Terrible connection with Virgin...

RoachycaL

RoachycaL

RoachycaL

Soldato
Joined
2 Jan 2006
Posts
3,152
Location
Newcastle Upon Tyne
Hi guys,

Very very very long story short, Ive had virgin since July last year and Ive never had the solid 20 meg connection that I pay for.

A few weeks after getting virgin installed, the speeds became terrible - only in the evenings even though customer support confirmed I wasnt being traffic shapen, and after 20 or so phone calls they finally realised it was a problem on their end.

However for months and months I have suffered from crap fluctuating speeds, but this week has just been bloody terrible!

I live in a student area, but all the students have gone home for easter now apart from me and my flatmate (we live in newcastle anyway). So I know for a fact its not the amount of users online in the area.

Over the past couple of days, the internet has almost ground to a halt (pages taking minutes to load pages and downloads simply pausing for no reason).

I filed a complaint earlier today, as Im seriously considering switching providers.

To try and explain more clearly - if for example I hit OCUK - the page will begin to load - or just say "waiting for overclockers.co.uk.....", it will sit there until I hit refresh, then the page will instantly load - this is after me hammering refresh serveral times.

I will frequently type in a URL - and the browser will INSTANTLY tell me, "page cant be displayed", whereas if I hit F5, the page will then load no problem!

When Ive been downloading stuff on the xbox this evening too, downloads will go for about 10 seconds and then just completley stop. Its almost as if the connection is constantly getting interrupted?

I have so far tried, rebooting modem, router - machines connected and
Changing DNS servers - which appeared to work briefly, everything was really fast for about half an hour.

I also got disconnected from xbox live, whereas my flat mate was still sitting on his xbox playing with mates - connected perfectly fine. We are both connected using ethernet, so I cant see why I seem to be suffering from more issues than him!

Im really looking for some help and advice to sort this out, hopefully myself as it appears to be partly virgins issues, and partly issues on my network. I have tried numerous times with customer support and gotten nowhere.

I have messed on for months trying to get to the bottom of my connectivity issues and have almost gotten to the end of my tether, I feel that if this is no simple fix then I will simply switch providers.

Thanks for any help or advice.
 
This happened to us on Virgin too, simplest solution was the best one - unplugged the modem and then plugged it back in again, and it was much better!
 
Show us your modem stats. Do you know how to do that? What modem is it? Have you tried wiring direct into it to test this? What area are you in?
 
One thing it doesn't look like you have tried is removing the router from the equation.

Switch everything off for 5 minutes and connect your computer directly to the modem and see if that makes any difference.

If so, then you have a buggered router.

Other than that not really a lot to suggest, post your modem stats (iirc go to http://192.168.100.1 ) as there may be something there that VM needs to have a look at.


FWIW I had similar issues with our 50Mbit connection at the end of last year, after 3 months of farting around with tech support and idiotic engineers I just gave up and cancelled and insisted upon a 3 month refund for the service that I'd not been receiving.

I now have a 20Mbit ADSL connection from a very good ISP and its bloody excellent.
 
jaybee said:
Show us your modem stats. Do you know how to do that? What modem is it? Have you tried wiring direct into it to test this? What area are you in?
Click to expand...

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 55
Downstream Frequency : 307000000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 9.3 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 40.3 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 1
Upstream Frequency : 37500000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 43.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

is that what youre after?

wij said:
One thing it doesn't look like you have tried is removing the router from the equation.

Switch everything off for 5 minutes and connect your computer directly to the modem and see if that makes any difference.

If so, then you have a buggered router.

Other than that not really a lot to suggest, post your modem stats (iirc go to http://192.168.100.1 ) as there may be something there that VM needs to have a look at.


FWIW I had similar issues with our 50Mbit connection at the end of last year, after 3 months of farting around with tech support and idiotic engineers I just gave up and cancelled and insisted upon a 3 month refund for the service that I'd not been receiving.

I now have a 20Mbit ADSL connection from a very good ISP and its bloody excellent.
Click to expand...

I think I have at some point in my months of messing taken the router out of the equation, as I originally thought it was the cable that connected the router to the modem (it was under the floor and I actually stuck a screwdriver nail through the cable - yet it still worked perfectly) however with the router out of the equation, it still did the same thing.

