Horrible internet connection

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This is probably more of a rant. I have Vigin cable, and it's very unreliable and slow. Most downloads fail before 1mb is downloaded, and just slow in general - particularly bad in the evenings. 20mpbs is a complete joke - I rarely get 2mbps. Surely they must be breaking the contract here.

I will have to phone India for this, but don't have any faith whatsoever in a positive outcome. So far they have been less than useless to me. They don't support anybody using Macs! wow what a statement. Of course they then tell you they will fix it immediately, put you on hold for half an hour, hang up, and nothing happens. I am completely fed up with bad internet providers, what a waste of time.

They used to be OK in the NTL days, which is why I got them after adsl epic failure, but now my experience is pretty bad :thumbsdown:
 
daugirdas said:
This is probably more of a rant. I have Vigin cable, and it's very unreliable and slow. Most downloads fail before 1mb is downloaded, and just slow in general - particularly bad in the evenings. 20mpbs is a complete joke - I rarely get 2mbps. Surely they must be breaking the contract here.

I will have to phone India for this, but don't have any faith whatsoever in a positive outcome. So far they have been less than useless to me. They don't support anybody using Macs! wow what a statement. Of course they then tell you they will fix it immediately, put you on hold for half an hour, hang up, and nothing happens. I am completely fed up with bad internet providers, what a waste of time.

They used to be OK in the NTL days, which is why I got them after adsl epic failure, but now my experience is pretty bad :thumbsdown:
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NT-Hell? You're having a giraffe, they were useless.. :)
 
Just signed up for their 50MB package last week and actually had just over 50MB at one point this morning, however normal seems to be around 25MB so I will be taking it up with them tomorrow.
 
I've had their 20mb service for a while now and it's very good imho. I sometimes check at speedtest.net and rarely is it below 16mb and usually well above. Never really had any problems and we have around 15 devices that can access the net (gulp, didn't realise that till now)
 
You can't class a provider as rubbish just because of a personal bad experience.
You are only one side of the coin.
I have been with them for over 5 years and in that time I have had hassle free surfing and TV watching.
Customer services have been helpful when I needed them and my last interaction with customer services bagged me a V+ box with free HD tv and free installation.

Can't ask for better than that imo.
 
I have 10meg with Virgin and its pretty constant. 6 months ago someone knocked over the box at the end of the road. for the 18months before that I had 40 meg even though paying for 10. When they fixed the box they fixed my connection :(
 
I have also found Virgin to be excellent I pay for a 30mb connection and usually get 31 -32. When i have had problems they have been good on the phone too, not like BT who i had real problems with before I moved to Virgin.
 
stupar said:
You can't class a provider as rubbish just because of a personal bad experience.
You are only one side of the coin.
I have been with them for over 5 years and in that time I have had hassle free surfing and TV watching.
Customer services have been helpful when I needed them and my last interaction with customer services bagged me a V+ box with free HD tv and free installation.

Can't ask for better than that imo.
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I guess that works both ways, I too have had the TV & Phone for many years and also got a V+ box free when the old one crashed.
However if I am now paying for "up to 50MB" and there is an "up to 30MB" package below mine, I expect to be getting consistently over 30MB and very close to 50MB otherwise I am definitely being 'short-changed'.
 
Don't ring in the evening. Ring first thing in the morning and you generally get the UK call centre. They aren't as hopeless.

The broadband help forum on VM's website is better. CS people in there have a braincell and can organise engineers and such like.

Check your modem stats first as if that is showing lots of errors it results in a duff connection.

I have 50mb. At non peak times I get 50mb. It is a contended service so it won't always be as fast.

If you go over your download/upload limits then they rate limit you. When they brought out 100mb and increased upload speeds they added limits into 50mb which was pretty annoying as it meant I had to change back up times to suit them rather than me. I can't get 100mb so it is annoying to have limits imposed when it was sold as 'unlimited'.
 
Well in fairness I've just done a test plugged directly into the router rather than using wireless or powerline connection and the following has been the results:-

Apparently, according to the site, this is a 'Grade A' connection.



This is the current speed, though it does vary a bit in tests.



So it looks as though my 'complaint' is currently unjustified and that the reduction that I have been experiencing is as a result of using my wireless/powerline connections and that this has created losses at the end of the line. Maybe the O/P and others are experiencing problems due to the way their equipment is currently performing :shrug:

I will keep a watch on it wired directly into the router and see what experiences I get.
 
DNS seems to be critical to having a decent feeling broadband connection. I usually use google's as it seems to be much faster than any other.
 
I've been with them since it was Telewest, always been a solid connection and had exactly what we were paying for, when we started experiencing dropouts they sent us a new modem, which fixed the problem.

