Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)

[philce]

Ongoing problems with sub 1Mb speeds at peak times (all day during the school hols), packet loss etc, see the live graph from TBB ping tests.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/09/62.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/ac2ec57e8f3c23cde0ce082b299a3592.html)


I have a complaint raised with the CEO's office who have admitted there is a capacity problem, and have promised fixes. These fix dates have come and gone 3 times now, latest is Sept 29th.

If anything things are getting worse, my latest speedtests are terrible!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/09/63.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

Can anyone with some inside information give me some confidence that something will be done and that these dates are not just empty promises?

Cheers

[Chrysalis]

glad I got moved of the legacy its just getting worse, I can verify your report tho as when I first signed up to VM I was on legacy and it was not fit for purpose as your stats clearly show.

Hopefully more leics bods will show up here as I am aware of many complaints been made in the area.

The more I think about it the more I think I got moved because I complained rather as a matter of ongoing work. Its good that they react to complaints but bad they leave the service in this state to the silent ones.

[morley04]

Hello im currently in the LE33 area and have a fault logged under ref: F001337486 for high upstream utilization, The work started on the 17/09/10 and should be finished within about 3days i have been told.

[Ignitionnet]

Hello im currently in the LE33 area and have a fault logged under ref: F001337486 for high upstream utilization, The work started on the 17/09/10 and should be finished within about 3days i have been told.

Interesting. Didn't realise they did upgrade work on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. I'm pretty sure the guys who would be doing this work aren't aware they do these upgrades on Friday / Saturday / Sunday night either.

[philce]

Interesting. Didn't realise they did upgrade work on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. I'm pretty sure the guys who would be doing this work aren't aware they do these upgrades on Friday / Saturday / Sunday night either.

Exactly my point in the first post. I think we are being fed porkies by VM.

Although I am being compensated for the problems, if there is no fix insight then I will move. My crappy ADSL was better than this, at least I was getting my line speed all the time (decent ISP), this is a joke. I cant believe that there are only a handful of users complaining?

I have just tried to download a 18.5MB file and it has taken 5 minutes! Take a look at the TBB ping graph, its terrible!

Chrysalis, can you post a link to your graph so we can see what it should look like? (just to wind us all up here in LE3!)

[pip08456]

Is this what yopu want???

My Broadband Ping (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/ec07e82bbcb600f05cd928ab9956adaa-19-09-2010.html)

[philce]

Is this what yopu want???

My Broadband Ping (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/ec07e82bbcb600f05cd928ab9956adaa-19-09-2010.html)

Yes thats the one, compared to mine its a perfect connection!

I cant believe that there is only one other user on here with problems?

[pip08456]

Yes thats the one, compared to mine its a perfect connection!

I cant believe that there is only one other user on here with problems?

I have to go back to the begining of July for a bad one. All the rest are as flat as the one posted before.

My Broadband Ping (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/b36bb823102852d87b0b8fdb710b212d-02-07-2010.html)

[Chrysalis]

hah dude you not from leicester.

Live graph on overlay and after some kind of work was done a week or so ago.

Download Failed (1) (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/7fa5008d7c8192cd51bc3c084aa30245.html)

Legacy is a strange one in leicester, I looked back at my graph history and I can defenitly say my tbb graphs for many days were better then my overlay was getting before the recent work, however 80% of the time on legacy speeds were hideous as in sub 25% of rated speed, during peak I would say sub 5% and at many times during the day data transfer would stall and just bottom out near 0. Lots of packet loss as well as connection drops, although not the modem dropping just tcp connections been reset. All these things happened when I was on legacy in the LE3 area. Whilst on overlay even when jitter got high, speeds were fairly steady usually in the 15-20mbit range but mostly around 20mbit.

Now its bliss, but this is 1-2 weeks of good service since I signed up at the start of the year.

here is a graph from my overlay before the work was done, 2 sundays back.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/932f6327bac0021591cd17eb6038c704-05-09-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/932f6327bac0021591cd17eb6038c704-05-09-2010.html)

even with that jitter speeds were mostly ok however the jitter was noticeable on latency senstive stuff such as ssh.

[pip08456]

hah dude you not from leicester.



