View Full Version : Just gone live - and need some advice
Just gone live after transfering from another ISP.
Must admit I was most most impressed how fast and easy the transfer was, slight issue with the password but a quick phone call soon sorted that one out. 10mb ADSL (no cable in my area).
The new router arrived yesterday and was quicly plugged in and set up without the wireless manager. All connected up no problem.
I decided to test the line out after midnight last night when things were quiet. I was achieving a very constant 5mb d/l - very nice thank you very much.
My question is this - as this was a VERY constant 5mb and didnt flucuate at all, is it possible that my wireless network router is only set for 5mb and i need to alter something to open it up so to speak, or line constraints withstanding, is this quite normal?
TIA
Andy :)
On ADSL it's either 8Mb or 16Mb, also they are only attainable when you live close to the exchange...
The 5Mb is probably your highest possible speed (best to try speed tests at different times of the day) but with ADSL your speed might not settle down to your final speed until 7 days after the install...
Your wireless could reduce the speed...but only if it's a very old wireless or on an old usb1 laptop...
BTW....WELCOME TO THE FORUM :)
Thanks for the speedy response, and you are quite correct about the 8mb. My old ISP advised me after they did a speed test I should be able to achive speeds up to 6.5mb so this got me thinking. But 5mb is more than fast enough for me. I was paying twice what I am now for a 2mb line so it's all good. :)
As an afterthought, is it possible my wireless reciever will only manage 5mb?
It's only a couple of years old PCI type and on a G network.
I'm at work at the minute so I'm unable to check its specs, but is it possible or very unlikely do you think?
CrowmanUK
13-12-2008, 15:56
Heres a tip that could speed it up a fair bit mate, i've mentioned it a few times but one more wont hurt
http://www.beforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8152
Get rid of that ring wire, took me from 8ish to 12ish meg, well worth 5 minutes fiddling.
Heres a tip that could speed it up a fair bit mate, i've mentioned it a few times but one more wont hurt
http://www.beforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8152
Get rid of that ring wire, took me from 8ish to 12ish meg, well worth 5 minutes fiddling.
Would be a good mod if the OP was on ADSL2+ ;)
CrowmanUK
13-12-2008, 16:06
I've tried it on a few bog standard adsl lines and its worked on them too, obviously not speeds that high but there has been a fairly decent boost to the speeds.
Is the 5Mbps you're getting close to your sync speed?
Plus why not try it without the router in place and see if your download speed improves.
Thanks for the tips, I'll check them out.
Would be a good mod if the OP was on ADSL2+ ;)
Removing the ring wire on the POTS works just as well, it doesn't need to be ADSL2+. Removing the redundant wiring makes for a better SnR level and in doing so improves speed at a very slight cost of power. ;)
Well after a few days of monitoring I'm less than impressed.
The line did indeed "settle down" to a very steady 3.7mb. It was going at a constant 5mb a few days ago. My router tells me I'm connected at 6.5mb. My line test apparantly shows I can do 6.5mb.
I've tested at various times of the day. Worse was to come in the evenings however. A very steady 50k. I would point out that I do not download anything between 9am - 9pm.
Uncoupled terminal 3 on the BT box. No difference.
My previous ISP had a constant 2mb 24/7. Very steady and gave me no headaches.
I'm monitoring the speed but I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.
Or is it simply a "welcome to Virgin"!
Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated. ADSL line.
chickendippers
16-12-2008, 10:21
Line training can take up to 7 days, during that time speeds and connectivity can fluctuate.
Ahh, line training. Thank you. I've never heard of that one.
Seems odd but I'll try and have a little patience.
Hope it doesn't train itself to 3.7mb tho.
chickendippers
16-12-2008, 14:24
Well your speed will constantly adjust based on the line conditions even after the initial training period, so don't worry too much. I've moved to a non-cable area a few months ago and whilst my connection was syncing at 4Mb over the summer it's now down to 3Mb.
The Virgin National documentation does seem to be lacking, but my ISP's is quite good:
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/high-speed.shtml
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/speed_tips.shtml
CrowmanUK
16-12-2008, 19:45
I've had some experience of adsl and I can only say you're being traffic managed, in the first 10 days where its setting up a consistent speed they wont say if you're being managed or not but if you are getting 50-80kbit/sec you're being managed, and you'll be managed on a weekly basis during peak hours. Its why I moved to BeBroadband.
