Virgin Media Discussion Thread

My Sky FTTP and TV package is up for renewal soon. What is the general consensus on virgin currently? I appreciate over utilisation is localised, but does it still crop up or have virgin generally got sufficient back haul capacity to cope at peak times?
 
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I'm thinking of going back to VM for their Stream product. Any opinions on Stream for live TV? I'm currently on BT FTTP 900Mbps but never use anything close to this. I was with VM a couple of years a go and always had good service.
 
russ9898 said:
My Sky FTTP and TV package is up for renewal soon. What is the general consensus on virgin currently? I appreciate over utilisation is localised, but does it still crop up or have virgin generally got sufficient back haul capacity to cope at peak times?
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If you use TV such as sports they are difficult to look past as a package unless you get a good deal rpm Sky, however that is very much area dependent. For broadband, FTTP is still superior technology. If no TV, simply find another FTTP provider, there’s plenty to chose from.
philjayj said:
I'm thinking of going back to VM for their Stream product. Any opinions on Stream for live TV? I'm currently on BT FTTP 900Mbps but never use anything close to this. I was with VM a couple of years a go and always had good service.
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Not used it but also take a look at Sky Stream.
 
A Virgin engineer is here for the upload speed issue (it seems capped around 85 Mbps). My account as I can see it shows 104 Mbps upload, the kit he has shows I'm on 1000/50 (50 Mbps upload). He's off to speak to the network team to work out what's happening. He thinks the hub is fighting with the assigned profile and I'm ending up with something in the middle. No idea if that's even a thing, I don't know much about Virgin's network if I'm honest.
 
ChrisD. said:
A Virgin engineer is here for the upload speed issue (it seems capped around 85 Mbps). My account as I can see it shows 104 Mbps upload, the kit he has shows I'm on 1000/50 (50 Mbps upload). He's off to speak to the network team to work out what's happening. He thinks the hub is fighting with the assigned profile and I'm ending up with something in the middle. No idea if that's even a thing, I don't know much about Virgin's network if I'm honest.
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seems like an issue that could have been resolved by a call rather than an engineer to you.

lets hope its a simple call to them to get it sorted out
 
ChrisD. said:
If you use TV such as sports they are difficult to look past as a package unless you get a good deal rpm Sky, however that is very much area dependent. For broadband, FTTP is still superior technology. If no TV, simply find another FTTP provider, there’s plenty to chose from.

Not used it but also take a look at Sky Stream.
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Its the overall package which has attracted me, we currently have Sky inc sports mainly for F1.

I believe from memory our current package with Sky is 500mbit broadband, Sky TV inc sports and an additional multiroom box for approx. £85 per month.

Virgin offer the Ultimate bundle which is gigabit broadband, full TV package inc an additional box including BT sports and an unlimited data sim card for £85 per month. I assume there is also the usual £100ish or so cashback to be had via Quidco or similar. I'll have to see what, if any retention offers Sky come back with but I image they will be hard pushed to top Virgin's overall price vs package.
 
If it helps I use NOW TV for the F1 via the app on the TV. The only downside is you can't pause/record so can only watch live, but it does de-couple you from needing a basic Sky/Virgin TV package/box/dish etc.
 
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russ9898 said:
Its the overall package which has attracted me, we currently have Sky inc sports mainly for F1.

I believe from memory our current package with Sky is 500mbit broadband, Sky TV inc sports and an additional multiroom box for approx. £85 per month.

Virgin offer the Ultimate bundle which is gigabit broadband, full TV package inc an additional box including BT sports and an unlimited data sim card for £85 per month. I assume there is also the usual £100ish or so cashback to be had via Quidco or similar. I'll have to see what, if any retention offers Sky come back with but I image they will be hard pushed to top Virgin's overall price vs package.
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That's exactly what I've not long signed up to, Sky couldn't get anywhere near and I watched the F1 via Virgin this weekend with no issues.
 
Duke said:
If it helps I use NOW TV for the F1 via the app on the TV. The only downside is you can't pause/record so can only watch live, but it does de-couple you from needing a basic Sky/Virgin TV package/box/dish etc.
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Likewise. We cancelled Virgin and use the NOW TV app on Firestick for watching Sky Sports. They periodically have half price deals as well, which I'm on until November. Paying £20 a month currently + Boost at £6/month.
 
Well my switch to Aquiss happened yesterday. The difference on the bandwidth monitor is pretty significant. For reference, we constantly have a server syncing with a remote server, it frequently bursts our upload capacity. So ping spikes and the occasional packet loss is normal on these graphs.

Here's a normal day on Virgin.



Here's whatever mess was happening the day before yesterday and is becoming more normal.



Here's the move to Aquiss. The big packet loss was due to switching over.

 
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Caged said:
Looks like some simple QoS rules would massively help improve the responsiveness of your connection while doing those sync jobs
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I have some but I need to refine them. Stuff like ICMP echo requests from the bandwidth monitor will be low priority, so I don't think the graph quite represents the end user experience. It does, however, show the difference between the two networks, with nothing being changed.
 
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Just installed a hub5 yesterday and I thought it might be better than my old hub3 in modem mode with an old nighthawk router.

Turns out it's crap and drops connection a lot. What's a good WiFi 6 router for this thing?
 
I think you wil find most people that upgraded to the Hub5 a while back had a better experience so I think you need to look elsewhere.
If your talking wifi6 I've never used mine. Unifi/Mikrotik seem to work ok, depends who you ask.
 
I have this enormous suspicion that running a monitor on my connection improved it.

Or it's sheer coincidence aligning with works. I was getting tons of dropped packets, stuck a monitor on and from that exact day I've seen nothing but a clean, well, blood free graph for over a month.

Broadband Quality Monitor | thinkbroadband

FREE Broadband Quality Monitor to keep track of latency & packet loss
www.thinkbroadband.com www.thinkbroadband.com

That's essentially the same since I started.
 
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Hotwired said:
Or it's sheer coincidence aligning with works.
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Probably that, tbh. Or your upstream routing changed, or any number of reasons. Even for VM, the graphs are supposed to look 'nice', they just have a higher baseline due to DOCSIS being DOCSIS. Here's mine for today (residential connection):
 
russ9898 said:
My Sky FTTP and TV package is up for renewal soon. What is the general consensus on virgin currently? I appreciate over utilisation is localised, but does it still crop up or have virgin generally got sufficient back haul capacity to cope at peak times?
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It does still happen on some nodes. Seems to be nowhere near as bad as a decade ago though, can tell easily from the amount of people on the VM forums reporting issues, its a fraction of what it used to be.
 
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