As I said up there, Im honestly thinking of doing the same that youve done mate - just complain till I get some money then move on, because Im sick to death of Virgin after being with them for just a few months.

May I ask who the isp you get 20 meg with on adsl?
 
RoachycaL said:
Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 55
Downstream Frequency : 307000000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 9.3 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 40.3 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 1
Upstream Frequency : 37500000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 43.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

is that what youre after?

<snip>

May I ask who the isp you get 20 meg with on adsl?
Click to expand...

Your downstream power is perhaps a little bit high, but I'm no expert when it comes to such things I know the general rule is to get it lower the better.

I use AAISP for my internet now.

They own the phone line too which makes any problems with it their responsibility, well they will do all the BT chasing on my behalf. :)

I have the service they provide over Be's LLU backhaul and so far it's been flawless. Also lots of extra things like full rDNS delegation (more use at our offices than my house but none the less), all my machines also have public IP's and I even have a fully routed /48 IP6 netblock now :p

Far from cheap at the best part of £50 a month inc. the phone line but I am thoroughly bored of sub-standard service from consumer grade ISP's - I work from home a lot and can't afford to be messed about with by incompetent tech support or just generally put up with crap quality of service.
 
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a lot of ppl blame the -incoming- connection but most of the time its user error, some routers throttle/just general crap and need setting up right - I know this from experience, sometimes even firmware can make a huge diff.

If you live in a heavy student area though the same thing happend to my friend, he ended up leaving VM and went with sky and hasnt looked back since - because he is like ontop of his exchange.
 
Ok well my flatmate just told me that Virgin called YESTERDAY - in response to the complaint I failed a few days ago.

Apparently they are doing maintenance work in the area and that the speed will be fixed by the ninth - this is a message that got passed on to me as I didnt get to speak to them.

I personally find this ridiculous for 2 reasons - one being maintenance is going on in the area for several days up to a week and they havent even notified me of this?

And two - they havent offered any kind of credit on my account!

Should I push them to get some money back from this? As personally Im totally sick of all this bull, how would I go about doing this? They apparently said to call back using 151 but I know that theyre support line is atrocious.
 
Sounds very familiar mate. They basically did the same to me for a couple of weeks to shut me up and get me off their backs but every time the supposed date for a fix came and passed with no improvements. The difficulty is that if they have oversold the capacity in the area it's not always a quick fix for them, they are going to have to install new equipment and possibly lay more cables. Thing that really hacked me off though was the constant dishonesty from their support teams.

I'd phone up and threaten to leave, get some compensation for the time it's been shoddy and maybe see how it goes.

When it worked my connection was brilliant, low pings and high throughput but after 3 months of it being unusable during the day (infact it was running at circa 45% packet loss from 09:00 till 03:00 the next day normally!) I just gave up and left.

I'd recommend phoning their accounts / customer retention department during regular business hours. I always seemed to get more receptive people at that time as apposed to the overnight support drones in the offshore places.

If you're going to look at alternatives I'd start by finding out what ADSL providers are at your local exchange and also figure out how long your phone line might be - my line is short at under 500m so that is why I get such good speeds on ADSL. samknows.com is a useful tool for this.
 
This happens to me as well, this is why my ssh connections keep timing out. what might help is if you set your own DNS servers and if you have a SPI then open up port 53 for 255.255.255.255 which is the cable broadcast address.

but if you cut out your router and connect directly to the modem and it still sucks then there is nothing configuration wise you can do to fix that on your side. I am moving in July and will 100% make sure where i move to a house that has a working BT socket so i can switch back to adsl2.

Who needs 50mbit when you can't even download with it without being monitored and tracked all the time. (which is coming) Just waiting for them to send me letters about HASH's that they apparently intercepted. LOL let them come and try sniff my packets
 
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wij said:
Sounds very familiar mate. They basically did the same to me for a couple of weeks to shut me up and get me off their backs but every time the supposed date for a fix came and passed with no improvements. The difficulty is that if they have oversold the capacity in the area it's not always a quick fix for them, they are going to have to install new equipment and possibly lay more cables. Thing that really hacked me off though was the constant dishonesty from their support teams.

I'd phone up and threaten to leave, get some compensation for the time it's been shoddy and maybe see how it goes.

When it worked my connection was brilliant, low pings and high throughput but after 3 months of it being unusable during the day (infact it was running at circa 45% packet loss from 09:00 till 03:00 the next day normally!) I just gave up and left.