Aren't I lucky! :D:D:D:D:D:D

[philce]

Aren't I lucky! :D:D:D:D:D:D

Indeed! Some consolation for living in Wales!!!!;););)

[Chrysalis]

is almost back to how it was before the change happened, so we looking at about 2-3 weeks of bliss only.

I expect most likely this is due to legacy users been moved over as legacy is so congested its unreal.

Download speeds also affected again, although only to the same level was was 3 weeks ago.

The OP is also on overlay now.

[Chrysalis]

my part of LE3 has got very bad again and this is the worst I have seen my overlay port perform.

I am seeing speedtests ranging from 5-20mbit during the day on weekdays. (20mbit been morning). Last night after 1am I couldnt hit 20mbit at all, maximum was 17mbit so back to unable to get full speed off peak. Today so far maximum I hit is 12mbit and is only the morning. Jitter is evident 24/7 never drops to normal levels even at 3-4am.

Will give the CEO office a call back on monday and ask for explanation.

[Chrysalis]

just got confirmation from VM staff UBR is oversubscribed. :( no fix date tho.

[Ignitionnet]

Ask them which direction its' congested in and how many customers are on it. :)

[pip08456]

Still OK in Wales

My Broadband Ping (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/0efa8b43145d4c89b0299c43e41bd7c4-25-10-2010.html)

Sorry Guys I couldn't resist.

[Chrysalis]

they said upstream.

[uno]

My parents in the LE4 3 postcode area on 50mb service connected to Northfields Hub site have also been having lots of problems recently with low speeds and latency had an engineer visit who confirmed it was network problems and over subscribed but said he would raise a fault ticket but likely to take a long time to improve

[ShadowTD]

LE11 has been dog rough the past few days. I don't really have the heart to call VM as I know the area is oversubscribed with st00dents...

[Chrysalis]

no update from the CEO office today, things seem a bit faster tonight but still flaky, flaky all during the day as well. Ironically about 9pm I had speeds faster than I had in the day.

[Chrysalis]

still no update from the CEO office but today speedtests are back up and latency is lower.

[Chrysalis]

impressed with Neil, I sent a follow up email asking why the CEO office hasnt followed up and got a personal apology within 2 minutes. Seems he does read the emails.

No upgrade was planned for my area, so got some honesty but they said they going to start the motions for it. I asked if they got plans to bring in the traffic shaping soon to control it but no set date for it.

[Chrysalis]

things not good now at all, 1.30am also.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/10/1.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

http://www.pingtest.net/result/27096649.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

missing images on web pages etc.

[Chrysalis]

hitting the 25% mark now.

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/results.php?t=1288560095&v=11266701

[uno]

I went to my parents house last night in the LE4 3 postocode area and their 50mb service was only allowing downloads of 19-24mb from about 3pm until 10:30pm then suddenly went up to a more realistic speed of 30-40mb so obviosly some over subscription problems and just seems to be getting worse every time i go round and they say its the same everyday.

I wonder if anybody can confirm whether any works is planned soon on Northfields hub and UBR13 as part of new speed rollout so hopefully they can get the service they pay for. The whole of the network around Leicester seems quite flaky at the moment I ahve heard of lots of reports recently of bad speed and latency

[pip08456]

I went to my parents house last night in the LE4 3 postocode area and their 50mb service was only allowing downloads of 19-24mb from about 3pm until 10:30pm then suddenly went up to a more realistic speed of 30-40mb so obviosly some over subscription problems and just seems to be getting worse every time i go round and they say its the same everyday.

I wonder if anybody can confirm whether any works is planned soon on Northfields hub and UBR13 as part of new speed rollout so hopefully they can get the service they pay for. The whole of the network around Leicester seems quite flaky at the moment I ahve heard of lots of reports recently of bad speed and latency

It could be this (http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.controller?CONFIGURATION=1002&PARTITION_ID=1&TIMEZONE_OFFSET=&USERTYPE=&VM_CUSTOMER_TYPE=Cable&CMD=VIEW_ARTICLE&ARTICLE_ID=2781)

Nobody can confirm anything as to the upgrades as no schedule is publicly available.

Something to look forward to though, there have been no reports of problems (so far) in areas that have had the upgrade.

[Chrysalis]

last nights ping graph showed it went crazy bang on 2am as if a switch was flicked and stopped at 6am, this the time of day where the UBR should be under least load.

