View Full Version : Do Virigin Drop Your Internet Speed?
Ive noticed today that my internet, not my PC, has been incredibly slow. I did various internet speed tests and they all came up with 171kbps. Im paying for a 2mbps connection, but im only getting 171kbps?????
This is a disgrace and to top it off, you have to pay nearly or more than £1 per minute to call their faults line to see if there is an issue!!!
Im wondering if they have dropped the speed of our internet without informing us by email and/or letter.
MovedGoalPosts
18-10-2007, 23:45
You can be traffic shaped between 4 and 12:00 pm if you download heavily in those periods. However the connection speed resets to normal levels after 4 hours of shaping.
The only time they will drop your speed is if you download over 3.5GB in a day.
Where are you downloading from?
P.S. Calls are 25p per min and are refunded if the problem is with their service.
Rob - YOU LIE!
I don't download a lot. Haven't downloaded anything over the last 48 hours except for playing BF2 in the early hours of the morning (2am-6am) when decent speeds are available (note NOT full speed, just half full speed) and to top it off I can only download at 17KB/s and that's with a 20Mb line.
VM offers terrible service. Period.
Rob - YOU LIE!
I don't think you're going to get much help on this forum with that attitude. :rolleyes:
I don't seem to get much help from the cable forum guys anyway.
I don't seem to get much help from the cable forum guys anyway.
What do you expect when you behave like a 5 year old?
Graham M
19-10-2007, 00:06
*stamps feet*
*exit stage left*
Ive been out all day, my internet has been turned off, as has my PC, ive not downloaded anything today or in the last 72 hours. So thats rubbish about speeds dropping if you've downloaded so much.
Graham M
19-10-2007, 00:13
Umm no it isn't and they do, maybe you haven't but we're not erm... lieing to you?
Ive been out all day, my internet has been turned off, as has my PC, ive not downloaded anything today or in the last 72 hours. So thats rubbish about speeds dropping if you've downloaded so much.
No it's not. VM apply traffic shaping when people go over a set amount of traffic in one day. You say you haven't gone over this limit, so something else must be causing your slow speeds.
Don't go about 'rubbishing' other people's posts when you don't know what you're talking about please.
So how do you explain such a decrease in my internet speed if ive not downloaded anything and my internet speed is incredibly low? Virgin Media cannot decrease my internet speed on the notion that i have been downloading so much, when that is quit simply rubbish.
So how do you explain such a decrease in my internet speed if ive not downloaded anything and my internet speed is incredibly low? Virgin Media cannot decrease my internet speed on the notion that i have been downloading so much, when that is quit simply rubbish.
I can be lots of things. It may be a fault, it may be oversubscription on your UBR, perhaps the sites you are downloading from are slow, you may have a dodgy network card, your card settings may be wrong, or a combination of the above and some other factors.
Can you cut out the 'rubbish' please? If you want to get any help on here, I suggest you show a bit more respect to others.
How do i go about checking if any of the above things are what is causing the issue? What do you mean a network card? This site is slow as well, for me anyway. My email is slow, everything i go to. Even checking my internet speed.
ive had the same problem as the op since the 20mb rollout began i get shaped after 4pm no matter how much or little(i.e no downloads) i download i hear some people dont have this problem but its obvious that quite a few get auto shaped no matter what, as for blaming hardware i dont think so i have had my vm modem changed,2 routers, 3 nic cards and many re-installations of windows and still stuck in shaped land no matter what, when the engineer came out to check it the other day he said that they are capping everyone no matter what which didnt shock me in the slightest.
Then how can they expect you to pay for a 20meg or a 2meg connection when the majority of the time that i use the internet my connection is "capped"??
Good question its still a one a lot of people are waiting for the answer, dont hold your breath though they still wont belive its happening lol.
p.s i hear the 50mb will be good soon :D should be capped at about 1mb downloaded to about 512k all without limits btw :).
ultimate
19-10-2007, 09:32
I do not download anything at all, yet a get crap speed in the evening, in fact there is a number of threads here where people do not download and get very slow speed in the evening, some suspect it is the host fault in bagu.cable.ntl.com, some people blame it on VM deliberately slowing down our speed for unknown reason. We simply do not know what is going on. My upload speed do not go down at all, so I don't think my speed is capped. I am leaving VM BB if this goes on for any longer, I already have my BT line reinstated.
southwell
19-10-2007, 09:34
I was traffic shaped at my parents from 2mb to 1mb within half an hour of the shaping period!
