I confess I haven’t been paying as much attention as usual to pfsense (or any other firewall/UTM) of late. If it works via VPN, I would imagine you are routing DNS over VPN anyway to avoid leaks, so probably worth trying an alternate DNS provider or even trying VM’s own before going any further.
Virgin Media Discussion Thread
- Thread starter macca40
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Soldato
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- Yorkshire
My VM has been rock solid and reliable for the past 3 years, currently on VM350, always hitting 350-380 average with sub 20ms pings to pretty much all UK/EU based hosts and there has never been any congestion issues in my town etc. VM Hub is in modem mode connected up to a full suite of UniFi gear
2 nights ago whilst playing CSGO my ping rocketed and caused major lag so I had to come off, and noticed my pings to the likes of 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 or 9.9.9.9 were on average 20-60ms with frequent spikes of 200ms+ - rebooting the VM Hub and all my kit made no difference, so I enabled a TB Monitor and pretty much since every night around 5pm until around 11pm my latency just goes through the roof, to the point I cant play CSGO, the lads can't play Fornite or FallGuys because of the lag - I cant tell you how mad the kids get!!! A few mates in the next village dont have issues so I assume there is no issue in the town itself. I am aware that Gig1 is now available in my area so i'm not sure if that's causing issues or there has been a huge uptake in customers in my area?
I know how painful it is to ring VM tech support and get through to anyone useful that doesnt make me do a ton of 1st line trouble shooting, but how would you approach speaking to them to report this? Speedtests dont show the true issue but do the guys in the call centre look at TB quality monitors and recognise them as issues?
Here is my current graph, the red packet loss from 2am to 8.30am is because I got issued a new IP by them as I woke up to a different one and changed this in TB
As you can see, my average ping most of the day is sub 20ms, then at 5pm boom it rockets off!
2 nights ago whilst playing CSGO my ping rocketed and caused major lag so I had to come off, and noticed my pings to the likes of 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 or 9.9.9.9 were on average 20-60ms with frequent spikes of 200ms+ - rebooting the VM Hub and all my kit made no difference, so I enabled a TB Monitor and pretty much since every night around 5pm until around 11pm my latency just goes through the roof, to the point I cant play CSGO, the lads can't play Fornite or FallGuys because of the lag - I cant tell you how mad the kids get!!! A few mates in the next village dont have issues so I assume there is no issue in the town itself. I am aware that Gig1 is now available in my area so i'm not sure if that's causing issues or there has been a huge uptake in customers in my area?
I know how painful it is to ring VM tech support and get through to anyone useful that doesnt make me do a ton of 1st line trouble shooting, but how would you approach speaking to them to report this? Speedtests dont show the true issue but do the guys in the call centre look at TB quality monitors and recognise them as issues?
Here is my current graph, the red packet loss from 2am to 8.30am is because I got issued a new IP by them as I woke up to a different one and changed this in TB
As you can see, my average ping most of the day is sub 20ms, then at 5pm boom it rockets off!
Soldato
- Joined
- 4 Nov 2006
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- 2,752
- Location
- Yorkshire
Thank you, didn't appreciate they were quite active on there and seem to help quite a few folk. Cheers for the recommendation
How odd... I live on a 6 y/o new build estate, where I can only get Openreach FTTC. When I first moved in we only had ADSL for about 5 months, then we got FTTC installed and got the full 80/20 about 5 years ago... Then crosstalk has battered me down to 50/15 these days.
Today I saw 2 blokes from Virgin Media looking around my cul-de-sac, looking at the ducts and posting leaflets through all of our doors saying to sign up with them etc... Knowing we didn't have VM cable I shouted them over. Turns out due to the new laws that Openreach has to share their ducts, they're going to blow fibre through our estate early next month. The only delays apparently will be if they come across any blocked ducts they reckon. They've already done it for a few places in Newark and Grantham not far from me successfully, which is interesting.
I swore to never go with Virgin due to their reputation, number of outages through lockdown etc... But I'm swayed by the 500Mb+ speeds and dying to jump ship if they do actually get installed here next month. Plus my town is covered fairly well by VM and doesn't seem to suffer much if any congestion issues. So maybe it wouldn't be too bad?
I think they may also have issues as a lot of the houses on the estate, the entry points are completely underground into the master socket. Which I told them and they said it makes it more difficult, but it's still do'able they reckon? Which is good to hear.
Anyone talk me in or out of it, or had experiences with any recent retro installs by VM?