I've only ever spoken to the UK call centre and they've always been very helpful (mostly cable tv faults).

they don't actually advertise 'up to' BB speeds on cable, unlike adsl - if you're not getting the service you're paying for they should fix it instantly (notwithstanding your total BB speed includes the upload and a little overhead - like hdd capacities, never 100%).
 
I've been with NTL and now Virgin ever since i moved into my house about 11 years ago. The service is superb, blazingly fast and so much better than the local ADSL service. I can probably count the number of outages not linked to my equipment on half of one hand

I'm currently on the 50mb/s and i get slightly over that most of the time.

If you are having issues on the 20mb connection getting only 2mb then you have some issues somewhere. If this plugged directly into the cable modem? If so you need to call them up and get an engineere sorted ASAP.
 
Phil V said:
they don't actually advertise 'up to' BB speeds on cable, unlike adsl - if you're not getting the service you're paying for they should fix it instantly
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Yes they do, take a look at this page and you'll see "up to" all over the place... http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband.html

With cable, you will get the sync speed advertised (10, 20, 30, 50, 100Mbit) as that's the bandwidth allocated to you to the cable exchange. What you then have to contend for is bandwidth between the exchange and the main backbone. This is contended and they assume you are not using 100% of your bandwidth, as they couldn't provide a 50Mbit connection to the internet for everyone individually. If they did, they wouldn't need to traffic manage ;)
 
arad85 said:
This is contended and they assume you are not using 100% of your bandwidth, as they couldn't provide a 50Mbit connection to the internet for everyone individually.
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They could provide it, although it would be a monumental provisioning exercise in upgrading the internal network and their external links.

However, I don't think most subscribers would be willing to pay the cost of an uncontended 50Mbit link and even if they were, if the server they are connecting to is on a 2Mbit line it's not going to help them anyway ...
 
onomatopoeia said:
They could provide it, although it would be a monumental provisioning exercise in upgrading the internal network and their external links.

However, I don't think most subscribers would be willing to pay the cost of an uncontended 50Mbit link
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Exactly. It's not economically viable to (which is what I really meant by "they couldn't provide a 50Mbit connection to the internet for everyone individually" ;))
 
onomatopoeia said:
However, I don't think most subscribers would be willing to pay the cost of an uncontended 50Mbit link and even if they were, if the server they are connecting to is on a 2Mbit line it's not going to help them anyway ...
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indeed, we have an uncontended scalable 50mbps fibre at work and i can tell you it wasnt cheap to install or lease :D
 
Or quick to get installed. I think we had to wait for 12 weeks for our 100mbps.

But thats Openreach for you - despite 2 site surverys they still found they had to re-blow the fibre.
 
They've got to be able to justify the huge installation cost somehow - "it took 12 weeks of work for that £2600"
 
arad85 said:
Yes they do, take a look at this page and you'll see "up to" all over the place... http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband.html

With cable, you will get the sync speed advertised (10, 20, 30, 50, 100Mbit) as that's the bandwidth allocated to you to the cable exchange. What you then have to contend for is bandwidth between the exchange and the main backbone. This is contended and they assume you are not using 100% of your bandwidth, as they couldn't provide a 50Mbit connection to the internet for everyone individually. If they did, they wouldn't need to traffic manage ;)
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I have to say, that's definitely new, because they used to advertise on the basis that their BB was a guaranteed speed, probably due to them not needing to guarantee a 50mb connection to customers.
 
Phil V said:
I have to say, that's definitely new, because they used to advertise on the basis that their BB was a guaranteed speed, probably due to them not needing to guarantee a 50mb connection to customers.
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Depends which way you look at it.

My BB speed is "up to" 24Mbits/sec. I sync at around 4Mbits/sec. I never get more than that, so I don't get the full service. However, whenever I've done a speed test (day or night) I've always got close to my 4Mbits down. I'm happy with that (I pay for 24, but know my 4 is guaranteed as I'm on a good service - BeThere).

Virgin will always sync at the rate you have bought, so you will always get xxMbits/sec sync speed. Performance over the whole network will vary depending on what you're talking to, what traffic management is in place and how busy the network is. Your BB speed is xxMbits/sec, but you'll only be able to use it when the network is quiet.

All that has (probably) happened, is they've just been forced to be a tad more honest in what they sell...
 
*sigh* I'm lucky if I get over 2mb where I live with BT. And my actual house isn't in a virgin area...but the rest of the bloody city is!
 
Just fitted a wireless 'n' usb stick and wireless connection has shot up to 48MB.
 