Monitoring traffic:
Well each week we’ll monitor how much data our broadband customers download during peak times only. We measure this in kilobytes (KB). Peak times run from 4pm till midnight. We then add up the total amount of data downloaded over the week per customer. We then rank the list of customers, heaviest users first. From this list, we pick out the top 5% of heaviest users over the week. We reserve the right to traffic manage these customers during peak times. Traffic management lasts for just 1 week and is only applied during peak times (4pm till midnight).
Traffic Management:
For the small number of customers who are in the top 5% of heaviest users, our traffic management solution will temporarily set download speeds to no lower than 512Kbit/s. This limit is applied daily, 4pm until midnight, for 1 week.
During off-peak periods our traffic management solution will automatically reset download speeds back to their full speed.
Each week we review our top 5% heaviest peak-time users over the previous 7 days. We then update the refreshed customer list to our servers for traffic shaping.
http://www.virgin.net/helpme/broadband/faq/basics_traffic.html
Looking at that they've changed it again, that is what it was like when I signed up, thinking that 512kbit/sec would be ok if I got traffic managed, it works out to a 1/2meg connection, or about 65KB/sec. They actually had in place a new system, 80kb/sec or around 6KB/sec which is dial up speed, they hadnt changed that on the website though and thats how I got out of the contract early.
My advice and most people who have adsl on here would probably agree, move somewhere else while you can still cancel the vm contract without penalty.
chickendippers
16-12-2008, 22:58
How could they possibly be affected by traffic management? The OP has been with Virgin Media less than the 7 days mentioned in the policy, so they won't even have any usage statistics on them yet.
CrowmanUK
17-12-2008, 08:32
Trust me, its traffic management, within a few days of going onto vm adsl I had the same problem, i was down to 6kb/sec between 4pm (might have been 3) and 1am. When I called I was told I was still in the settling down period and there was nothing they could do, then I got told all sorts of porkies, the main one was there was a bug in the stm software, it had been there for a while and they didnt know when or even if it was being fixed. Service reps gave me different stories depending on who I spoke to, tech support got me to jump through a lot of hoops without actually solving anything and the customer care rep I spoke to when I left hadnt been told that the fair use policy had been changed on the website as nobody had told her.
VM ADSL is a joke, I was told by a tech that if you download more than 5gig in a week that you'd be traffic managed, and bear in mind its for a week from 4pm till 1am and you'll see that cable traffic management is something that the ADSL boys would jump at. I even had a bandwidth meter running which backed up how much i'd downloaded and when, it showed that I'd downloaded virtually nothing during peak times and when I phoned up to protest at being managed again I was told, sorry sir but the logs show you've downloaded 7ish gigabytes in peak times. Now thats a hell of a lot of web pages in anybodys book.
Do yourself a favour mate and get out before the 30days is up and you're stuck with a service that you cant get out of and certainly wont be any good at peak times if you do get traffic managed. Good luck with it.
Thanks for taking the time to respond m8. I'm monitoring how things are, and hoping the line "settles" higher than 3.7. I wont be d/l much till late on so I have no real problem with peak usage. It just has to be worked around. But thanks for the tip. Nice to know I have a 30 day window if need be. Fingers crossed I won't need it.
Can't get Sky Max Or BE atm so options are limited.
CrowmanUK
17-12-2008, 09:34
For me personally it was a nightmare, be very very careful when you download stuff as it could go towards your limit even though you are out of peak times, it was the only way they came up with the figures that they told me about. If the bandwidth limit has gone back up to 512kbit/sec you should at least be able to browse the web, on 50kb/sec I couldnt even do that, so once it hit 4pm I was offline, it just wasnt worth. The wife, who only goes to non graphical forums even gave up as it was taking ages for the pages to load.
chickendippers
17-12-2008, 10:30
If you're stuck with ADSLMax (upto 8Mb) I'd highly recommend http://www.plus.net (http://www.plus.net/myreferrals/new.html?w645oK3%2FCguHYxTpF%2BrJmYMH0UyY3eFbAPq9X c9vSA4%3D). They're very honest about the bandwidth limits, and they have great tools to monitor your usage, none of this 'pretend unlimited' stuff - that's why I chose them over Virgin National.
Plusnet ehh..
They were the one of the first, if not the first to introduce FUP on accounts. They brutally axed hundreds of accounts with hardly any warning. Domains were locked, webspaces wiped out. Customers were in uproar.
