50 meg down last night

[pabscars]

I dont know if anyone else experienced this, but last night at approx 9:30 my internet connection was disrupted and would not let me connect for about 20-30 minutes.

Prior to the loss, I was in the middle of a game on Call of Duty 4, when my friends were complaining that my voice chat breaking up, so as per usual, switch off console, turn off router, turn of modem.

But just before I did this, I noticed the router lights flashing like mad, as with the modem lights, of which the second one from the left in particular seemed to flashing at approx 500 times a minute.

I waiting 20 seconds or so, rebooted the modem, but something unusual happened, I noticed the blue lights on the modem were all very dim indeed, almost invisible.

I then continued to reboot the router, and then subsiquently tried to fire up the xbox, but still no connection, and an error message blaming the cause due to dns problems,

I tried using open dns values but still nothing, finally i decided to unplug everything, waited 5 or 10 minutes, rebooted everything again which seemed to do the trick.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to a probable cause, or was there any planned outages last night in warrington? WA3 :confused:

[StevenJohnson]

Well I'm on the 10meg package and funnily enough around that time my connection dropped to 1meg and was like that for about hour and half. It's been like this for about 2 week now.

[pabscars]

Well I'm on the 10meg package and funnily enough around that time my connection dropped to 1meg and was like that for about hour and half. It's been like this for about 2 week now.

Ive never experienced complete loss before like this, yes sure slow speeds especially on the lower tiers in the evenings.

I,m sure more people would have noticed if they had been affected, so maybe its a local issue ?, I will have a look at my modem logs tonight to see if it shows anything.

Where area are you from SteMan

[punky]

Well I'm on the 10meg package and funnily enough around that time my connection dropped to 1meg and was like that for about hour and half. It's been like this for about 2 week now.

Are you using a set top box by any chance?

[cimt]

Well, at about 1AM my 20Mb was down for about half an hour. It looks like I wasn't the only one with problems.

[StevenJohnson]

Are you using a set top box by any chance?

No I'm using a Modem with a Wireless Router, but even connected directly to the Modem the speedtest was reporting a bad download.

[General Maximus]

mine was alright last night, I was hosting a left 4 dead game and had no probs at all

[Peter_]

Ive never experienced complete loss before like this, yes sure slow speeds especially on the lower tiers in the evenings.

I,m sure more people would have noticed if they had been affected, so maybe its a local issue ?, I will have a look at my modem logs tonight to see if it shows anything.

Where area are you from SteMan
You are connected to brand new kit and they will have some teething problems, as for an outage it would only have affected you and any other 50Mb customers on the same uBR.

[slowcoach]

My send and receive LED's on the modem have been flashing like mad since the area became 50Mb enabled but last night they went back to just the occasional blink as previously, I presume they are still fine tuning the system.

[lowei]

Hi pabscar
Iam having problems myself with the 50 meg.After speaking to the so called virgin 50 meg team, they now blame it on the router they provided.so ive got to now speak with netgear.... Sick off all this @@@@:mad:

[pabscars]

You are connected to brand new kit and they will have some teething problems, as for an outage it would only have affected you and any other 50Mb customers on the same uBR.

Thanks Moldova, I appreciate what your saying, are you at liberty to divulge what may cause the outage eg a firmware upgrade/load balancing etc, if this is in fact the case then fine but the end user will suspect a possible issue, with his/her equipment.

I couldnt find any reference to any scheduled outages/updates, hence the post on here, when you read articles about mac cloning and people leaching off the system, you get a bit suspicious i suppose.

It wasnt a major problem just a minor hicup.

---------- Post added at 08:37 ---------- Previous post was at 08:08 ----------

Hi pabscar
Iam having problems myself with the 50 meg.After speaking to the so called virgin 50 meg team, they now blame it on the router they provided.so ive got to now speak with netgear.... Sick off all this @@@@:mad:


What are your problems lowei, not hosting on cod4 search and destroy by any chance.

Ive noticed that since my upgrade, the connection from a gaming point of view, was very good indeed, I never got a laggy game, regularly got selected as host, and basically kicked butt, which is great fun when the connection is in your favour as you will know.

However approx 2 weeks ago, something changed: I cant say for sure but now whenever i check my connection speed to speedtest.net via maidenhead, i get dire speeds, yet to the london server its better, and to outside the uk better again, yet it used to be the other way round

gaming is still ok, but dont usually get 4 bars anymore, ive been experiencing a little lag, which seems to have increased slightly as the days go on.

It just makes me wonder if there is now some kind of management going on with the 50 meg, this isnt based on any fact and could be complete twoddle, but something has changed, as now no matter what time i do a speedtest, it never gets over 20Mb and is usually between 10 to 20Mb.

Lets hope it is a bit of debugging going on, but if this is the case further explanation would be nice to put minds at rest.