I am getting varying performance during the day up and down almost randomly, the same in the evening but down alot more and can get very low like a few mbit. After midnight it just stays low all night around 10mbit.

Deciding what to say to them now since a service that only for few seconds at a time is able to hit the 'up to' speed is bordering along misselling.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/aaf9533d8f435c07dff2d18786859102-01-11-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/aaf9533d8f435c07dff2d18786859102-01-11-2010.html)

[Ignitionnet]

last nights ping graph showed it went crazy bang on 2am as if a switch was flicked and stopped at 6am, this the time of day where the UBR should be under least load.

That is in the maintenance window, they may have been playing.

[Chrysalis]

ok thanks for the info, I suspected but obviously would just have been guessing.

---------- Post added at 14:03 ---------- Previous post was at 13:54 ----------

uno yes much of leicester appears to be problematic, especially on legacy but now we seeing more of it on overlay (50mbit network) is a sign its getting worse not better.

What I do know now is previous upgrade work was not resegmentation was just drip feeding extra channels (I think ignition said this used to be blueyonder practice).

[pip08456]

ok thanks for the info, I suspected but obviously would just have been guessing.

---------- Post added at 14:03 ---------- Previous post was at 13:54 ----------

uno yes much of leicester appears to be problematic, especially on legacy but now we seeing more of it on overlay (50mbit network) is a sign its getting worse not better.

What I do know now is previous upgrade work was not resegmentation was just drip feeding extra channels (I think ignition said this used to be blueyonder practice).

I know it doesn't help ATM Chrys but as Igni has told you the upgrade work that is being done should solve your problems.

I know you do not have a lot of trust in VM but as things are happening to you in "the maintainance window" then you never know!

[Ignitionnet]

Resegmentation was done recently in Leicester and should have mitigated the capacity issues, hence why there's no further capacity upgrades planned at this time.

If there are still issues sounds like it wasn't successful.

[pip08456]

Resegmentation was done recently in Leicester and should have mitigated the capacity issues, hence why there's no further capacity upgrades planned at this time.

If there are still issues sounds like it wasn't successful.

Then it can be safely said Leicester will not have the upload upgrade any time soon.

[Ignitionnet]

Then it can be safely said Leicester will not have the upload upgrade any time soon.

That would go for the majority of the network though so nothing personal.

[freakgirl]

Is this just affected the Leicister area because i have been having constant problems here in Cardiff

[Chrysalis]

Resegmentation was done recently in Leicester and should have mitigated the capacity issues, hence why there's no further capacity upgrades planned at this time.

If there are still issues sounds like it wasn't successful.

What I told was different, this you speak off happened at every UBR in leics?

[Ignitionnet]

No, resegmenting all of them at once would be an incredible task. I'm discussing LE3 specifically.

[Chrysalis]

No, resegmenting all of them at once would be an incredible task. I'm discussing LE3 specifically.

so all of LE3 is under one ubr only? is quite a big area with high takeup and has 2 uni's.

I guess the improvement I had in sept may have been this resegment? but even right after the work was under heavier load than many other area.

[Ignitionnet]

so all of LE3 is under one ubr only? is quite a big area with high takeup and has 2 uni's.

I guess the improvement I had in sept may have been this resegment? but even right after the work was under heavier load than many other area.

I have no idea how much covers LE3, just what I was told.

[pip08456]

Is this just affected the Leicister area because i have been having constant problems here in Cardiff

Studentland perhaps?

I go through Cardiff hub with no problems so it may be better to open your own thread to explore further.

I can't really see me having been upgraded without you but it is always possible.

[uno]

Somebody mentioned about management but it was not that as parents are very light web users and only have 50mb really for the higher upload as have Vonage phone and Vodafone sure signal connected which suffered on 20mb service with not enough upload speed.

It seems then as per other posters that as first thought it is the Virgin network this isnt even a student area and is a large village and that nothing will be done soon so I think call to CS will be happening to raise a complaint

[Chrysalis]

(more?) upgrade work is been scheduled but it will be months away and no date set yet. I hope this helps for anyone living near me with same issues.

[Chrysalis]

having to use my adsl as default again as youtube and iplayer both dont work without buffering, as well as missing images on websites.

