Virgin media bb speed

[Alky 10]

Just for interest - is there a correlation between latency (ping) and download speed? I seem to get various speeds ranging from 0.01Mbps to 0.4Mbps with latency changing from 27ms (best ever) to 300ms (more like normal at 250ms).

 

Virgin and BT both say I should get up to 2Mbps - as the day gets on the ping gets worse - is there anything I can do or am I (as I believe) at the mercy (sik) of BT?

[fnkysknky 10]

Don't forget these services are sold as up to x mbit - you're not guaranteed the packages maximum speed as it's not possible to do so as there's only a finite amount of bandwidth. You have to take contention ratios into account - not sure what Virgin are advertising there's as these days.

[Phanerothyme 12]

most of the time the speedtest page will give me a downstream speed of about 7mbps and an upstream speed of around 300kbps. Every single night, for the last four nights I have experienced total dropouts and severe speed reductions.

Weirdly the speed reductions are only on the downstream transfer, upstream traffic is unaffected.

 

I think virgin are piling on customers before ramping up the connectivity.

[sallonoroff 10]

virgin nationwide throttling

 

 

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[Phanerothyme 12]

virgin nationwide throttling

 

 

.

 

The traffic shaping and bandwidth throttling isn't an issue for me. Constant service and speed dropouts are. Every night for the last 4 nights.

 

I think the virgin system is fair enough, and I can't really conceive of when I would d/l more than 3gb in an evening. And then it only halves your dl speed, so you'll get your 90 minutes of video in 40, not 20 minutes.

 

I wonder how heavily they restrict p2p traffic?

[infernal mas 10]

The speed issues are completely Virgin's fault. On cable you don't get speed drops due to many users, that's absolute BS on their part. They only thing that would cause that is over subscribing UBRs. Speed drops on the ADSL version, fair enough.

 

Until tuesday I was on the 4mb cable service and had NO speed issues at all. But the last two evenings 10mb have been dreadful.

 

As far as their traffic shaping goes, if they stick to it then it's not that bad at all.

[Ghozer 112]

Don't forget these services are sold as up to x mbit - you're not guaranteed the packages maximum speed as it's not possible to do so as there's only a finite amount of bandwidth. You have to take contention ratios into account - not sure what Virgin are advertising there's as these days.

 

Contention ratios dont exist on cable... not in the same fashion as DSL atleast...

 

the only thing that matters is number of users on the server/router at the ISP's end... if a Server can only cope with 20 people at max speed, and they are putting 25 or 30 people per server, thats because they are over subscribing and not paying out for more/better servers....

[fnkysknky 10]

Contention ratios do exist on residential cable. ntl used to implement a 20:1 contention ratio as below:

Q. I've heard that contention ratios differ between cable and ADSL broadband. Can you explain?

A. Yes. We have engineered our local access network to provide a 20:1 contention ratio in comparison to a number of ADSL providers who have contention ratios as high as 50:1. The "contention ratio" is the number of customers that share one unit of data capacity, meaning the lower the contention ratio the higher the quality of the local access network.

 

Taken from http://www.ntl.co.uk/mediacentre/thecompany/faq/default.asp?section=3

 

I'm not entirely sure what current implemented ratios are for Virgin - probably 20:1 or 30:1.

[craigus 10]

i wish they'd just hurry up and sort everything out. at the moment my upload is faster than my download.. according to speedtest.net my download is 250 kb/s and my upload is 362 kb/s..

 

pull your fingers out virgin.. are we going to be entitled to some sort of refund??? i seriously doubt it!!

 

rant over

[infernal mas 10]

Complain and threaten to switch to Sky.

 

In fact with sky offering free 2mb broadband with a 2gb monthly cap, £5 for up to 8mb with 40gig cap and £10 for up to 16mb and no usage cap, I'm surprised people aren't switching anyway.

 

If the speed stays like this much longer I will switch, I never had issues before it became VM. I'd ring tech support, but the guy on the other end probably won't know where England is.

[steve_m 10]

Complain and threaten to switch to Sky.

 

i:

 

 

Everyone should be doing that, chances are you will get a discount, some people are getting 4meg for £7.00 per month for a full year I got the ten meg for £17.00 then told them a load of rubbish about what Sky had offered me and got the phone, talk unlimited etc. 10 meg internet. V+ and another three boxes all with the full tv package another cable line in from the street (needed to support the extra boxes) all free fitting for £92.00 queered the first DB and got another £8.00 per month knocked off Some people get nothing the first time they ring up but keep trying,tell them you can see the BT exchange from your front door Just lie thru your back teeth about SKY, BULLDOG and B INTERNET offers

[Pipine 10]

I tried to call virgin about it... eventually got some call centre in India who I could barely understand.... he said because I was a telewest customer I had to be put through to another number... got put on hold for a few more minutes then listened to instructions on how to reset your TV box... then got a line with no on-hold music, no message saying they'd be with me in a moment... I listened for a few minutes then hung up - how do I know if I'd ever get my call answered?

 

Absolutely rubbish. I'm going to email them instead... I'm not happy at all and still on around 255kps... going to sign whatever I need to at watchdog.