Maidstone UBR01 Oversubscribed/Huge packet loss

sp00d · 01-01-2009, 15:24

Hi guys,

I got Virgin media installed as soon as I moved to maidstone in sep 08, being on ubr01.maid.blueyonder.co.uk. Having been with an ADSL based ISP that cost Â£30/month + line rental, the Â£30 Virgin were asking for 20mbit net + basic tv + basic phone seemed too good to be true....and unfortunately that seems to be the case. I get pretty much consistent, huge packet loss, to such an extent that I often can't even ping the BBC/google etc, and my ingame latency is being shown as 1500ms+.

I have phoned technical support about 5 times, often getting put through to India, and each time being told to try things like "boot into safe mode", "make sure you have no applications running that are using your bandwidth" and "try restarting your pc". One guy concluded that as we had been through his little check list of solutions, and none worked, it MUST be my pc that is faulty.

Now I am not a network engineer, but I am a technical consultant for a fairly large J2EE consultancy. I am fully aware of what is and isn't running on my pc, and before even calling I tried basic steps like connecting directly to the modem to rule out the router as an issue. I am not using wireless, I built the 2 pcs in my home myself, and I have checked the network adaptors on my internal network - no packets are lost.

As far as I can tell, my UBR is very over subscribed. One morning I got up at 4am to test this theory, and I got 0 packet loss, sub 40ms latencies on most games, and nearly 20mbit download speeds - exactly what I am paying for. If, however, I use the service at reasonable times, ie after work 6-10pm or at weekends in the evening, it is just unusuable. I wouldn't mind if Virgin even throttled me to 1mbit at these times, IF the damn thing was reliable with low latencies so I can play my games.

On one of my calls the Indian guy at the other end of the phone did say there is some upgrade work to be done at my URB, but I believe he was making this up as he coudn't provide me firm details and kept giving vague answers to any questions I had about this. Furthermore, when I called again about 2 weeks later, the new Indian guy I spoke to could find no mention of any upgrade work. This "work" was supposed to take place on December 15th, but it is now Jan 1st and im sat in World of Warcraft with 1106ms latency, and im getting 1-2 out of 4 packets to google being lost.

I am at the end of my tether really, because if I phone yet again, I am sure that 4/4 packets might get through when im on the phone, and maybe I will get 10mbit+ download speed from virgins own servers, or maybe a few packets will be lost but the download speed will be ok..... However, they do not seem to understand that reliability matters to me, and that this packet loss is an intermittent problem that occurs on and off at peak hours, but is too frequent to play any game for more than 15mins reliably. Just because it seems ok on the phone, doesn't mean it is ok. And the times when the thing isn't behaving while im on the phone, just means that I have to jump through yet more hoops to make "100% sure sir it is not your computer"....

I don't see why the service I get should be SO dependent on whether my neighbours decide to go online or not. Virgin need to spend less on advertising, and more on infrastructure. What really concerns me is that if is this bad with 20mbit being the max around here, then when then they go to 50mbit I believe a 56k modem will give more reliably latency!

Is there anything else I can do about this, or do I need to just keep calling India? I have already told them that what they have sold me counts as "false advertising", because I never get the service I am paying for when I actually want to use it. If they said "20mbit at unsociable hours, and sub 2mbit, with very high packet loss at most sociable times" then at least I can factor in whether I want such a service for the price offered.

Sorry for the rant and thanks for any replies.

PS Happy new year!

Noggo · 01-01-2009, 16:44

If you don't want to spend hours on the phone to tech support you could always try VM's newsgroup support. They are very helpful and normally you get a reply quickly.

For how to setup outlook express for newsgroups:
http://www.virginmedia.com/customers...setting-up.php
and the group you need to subscribe to is:
virginmedia.support.broadband.cable

Post on the above newsgroup with a description of your problems and see what they're got to say on the matter. If you do find out your UBR is oversubscribed. If available find out the VM reference #'s and any `subject to change' capacity upgrade or resegmentation dates. Also ask for a note to be put onto your account detailing the problem. Then get in touch with customer service and ask for a reduction in monthly subs to compensate for the rubbish service until the problems resolved. I suppose if you're really racked off with the service you could try and get out of your 12 month contract.

spiderplant · 01-01-2009, 18:24

Your UBR is scheduled for upgrade on the 13th or 20th January, depending which card you are on. PM me your postcode or modem MAC address if you want to know the exact date.

ps. Welcome to the forum!

sp00d · 18-02-2009, 22:08

So throughout January the service was fine with awesome speeds. Now im back to less than 2mbit with constant packet loss to places like google and the bbc. Is the UBR now oversubscribed yet again as more people go for 50mbit? I wish Virgin had upgraded and just left the damn top at 20mbit.

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:40:26 GMT

Test 1: 1024K took 6531 ms = 156.8 KB/sec, approx 1292 Kbps, 1.26 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 9952 ms = 102.9 KB/sec, approx 848 Kbps, 0.83 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 10745 ms = 95.3 KB/sec, approx 785 Kbps, 0.77 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 14271 ms = 143.5 KB/sec, approx 1182 Kbps, 1.15 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 1027 Kbps, 1 Mbps

Awesome. That's without downloading/surfing/torrents anything.

---------- Post added at 21:08 ---------- Previous post was at 19:39 ----------

Ok, I phoned Virgin (again). And they told me that I currently have over 100% utilisation, and this fault has been escalated and they are going go fix it on March the 3rd. It's the same old rubbish I got told when I originally posted this thread: "Wait until date x and everything will be fine and we will compensate you then".

Am I just being fobbed off here? Does anyone know if he is telling the truth and the UBR will be upgraded on the 3rd of March?

broadbandking · 19-02-2009, 00:01

People been on 50Mb wouldn't affect you as they are on DOCSIS 3.0 and your on the DOCSIS 1.0, I can try and look tomorrow for you

sp00d · 19-02-2009, 10:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by broadbandking

People been on 50Mb wouldn't affect you as they are on DOCSIS 3.0 and your on the DOCSIS 1.0, I can try and look tomorrow for you

Ah ok, thanks for the info. I appreciate you looking into this and look forward to a reply!

broadbandking · 19-02-2009, 12:05

Just checked for you mate and all the cards in the ubr are going to be upgraded from the 3rd-4th March, so you should recieve better speeds just in time for my birthday lol. Hope this helps dude