Broadband - Dropped Connections in the Evenings - PL4, Area Ref 18

[plymouth_user]

My broadband (L) has been generally pretty good (not brilliant, but good) up until roughly 2-3 weeks ago. Since then in the evenings it has been all but unusable. Connections dropping every 3-4 minutes, speed slower than I can remember getting on dial up. Generally awful.

After giving up on using the 150 customer service (what.a. waste. of. time.) I emailed in an official complaint and as a result received a phone call telling me that the problems were due to 'high utilisation' in the area and that I would receive a months free broadband for the poor service I was experiencing. He said in around 2 weeks the problem should be sorted.

1 month then I have to endure (from when it started to their predict resolution date), whether I am paying or not is irrelevent as I need the broadband for working from home usually once or twice a week.

My questions (out of interest more than anything) are:

1) What does high utilisation mean? That they have too many users in my area?

2) It was suggested to me that students in the area might be a cause. They moved in Aug/Sept. The problem starts all of a sudden in November. Explain.

3) How is is solved?

4) Why does it take two weeks?

[xxxxxx]

My broadband (L) has been generally pretty good (not brilliant, but good) up until roughly 2-3 weeks ago. Since then in the evenings it has been all but unusable. Connections dropping every 3-4 minutes, speed slower than I can remember getting on dial up. Generally awful.

After giving up on using the 150 customer service (what.a. waste. of. time.) I emailed in an official complaint and as a result received a phone call telling me that the problems were due to 'high utilisation' in the area and that I would receive a months free broadband for the poor service I was experiencing. He said in around 2 weeks the problem should be sorted.

1 month then I have to endure (from when it started to their predict resolution date), whether I am paying or not is irrelevent as I need the broadband for working from home usually once or twice a week.

My questions (out of interest more than anything) are:

1) What does high utilisation mean? That they have too many users in my area?

2) It was suggested to me that students in the area might be a cause. They moved in Aug/Sept. The problem starts all of a sudden in November. Explain.

3) How is is solved?

4) Why does it take two weeks?

I'm from the Liverpool 7 area, and I have the same issue; had the issue for 4 weeks now. Rang them up last week and they said, "it could take weeks to months to fix this issue. I don't know exactly when the issue will be fixed." They don't know when the issue will be sorted lol. Absolute joke!

I'm on 20mb btw; getting below 1mb download speeds most of the day, with an average of 0.10 upload speeds.

[plymouth_user]

Around 6am (or at least when I wake up which is usually that time) until about 3-4pm it is fine. Not brilliant but I get roughly what I pay for: a steady, broadband speedish connection.

But as soon as 3/4pm kicks in it is a different world and, as I said, virtually unusable.

Disappointed that you seem to have been told that they do not know when it will be fixed :(

[Scrubbs]

I am suprised it's so bad for so long on a business tariff:erm:

[plymouth_user]

Oh I'm not on a business tariff, just the regular 'L' broadband service (with TV and phone, which are both working fine :) )

[Scrubbs]

It was the "I need the broadband for working from home" made me think you were on a different tariff:erm:

[plymouth_user]

Ahh yes I see now where you got it from :)

.. no it would be very nice if my work would pay for it, but I doubt they be willing to do that :)

Guess I have to wait for two weeks and hope for the best!

[plymouth_user]

I spoke to a technician again today.

In fairness he was very helpful and I wish Virgin had more people answering their phones like him. However the fact remains that the problem is only HOPED to be fixed this month. Not today tomorrow or next week, but this month.

And the problem? Contention. He did refute the claim it was too many users, but it seems to me be the only possible reason. What else does contention mean?

I hope this helps set some expectations - and also demands of refunds at the very least. This should be on Virgin's website and there should have been an announcement.

[Sephiroth]

To be specific, contention means however many users are connected to an aggregation point are contending for the available bandwidth. The weak point, IMO, is from the street cabinet to the regional CMTS. I forget the figure and someone more knowledgeable can correct me, but the optical link to the regional CMTS is 51Mb/s. So it doesn't take to much maths to work out how many 10 Mbps downloading users it would take to saturate the capacity. VM would sort this out by re-distributing users to other optical nodes or add optical nodes to the cabinet, allocate another channel with its 51Mbps capacity until some sort of balance is reached.