Today I saw 2 blokes from Virgin Media looking around my cul-de-sac, looking at the ducts and posting leaflets through all of our doors saying to sign up with them etc... Knowing we didn't have VM cable I shouted them over. Turns out due to the new laws that Openreach has to share their ducts, they're going to blow fibre through our estate early next month. The only delays apparently will be if they come across any blocked ducts they reckon. They've already done it for a few places in Newark and Grantham not far from me successfully, which is interesting.
I swore to never go with Virgin due to their reputation, number of outages through lockdown etc... But I'm swayed by the 500Mb+ speeds and dying to jump ship if they do actually get installed here next month. Plus my town is covered fairly well by VM and doesn't seem to suffer much if any congestion issues. So maybe it wouldn't be too bad?
I think they may also have issues as a lot of the houses on the estate, the entry points are completely underground into the master socket. Which I told them and they said it makes it more difficult, but it's still do'able they reckon? Which is good to hear.
Anyone talk me in or out of it, or had experiences with any recent retro installs by VM?
Associate
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VM dug up our whole town. My street was dug up around two months ago and the cabinet turned on around 3 weeks ago. I was activated on Tuesday. I'm on the 200/20 package. In reality I get 220/22. Really happy with the speeds, latency isn't as good as BT FTTC but nothing to be concerned about. Not sure why they didn't use existing ducts. In fairness they have a bunch of Romanian contractors digging the road and they work like dogs. Whole town in around 9 months is incredible. I would say go for it.
@RockLobster sounds good, yeah I’m 99% certain atm I’m gonna go for it.
Apparently the work is putting the cab in and blowing fibre through Openreach’s ducts. Then installing a mini cabinet underground at the junction he said of sorts? Then just the final leg from the nearest junction box to the home.
Edit: Do VM use the old HFC cable still, or is it FTTP with ONT on new installs these days? I guess it may vary but as it’s a full new estate with zero VM infrastructure using OR’s ducts, you’d think it’d be FTTP surely?
Apparently the work is putting the cab in and blowing fibre through Openreach’s ducts. Then installing a mini cabinet underground at the junction he said of sorts? Then just the final leg from the nearest junction box to the home.
Edit: Do VM use the old HFC cable still, or is it FTTP with ONT on new installs these days? I guess it may vary but as it’s a full new estate with zero VM infrastructure using OR’s ducts, you’d think it’d be FTTP surely?
Last edited:
Associate
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- 2 Sep 2007
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Fibre to the premises. They installed a grey box on the outside of my house. Installed a white box on the inside of my house. Drilled through a hole in the wall. Both these boxes are connected via Coaxial. From the white box to the VM router is coaxial too. The grey box has a fibre to coaxial converter.
With a duct install using BTs ducts I assume they will duct fibre to your door and install a grey box where your BT point is.
Be interesting how they manage the install, as my BT entry point is completely underground (no BT grey termination box outside) and comes in to my understairs cupboard where the master socket is. But they claim it was still do'able just more awkward.
I presume they'll blow fibre through the duct all the same, and maybe just need to remove my BT master socket from the wall to see the fibre enter, then fit the VM kit adjacent or something? That's what a fairly layman thinks about it anyway lol. Works for me in the cupboard anyway, as I have Cat6 going straight out to loft to my USG/Switch/AP etc...
I don't want their TV, but I do worry what route they could possible take to add an entry point to the living room as well - if TV was ever added, or if we sell up and the buyers wanted it. Entry point is one side of the house, living room across the hallway and on other side.
I can only think they'd either have an unsightly long run around side of house, to the front and into living room but it would pass around the porch and be awkward. Or whether they'd go external side of house where entry/stairs are, up into roof (same path my Cat6 goes) then come back down front of house behind drain pipe (same way Sky coax does) and into living room? Would be the neater method I imagine tbh.
Interesting that Virgin Media are using PIA now to access Openreach ducts. I think CityFibre are also going down this route.
I'd expect more and more providers to shift to offering their TV services over IP anyway, so they can do things like sell multiroom packages without having to book people to run cables around.
I'd expect more and more providers to shift to offering their TV services over IP anyway, so they can do things like sell multiroom packages without having to book people to run cables around.
How much does Gig1 cost? I'm currently paying £72 for M350 plus basic TV and Phone. The Gig1 checker says that it's available in my area but MyVirgin states that I'm already on the best package
Mine did exactly the same though the check said it was available in my area, I contaced them through the live chat and got offered the Gig1 for £64 with phone and a £35 credit to cover the activation fee/router.