Some of you will probably remember BT Surftime. Advertised as 24/7 unlimited. Sign them up the GM (Lee Strafford) says. The product was unsustainable. The GM says cut the highest users. He didn't give a flying.. The poor guys in tech support were battered. I know what I'm talking about as I worked there when it happened. I hear Lee managed to flog plusnet to BT (the mugs) I don't think I'll be using them tho, but thanks :)
You are correct Crowman.
I didn't d/l anything at all till 9pm last night.
Blistering along at 6.5! speed seems to be improving anyway.
An hour or so later. 50k! Checked my queue this morning and everything had come down overnight at some point so the speed must have gone back up ok at some point.
I went live on the 10th this month. So does this mean I can only d/l after midnight or is it still the "settling in "period". Starting to get a little irritated now. I thoght peak hours were 9am - 9pm.
Stabhappy
18-12-2008, 09:20
It's only the 18th, the settle down period is about a week IIRC. Only after that period can you be sure of your speed.
Ok, speed issues aside. Can someone confirm when it is actually ok to d/l using VM ADSL.
Coz it aint 9pm till 9am as I tested this out last night. And if it isn't then thats a breach of T&Cs as far as I'm concerned and I'm looking for an alternative ISP.
TIA.
Finally..
http://www.virgin.net/allyours/faqs/trafficmanagement.shtml
Wasn't aware they have separate policies in place for cable and ADSL.
Not so bad.. Seems fair and workable... Peak is 4pm to midnight, and 10am-midnight at weekends. 16 hours a day at full tilt seems better than the 12 hours on cable. Just need to make sure my scheduler clicks in late on, and not to dare d/l anything in peak.. ever.. or my PC may explode or something :)
Hey hoohim your connection is actually being provided by Demon Internet (http://www.demon.net/) (but billed by VM) according to your IP address, so maybe they have more details on their website about the kinds of traffic management that is being used? I'm assuming you are posting here using the connection you refer to in the thread.
I'm actually at work here m8.
VM's ADSL traffic management really sucks bad.
we'll do this after they've downloaded over 300Mb during a single one-hour period
:LOL: its only 37.5 MBytes / hour
CrowmanUK
19-12-2008, 21:31
Ah so that 5gig during peaktimes would tie in with what I was told by a tech support guy, still doesnt tie in with what I downloaded and what times though and if you do get traffic managed and you think its unfairly done you'll have a right game trying to prove it.
Just remember that you've got 30days to cancel and after that its 12 months. ;)
Hoohim,
Haven't you got any alternative ISP's listed for your BT exchange, because there's got to be a better one without the restrictions that VM apply. You're got a pretty good line if you get 6.5Mbps when not restricted.
try searching:
http://www.simplifydigital.co.uk/
or
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php
to see whats available.
from samknows you should get a list something like this:
The following services are available in your location:
BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
BT Wholesale WBC (21CN)
BT Wholesale SDSL
AOL LLU
O2 / Be LLU
Bulldog LLU
TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU
Tiscali LLU
Tiscali TV (via Tiscali LLU)
Orange LLU (Formerly Wanadoo)
Virgin Media (Cable)
---------- Post added at 22:43 ---------- Previous post was at 22:33 ----------
O2 broadband (none LLU) for £22.02 / month, unless you have a O2 mobile then it's cheaper at £17.13.
http://broadband.o2.co.uk/home/findmore.jsp
thanks for the advice guys.
just to clarify.. VM ADSL "To make sure all our customers are getting the right level of service at peak times, we limit customers who have downloaded an excessive amount of data for one hour during peak time. These customers will be limited, on a one-off basis, to a 512Kbit/s limit for the rest of the peak period for that day and we'll do this after they've downloaded over 300Mb during a single one-hour period. Peak time is from 4pm to midnight during the week and 10am till midnight at the weekend."
Schedule my d/ls from midnight - 6.5mb - no problem.
Pain in the butt if you wanna d/l in the evening but you get 300mb before you're throtled so you can surf, but thats about it.
By the look of things the cable policy sucks more so all in all I'm happy with my speed now its settled and the policy is workable for me. Dare I say it "very happy".
And there are no better ISPs in my area that can offer me the unlimited d/ls and fast speeds that my profile requires. Sky Max and Be seem to be the only ones of note so I'll have to wait for those.
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