Sky have been miles better imo, constant 14mb connection and no shaping, not to mention only £10 a month!
Graham M
19-10-2007, 10:05
I was traffic shaped at my parents from 2mb to 1mb within half an hour of the shaping period!
Sky have been miles better imo, constant 14mb connection and no shaping, not to mention only £10 a month!
What are the latencies like?
southwell
19-10-2007, 10:10
What are the latencies like?
Around 20ms on most servers i think, not played pc games for a while though. Ill have to have a go when i get the chance. I don't have any problems on my PS3 though, never any lag or disconnections.
what happens is that when you download over 3.5GB, The config file changes form say 20mb to 10mb. If you think you are being shaped, call VM and they can see what config file you are getting sent but simply running a test.
Just cos you're getting slow speeds, it doesn't mean that you are getting capped. As danielf said, it can be so many things. Engineers are simply trained to make sure that the line signals are fine and to make sure the equipment is online.. there are very little who know what they're talking about when it comes to speeds.
I too (like so many) am not happy with the speeds received with my 20mb connection. On the whole I believe the slow speeds are due to technical issues that need hardware fixes. The slower speeds in the evenings are largely due to the sheer amount of users on the system, creating data bottle necks. IMO Virgin could and should spend more money improving / upgrading the system to handle such loads (hence providing the advertised service, and relaxing the need for traffic shaping). However there definitely are other technical gremlins all over the network which still need sorting / ironing out.
In responce to some of the comments above: From how I understand Virgin's traffic management. If 'you' were to download more that your threshold in any one day at any time of day, traffic management kicks in from 4pm-midnight. Virgin continue to limit your service for the next 7 days regardless if you download anything else or not in that period.
Personally I think Virgin should withdraw the 20mb service till they can provide and adequate service, and stop rushing things out before the network can handle it. (why oh why are they bothering with 50mb??)
The only good thing about my 20mb service, is the consistantly fast upload speed.
smeagoly1
19-10-2007, 12:18
I have to agree with azlan, companies should not bring out a service if it's not going to do the job it was sold to customers for. What will the 50meg users get when it comes mainstream? how will it affect all other users.
I think the crux of teh matter is, when we had seperate companies Telewest/NTL and Virgin we all had three seperate hardware packages, amalgimating all three into one has just been a monumental mess up.
It just seems at odds we all had excellent net experiences prior to teh take over then a vast ammount of users started experiencing quiet similar problems that never occured in these quanitities before.
If a company is going to roll out a new service, they should have done their homework properly beforehand, i.e can the current infrastructure cope with and is it going to be future compatable.
Virgin Media did test this before it was released and the majority of customers are able to get the 20mb, but unfortunatly, things do go wrong.
I've worked close to some of the guys on the fault management team at VM and I can honestly say that they're not happy that this has gone wrong and are trying their upmost best to get this problem resolved as quickly as they possibly can.
They can only get this resolved if people report it..... and most people wopuld rather moan than take action.
To improve this service, they need to take steps such as relaying cables... a long and expensive process.. And I can honestly say that I have seen these problems that have been reported have been fixed.
Also, another point is that telewest and NTL are 2 different networks. They all work the way they did before the merge.. hence the different broadband equipment, different email addresses and even different technical support centres.
My advice... listen to the facts. If you're still getting your speeds.. report it!!!
smeagoly1
19-10-2007, 13:51
The problem old customers have is that THEY had a working service they paid for before the brand changeover and "all of a sudden does it go ape for them?" That is what a great deal of those experiencing problems can't understand, or work out why under their old ISP name things seemed to work fine then.
This year it's a bit on the wobbly side.
No or little information is being forwarded to them is just exacerbating their mood and unhappiness, hence so much moaning by those feeling they are getting fobbed off, when they do phone up! Sorry i haven't got a bad word for uk based tech support but experience with abroad it's a different ball game.
Like i have stated in a few threads, contact UK tech support via e-mail has always got me a positive result, even if a little wait was in order.
btw people are reporting it and still get the feeling they are getting fobbed off, judging by some of the threads i have been reading about not wanting to use the call centres.