VM would also re-allocate users to different ports at the CMTS in order to load balance.

There are people with better specific VM network knowledge than myself who can fill in the gaps or correct errors. But what I've said is in principle correct.

[plymouth_user]

I am very interested in the reason and if it isn't too many users then I will be more than happy to accept whatever that is but the fact remains in the example you give, if there were less users, there would not be a problem.

VM wouldn't have a business model possibly, sure, but that is not my problem. They should not be selling packages if they cannot provide the service.

I also note that according to their website, they are reporting no issues in this region. Really? They do not consider this an issue?

I understand problems occur and it is mainly just so frustrating, but I feel they could have been more open with what is going on, rather than making me chase and chase to get a half answer.

[Sephiroth]

If you've been following what I have said in other threads (which you haven't because you're new to this forum) you'd know that we share similar ideas about VM's business model.

However, if your engineer is coreect and in possesion of the right knowledge, he'd know if the total number of users in your area exceeds the available capacity if they are optimally connected for load balancing.

Of course, in a student area, I believe it doesn't matter how they distribute the user base - the giga-downloading and streaming they do will increase to match the available capacity.

Also, uploading, which is what gaming is principally about for latency purposes, has its own technical challenges when you mix peer-to-peer stuff with gaming packets and then contend for your mini-slot without lag.

So they can improve downstream without necessarily improving upstream by the same amount. All very complex when you get to the detail necessary to understand what's really going on.

[shane_uk]

I am in the pl5 area and from 4pm on wards the connection is just balls. It’s since the collage kids returned and it probably took them a month to get connected and I don’t see them getting this sorted any time soon

[shane_uk]

Bit of an update for us the bloke admitted the ubr us under pressure and they have now passed it on to planning. Now planning are ether going to update the ubr or move some people around and he never had a clue on the time frame for it. Other than that he said we are pretty much stuck with the poor speeds

[Saftlad]

Same in PL6 :(

I did think about installing some management tools myself to make sure I stayed under the 7000MB limit 10-3pm and 3500MB between 4-9pm, but it really doesn't matter. Even when I haven't used the PC during the day, I still get carp speeds in the evening

[plymouth_user]

The problem according to the people I spoke to is the same for all users, regardless of the speed you are paying for (even 50mb). It is entirely to do with too many people using it at once, hence why at 6am the speeds are fine (at least for me).

[PC3527]

This is the same problem I have been having in Winchester SO22 and I hadn't considered the new influx of the great unwashed back to the area but my connection issues have been occurring since about September!

I'm paying for 20MB and in the evening I am getting on average 3MB....

Thinking about voting with my feet and sodding off to Sky!

[plymouth_user]

VM cannot blame this on students. No one forced them (VM) to sign up too many users or more than they can handle.

[xxxxxx]

I've just done a few ping tests, and everyone of them were F. And I've been told it might not be fixed till the middle of January. Are they kidding me or something?

I'm switching servers; to Sky. I'll ring them up sometime this week.

Even if they fix this problem, there is no guarantee it won't happen again. And the STM is just stupid to start of with, because technically we're not getting unlimited in any case.

[shane_uk]

I phoned again last night and got through to quite a knowledgeable Scottish tech. Well it int good he said we are priority 4 or something like that and uploads in the city centre are saturated with up loaders e.g. torrent user’s and he said he has seen it before and he did not think the problem will be sorted till 4 to 6 months time

[Sephiroth]

I've just done a few ping tests, and everyone of them were F. And I've been told it might not be fixed till the middle of January. Are they kidding me or something?

I'm switching servers; to Sky. I'll ring them up sometime this week.

Even if they fix this problem, there is no guarantee it won't happen again. And the STM is just stupid to start of with, because technically we're not getting unlimited in any case.

STM is sensible because it protects non-download hoggers from the hoggers.

Anyway, "unlimited" in this context means unlimited data volumes/month (subject to fiar usage policy), not a price plan based on GB/month thresholds.