Virgin Cable Speed - 2

[majestic100]

I have used Broadbandchoices.co.uk Speedtester for some considerable time to give me hourly updates on download speed. It's always given what I thought was fairly accurate results

From January thru' mid June 2008, I was on Virgin's 4Mbps service and monthly download averages were always in the region or 3 - 3.5Mbps.

From mid June came the free upgrade to 10Mbps and apart from the first week or two where the downloads speed was being shown in the 7 -8Mbps range, the speedtester is now registering in the 2 -3Mbps range with the odd occasion, and I mean odd occasion in the 3 - 4Mbps range.

Now I assume pre mid June the 4Mbps service was not traffic managed but with the free upgrade to 10Mbps came the use of traffic management. However, having read, and I think understood the terms of traffic management, I don't think they are being applied correctly.

For example, between the hours of 9am and 3pm (GMT), the download limit is 2.4GB. (I hope I've remembered that correctly). If this is exceeded within the timeframe, download speed is throttled to 75% of service rate i.e 2.5Mbps on 10Mbps service for the remainder of the time.

I monitor my downloads and note tha during the hours of throttling (9am - 3pm and 4pm - 9pm), I haven't exceeded the limits. So why the bad download speeds ?

Having rang Virgin Customer Service the comment was made that my "area" was experiencing high downloads and therefore reason for low download speed. It appears that my area is permanately in a state of high download!

I couldn't get any response from Service representative as to direct questions of:

1) what is my contention ratio ?
2) was it normal practice to throttle on an area basis and not a per user basis as would be expected.

The service representative said she had "adjusted" the network and to wait for a couple of hours and I should see an improvement - I haven't.

Just wondering if others experiencing similar issues.

[dev]

try http://www.speedtest.net instead, the broadband choices one is pants. the file they use to check for speed is completed in under a second so an accurate reading cannot be made.

[majestic100]

Thanks. Ran with following results....

1) London - D/L 9858 Kbps U/L 282 Kbps (recommended server)
2) Moscow - D/L 8991 Kbps U/L 461 Kbps
3) Bucharest - D/L 2582 Kbps U/L 488 Kbps
4) London - D/L 9850 Kbps U/L 491 Kbps

Good results. I've tried various other on-line speed testers with similar results and also started a trial game download from microsoft.com. This gave a D/L reading 1.2MBps. Again good results

Ran broadbandchoices speedtester immediately after with result of 3.2Mbps. I'd like to know why such a disparity especially since pre STM, D/L speeds seemed to be reported accurately (?)

[Ignitionnet]

So you don't actually have slow downloads generally and most sites are fine but are seeing slow speeds from a single speedtest and called Virgin to ask about it?

Virgin cannot give you your contention ratio as it varies from area to area and they make no promise on what it is.

Throttling is per user.

Broadbandchoices speed tester is rubbish, nothing anyone can do about it, it's rubbish.

if your connection is running slow generally call Virgin, but if just one site is giving issues then it would seem logical that the issue likes with that one site.

[majestic100]

Thanks for feedback. As other speedtesters generally agree with each other and all disagree with broadbandchoices, I'll ditch and remove that one from system. I did like the idea of a speedtester running on the PC giving hourly test. Other than that offered by broadbandchoices are there any others that are deemed relaible?

[Stabhappy]

I highly recommend against constantly speedtesting; if everyone does it on the hour then innocent users are going to suffer.

If you think your line is sluggish or STM'd, then fair enough go for it, but just bare in mind you're not the only one sitting on the exchange.

[junouk]

them speedtests you guys use are crap use this test speeds on big file
http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/

or www.speedtest.net

[Ignitionnet]

Thanks for feedback. As other speedtesters generally agree with each other and all disagree with broadbandchoices, I'll ditch and remove that one from system. I did like the idea of a speedtester running on the PC giving hourly test. Other than that offered by broadbandchoices are there any others that are deemed relaible?

Why run an hourly speedtest?

So long as the service feels responsive don't really see the point in obsessing over its' performance. Performance isn't guaranteed.

[adrian1971]

use bandwidth meter pro. a nice little program :)