[lowei]

Yes you are right Pabscar hosting on cod4.It happened on Sunday where i could only host up to 6 people.Funny thing is last night was hosting fine then it kicks me off host and the lad next door on BT broadband who was playing in the same game as me now gets host.wtf iam paying a fortune for so called 50meg and some 1 on a copper line has better Internet than me?????yeh this is the mother @@@@@@ off all broadband.

[jrwagh333]

pabscars I am getting the EXACT same problem as you.
i have changed our DNS to OpenDNS and web pages do load alot quicker.

When i go to speedtest.net though I only get 10-15meg download. I use to be seeing number in the high 40's!

Do a speed test in Maidenhead (the recommend one for me) and I get about 10meg, Just done the Lodon one got about 38meg.

Im in Devon, Where are you to?
Your the 1st person I have come accross with the exact same problem as me.

[pabscars]

pabscars I am getting the EXACT same problem as you.
i have changed our DNS to OpenDNS and web pages do load alot quicker.

When i go to speedtest.net though I only get 10-15meg download. I use to be seeing number in the high 40's!

Do a speed test in Maidenhead (the recommend one for me) and I get about 10meg, Just done the Lodon one got about 38meg.

Im in Devon, Where are you to?
Your the 1st person I have come accross with the exact same problem as me.

I,m in Warrington, and speedtest,s have been naff from Maidenhead for 4 to 5 days approx, but previously i was getting over 50 meg down, and even well over on a number of ocassions.

I,m wondering if the people on the new docsis 3 network are for some reason being routed differently, who knows.

Ive not got the technical know how to find out

---------- Post added at 12:59 ---------- Previous post was at 12:50 ----------

Yes you are right Pabscar hosting on cod4.It happened on Sunday where i could only host up to 6 people.Funny thing is last night was hosting fine then it kicks me off host and the lad next door on BT broadband who was playing in the same game as me now gets host.wtf iam paying a fortune for so called 50meg and some 1 on a copper line has better Internet than me?????yeh this is the mother @@@@@@ off all broadband.

I noticed i couldnt host on cod4 the other day, there were 8 in the lobby and it kicked everyone out, although shortly after that my connection dropped completely and was down for about 20 minutes or so.

Ive not tried since though so dont know if it was an isolated incident, but the last time i played on cod4 it was garbage, but on ps3 on cod 5 its fine most of the time, just with the odd hickup, last night though i had loads of trouble trying to find games, and my friends not being able to join my lobby, so i just gave up in the end and went on free for all.

its been suggested that because the 50 meg is so new that your going to get the odd time when it missbehaves, i just hope this is in fact a direct result of some network tweaking and not a shape of things to come.

[jrwagh333]

This is very odd isnt it.

Got someone from the "50meg team" coming out today, lets hope he knows something... i doubt it though.

He might not even turn up, they might hand it to a non-50meg trained guy like they always do... Trained in what way is what I want to know. They don't know anything when I question Them.

[pabscars]

This is very odd isnt it.

Got someone from the "50meg team" coming out today, lets hope he knows something... i doubt it though.

He might not even turn up, they might hand it to a non-50meg trained guy like they always do... Trained in what way is what I want to know. They don't know anything when I question Them.

I think VM are using guys who are just competent at doing installs for the installs, any technical problems are probably dealt with by more senior trained engineers, let me know how you get on and hopefully if anything is diagnosed it might help others in the future.

What is it specifically you are getting them out to investigate.

[jrwagh333]

I will do, don't worry.

Well since last Friday, the speed test on speedtest.net has dropped to about 12megs download. Also when I would click to load a webpage there would be a a white page show up, and then a 5 second pause before anything started to load. Then once the loading did start, it would stutter. Since changing to OpenDNS today that has stopped and the download speeds have improved. But The Maidenhead download is still slow.

I'm not telling them that it is fixed, just see what they say when they turn up. They might replace the modem and/or router... We will see.

[NH001]

I've had an upgrade from 20mb to 50mb this am (M33 areas) and made a school boy error! I had already set up Wireless so engineer justed needed to swap out router. He did this (11am ish) and called in but said could not activate due to a system crash.

He said to switch on modem in about an hours time and somebody will call to complete activation. At about 1.30 switched on and no signal. Called faults but guy did not really understand about the upgrade but did get a signal back. I don't think anybody will ever call me to "complete the upgrade" but not sure what they will do anyway.

However, my speeds are now around 3MB as apposed to 19MB I was getting. I assume I need to register as a fault but before I do:

- Can anybody confirm they are currently getting around 50MB, ideally in Sale area?

Looks like my IP has moved from 86.28.211 to 86.28.221.

Thanks.

[pabscars]

I've had an upgrade from 20mb to 50mb this am (M33 areas) and made a school boy error! I had already set up Wireless so engineer justed needed to swap out router. He did this (11am ish) and called in but said could not activate due to a system crash.

He said to switch on modem in about an hours time and somebody will call to complete activation. At about 1.30 switched on and no signal. Called faults but guy did not really understand about the upgrade but did get a signal back. I don't think anybody will ever call me to "complete the upgrade" but not sure what they will do anyway.