Mick Fisher
19-10-2007, 15:18
When the outrageous 10p connection charge and 25p a minute charge to report a fault to some offshored no-help line was introduced I vowed when the time came for me to use it I would rather phone Be instead. :(
The premium line off shored so called TS is the reason people are not reporting faults and it is my opinion that this is an intentional result of its introduction.
At a stroke VM have a new cash cow, have made their network look in a lot better nick than it is, proven by the huge reduction in the number of reported faults and ergo have likely made their poor response times look good.
The absolute impossibility of speaking to anyone with a clue or anyone willing to take ownership of your issue is again by design, by VM, who probably anticipated the present and ongoing BB fiasco well in advance.
The main purpose of the offshored support, again in my opinion, is to keep booking engineers in an effort to string subs along for as long as possible in order for VM to "milk" them of as much cash as possible while still delivering a sub standard service to very many areas.
This practice is extremely frustating to subs to say nothing about the Techs who have to explain in a diplomatic way (lie through their teeth) as to why they can't do anything and why all is expected to be hunky dory at some undisclosed mythical time in the future as long as the poor saps keeps shelling out their hard earned cash each month.
This industry may as well be unregulated for all the notice ofcom or the ASA take, or whoever the powers that be are. :td:
End of rant, move along, nothing more to see here..:)
InternetFollower
19-10-2007, 15:35
The main purpose of the offshored support, again in my opinion, is to keep booking engineers in an effort to string subs along for as long as possible in order for VM to "milk" them of as much cash as possible while still delivering a sub standard service to very many areas.
The basis of your opinion doesn't add up. Engineer visits are expensive for VM so it is in VM's own best interest to solve issues without engineer visits where ever possible.
what happens is that when you download over 3.5GB, The config file changes form say 20mb to 10mb. If you think you are being shaped, call VM and they can see what config file you are getting sent but simply running a test.
Just cos you're getting slow speeds, it doesn't mean that you are getting capped. As danielf said, it can be so many things. Engineers are simply trained to make sure that the line signals are fine and to make sure the equipment is online.. there are very little who know what they're talking about when it comes to speeds.
I've tested this quite a bit, and I find my speed changes after ~2GB from 20mb to 5mb. (I tested this using their newsserver)
That said, 2GB equals about three movies in watchable quality, and 5mb is still good enough to download stuff. I mean, I can remember having 5mb to begin with, and it's still 1 1/2 times faster than our BT connection to the office!
slowcoach
19-10-2007, 17:42
I think some members are confusing “CAP†and “CRAPâ€Â, you are capped if you download more than your quota between 4pm and midnight, when you have poor speeds between 6am and 4pm that is crap which is designed to prompt you to call the premium tech line, plain and simple.
You can be traffic shaped between 4 and 12:00 pm if you download heavily in those periods. However the connection speed resets to normal levels after 4 hours of shaping.
However the connection speed resets to normal levels after 4 hours of shaping.
Coughs allegedly :(
homealone
19-10-2007, 20:02
Coughs allegedly :(
I've monitored this and my 4Mb connection reduced to 2Mb after I downloaded over 750MB, it then went back up to 4Mb four hours later.
I'm not saying that will be the same for everyone, but in my case it does seem to behave as it should.
People finding they are genuinely 'capped' without exceeding the download threshold could be a victim of modem cloning, where someone has already spoofed the MAC & downloaded the allowance??
Mick Fisher
19-10-2007, 23:54
The basis of your opinion doesn't add up. Engineer visits are expensive for VM so it is in VM's own best interest to solve issues without engineer visits where ever possible.
Yeah Right! So how long is it now since this 20meg fiasco has been going. It's not getting better. It's getting worse. And now we learn about trials of even more stringent STM.
Oh I see, even more stringent STM, is that what you mean about solve issues without engineer visits. You really mean VM solving their cash flow problems? Ah, when all the time I was referring to issues faced by subs not getting what they pay for.
Tut, silly me...............
ultimate
20-10-2007, 08:58
People finding they are genuinely 'capped' without exceeding the download threshold could be a victim of modem cloning, where someone has already spoofed the MAC & downloaded the allowance??
Can they clone STBs?
If the upload speed remains the same, only download speed changed, is that capped?
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