Virgin Media Discussion Thread

Andr3w said:
Is there a way to check if a VM node is overcrowded or in a congested area?
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I think the easiest way to look at it is are there any fibre optic providers on your street? What is the max broadband speed BT can give you on your street?

If VM is on your street and its way more faster say 40Mbps vs 500Mbps(example), you pretty much have to assume many on your street are already on VM.

Over utilization is a big issue, has been on my street for 10+ years, even VM staff would not admit it till one UK staff member mentioned it on the VM forums, its like they just never wanted to admit an issue of why my VM bb was a yoyo, probably had 40 down times past 6 months and its not my end you can see the router going red light and desperately trying to re-sync and vm status page if not vm down detector saying an issue detected most of the time.

Having said the negatives, if VM do a good deal and price and you are not desperate for 100% up-time they do tend to fix the bb issues well usually within hours think the longest for myself was overnight... and as for TV, phone services those are usually always up its never been down for me for 20+ years it felt like at least maybe just one or 2 services of channels at most.
 
jonnymc4 said:
Dreading my wife having to cancel at the end of our contract. It was a hassle trying to upgrade to the maximum package - they questioned her why she wanted to(!), saying the Gig1 internet was really fast and would she watch all the TV channels. Bordered on insulting to be honest.

Thankfully we have FTTP available now. I just hope Netomnia pull their finger out so we can get Youfibre (900/900 at £30) otherwise waiting on a decent offer from Vodafone (seen their 900/110 for £30 previously).

There is asbolutely nothing that VM can offer us to stay with them. Since working from home over the last few years I've noticed a lot of dropouts, and even more so recently. The service just isn't good enough.
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Bah, I got in contact with Netomnia yesterday and they said despite having laid the main cable, the remainder of the design to the houses is still ongoing and the install won't be complete until next year. Looks like I'll have to pick up an Openreach FTTP contract until I can get Youfibre.

Still, looking forward to be moving from VM.
 
Well they phoned me back and offered me £40 for 1gb internet and free superhub 5 which i accepted.

Superhub 5 arrived today, plugged it in and did speedtest and got 100mbps readback, then did another one about 5 mins later and it gave me 500mbps and just did one a second ago and its now 50mbps

Is Speedtest by Ookla still reliable ? Why am i getting different speed readings everytime despite only 1 computer connected with zero internet activity happening in the background ?

edit: It now wont ever go higher than 50mbps :rolleyes:
 
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imtoooldforthis said:
Well they phoned me back and offered me £40 for 1gb internet and free superhub 5 which i accepted.

Superhub 5 arrived today, plugged it in and did speedtest and got 100mbps readback, then did another one about 5 mins later and it gave me 500mbps and just did one a second ago and its now 50mbps

Is Speedtest by Ookla still reliable ? Why am i getting different speed readings everytime despite only 1 computer connected with zero internet activity happening in the background ?

edit: It now wont ever go higher than 50mbps :rolleyes:
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I still use it for checking my speeds and never have any issues

My test with 250mb service

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imtoooldforthis said:
Ok seems to be doing 800mbps consistantly now, maybe it initially had to download some first-time setup shizzle to the router which resulted in the inconsistent results from Speedtest.
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Best I've had so far is 947/52.

Going to fit a cat8 cable today between router and PC to see if there's any gains.

Should be over 1024 according to one of the support guys.
 
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Kelt said:
Best I've had so far is 947/52.

Going to fit a cat8 cable today between router and PC to see if there's any gains.

Should be over 1024 according to one of the support guys.
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In case you were being serious:

Cat8 isn't a real thing, certainly for home deployment. Cat5e - Cat6a is all you will ever need, and even the former will do 10 gig over shortish (10-20m) runs if it's a decent pure copper cable with good termination. You'll never see 1024Mbps on a 1Gbps NIC, it's physically impossible. VM do indeed send more than a gig to the modem, but unless you're connected to >2.5Gbps (which, I recognise, you didn't mention either way) you won't see over about 940Mbps actual.

If you have multi-gig equipment and you're shooting for 10G over Ethernet, then sure - get Cat6a and do it once and do it right. For a bog standard home install though, I can't see you having any issues with good Cat5e. Anything above, like 'Cat 7' and 'Cat 8' on certain shopping sites are likely copper coated aluminium junk that went overly heavy on the marketing (because 8 is bigger than 6 and 5, amirite?).

This has been your 'Has it been 10 pages already?' friendly PSA. :D
 
I doubt it's possible to damage a cable enough that it links at 1Gbps but the throughput is impacted, at least in a domestic environment and ruling out things like stripping the jacket off and running each half of a pair 5m apart from each other around a motor with carbon brushes in.

You're downloading at 947Mb, that's about your limit for a gigabit link. You are wasting time trying to go quicker unless you have 2.5Gb network card(s) and switches.
 
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Caged said:
I doubt it's possible to damage a cable enough that it links at 1Gbps but the throughput is impacted, at least in a domestic environment and ruling out things like stripping the jacket off and running each half of a pair 5m apart from each other around a motor with carbon brushes in.

You're downloading at 947Mb, that's about your limit for a gigabit link. You are wasting time trying to go quicker unless you have 2.5Gb network card(s) and switches.
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Yeh, was only going by what VM support said, suppose I should have known better!

Was going to embed an Imgur link, but they have changed their site, for the worse.

Best I just got was 945.58/52.64
 
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imtoooldforthis said:
Well they phoned me back and offered me £40 for 1gb internet and free superhub 5 which i accepted.

Superhub 5 arrived today, plugged it in and did speedtest and got 100mbps readback, then did another one about 5 mins later and it gave me 500mbps and just did one a second ago and its now 50mbps

Is Speedtest by Ookla still reliable ? Why am i getting different speed readings everytime despite only 1 computer connected with zero internet activity happening in the background ?

edit: It now wont ever go higher than 50mbps :rolleyes:
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Run samknows realspeed speedtest.

It will do one test to your device, and another just to the hub, if the hub itself is slow you know its a VM network problem.

www.samknows.com

SamKnows

Internet performance monitoring
www.samknows.com www.samknows.com
 
buckled just in case I didn't get a better deal:o

Gone for the hotuk deals ultimate 1gig VM promo deal with £197 topcashback (6 months paid afterwards) and £200 bill credit, so its about £63 per month but just depends what you take cashback or xbox S and any other extra channels. But the general package still includes o2 sim, landline, main box with mini box, 1gig bb, sky sports+btsports+netflix.

Some guys have cancelled the o2 sim or downgraded the o2 service to £8 service getting it down to £40s and £60s roughly, but not sure if topcashback 100% polls if you do that.

14 days to cancel if the £197 top cash back don' poll or the £200 free credit so going to give it a shot.
 
Seems Cat 8 is a thing.

CAT 8​

Category 8 is the official successor to Cat6A cabling. It is officially recognized by the IEEE and EIA and parts and pieces are standardized across manufacturers. The primary benefit of Cat8 cabling is faster throughput over short distances: 40 Gbps up to 78’ and 25 Gbps up to 100’. From 100’ to 328’, Cat8 provides the same 10Gbps throughput as Cat6A cabling.

Due to these distance limitations, the best use case for Cat8 would be inside a data center to connect network equipment to each other. It would not be cost-effective to use Cat8 for an office build out as the distance would quickly decrease the speed throughput to that of Cat6A, which is cheaper to procure and install for the same performance.
 
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