Virgin Media Discussion Thread

I love my ping, been with VM for years never had an issue but I have actually lost connection a few times in the last few days :(

 
I popped home for the first time since Christmas and I am surprised to find that virgin still haven't upped my upload. 1.6 and a 9ms ping isn't bad but it seems slightly unfair we are paying the same amount as someone else who is getting a better service. Meh.
 
Faster doesnt mean better right now for VM. Then again I can't compain with a general 50mb solid + 15ms ping.. however guy a few hundred metres down the road doesnt get anywhere near his 50mb and pings are well over 100 most of the time.
 
My speeds are all over the place right now, down below half of what i should be getting, a lot of it i can put down to the home plugs i'm running on right now to this pc, but that should not be affecting the upload speed, but until i can get the pc hooked directly to the modem at the other end of the house, i can't do a lot in the testing department

I'm going to need to review my current connection options, because i really am fed up with their p*** poor off-shore support, and the speed fluctuations and shaping/throttling on the top tier available to me when i use the newsgroups

so, enough is enough, once i get my main pc up and running and a couple of other things sorted, i'm going to be researching phone options and broadband, and will consider binning them completely
 
Had 50mb for well over a year now and its rock solid no complaints here, just waiting for the upload increase in my area now.

 
Just out of interest here is the result of a speedtest for my 50MB service using wifi on my iPod Touch 4G :

97793734.png


Cheers,

PC.
 
dmpoole said:
What's so special about the upload speed?
Why?
Click to expand...

sending emails with attachments, gaming, etc.

gaming is the major one, the more you upload, it makes everything better. you can host bigger games, better response times, less lagg, etc.

for example on the ps3 i am usually host due to my 1.5Mb upload, i cant wait til i get 5mb upload, then i will always be host, it gives me a slight advantage then of being able to kill people easier.

otherwise for browsing and downloading you want high download speed, but gaming is all about upload and how fast you can send data to others.

most countries have a 50/50 split in europe i think.

but in the uk the split is 10/1 at best, and in my case it nearer 40/1.

if we had a 50/50 split here it would be amazing, i dont understand why it hasnt been offered by ISP's. a 50MB upload would be awesome.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
gaming is the major one, the more you upload, it makes everything better. you can host bigger games, better response times, less lagg, etc.

for example on the ps3 i am usually host due to my 1.5Mb upload, i cant wait til i get 5mb upload, then i will always be host, it gives me a slight advantage then of being able to kill people easier.
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I've never played online games so you're going over my head a bit.
What exactly are you uploading?
 
Upload speed also affects browsing as you have to send packets to different web servers i.e. ad servers etc. The faster it can ask for those requests, the faster the browsing. Virgins upload on the 50 mbps is supposed to be 1.75mbps but it can drop as low as 200kbps. You then start to experience lag on websites delays and loose the snappy web browsing feeling.
 
So I'm going to order 50mbit as I am fed up with 3mbit interwebz on my shoddy telephone line.

Am I right in thinking the XXL (50mbit) is the line with little to no traffic shaping?

/edit wtf is this "£40 one off fee", it says free installation and activation or is that only with the phone line, if so, that's pretty annoying.
 
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dmpoole said:
I've never played online games so you're going over my head a bit.
What exactly are you uploading?
Click to expand...

think about how a game works, lets say a first person shooter, some of them can have up to 64 people playing together at the same time (counter strike source). when i shoot at someone or move about, it sends the data to the server of what i am doing and how it affects the game. the more data i can send the better the hit register accuracy is.

for example people with a small upload, when they shoot someone, sometimes all the hits dont register. this is due to poor upload speeds. everything needs to work in sync. if you dont send the data in time, the server ignores it, or it creates lagg.

someone with a large upload has a better chance of all their hits registering with the server over someone with a small upload.

hosting is the same principle, the bigger your upload, the bigger game you can host. i think most servers on CSS have like a 100MB upload or thereabouts or higher. upload for a server = download for us. so if a server has 100MB upload, it can only upload 100MB at any one time, say if its a 64 player server. it will allocate just over 1MB per person, but my download is 50MB. so in theory the server could increase their upload by 10 times and still not fill my download. i think with my 1.5MB upload i could host a 10 player game from my computer, when it increases to 5MB i could probably host a 20 player game from my computer.
 
dmpoole said “What's so special about the upload speed?
Why?”
Virgin gives us a real nice online backup system that automatically backups files and at 50meg you get unlimited storage. I use the upload to backup all my work, photos, documents and saved games. HD video of my horse’s takes ages to upload.

Saved games can very fast get to a gig or more in space. The more upload you have the better.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
think about how a game works, lets say a first person shooter, some of them can have up to 64 people playing together at the same time (counter strike source). when i shoot at someone or move about, it sends the data to the server of what i am doing and how it affects the game. the more data i can send the better the hit register accuracy is.

for example people with a small upload, when they shoot someone, sometimes all the hits dont register. this is due to poor upload speeds. everything needs to work in sync. if you dont send the data in time, the server ignores it, or it creates lagg.

someone with a large upload has a better chance of all their hits registering with the server over someone with a small upload.

hosting is the same principle, the bigger your upload, the bigger game you can host. i think most servers on CSS have like a 100MB upload or thereabouts or higher. upload for a server = download for us. so if a server has 100MB upload, it can only upload 100MB at any one time, say if its a 64 player server. it will allocate just over 1MB per person, but my download is 50MB. so in theory the server could increase their upload by 10 times and still not fill my download. i think with my 1.5MB upload i could host a 10 player game from my computer, when it increases to 5MB i could probably host a 20 player game from my computer.
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I think you are a little confused. The amount of upload (and download) bandwidth that playing in an online game uses is almost nothing - to the point where they are playable on a 56k dial up connection, 10-20kb/s is normal, using a max of around 10mb per hour of play.

Having a faster upload means you can upload more at once, it doesn't mean that single packets will physically move faster - your ping will be the same on any given connection regardless of upload (within reason ofc) - their low ping is what makes broadband connections good for gaming, not their bandwidth capacity. In short the difference between 1mb and 5mb will make no difference what so ever when playing an online game.

If hosting, of course, it will allow you to host more players. However it doesn't "allocate" all available bandwidth and share it between connected players. All players use the same amount, within reason, though this of course change slightly depending on settings, what's going on, how many people are connected and doing stuff, etc.

CSS' bandwidth varies a lot due to server settings, sv_maxrate mainly. This sets the max a server will upload per player. So in theory with a 1.5mbps upload you could host 2 to 60 players, depending on your maxrate. With a 5mbps upload you could host 2 to 128 players, again depending on your maxrate. Average is around 10-20kb/s per slot. Realistically you'd be looking at a max of a 32 player server on a 5mbps upload so you can maintain a high maxrate.
 
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sithlord said:
Upload speed also affects browsing as you have to send packets to different web servers i.e. ad servers etc. The faster it can ask for those requests, the faster the browsing. Virgins upload on the 50 mbps is supposed to be 1.75mbps but it can drop as low as 200kbps. You then start to experience lag on websites delays and loose the snappy web browsing feeling.
Click to expand...

Nonsense.
 
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