---------- Post added at 18:20 ---------- Previous post was at 18:18 ----------

Somebody mentioned about management but it was not that as parents are very light web users and only have 50mb really for the higher upload as have Vonage phone and Vodafone sure signal connected which suffered on 20mb service with not enough upload speed.

It seems then as per other posters that as first thought it is the Virgin network this isnt even a student area and is a large village and that nothing will be done soon so I think call to CS will be happening to raise a complaint

yep its not limited to student areas, my sister in Leics is not even LE3 and is not in a student area yet also has poor performance.

[Chrysalis]

people can still see my live ping graph here.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/35094657-post9.html
first graph

speed is higher than previous nights around 16mbit but jitter is very high, not something I expected with the new traffic shaping?

working day jitter is low until 4pm now.

malfunctioning shaping causing issue 4pm onwards?
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-50Mb-broadband/Leicester-LE2-50Mb-very-poor-peak-time-performance/td-p/167998

[Chrysalis]

I decided to test before and after midnight on speedtest.net

before I was getting 13-16meg/sec
after it dropped to 1.2meg/sec
right now its about 6.5meg/sec

the shaping I guess is helping LE3, but the scale of the congestion looks very severe judging by the speeds right after midnight and that latency is still high right now and during shaping.

[philce]

(more?) upgrade work is been scheduled but it will be months away and no date set yet. I hope this helps for anyone living near me with same issues.

I saw some Virgin bods pulling fibre near Meridian business park yesterday.

Perhaps something to do with the upgrades? Probably just a business connection though.

I also notice that Hinckley has had the upstream upgrades done, so they get FTTC and now Vm upgrades! What a joke!

[Chrysalis]

Well kind of predictable, FTTC is the reason these upgrades are happening, so is not a surprise they prioritise FTTC areas.

I have always considered that VM do their research and will be aware of what areas are good competition areas, short lines with LLU etc. LE3 is mostly at least on the west side long lines and the inner city exchanges also have no BE LLU. VM will be aware that they can slack on the maintenance and probably still keep customers because the competition is of low standard.

BT do similiar, they let exchanges with no LLU/VM presence get congested (amber or red status) and take their time on fixing it, but in areas with BE LLU and also VM, they will always be green status uncongested.

My service is now faster during peak then off peak, effectively peak is the new off peak.

during evenings I get ranging speeds but typically now above 15mbit. (on speedtest,net, lower in single stream stuff).
12.01 am last test which was this morning I got 1.2meg/sec.
12.40 am 6meg/sec
and 4am 9meg/sec
daytime usually 19-20meg/sec but still some variance.

oh and I also still have large ssh lag, missing images on websites and broken streaming. This all occurs even if speedtesting high.
so basically I now only get ok speeds when STM is on.

[philce]

Oh well , spoke too soon!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/11/112.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

http://www.pingtest.net/result/27492404.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

Things are getting worse again!

Latest Graph.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/4.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/8b238e68396c0e46f53d8b2ce6c35bba.html)

[Chrysalis]

off peak speeds are now bearable after hopping to a new downstream port. Seems there is a bad balancing issue. around 16-17mbit.

will see later if it fixes the web browsing and streaming issues.

[philce]

off peak speeds are now bearable after hopping to a new downstream port. Seems there is a bad balancing issue. around 16-17mbit.

will see later if it fixes the web browsing and streaming issues.

How did you change port?

[Chrysalis]

Turn the modem off, probably for at least 15 minutes. But before you do it check the modem status page first http://192.168.100.1/ and look what downstream channel you are on. Then turn it off 15+ minutes and turn it back on again, give it a minute or so to boot and connect and then check if you on a new channel.

On overlay you locked to only 1 upstream channel tho, so can only change the downstream not the upstream. This new channel I am on is still is all over the place during today but this morning between midnight and 6am was a lot faster than my other channel.

[philce]

Turn the modem off, probably for at least 15 minutes. But before you do it check the modem status page first http://192.168.100.1/ and look what downstream channel you are on. Then turn it off 15+ minutes and turn it back on again, give it a minute or so to boot and connect and then check if you on a new channel.

On overlay you locked to only 1 upstream channel tho, so can only change the downstream not the upstream. This new channel I am on is still is all over the place during today but this morning between midnight and 6am was a lot faster than my other channel.

Cheers, ill try that next time things start playing up.

