Virgin media problems between about 7pm and 11pm

kmufc77 · 29 Aug 2011 at 16:53

alex24 said:
Leave VM as soon as possible. I had exactly these issues for almost 2 years and they never fixed it. It's caused by oversubscription and their upload capacity being saturated on your chassis.

On BT Infinity now and it's infinitely better.

I will continue to bash VM until they send me back the ~£100 that's owed to me through paying for non-functional service. They wouldn't even acknowledge these problems for most of the time, horrible service.

Wait until Infinity has been around as long as VM cable and that service will also be over-subscribed in the future.

VM have been miles ahead of any other ISP for me personally,though i can appreciate the moaning if an ISP is over-subscribing,throttling etc.

alex24 · 29 Aug 2011 at 17:09

Yeah, can only hope the service stays as good as it is for me atm.

KIA · 29 Aug 2011 at 17:32

kmufc77 said:
Wait until Infinity has been around as long as VM cable and that service will also be over-subscribed in the future.

I doubt we'll see widespread local infrastructure congestion. Remember Infinity doesn't equal FTTC. It's a BT retail ISP product.

Drukk · 29 Aug 2011 at 23:56

rah^ said:
Best off posting in the VM forums, leave it 3 or 4 days pop back and see if you have a reply (you'll get a definate answer then) but I assume they'll come back and say its a local utilisation issue on your upstream!

Fancy posting up the modem stats you have ie power levels etc?

I will post in the VM forums later in the week if its still no good. Did nt get a chance to test it at the worst peak times tonight which appears to be around 20:00 but at 21:30 got 1% packet loss, 54ms ping and 32ms jitter which seems to be an improvement anyway. Will carry on checking this week.

Some modem stats -

Downstream Receive Power Level : 6.0 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 34.1 dB

Upstream transmit Power Level : 39.2 dBmV

FTTC is n't available in my area yet but have registered for updates. The estimate for adsl is 7.5mb which does n't seem to bad. Am only on 10mb cable anyway. If its less congested then it would be fine for me so will just see how it goes.

awinchurch · 30 Aug 2011 at 07:08

Just so you know, depending on your area 6 dBmv is borderline high but in your area it might be the normal level as it varies for each region.

Upstream values are the same for all areas and 39dBmv is borderline low. Any lower and it could start to affect your speeds but saying that it should not make a difference at 39 so not to worry.

Very surprised he didn't call broadband support though as there is definitely something else going on if not utilisation

rah^ · 30 Aug 2011 at 08:46

awinchurch said:
Just so you know, depending on your area 6 dBmv is borderline high but in your area it might be the normal level as it varies for each region.

Upstream values are the same for all areas and 39dBmv is borderline low. Any lower and it could start to affect your speeds but saying that it should not make a difference at 39 so not to worry.

Very surprised he didn't call broadband support though as there is definitely something else going on if not utilisation

This happens to be the reason I told him to post a full set of stats on the VM community site. That way when a mod does get back it'll be a more definitive answer also if there are any real problems with his connection they'll more than likely raise the issue / book an engineer.

Efour · 30 Aug 2011 at 10:34

I would contact them via Twitter if you want a response within 12h rather than 4-5days which will usually require another 4-5 reply to get the ball rolling.

Or you could gamble on a call centre call and getting a rep with more than 2 braincells and being able to identify the difference between an area fault/ bad power levels/ congestion. Most of them cant do this.

Drukk · 30 Aug 2011 at 21:20

Latest update, it was as bad as ever tonight so phoned up VM support. Was expecting the usual disconnect router, turn computer on and off, the usual rubbish etc. but got through to someone who actually knew what he was doing.

He checked the pings to the modem and the modem settings and eventually said it was a utilisation problem. Atleast now that has been established.

Not great news really as I have TV, phone and BB with VM and its going to be a pain to change it all over. He did say they were planning some work on the 5th Sept but did nt know if it was an upgrade or trying to spread the load out a bit. I will give it till then and in the mean time start looking at adsl options.

The problem is I don't want to be paying for 2 phone lines, does anyone know if its possible to have just adsl without paying for a phone line as well? That way I could just cancel the BB and it would be relatively painless!

Efour · 30 Aug 2011 at 21:28

You could possibly get VM adsl lol if they did it in your area...

But no im sure that the phone line needs to be owned/leased by the ISP (LLU) or BT

Try asking on the forum what the planned work is, push for some more info on it you might get lucky.

C64 · 31 Aug 2011 at 02:02

If you can check your connection late as pos like 1am and I bet it's fine my 50mb been the same for ages it's 100% them putting too many users on the same hub or whatever it is they use this would explain why it improves as more and more people go to bed.Virgin media need to wake up about this issue as nobody is going to stay with an unusable for online gaming 4pm-1am service but as ever it's area dependant so they are happy to tell you to gfy basically.

KIA · 31 Aug 2011 at 11:33

Efour2 said:
You could possibly get VM adsl lol if they did it in your area...

VM ADSL is awful. It's like Sky Connect. :eek:

Drukk · 21 Sep 2011 at 21:07

Just to give an update on this problem, Virgin gave me a discount for the month and said they would upgrade the system (not sure what they actually do for this) within 25 days.
This was said on the 5th September.

With great surprise, from going from an evening connection that was worse than dial up, typical figures 20% packet loss, 300ms ping, 452ms jitter, for the last 2 days it has been absolutely great. Currently getting 0% packet loss, 25ms ping and 14ms jitter over the last 2 evenings.

This is to much of an improvement to be just less people using it so have to actually give them credit, they seem to have sorted the problem within the time they said and its now better than its ever been even before the problems started!

I just hope it stays that way.

TNGL · 21 Sep 2011 at 21:57

Drukk said:
Just to give an update on this problem, Virgin gave me a discount for the month and said they would upgrade the system (not sure what they actually do for this) within 25 days.
This was said on the 5th September.

With great surprise, from going from an evening connection that was worse than dial up, typical figures 20% packet loss, 300ms ping, 452ms jitter, for the last 2 days it has been absolutely great. Currently getting 0% packet loss, 25ms ping and 14ms jitter over the last 2 evenings.

This is to much of an improvement to be just less people using it so have to actually give them credit, they seem to have sorted the problem within the time they said and its now better than its ever been even before the problems started!

I just hope it stays that way.

Nice to hear. Virgin Media is the best ISP at the moment in my opinion.