Virgin 10 meg is a dud

[hvendelbo]

I have been round the mill a couple of times with UK IPSs. I know by now that they are lying through their teeth to the extent that Ofcom should shut most of them down for malpractice.
But of course being the UK, businesses can get away with everything short of murder.

For those that are curious about how the 10 meg service performs,

Pros:
1) It rarely disconnects you
2) At times you will get 8 meg download

Cons:
1) Ping times can be quite bad
2) Their provisioning means that you share with a lot of others
3) Some websites break because the connection is so congested

Coming from Bulldog, it's an improvement even if not a big one.

Sunday afternoon this is my connection stats



http://www.speedtest.net/result/235527752.png

[deathtrap3000]

You sure your on 10meg?
Have you looked at the modem config?

[hvendelbo]

Unfortunately I cannot access the modem, as I have a bridge in front of it to get around the lame hardcoded ip setup.
But 10 meg is what I ordered, and I have had 8 meg effective speed once, so it's what I expect to have.

[Graham M]

Originally Posted by hvendelbo

Unfortunately I cannot access the modem, as I have a bridge in front of it to get around the lame hardcoded ip setup.
But 10 meg is what I ordered, and I have had 8 meg effective speed once, so it's what I expect to have.

What "lame hardcoded ip setup" does it have a dodgy leg?

[deathtrap3000]

Well until you can have a look at the modem config then all I can say is that the speedtests are very unreliable and you should stick with it until you have proof that your on 10meg until you complain to vm about the slow speeds. Then maybe they will drop the price or try and improve the speed or something.

[SnoopZ]

Just because you're having problems with you're 10mbit doesn't mean that everyone is. When i had 10mbit i always got 10mbit and now i'm on 20mbit i also always get that too.

Doing webpage speed tests isn't a very accurate way of measuring your speed, for example our own forum speedtest was giving me results of only around 12mbit which i know to be wrong.

I use a multi threaded newsgroup download to test mine as thats always accurate.

I do hope you get it all sorted though.

[hvendelbo]

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 1
Downstream Frequency : 586750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM64
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 9.8 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 29.5 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 4
Upstream Frequency : 46200000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 42.5 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size :

Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 20480000
Maximum Upstream Data Rate : 768000
Maximum Upstream Channel Burst : 1600
Maximum Number of CPEs : 1
Modem Capability : Concatenation Enabled, Fragametation Enabled, PHS Disabled

Sun Feb 17 19:59:57 2008 Sun Feb 17 19:59:57 2008 Information (7) New UCD in effect
Sun Feb 17 19:57:36 2008 Sun Feb 17 19:57:36 2008 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...

I'm not sure what the two log entry lines indicate.

[Paul M]

You are on 20M

Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 20480000

[hvendelbo]

I guess this is not the level I would want, and the cause of the slow speeds:

Downstream Receive Power Level : 9.8 dBmV

Can this be caused by the cabling at my place, or is it at Virgins end?

Originally Posted by hvendelbo

I have been round the mill a couple of times with UK IPSs. I know by now that they are lying through their teeth to the extent that Ofcom should shut most of them down for malpractice.
But of course being the UK, businesses can get away with everything short of murder.

For those that are curious about how the 10 meg service performs,

Pros:
1) It rarely disconnects you
2) At times you will get 8 meg download

Cons:
1) Ping times can be quite bad
2) Their provisioning means that you share with a lot of others
3) Some websites break because the connection is so congested

Coming from Bulldog, it's an improvement even if not a big one.

Sunday afternoon this is my connection stats



http://www.speedtest.net/result/235527752.png

You're an ****.

to anyone out there who's not sure, or who isn't wise in the ways........ 99% of the time cable (virgin) will be quicker, by a long way, than adsl.

and if you're not sure, if you haven't got cable then you've most likely got adsl.

virgin offer ftt*. Now ftt* stands for (FTTH,FTTK,FTTN) which is fibre to the home or kerb or node.

Virgin fibre is never more than 500m away max. to your kit. BT only deeam of such things and therefore so can all the other service providers.

in the long term virgin will always provide the faster service .

[Ernie_C]

Originally Posted by Paul M

You are on 20M

Of course, we could have seen that without his config info as the speedtest was suggesting an upload speed above the 10Mb maximum.

[cadire]

The ping looks quite high too. I would expect to see less than 50ms. Whether that means a problem at the customer's premises, or on the network, I have no idea. It does indicate something out of the ordinary though.

To reinforce that, here are my results (run from my laptop over a wireless connection). I'm on 4mb broadband.
Interesting that it says Telewest Broadband.

[Ben B]

Originally Posted by cadire

Interesting that it says Telewest Broadband.

It's only changed to Virgin Media in ex NTL areas and possibly on Virgin.net connections

[roland69uk]

[SnoopZ]

I'm no expert but i'm sure the downstream power level of 9.8 dBmV is way way to high. And you're still on QAM64 although i'm not sure what difference that will make, but some modems don't like it.