how you feel, ive got the 20mb package and after a few youtube vids iam stuck on 5mb the rest of the day, its shocking i pay for 20mb so how the hell can i get 5mb at times

A few You Tube vids? You're joking right? The limits for the 20mb package are 7Gb between 10:00 and 15:00 and 3Gb between 16:00 and 21:00. It's unlimited from 21:00 to 10:00 and from 15:00 to 16:00.

To be fair to Virgin vs Sky, unless you are near the exchange with Sky you won't get 16Mb and with Virgin you almost always get max speeds for the connection you are on, bar throttling of course.

Dano · 6 Jul 2009 at 23:53

Whilst the limit before capping is frankly daft I never notice any difference once capped except download speeds, everything else is just as snappy and pings remain the same, sure something isn't running torrents in the background?

MagicBoy · 6 Jul 2009 at 23:54

Speed said:
To be fair to Virgin vs Sky, unless you are near the exchange with Sky you won't get 16Mb and with Virgin you almost always get max speeds for the connection you are on, bar throttling of course.

I've pulled about 180MB in podcasts, plus web traffic. Not got any bandwidth monitoring installed on my Mac but can't see how it's gone anywhere near the cap limit.

As for Sky - exchange is over the road.

I'd have gone with Virgin, however they cabled up the entire town apart from my street...

MagicBoy · 6 Jul 2009 at 23:57

Dano said:
Whilst the limit before capping is frankly daft I never notice any difference once capped except download speeds, everything else is just as snappy and pings remain the same, sure something isn't running torrents in the background?

The olds PC is off. Router and the modem have been rebooted. Very unlikely to be someone hacking the wireless as it's got a massive password and MAC filtering.

xb8browney · 7 Jul 2009 at 07:36

Same old bashing comments.

WAN Bandwidth - Monthly
Date Download
2009-07 11.84 GB
2009-06 166.09 GB
2009-05 215.07 GB
2009-04 107.23 GB

I've never been on STM, I just download out of STM hours and the limit on my 20Mb is 10.5Gb plenty BW during peak times.

I get great ping in games 18MS solid.

There off-shore support is poor but there UK use group support is really good!

Sent them a message at 22:20PM on Sunday I had a reply back at 09:00 Monday morning

Hi XXXXXXX,

Your modem has migrated from a Cisco CMTS to a Motorola CMTS. This is to
utilise the capacity of our newer infrastructure, freeing up capacity on
legacy equipment. As such you will have seen a temporary disruption to
your service as the modem re-tuned. This process has completed now and
you should see no more interruptions.

eggyoke · 7 Jul 2009 at 08:56

I'm on 20mb virgin line and its normally OK. That is... I dont notice any change in speed if I'm just browsing or watching youtube vids.

I use rapidshare a lot, and with a 1 file download I normally get around 600-800kbs. I have seen it at 2000kbs+ when downloading from some high speed servers, but thats rare.

I'm probably not getting the right speeds, but my sister is on an unlimited Sky line (16mb I think) and its the worst broadband I have ever used. Its woeful and reminds me of my old 56k dial-up.

She has complained to them but they just say its because shes not close to a sky exchange post (or whatever its called.)

They shouldn't offer the service if they cant deliver anything that resembles the deal.

antijoke · 7 Jul 2009 at 11:24

My Virgin 10Mb connection has been awful last night (and recently), I couldn't get any video from YouTube to stream, not could I get onto Speedtest.net to test my speed. Online gaming from my PS3 has been a joke too. Using Netgear router wireless for laptop and hardwired for PS3.

Is it worth a call to them?

Speed · 7 Jul 2009 at 17:47

anticonscience said:
My Virgin 10Mb connection has been awful last night (and recently), I couldn't get any video from YouTube to stream, not could I get onto Speedtest.net to test my speed. Online gaming from my PS3 has been a joke too. Using Netgear router wireless for laptop and hardwired for PS3.

Is it worth a call to them?

If it happens again and a router and modem reboot doesn't sort it for good, then yes give them a call.

mmorpheus1 · 7 Jul 2009 at 23:03

Your modem has migrated from a Cisco CMTS to a Motorola CMTS. This is to
utilise the capacity of our newer infrastructure, freeing up capacity on
legacy equipment. As such you will have seen a temporary disruption to
your service as the modem re-tuned. This process has completed now and
you should see no more interruptions.

This is because of the 50MB upgrades that are going on all over the country.

Check the status page to see if any upgrades are happening in your area.

Speed · 7 Jul 2009 at 23:05

mmorpheus1 said:
Your modem has migrated from a Cisco CMTS to a Motorola CMTS. This is to
utilise the capacity of our newer infrastructure, freeing up capacity on
legacy equipment. As such you will have seen a temporary disruption to
your service as the modem re-tuned. This process has completed now and
you should see no more interruptions.

This is because of the 50MB upgrades that are going on all over the country.

Check the status page to see if any upgrades are happening in your area.

Where did you see that?

d_brennen · 7 Jul 2009 at 23:10

Virgin are bloody awful for me. I'm on their 8mb service (dsl) and it gets throttled like crazy. Worst of it is I am not even torrenting. Buy a game from Steam? Bang! Dial up speed. The faster the connection the quicker you hit their stupidly low caps. It is having to change the way I use the net which angers me :mad:

Speed · 7 Jul 2009 at 23:30

d_brennen said:
Virgin are bloody awful for me. I'm on their 8mb service (dsl) and it gets throttled like crazy. Worst of it is I am not even torrenting. Buy a game from Steam? Bang! Dial up speed. The faster the connection the quicker you hit their stupidly low caps. It is having to change the way I use the net which angers me

It's best just to download when there are no limits, it's not ideal but no ASDL in my area can hit Virgin speeds. I get 1.3MB/s pretty reliably.

Gypo · 8 Jul 2009 at 13:51

Never had any problems whilst oi was with Virgin on the 20mb service, ok the traffic shaping was a pain but i used it for games and 5mb was sufficient still.

mmorpheus1 · 8 Jul 2009 at 20:22

Speed said:
Where did you see that?

Have a read on HERE

And i work for them

50 Meg has been rolled out in quite a few places now, i have it and it rocks

Speed · 8 Jul 2009 at 20:48

mmorpheus1 said:
Have a read on HERE

And i work for them

50 Meg has been rolled out in quite a few places now, i have it and it rocks

I was under the impression the rollout was pretty much done. I did have some distruption yesterday, but the 50Mb service has been available to me for months.

EdAllonby · 8 Jul 2009 at 20:58

I get capping virtually every night, Virgin needs to expand their download rates, they seem to have enough money to do so.

PistolPete · 8 Jul 2009 at 21:29

Maybe you need to re-think your downloading. On 20Mb you can download over 100GB A DAY without hitting the STM.

Speed · 8 Jul 2009 at 21:58

I have to agree that Virgin need to at least double the limits on all of their packages. But you can download a hell of a lot without hitting the limits if you are careful.