Thing is, its much better tonight, I dont get it! (perhaps everyone is at Abbey Park watching our council tax go up in smoke!)

[Chrysalis]

congestion can sometimes ease off, but is probably due to less people been online for any given reason or perhaps heavy downloaders taking a break.

VM's local network is fragile, 3 20mbit users downloading at full speed will saturate a downstream channel holding 100s of users. On the upstream it requires more users but of course there is only 1 upstream channel. Of course we also have the 50mbit users on the overlay as well.

LE3 is oversubscribed I have little doubt, VM didnt even try to deny it, what I find sad is they dont have the moral to suspend new signups whilst fixing the problem, and twice now I had to tell them they overloaded so can start upgrade work when they claim they normally do it as a matter of course via monitoring. Last time was in early may late april time and the reseg didnt complete until september. I also think multiple reseg's are needed but I expect they will only do one at a time doing the absolute minimum required. This was proven already when the last reseg barely made things work for a month. Given it takes tham half a year to do a reseg they need to ensure there is enough capacity free for 6 months worth of growth after a reseg.

[Chrysalis]

my long line adsl has been outperforming my VM for about the last 6 hours, last speedtest was 4.71 down and 0.70 up. So even during traffic shaping hours speedtests dont even get above 25%.

[Chrysalis]

some have question if people like me who arent happy will do the only thing that hurts VM and leave.

Here are my speedtest and pingtest results from monday to today. Adsl side by side for comparison, (long line).

Ukonline has the slower maximum speed but is very stable in performance no matter what time of day.

speedtest
down up time day isp
14.27 0.72 9am monday VM
16.01 0.73 midday monday VM
4.56 0.73 2.50pm monday VM
16.24 0.72 11.55pm monday VM
0.34 0.73 12.05am tuesday VM
18.21 0.72 1.40am tuesday VM
14.96 0.70 3.30am tuesday VM
17.01 0.72 9.50am tuesday VM
1.34 0.58 6.20pm tuesday VM
1.21 0.72 8.10pm tuesday VM
9.41 0.73 11.40pm tuesday VM
4.65 0.72 5.30pm wed VM
15.02 0.45 3.30am thurs VM
8.76 0.48 3.31am thurs VM
14.96 0.66 3.32am thurs VM
6.02 0.72 10.15am thurs VM
13.89 0.72 0.06am fri VM

4.58 1.04 9am monday ukonline
4.60 1.03 midday monday ukonline
4.56 1.04 2.50pm monday ukonline
4.58 1.04 11.55pm monday ukonline
4.56 1.03 12.05am tuesday ukonline
4.55 1.03 1.40am tuesday ukonline
4,61 1.03 3.30am tuesday ukonline
4.59 1.04 9.50am tuesday ukonline
4.58 1.04 6.20pm tuesday ukonline
4.52 1.03 8.10pm tuesday ukonline
4.56 1.03 11.40pm tuesday ukonline
4.65 1.04 5.30pm wed ukonline
4.49 1.03 3.30am thurs ukonline
4.49 1.04 3.31am thurs ukonline
4.50 1.04 3.32am thurs ukonline
4.54 1.04 10.15am thurs ukonline
4.48 1.03 0.06am fri ukonline

pingtest no packet loss shown as always 0%
latency(ms) jitter(ms) time day isp
35 21 9am monday VM
38 16 midday monday VM
72 39 2.50pm monday VM
38 16 11.55pm monday VM
196 71 12.05am tuesday VM
45 12 1.40am tuesday VM
38 24 3.30am tuesday VM
39 29 9.50am tuesday VM
94 41 6.20pm tuesday VM
312 256 8.10pm tuesday VM
65 51 11.40pm tuesday VM
39 27 5.30pm wed VM
49 42 3.30am thurs VM
32 95 3.31am thurs VM
36 37 3.32am thurs VM
41 68 10.15am thurs VM
13.89 0.72 0.06am fri VM

17 0 9am monday ukonline
18 1 midday monday ukonline
18 1 2.50pm monday ukonline
16 1 11.55pm monday ukonline
17 0 12.05am tuesday ukonline
16 1 1.40am tuesday ukonline
17 0 3.30am tuesday ukonline
18 1 9.50am tuesday ukonline
18 1 6.20pm tuesday ukonline
18 0 8.10pm tuesday ukonline
16 0 11.40pm tuesday ukonline
18 0 5.30pm wed ukonline
16 1 3.30am thurs ukonline
19 1 3.31am thurs ukonline
17 0 3.32am thurs ukonline
18 0 10.15am thurs ukonline
18 0 0.06am fri ukonline