However, my speeds are now around 3MB as apposed to 19MB I was getting. I assume I need to register as a fault but before I do:

- Can anybody confirm they are currently getting around 50MB, ideally in Sale area?

Looks like my IP has moved from 86.28.211 to 86.28.221.

Thanks.

Ive hit 50MB plenty of times on my ps3, but no where near on my pc or laptop, partly due to their age and the fact they are both wireless, have you tried going just through the modem and bypassing the router, obviously through ethernet not wireless, just to make a comparison.

I would imagine your ip has changed because youve now moved onto the new docsis 3 network.

Also i was told not to expect full speed initially, as it can take up to 24 hours before you hit the magical figure.

You should recieve a phone call at some point asking you how the install went, i did.

[NH001]

have you tried going just through the modem and bypassing the router

Yes, the old speeds were via old Linksys router - new are via Cat5 direct to modem.

In fact - when through the router struggle to get 1mb. Very strange...

[pabscars]

Yes, the old speeds were via old Linksys router - new are via Cat5 direct to modem.


Have you tried running tcp optimiser, from the speedtest.net site, if you have I would give it 24 hours, then check again.

I know its probably not the answer your looking for, but mine did the same, and by the following morning it was flying.

[jrwagh333]

Guy has just been. He said everything was "OK" That's because we fixed our connection this morning by going to OpenDNS. He did say though that are cable, for the distance that it is from the box, is quite thin.

So he will ring his boss and see if they can put in a better cable in our street. He did say it cost VM £500-£600 a pop though. So i doubt that will be happening

[pabscars]

Guy has just been. He said everything was "OK" That's because we fixed our connection this morning by going to OpenDNS. He did say though that are cable, for the distance that it is from the box, is quite thin.

So he will ring his boss and see if they can put in a better cable in our street. He did say it cost VM £500-£600 a pop though. So i doubt that will be happening

Well lets hope everything stays ok, why did he suspect your cable as being too thin, did he test it some way, did he check to see if you can now get full speed, or there abouts.

My internet went down AGAIN last night, I,d been out all day and didnt get back till 10pm, and when i switched on my xbox it would not connect to xbox live, after rebooting everything numerous times it eventually fired up at around 10:30.

Can someone please pm me with the dedicated 50 meg tech support phone number, if there is one, I know i got one for the netgear router support but i cant remember if i got one for vm support.

[HSp8]

mine was bad last night - down to 1Mb (tried unplugging modem/router/etc) - made no difference

but by the time I'd figured out how to post to Virgin Support on newsgroups (strictly a binary files man myself), It'd gone back to normal

[pabscars]

mine was bad last night - down to 1Mb (tried unplugging modem/router/etc) - made no difference

but by the time I'd figured out how to post to Virgin Support on newsgroups (strictly a binary files man myself), It'd gone back to normal

What time was this !!!!

Ive just been onto Tech Support, and spoke to a nice chap from liverpool, he has checked my line and said the snr is spot on and hasnt showed it move much from 35, he has put a trace on it for a week and if there are any issues he will call me back (how nice),

He thought it may have been a router problem, but I,m not convinced because when it went down the other night, i tried it through the modem and it still wasnt online,

He did however give me a bit of info that if the, "Tick" ready light is on then it should be ok, and if its flashing quickly then it means there is a upstream problem, and if it flashes slowly its a downstream issue.

Just something to bear in mind.

Hat off to VM, the phone call was helpfull, uk based, not rushed at all, and although no specific problem found left me feeling satisfied.

Lets see how it goes over the weekend. :)

[HSp8]

What time was this !!!!



It started almost as soon as I began downloading - at about 7pm (I'm in Brighton area).

Gave up after a while - tried again just before I went to bed (10pm) and it was back to normal

[jrwagh333]

Guy rang me back today. He told me that the distance from the box at the end of my road (sorry I dont know the name) should be only around 80meters but ours is about 130meters.

So booked for next Friday. Someone is coming around to lay a new cable down. Who knows where, the street, my house?

Lets just see. Im getting about 40mbps now so not bad. He told me if us 50meggers get 30mbps+ then we are "getting it".

[pabscars]

Guy rang me back today. He told me that the distance from the box at the end of my road (sorry I dont know the name) should be only around 80meters but ours is about 130meters.

So booked for next Friday. Someone is coming around to lay a new cable down. Who knows where, the street, my house?

Lets just see. Im getting about 40mbps now so not bad. He told me if us 50meggers get 30mbps+ then we are "getting it".

The new cable would be from the green box at the end of your road to the little brown box on side of your house, so maybe a little digging in your garden to lay the new stuff is in order.

If it wasnt an issue, ie your getting 40mbps now, then why are they laying a new cable?

Well hopefully you should see full warp speed once the new stuff is layed, fingers crossed.

[jrwagh333]

I'm not sure, but I'm all for the new cable.