Virgin & Gaming :(

I have NTL/Virgin, as I understand it - it's pure lottery whether you have a good, up-to-date exchange.

My link is to Bromley, which is more or less ok. Everything is perfect until you exceed the daily threshold, thus am getting throttled 75% (speedcapped). When this occurs, dropouts and lost packets happen. Whatever policy Virgin are using for deep packet inspection - it adds an extra overhead to you data travel & delay times.

This is purely subjective - and my own connection to Virgin. When not in peak times and when not being throttled, my speed/pings are fine. Have a look at Virgins Traffic Management policy to see if it applies to you as well.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
 
no probs here with virgin,although i did have some problems some time back,they fixed the underground fiber optic and all is good.....tell them if they dont fix it then your not paying for it!I told them this and they soon came out and fixed whatever the problem was...if it aint working dont [pay for it and go somewhere else,also ask to speak to a manager as those idiots that answer the phone are clueless most of the time and only have the knowledge of "how to plug your router back in" BS
 
I'm in a densely populated student area of Loughborough where I think pretty much everyone in the area is on Virgin.

I'm on the 20Meg service and before christmas it was amazing, solid 18-19mb and low pings.

Since christmas it's been appualing. Can't play online games like css as someone mentioned earlier and getting loads of packet loss!

It's strange because the downloads are still relatively fast just the ping is shocking - so just loading webpages and general web browsing is so so slow!
 
Tweaker said:
For the last week i can barely play online in the evening, its getting ridiculous now. When i call the helpline they dont know what i am talking about. My ping goes all over the place, latency to servers just goes to hell and in Counter strike souce i warp all over the place and it affects other players much more than me. Here is Virgins info

[snip]

Here is my ping test, at 4ish in the afternoon all is fine, then in the evening. :(

[snip]


Who can i call for a real answer why this is happening, i would take 1mb Internet for lower pings.
Click to expand...
Your ping and stuff seems fine. In CSS, have you checked your rates? I use the following:

  • cl_updaterate 100
  • cl_cmdrate 100
  • rate 30000
 
Well I look forward to seeing what tomorrow brings if the engineer turns up but I'm certainly not being fobbed off with some BS excuse.

The amount of packet loss on my line through their network would suggest that I perhaps have a faulty modem or that something local to me is very broken, though the chap that I spoke to on the phone admitted they have some congestion issues in my area but it should not be affecting my service as bad as it is 24/7.

At the moment I seem to have a similar issue to Microwave, throughput is generally fine from good sources but the latency / loss is horrific.

Either way I will be refusing payment of the broadband portion of my next bill if it isn't fixed pretty damn quickly as at the moment it's not fit for purpose.

@gee3000

A 40 ms ping is crap. <10-15ms is the norm for a cable service, especially if you are online at the time of day when most people are not using their home connections and even then on the 50mbit service it's generally about that all the time I found before I started getting issues.
 
if you have problems with virgin get on the technical support newsgroup , phone is crap.

seems to be qualified engineers doing the newsgroup, they can monitor your line , change settings on the fly for your connection , check the ubrs for utilisation issues.

none of which happens on the phone and the network people that come out seem to be brainless monkeys changing your signal levels to whatever the manual says
 
arknor said:
if you have problems with virgin get on the technical support newsgroup , phone is crap.

seems to be qualified engineers doing the newsgroup, they can monitor your line , change settings on the fly for your connection , check the ubrs for utilisation issues.

none of which happens on the phone and the network people that come out seem to be brainless monkeys changing your signal levels to whatever the manual says
Click to expand...

Very true. As above, I've got someone coming round tomorrow, would have taken about 6 calls to the call centre to get that arranged, and with a lot of faffing around with waiting for the router to reset 'can you turn the modem off and on again please sir' etc.

I haven't had sub 40ms pings since november. Averaging about 110-150ms, loads of packet loss, around 20-50% normally. My upsteam power level is a bit low apparently, hence the engineer, but the main issue here is the oversubscription, I'm sure. There are also some SNR issues on my UBR apparently. Can't seem to get the info as to when they'll be addressed.

Glad I managed to negotiate an awesome price for the L broadband though, I can't take phone (and so TV + BB are then astronomically expensive compared to getting all 3) due to my location (weird, middle of a city).
 
Bristol appears to be a real postcode lottery.

I'm near UWE on one side and my 20mb and 50Mb have been faultless 24/7, yet a one of the guys working for me is one the other side of UWE in Filton and he has no end of problems. It's pretty much a 50/50 split if you ask people I work with.
 
I've been having similar problems, posted about them a little while back. From what I've read on the virgin forums they have over subscribed the service in my area (east london)

I've finally got someone at virgin to admit there is a problem with the line and they have logged a call. That was last week, which reminds me I need to chase that up (they were going to call me after a couple of days, but obviously that didn't happen.)
 
Well the engineer came round, decided the best thing to do was to send someone else next week. I'm not sure if they're going to turn up, he didn't seem to know what he was doing. Even left some of his kit here unfortunately. Bit of a waste of me staying in for the afternoon but I expect no more from Virgin Media. There's nobody you can call to get help, there really isn't. All there is, is the newsgroup.
 
The chap that turned up here this morning was actually not a complete moron, and he did say that the problems in my area were pretty much down to the local student population returning from holidays and hammering their lines 24/7.

Having said that avg of 40ms latency since 9am with 2% packet loss climbing now to 100ms avg and 5% loss since about 15:30 is still poor.

Nowt wrong with my modem or physical cable into my place, only thing is I can't really see the situation improving anytime soon.

/me wonders how much getting rid of VM and getting a BT line installed is going to cost him... :(
 
I've had same probs on VM 10mb (packet loss high ping and jitter) started here (Gt Yarmouth,Norfolk) on 22nd December and still ongoing :(
Only seem to be peak times 4-10pm

At worst 65% packet loss, most of the time its any where from 3 to 20 %
 
I've been on NTL/Virgin since about 2002. Started on 256kb I think. Then gradually rose (whilst staying on the same mid level package) over the years to 512 > 1mb > 2mb > 4mb > 10mb. I have to say it has been amazingly reliable over the years and my area seems to NOT be over subscribed. A lot of people go with Sky round my way which suits me nicely. My pings are always low and I'm almost scared to upgrade or do anything with it as it runs so perfectly. The only issue I have is when they cap me if I accidentally download too much in the day. Just got to be careful and set downloads off after 9pm which is annoying, but worth the hassle for a good line.
 
Well my connection has been what I'd call sub standard all day, but since about 9pm it's really been useless.

vmfail.jpg
 
Oddly, mine's been OK this evening since the engineer came round. He said he'd mention the issue to the tech people on the other end. It's still not fast, but I've been able to play DoD:S for a few hours with pings of about 50 ms.
 
I have virgin at home, they are worse than tiscali was but highly recommended at the time. I guess if they are highly recommended everyone jumps on the bandwagon :( at where i am now i am with BT and for the consistency of decent speeds they are well worth it. Plus at the end of the day you aren't saving anything if you go for the phone and BB package as they rip you off for the calls!
 
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