Virgin 50mp. Minimum Speed

Rainmaker · 5 Jul 2010 at 20:45

Se7ven said:
With Virgin you would only get 50Mbps if your cabinet was right outside your door.

Duke said:
Incorrect!

As Duke says, that's not right at all. I can't even see a cabinet in our street (I live on one of the longest roads in the UK) and I still get 50.7 megs down and 1.6 megs up, which is more than the package is advertised at.

That's possible because unlike on ADSL(2+), VM give you the overheads on cable so you can see at least your full purchased speed on a decent install. On ADSL it'd be "up to 8 meg" minus overheads, so never more than 7.x Mbps even on a perfect line - which doesn't exist. Cable is not affected by distance to the exchange as ADSL(2+) is, so it's not a factor.

Se7ven said:
Oh I see you're not complaining now that you're getting your 50Mbps, tbh you shouldn't be complaining at 25Mbps either no ISP will ever guarantee you X speed

25Mbps is classed as a fault on the 50 meg service, as is anything under 40 megs as a rule. Quite right too. Once again cable is not ADSL. If you pay for 50Mbps you should get damn close, else something is wrong somewhere.

ca9phoenix · 5 Jul 2010 at 20:57

as others have said VM is not dependent on your distance from the street cabinet as it should be fibre optic to outside your house and copper from the street to your home.

not sure where my VM cabinet is but i get full speed

magicroundabout · 5 Jul 2010 at 22:35

as mine is sorted now the CAB is only 400 yards away

below is 3 quick tests to show what i get through homeplugs too

Rainmaker · 5 Jul 2010 at 22:45

magicroundabout said:
below is 3 quick tests to show what i get through homeplugs too

Your antivirus or similar is caching the speed tests mate. No way are you getting >110 megs/sec through a 50 meg line.

Temporarily disable your AV, clear your browser cookies and try again.

HangTime · 5 Jul 2010 at 23:45

I really don't get why people would be using a wireless network on the back of a 50mbit+ internet connection (if they are wanting to get full speed) in the first place

Obviously if you have a very good wireless signal it will be ok, but most people don't.

cheechm · 6 Jul 2010 at 01:07

Browser must be caching magicroundabout.

magicroundabout · 6 Jul 2010 at 09:05

Rainmaker said:
Your antivirus or similar is caching the speed tests mate. No way are you getting >110 megs/sec through a 50 meg line. Temporarily disable your AV, clear your browser cookies and try again.

ah ok cool.
I'll try this later.

i take it this would account for the sudden jump upto these speeds?

cheechm · 6 Jul 2010 at 11:15

magicroundabout said:
ah ok cool.
I'll try this later.

i take it this would account for the sudden jump upto these speeds?

Unless your connection actually has jumped, it would account for the dud test results. The way SpeedTest works is it downloads/uploads a test file and sees how fast your computer does it.

Jayster · 6 Jul 2010 at 11:24

In each street virgin puts enough power down the line so the person at the furthest end of the street has enough power to get 50 and the people who live closer have attenuators fitted to reduce the power level to the optimal levels.

magicroundabout · 6 Jul 2010 at 11:31

doing several tests over the last few weeks it has always jumped around with regard to the scores.

i did test downloading ATI-CCC 10.6 last night and it sat at 3mbps when the day before it downloaded @ 6.0/6.8mbps.

now i know the server could be full but i couldn't find the virgin link to the demo game files which they ask you to test your speed on.

i have tried the Virgin 50mb download test http://www.updn.co.uk/ which gave 24mbps so now thinking my speeds may have dropped again?

Stretch · 6 Jul 2010 at 14:41

I work on the principle that if I receive 50% of a service I pay 50% of the bill. Ask for a refund for every month it's slow and see how quickly your problems are resolved.

Jayster · 6 Jul 2010 at 17:16

magicroundabout said:
doing several tests over the last few weeks it has always jumped around with regard to the scores.

i did test downloading ATI-CCC 10.6 last night and it sat at 3mbps when the day before it downloaded @ 6.0/6.8mbps.

now i know the server could be full but i couldn't find the virgin link to the demo game files which they ask you to test your speed on.

i have tried the Virgin 50mb download test http://www.updn.co.uk/ which gave 24mbps so now thinking my speeds may have dropped again?

gamesfiles.virginmedia.com download 3-4 and add them up then allow about a little for overheads.

magicroundabout · 6 Jul 2010 at 19:57

well i cleared my cookies etc and turned off Kaspersky and this is what i get now.
3 quick tests

magicroundabout · 6 Jul 2010 at 20:00

also when doewloading from http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/

i have speeds of 3mbps > 5mbps

Principle engineer will be coming soon to sort it once i've spoken to him.

Rainmaker · 6 Jul 2010 at 20:01

magicroundabout said:
well i cleared my cookies etc and turned off Kaspersky and this is what i get now.
3 quick tests

That's more like it mate. You'll probably find you get more from the London server; Birmingham isn't very 50 meg friendly. Grab a test Linux download from Usenet and see what you get. Search for 'ubuntu' on one of the free index sites and connect to news.virginmedia.com on port 119 with on authorisation ticked (no user/pass). See what speed you get with, say, 15 connections to the server. I'm willing to bet it'll be as close to 50 megs as anything.

magicroundabout · 6 Jul 2010 at 22:17

it appears my Kaspersky is the cause of the chaching as once it's turned off i get settled scored. now hitting 30mb.

is there a setting within Kaspersky i can turn off to stop this happening?

cheechm · 6 Jul 2010 at 23:33

magicroundabout said:
it appears my Kaspersky is the cause of the chaching as once it's turned off i get settled scored. now hitting 30mb.

is there a setting within Kaspersky i can turn off to stop this happening?

I would keep it on. Means that other pages where the images are cached can load faster, although given the speed of your connection, I doubt it matters. Oh and I think that caching is done by the browser... Isn't it...?

deuse · 7 Jul 2010 at 07:43

magicroundabout said:
it appears my Kaspersky is the cause of the chaching as once it's turned off i get settled scored. now hitting 30mb.

is there a setting within Kaspersky i can turn off to stop this happening?

Get Nod32 it's so much better and easy to turn off if you want to play a game ect.

magicroundabout · 7 Jul 2010 at 09:06

cheechm said:
I would keep it on. Means that other pages where the images are cached can load faster, although given the speed of your connection, I doubt it matters. Oh and I think that caching is done by the browser... Isn't it...?

unsure. only reason i say it's kaspersky is because when i pause protection the dial stays more constant and doesn't jump around or spike.

Once Kaspersky is on it will sit around 30mbps and then suddently spike upto anything like 171mbps (as shown above)

Rainmaker · 7 Jul 2010 at 11:26

That happens because of the way the web antivirus component works in a lot of anti-malware suites. Instead of you just downloading in a steady stream (as you would connected directly to the internet), you're using the web antivirus as a kind of "pool" in the middle.

<internets>-------<<<<<<<<<<Web AV checker>>>>>>>>>>-------<you>

Basically you request the web page (speed test), and the AV sits in the middle. It'll download, say, 2MB at a time, check it for malware, then release it to you. At your end it seems transparent as you're getting a steady stream of data and don't notice the difference. To the speed test end though, you're downloading a huge whack of internets at once (when the AV 'pool' empties then fills back up again).

Some AVs are worse than others. I've never seen this happen with Avast or Avira, but Kaspersky and several others definitely do. It's not the end of the world and no need to change your AV over it; just temporarily disable the web shield when speed testing.