We seem to be getting about 6.7 Mbits/sec download on a rural ADSL connection (Talk Talk). I haven't a clue if that's good or bad, but it seems more than fast enough for anything we ever want to do.
 
I was getting annoyed with my line the other day, I have 100MB up/down within Hong Kong but contention on the international pipes can drive it down to 10mb at times. It was slowing to complete crawl last night.....eventually went and looked at all the kit and discovered that one of the cat's digging sessions in the TV cabinet had put a kink in the fibre optic cable. Straightened it out and all is fine again.
 
mid_gen said:
I was getting annoyed with my line the other day, I have 100MB up/down within Hong Kong but contention on the international pipes can drive it down to 10mb at times. It was slowing to complete crawl last night.....eventually went and looked at all the kit and discovered that one of the cat's digging sessions in the TV cabinet had put a kink in the fibre optic cable. Straightened it out and all is fine again.
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:lol:

hopefully the core isnt damaged but thatd be easy enough to spot
 
arad85 said:
Depends which way you look at it.

My BB speed is "up to" 24Mbits/sec. I sync at around 4Mbits/sec. I never get more than that, so I don't get the full service. However, whenever I've done a speed test (day or night) I've always got close to my 4Mbits down. I'm happy with that (I pay for 24, but know my 4 is guaranteed as I'm on a good service - BeThere).

Virgin will always sync at the rate you have bought, so you will always get xxMbits/sec sync speed. Performance over the whole network will vary depending on what you're talking to, what traffic management is in place and how busy the network is. Your BB speed is xxMbits/sec, but you'll only be able to use it when the network is quiet.

All that has (probably) happened, is they've just been forced to be a tad more honest in what they sell...
Click to expand...

Except, according to this Ofcom report Virgin Cable provide exactly what they promise. My guess is that the 'up to' was added because people complained about not getting the 'full' speed (see my note re uploads etc).

But I suppose Ofcom could have their sums completely wrong and no-one is really getting the full speed from Virgin cable as you suspect.;)
And all my speed tests which give me 8.9 - 9.4 mbps (on a 10mbps service) are all wrong too :thinking:
 
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Phil V said:
Except, according to this Ofcom report Virgin Cable provide exactly what they promise. My guess is that the 'up to' was added because people complained about not getting the 'full' speed (see my note re uploads etc).

But I suppose Ofcom could have their sums completely wrong and no-one is really getting the full speed from Virgin cable as you suspect.;)
And all my speed tests which give me 8.9 - 9.4 mbps (on a 10mbps service) are all wrong too :thinking:
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No, no... I'm sure people actually are getting those speeds, but there will also be people not getting those speeds as it has to be contended. From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media#Virgin_Media_Business VM have 4m BB cable customers. if on average, they're on the 20Mbit package, to allow for them all to have 20Mbit all the time, they'd need 20Mbit x 4M = 80Tbit/sec onto the internet. To put that into perspective, that's way more than exists between here and the US to run all internet traffic between US/Europe!

What you have is the guaranteed connection at xxMbit which you don't get with ADSL. What you also have is the statistical probability that 95% of VM customers pay for an xxMbit package but don't use that 99.9% of the time... You can do the maths and provide far less capacity to give the impression you have that b/w.

As I said, if they could guarantee the rate and not worry about it, they wouldn't need to traffic manage....
 
I understand that the customers aren't actually all using it, and that there are 'fair usage' policies in place which put restrictions on certain kinds of activity.

However my point is that the 'up to' on a VM fibre connection is a different animal entirely to the 'up to' on a creaky BT ADSL connection. And whilst people fill the internet with noise about how a fibre broadband connection won't give the advertised connection speed - then people are being misled and won't be making informed decisions. And VM cable customers who aren't getting their paid for speeds won't know that they should be complaining or looking for a cause of the problem.:shake:

You may be 'happy' paying for 24mb and getting 4mb as a 'quality' connection. But I'm paying for 10mb and getting 10mb as a quality connection, I believe that this gives me cause to be happier? :) YMMV
 
Phil V said:
However my point is that the 'up to' on a VM fibre connection is a different animal entirely to the 'up to' on a creaky BT ADSL connection.
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Yup. Totally agree with that. As long as people realise what "up to" means.

I'm happy with my 4Mbits as I knew it wasn't going to be a 24Mbit service and I value consistency vs headline speed. I work from home in the TV sector. I might need to upload several Gb/day. I don't want to be throttled in the evenings because of my work.

I also don't live in a cable area. If I did, and I bought a cable service (there are lots of bad stories of Virgin so...) perhaps I would think differently. I would go into the service thinking that the sync speed was xxMbits/sec, the actual speed would vary with day and time... That's all. Nothing more. Nothing less...
 
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