[Chrysalis]

VM have another shot, my ukonline (easynet) has flapping routes (is broken) so VM is now my default again. For whatever reason by coincidence today the jitter is very low as well. So if it stays low it will give me an indication if the missing images etc. are down to congestion or the shaping. For the hour or so I have been using it I have not had browsing issues.

[philce]

Things seem better at the moment, no stalls or missing images recently.
Im not using the VM DNS servers though, I use the google ones, and seems OK so far?

There is clearly congestion though, it is visible on the ping graphs, usual times so to be expected.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/225a99aa33f7c9b0ae839a823f7f2911-17-11-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/225a99aa33f7c9b0ae839a823f7f2911-17-11-2010.html)


Anyone got any info regarding the upstream upgrades? Perhaps that is why things seem to have settled?

[qasdfdsaq]

Beats mine:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/618b7927ddcd0f5aff0528cf3fa2fca7-17-11-2010.png

Still, I'm not getting very big speed problems on mine, even with those latencies.

Sorry for the basic question, but what are your power levels like?

All I know about the upstream upgrades is they're increasing capacity by 6x (in the first phase) and individual speeds by just under 3x. So it should help things. I don't know if your modem config gets updated as soon as the upgrades are done or some time after though.

[Chrysalis]

Browsing is still ok (not tried streaming but will do in few minutes), latency is of course high again and speeds dropped.

What I am finding odd since late oct is that in the past on this overlay port I have had high jitter but speeds were unaffected ie. I could still pull down 20mbit/sec. Now I have speed issues even when jitter is low. I suspect the shaping hw on my port may be getting saturated. As thats what got introduced around that time.

My power levels are currently around 2 to 2.5db. Previously was around 0db but I removed one of my atennuators. I read somewhere that on this modulation that -3 to +7 is the optimal range which puts the middle of that range above 0, I also figured since the port is highly contended having a louder signal may help things. Nevertherless after I removed the attenuator things seem better but not a huge difference. I still have a 10db attenuator in there as without that the power level is way too high.

I will take your graph for mine philce please.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/7fa5008d7c8192cd51bc3c084aa30245.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/7fa5008d7c8192cd51bc3c084aa30245.html)

[qasdfdsaq]

Apart from the high minimum ping, I'd take my O2 graph over VM anyday.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/99b0c5734f46498148c8b075c96cf5a4-18-11-2010.png

[Ignitionnet]

Want mine instead?

Download Failed (1)

Note the peak time congestion :)

[Chrysalis]

hah iginition, trying to make us feel VM are good. :) All that tells me is O2 are simply aweful.

here is a good isp.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/81de68970c5a98cf74e488fd2ad3b60a-18-11-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/81de68970c5a98cf74e488fd2ad3b60a-18-11-2010.html)

I thought you was on O2 llu? that looks like their BTw service.

[qasdfdsaq]

Heh, wonder what's up there Ignition. Since yours is all over the place the whole day, it doesn't look like peak time congestion - I got the same 100ms+ "hump" in Edinburgh so I'm guessing national routing/peering/backbone problem or something. Certainly not local to you (London?) anyway.

[Ignitionnet]

Oh that's upstream utilisation apart from the big green stuff at peak.

[Chrysalis]

ignition related to the akamai BE issue I guess, so not a long term issue on llu O2.

[qasdfdsaq]

Well in the hunt for the perfect ISP I'm started to get tempted just to set up a wireless link to my work and use their internet connection:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/16ac047d113f49c6fd29916d2ee377f5-20-11-2010.png

It's only about ~1KM LOS and we're experimenting with long-range outdoor wireless internet links anyway...

[Chrysalis]

I have got some news about LE3 which is shocking. Also check my graph for last night the jitter stayed high all night so 24/7 congestion.

[qasdfdsaq]

What's the news?

[philce]

I have got some news about LE3 which is shocking. Also check my graph for last night the jitter stayed high all night so 24/7 congestion.

