VM or PlusNet...

Shelster

Shelster

Shelster

Associate
Joined
3 Aug 2003
Posts
2,028
Location
Plymouth, UK
Will be moving into a new build house in December and am looking at options for my tintyweb (and also TV package too).

Assuming that the estate is conduited and wired up for VM, a few questions...

1 - Is the internet as flakey as what people are making out to be? Seems to be a lot of posts regarding very slow speeds and outages up the ying yang.
2 - Do you know if you can get the super fast 156 Mbps speed in Plymouth? or is that limited?
3 - Is the SH2 a pile of pump? Was contemplating getting an ASUS router and just using the SH2 in modem mode, if that is at all possible
4 - Cab for FTTC is approx 40M away from house, so would be hopefully expecting close to the top end of speeds from that...which I would expect to be fairly rock solid...if the VM fast option is there is it worth it???

Still early days yet so have plenty of time to figure out my options fully. Also going to have to factor in TV (choice between Sky and VM) and then costs.

Last one, do you still have to take a landline with VM if you take their TV and Internet? Reasoin being is that only have ever had landline just for the fact it was needed for internet....all our telephony is either done via mobile or a VOIP service so it is not used at all for calls
 
VM's quality of service seems to vary depending on where you are in the UK. It has been temperamental down here in Sussex, a few months ago we had tonnes and tonnes of issues, and we couldn't use any of our own network gear because the SuperHub (SH1) would throw a hissy fit. VM refused to replace the SuperHub with a SuperHub 2, and they didn't even want to replace it with another SuperHub 1, so now we are stuck with a crap 'Super'Hub and I have a nice router and a switch just sitting there doing nothing...
 
Been on VM for nearly 14 years here and its solid. I work from home, VPN'ed into the office, so notice pretty much immediately if a connection goes down. I get the occasional loss of service for a few minutes, but can only remember maybe 2 or 3 times over 14 years when its been out for more than a couple of hours. The last one was MAJOR lightning storms taking power out to cabinets - which is under the 'act of god' category in my book.

I also recently upgraded to the 150 Meg service and SH2 - and its all as solid as ever. I use the provided Wifi on the SH2 and wired for desktops - we've got tablets, phones and laptops all running over Wifi and it all just works.

One thing I did have trouble with was getting a range extender to work with the SH2 - but I could never figure out if it was a fault with the extender or the SH2. I ended up with the extender totally bricked - so suspect that was to blame.
 
Recently left VM for Plusnet FTTC, downloads aren't as quick, but general surfing/gaming is much better. With VM I used to find Youtube would take ages to load (to the extent of sometimes watching video on my phones 3G rather than on Desktop).

However I would go back to VM if needed, I think several of my issues were due to the SH being rubbish which I could have pushed for a new model.
 
Went to show home yesterday and decision was made for me...the developers have not put in any trunking for VM so only have option of FTTC so PlusNet it is then....
 
Virgin varies very much by area. The contention works differently with Virgin.

With FTTC, it's like you have your own little data pipe back to the exchange, which is often 10,000 customers, then you feel any congestion at the ISPs network. This makes it relatively easy to know if an ISP is congested or not as most issues affect a large percentage of customers.

Virgin, you feel the congestion at street level, so if you live on a street with a lot of student houses for example, you will have awful congestion. If you live in a suburb with lots of families, young kids, old people, you are probably going to think Virgin is amazing.

No traffic management on download with VM, but even on the 152 product, there is only 12mbit up, and that can get throttled by 75% to a measly 3mbit...

Plusnet are owned by BT, I'm just switching to them myself (no VM on my street, despite being in Bristol), but they are supposedly managed at arms length.

SH1 was awful, I mean, really truely awful for wireless.

SH2 is supposedly better.

Both support Modem mode, so just use this then connect any ethernet router with DHCP wan, and you get the public IP assigned to your router. I used to use a Netgear R6300 like this in my old place, and it worked fine.
 
rtho782 said:
Virgin, you feel the congestion at street level, so if you live on a street with a lot of student houses for example, you will have awful congestion. If you live in a suburb with lots of families, young kids, old people, you are probably going to think Virgin is amazing.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, we live on a student street (10 mins walk from a 20,000 student university) and VM is rock solid, 24/7. Get 50Mb day and night. I know students who've had to wait absolutely ages for fibre to be installed due to demand only to be plagued with slow speeds, connection problems, etc.
 
MichaelAwkward said:
Not necessarily, we live on a student street (10 mins walk from a 20,000 student university) and VM is rock solid, 24/7. Get 50Mb day and night. I know students who've had to wait absolutely ages for fibre to be installed due to demand only to be plagued with slow speeds, connection problems, etc.
Click to expand...

Fair enough!

From living in various houses in the Bristol area, I've found Virgin to be awful in student areas. But Virgins network is so different in different areas as it was built by different companies (NTL, Telewest, and their various predecessors) that I guess direct comparisons are hard.
 
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