Virgin Media Discussion Thread

DarkBahamut said:
You'd be surprised then!

The exact figures will vary from area to area of course, but basic math make it easy to work out on congested nodes.

If I run a single stream download during peak hours I get around 3mbit. Given that we know the bonded group has around 400Mbit of bandwidth after DOCSIS overheads this means that at the exact moment of the speed test there must be at least 130 other downstream connections on the node all using at least 3Mbit of bandwidth each, otherwise these figure wouldn't occur.

Now, it possible for one property to be offering more than a single download stream, but how many properties won't be using >3Mbit during that moment? Even during peak hours I'd bet the figure is well half of connected hones running at over 3Mbit, and this doesn't count homes that are using bandwidth but running under the available amount. It's certainly not far fetched to expect 300-400 homes to be connected given the figures, and given that some nodes are even worse than mine, I bet some are over that number, however the 400 number has been mentioned as a target VM use previously on their forums so I guess they start splitting them at that point assuming the loading thresholds aren't breached already.
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Love the way you just pull figures out the air about the number of homes connected to a node.

Talk about the old adage "a little knowledge is dangerous"

*disclaimer* I may work for Virgin Media but my views, opinions and postings do not represent the views of Virgin Media. *disclaimer*
 
Damn, uploading 100gig of photos has really shafted me speed wise....:eek: Supposed to be 150meg....

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They are not supposed to cap download speed, just upload......
 
Dog said:
Love the way you just pull figures out the air about the number of homes connected to a node.

Talk about the old adage "a little knowledge is dangerous"

*disclaimer* I may work for Virgin Media but my views, opinions and postings do not represent the views of Virgin Media. *disclaimer*
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As someone who may work for them, what do you think about the horrifically poor service many people get on peak as a result of virgin/liberty not paying for the infrastructure to back up their speed claims?

I'm taking 100Mb this week, will be getting monitored most evenings. If it drops below 30Mb in an evening it's getting taken out on the 28 days to cancel clause. From the sound of lots of places, 30Mb might be asking a bit much.

As it happens - BT are about the only ISP doing fibre that have a "minimum speed" type bit in the contract. Lived in the middle of suburbia in Sheffield and always got 73Mb on an 80Mb line regardless of time.
 
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Recently the speeds in our area have become unbearable, dropping down to 2mbit and to get the full 120mbit, I have to use it at 3am or something

We are moving house and going to BT Fibre as the inconsistency is too much
 
Surely all ISPs suffer from 'bad' exchanges/areas? I believe Virgin in Manchester is pretty terrible. Certainly my Mancunian ADSL2+ is pretty junk (on a different provider).

However Virgin 152Mb is absolutely top notch in my proper house up North- never less than 160Mb day or night: presumable I miss the times they are maintaining the infrastructure.
 
Yes, all you ever hear on this forum are bad experiences with Virgin, and I feel sorry for those people, but they are certainly a tiny proportion of their userbase. I've had Virgin at my current address for 6 years, and had it at a previous address for 3 yrs or so, and apart from a couple of annoying outages due to an equipment fault it has been absolutely superb. In my area, I'd recommend it to anyone.
 
That's... heartening, my area's supposed to be pretty poor for virgin. A friend on the same street swears he's getting full speed any time so maybe my particular segment is good :)
2 days till install :)
 
Bossk128 said:
Surely all ISPs suffer from 'bad' exchanges/areas?
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Virgin is one of the worst as far as congestion is concerned. It can take VM years to fix congestion issues. People have been having problems with YT for god knows how long.
 
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KIA said:
Virgin is one of the worse as far as congestion is concerned. It can take VM years to fix congestion issues. People have been having problems with YT for god knows how long.
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I've not paid attention for years (once I got to 20mb i was happy :p), but I remember BT taking a flipping age to add DSLAMs, easily years as well.

I guess voting with the wallet is the only way to hit them where it hurts.
 


Well, there's off-peak. I'll give it a few days and see if peak stays decently consistent. Anyone found it was all rosy to start with (even at peak) then died off? If it was me, I'd pin new customers to a guaranteed speed profile for a the first couple of weeks then switch them to the "general masses" one (if I was worried about them complaining at least). Curious if anyone has seen any of this sort of trickery? :)
 
Mercutio said:
As someone who may work for them, what do you think about the horrifically poor service many people get on peak as a result of virgin/liberty not paying for the infrastructure to back up their speed claims?

I'm taking 100Mb this week, will be getting monitored most evenings. If it drops below 30Mb in an evening it's getting taken out on the 28 days to cancel clause. From the sound of lots of places, 30Mb might be asking a bit much.

As it happens - BT are about the only ISP doing fibre that have a "minimum speed" type bit in the contract. Lived in the middle of suburbia in Sheffield and always got 73Mb on an 80Mb line regardless of time.
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For a single evening? Surely you have to understand that that is hardly reasonable?
 
spoffle said:
For a single evening? Surely you have to understand that that is hardly reasonable?
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Hmmm?

What's hardly reasonable? If the speed offered is 100Mb, if it's dropping below 30Mb (I'm not meaning the odd spikey blip, I mean consistently below as soon as we get to peak hours) then I don't see how it's unreasonable to say it's not really up to scratch.

This isn't from an angle of "I want to sit and hammer it with torrents all evening" either, far from it. I'll just be firing up speedtest a couple of times an evening and seeing what I get. I'd expect it to be able to supply decent peak speeds as that's when I want to use it, same as everyone else, or it's rather pointless otherwise.

I've come from BT giving 73Mb at any time day or night (in an area on the edge of affluent suburbs with tonnes of students about too) to a property where the cabinet is about 1.3km of cable away (18.6Mb). I've spent some effort to have an agreement that I can quit contract on that so I'll give the Virgin install a month to see if it's consistently better. I think expecting to be able to hit 30Mb on a 100Mb service at pretty much any time is fairly reasonable, otherwise I'm better with a guaranteed 18.6 (on a 40Mb service) as I know that is already doable at any time.

In about 3 weeks time either Virgin or BT gets cancelled.
 
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You said if it drops to 30Mb in an evening within the 28 days, you're cancelling it. Maybe I've taken what you've said too literally? As I read it as if it drops once, you're getting rid as you're concerned it'll be like that all the time.
 
I have just been informed my review date has been put back 4 months to September.

Exactly 1 year and it is still a review date and not a fix date.

18 months is how long it takes generally.
 
spoffle said:
You said if it drops to 30Mb in an evening within the 28 days, you're cancelling it. Maybe I've taken what you've said too literally? As I read it as if it drops once, you're getting rid as you're concerned it'll be like that all the time.
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Took me a bit too literally there I think :D

Let's say it like "if speeds regularly drop below 30Mb in an evening" instead. I genuinely have not seen a single instance of my BT line deviating from a perfect 18.5/18.6Mb any time I care to test it though.

There's a few too many cases of 5Mb happening at peak in some areas. That's clearly a capacity issue but they won't do anything about it for often 6-18 months, the capacity tickets have review dates and the dates go back so they are consciously going "nah, that's not sucking enough yet, they can suffer a bit longer" or "we've only had 5% drop in subscribers where they said speed was an issue" or something similar. It's being reviewed and considered "ok". That's... pretty ****.

Edit:

Approaching peak (kids home from school at least):

 
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