So whats happened? I cant check my graph as I defaulted my router and forgot to re-enable wan pings!

[Chrysalis]

So whats happened? I cant check my graph as I defaulted my router and forgot to re-enable wan pings!

it needs confirming before I post it here as it could well be wrong. But nevertherless my jitter is now high 24/7 there is no low congestion period for my connection now.

[philce]

it needs confirming before I post it here as it could well be wrong. But nevertherless my jitter is now high 24/7 there is no low congestion period for my connection now.

Looking at my graph for last night I would tend to agree.

Worrying to say the least......

[Chrysalis]

Looking at my graph for last night I would tend to agree.

Worrying to say the least......

I have started a campaign, the leics mercury say if I can get 200 names from my local area they will interview me, so me and a few others will be knocking on some doors to get feedback on VM performance.

The last VM local tech I spoke to says my area 2 out of 3 doors is VM. so 66% VM takeup for area. His words were "tons of customers in your area, is jam packed".

What do I hope to achieve? dont know, maybe some satisfaction of reducing VM sales from bad press. To me a march 2011 fix date is not acceptable, they probably adding new customers quicker then extra capacity on that date will cater for.

[philce]

I have started a campaign, the leics mercury say if I can get 200 names from my local area they will interview me, so me and a few others will be knocking on some doors to get feedback on VM performance.

The last VM local tech I spoke to says my area 2 out of 3 doors is VM. so 66% VM takeup for area. His words were "tons of customers in your area, is jam packed".

What do I hope to achieve? dont know, maybe some satisfaction of reducing VM sales from bad press. To me a march 2011 fix date is not acceptable, they probably adding new customers quicker then extra capacity on that date will cater for.

Nice, If you want me to do something similar round here let me know.

I bet 90% of users are unaware of how bad things are. (compared to ADSL)

[philce]

Where did you get the March 2011 information from?

[Chrysalis]

ceo office again, is new fix date.

[philce]

ceo office again, is new fix date.

I assume thats the upstream upgrades then.

At this rate they will be saturated before they are connected!

[Chrysalis]

no its just congestion relief, they are keeping shut tight on the upload upgrades.

[philce]

no its just congestion relief, they are keeping shut tight on the upload upgrades.

Why not just do the upgrades then? Makes sense otherwise 2 lots of work instead of one bigger one?

WTF do Hinckley seem to get everything before us? (FTTC now the VM upgrades?) Or is that not a coincidence!!! ;)

[Chrysalis]

Why not just do the upgrades then? Makes sense otherwise 2 lots of work instead of one bigger one?

WTF do Hinckley seem to get everything before us? (FTTC now the VM upgrades?) Or is that not a coincidence!!! ;)

Just the upgrades I expect wouldnt relieve the congestion. Or it could be the upgrades arent planned until late 2011.

[Ignitionnet]

no its just congestion relief, they are keeping shut tight on the upload upgrades.

It may not be the tier uplift but at that time scale, conveniently at the end of the calendar quarter and 4 months away which is a long time for resegmentation, it's extremely likely that'll be the pre-uplift work.

I'll poke someone and see what I can find out.

[uno]

My parents are still having lots of problems with slow speeds in the LE4 3 postcode area and have spoken to a couple of people in their street and report same problems so Leicester as usual really seems to struggle and last tech i asked said the upload increase would not be until summer 2011.

It does seem that Virgin are hugely overselling the network or have fell behind badly with network investment in the city also everybody i speak to says also keep getting a VOD error saying area is too busy so i presume again lack of capacity

[philce]

My parents are still having lots of problems with slow speeds in the LE4 3 postcode area and have spoken to a couple of people in their street and report same problems so Leicester as usual really seems to struggle and last tech i asked said the upload increase would not be until summer 2011.

It does seem that Virgin are hugely overselling the network or have fell behind badly with network investment in the city also everybody i speak to says also keep getting a VOD error saying area is too busy so i presume again lack of capacity

Its because BT refuse/cant/wont upgrade to FTTC and now we have the option of stable and fast broadband obviously we have all gone to Virgin.

They obviously take the money and until enough noise is generated by disgruntled users will do nothing.

I suggest you and your neighbours complain to the CEO of Virgin, that way the people who can do something about this will know about it. I would ring faults to check that it isnt a modem or cab fault first though.