I'd recommend phoning their accounts / customer retention department during regular business hours. I always seemed to get more receptive people at that time as apposed to the overnight support drones in the offshore places.

If you're going to look at alternatives I'd start by finding out what ADSL providers are at your local exchange and also figure out how long your phone line might be - my line is short at under 500m so that is why I get such good speeds on ADSL. samknows.com is a useful tool for this.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I think the best course of action for me is to wait until the 9th - and see if anything improves. If it doesn't, then I think I'm just going to switch providers - in the meantime I might try and get some compensation but I don't really know how to go about it - eg. how do they know I'm not just telling a load of crap to get some money out of them?

I think I'm also going to buy a new router as well - as this internet mess has been going on the past week, the router seems to have been acting funny too. I have all pc's on the network dynamically configured - but twice this week the router has decided not to give my pc an ip address until I reboot the router... I have also tried to find some decent firmware to switch it to, but I cant seem to find any! (its a netgear WGR614)

groen said:
This happens to me as well, this is why my ssh connections keep timing out. what might help is if you set your own DNS servers and if you have a SPI then open up port 53 for 255.255.255.255 which is the cable broadcast address.

but if you cut out your router and connect directly to the modem and it still sucks then there is nothing configuration wise you can do to fix that on your side. I am moving in July and will 100% make sure where i move to a house that has a working BT socket so i can switch back to adsl2.

Who needs 50mbit when you can't even download with it without being monitored and tracked all the time. (which is coming) Just waiting for them to send me letters about HASH's that they apparently intercepted. LOL let them come and try sniff my packets
Click to expand...

Thats how I think of it too, if they offered 50mb on a plate to me with no extra costs - then fine Id probably settle for that, however I have also heard rumors about traffic shaping being added to the service, and as you said they will eventually start monitoring their service.
 
They are already monitoring their service.

virgin intercepting your packets

Arguments against saying it is illegal for virgin to be complicit in monitoring as it is would be illegal for me to intercept other peoples packets without their knowledge.

http://www.christopher-parsons.com/blog/privacy/aggregating-information-about-cview

http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-565691

Then there is always this type of technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)

I am pretty sure that such packet inspection on such a large scale is going to affect network performance, that is why SSH does not work properly and people complain of disconnection and bad routing.
 
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Mine has been almost unusable for almost 5 months. Really slow, horrible upload, wild ping and packet loss. Problem was only confirmed a month or so ago (it's oversubscription - they call it high upstream load or something), and it's not likely to be fixed for a while yet, delays seem common. Once it's fixed, or my contract is over, I'll be trying to claim back at least half the cost of those months where service was awful. They know they're signing up more people to each UBR, but they're just not increasing provisions until it's a real problem. Not on, and I'm sick of it. Stirling service the year before that though. All's great when there aren't any technical issues.
 
@OP With regards to proving the issues tools like pathping are quite handy.

It works as a combination of traceroute and ping, i.e. it will trace a route and then ping each node on that route a specified number of times. It can be quite good at showing up nodes with occasional packet loss or other problems.

In my case when I realised what was happening I also used Cacti and Smokeping to do some RRD graphs of a few known good hosts such as the bbc, google, and also my default gateway that VM assigned my modem and a few other services such as their primary and secondary dns servers (I was also graphing the avg. time it took to answer DNS queries).

I collected a couple of weeks worth of data so it was clear there was a pattern emerging i.e. fine during early hours of morning, then broken during the rest of the day. Their support engineers finally admitted an issue and raised the issue on to their "capacity planning team" but I got bored and left before they fixed it.
 
Just wanted to update you guys, ever since yesterday my speed has jumped back up to a solid 20mb - it hasn't dropped over the past 2 days now.

All sites are lightning fast again and I'm maxing out downloads at 2.2mb/s. I'll keep you guys updated as if it drops again, I'm gonna be ******
 
Nice, looks like your issue has been sorted. If mine does get sorted when I'm back in my flat, it'll still be only 5 weeks of the academic term with a fully functioning connection for me. I somehow doubt it'll be fixed even before the end of the year, which would mean all the time I use the net there (in academic term time) it hasn't been working. Pretty damn shocking, and I'll be wanting my money back, as it went nowhere.
 
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