[uno]

My parents have had a tech out as have the neighbours he changed a couple of bits including the modem but then went back to normal even he admitted when pushed that the network was not as good as it should be at present.

[Chrysalis]

My parents have had a tech out as have the neighbours he changed a couple of bits including the modem but then went back to normal even he admitted when pushed that the network was not as good as it should be at present.

I get the same story of local tech's they usually say things along the line of "area jam packer" "many customers in this area" "nothing I can do we ran out of capacity".

I can also confirm many people round here in same boat as me, I still got some work to do before I can get back to the newspaper tho.

[Chrysalis]

ok I would appreciate it if ignition or anyone with the answers can help here.

Currently we know LE3 has just 1 UBR.

Someone suggested on VM's forums that in busy areas UBR's would host 1000-2000 users, to me that sounds wrong. It would equal a 1.2% takeup for 2k subscribers. The takeup is over 60%.

So if every card slot was filled up in the UBR, and VM didnt oversubscribe what would be the max subscriber capacity?

[Ignitionnet]

LE3 doesn't have just one uBR it's covered by at least 2, one legacy and one overlay network.

The legacy CMTS, there will be more than one of these feeding LE3, is good for 2,400 connections depending on loading levels, 300 customers per 38Mbps downstream seems reasonable.

The Cisco 10k is good for tens of thousands. It has 8 line card slots each of which can support 20 downstreams and 20 upstreams, or it can feed an external modulator.

There are 15 CMTS in Leicester hubsite, another 13 in Northfields, LE7, at least 2 of which in each site are 10k or BSR.

I'm confused by the statement about 2000 users being a 1.2% take up though.

LE3 LEICESTER Braunstone, Glenfield, New Parks, Groby Road (A50), Leicester Forest East, Westcotes

I doubt that that area is a population of 200,000 given that the city's population is listed as 300,000 and remembering that a 'user' for cable purposes is a cable modem, and there's only one allowed per property. Even at 100% take up there would not be 200,000 cable modems in the whole of Leicester, the average home having over 2 residents per premise.

Braunstone apparently has about 7,500 households, Glenfield 5,000, New Parks 8,000, Westcotes 4,000, unsure about the other two and can't be bothered to search that hard but nonetheless it's not 2,000 households, 26,000 + those two areas so at 60% takeup a next generation CMTS plus a couple of legacy ones would be fine! :)

Your issues stem from a lack of 16QAM upstreams and the DOCSIS 2 upgrades, once all that's done along with the ongoing resegmentation that's being done for downstream and network quality purposes your upstream capacity issues will be gone with no need for any further additional upstream ports.

He says optimistically.

TLDR - the amount of chassis are fine.

[Chrysalis]

thanks for the reply, but whats this ongoing resegmentation? seems theoretical :)

I read on the VM forums that reseg's arent always upgrades but sometimes are just moving users around between existing line cards?

so 300 10mbit users on 38mbit? is about 19:1 contention right? if assume 1 in 5 users is a 20mbit customer it then becomes a bit higher tho around 24:1. That contention ratio seems reasonable but it is a very small fragile amount of shared bandwidth, evident by the downstream congestion on the legacy network.

Also you missing various areas under LE3, eg. I dont live in any of those areas. But thanks for making the effort to get the population count of the ones you found, I will do a bit more checking into it.

[Ignitionnet]

thanks for the reply, but whats this ongoing resegmentation? seems theoretical :)

I read on the VM forums that reseg's arent always upgrades but sometimes are just moving users around between existing line cards?

Yes, they are sometimes balancing load, say where there are 3 nodes on one card and a single node on another they will move a node to another card. This is an upgrade to the 3 nodes, all of them have more bandwidth per modem post-resegmentation.

The resegmentation programme is ongoing throughout that 'general area'.

---------- Post added at 12:02 ---------- Previous post was at 12:00 ----------

so 300 10mbit users on 38mbit? is about 19:1 contention right? if assume 1 in 5 users is a 20mbit customer it then becomes a bit higher tho around 24:1. That contention ratio seems reasonable but it is a very small fragile amount of shared bandwidth, evident by the downstream congestion on the legacy network.

Due to the relatively small customer population it generally works fine. Most of the 20Mb customers will be on the overlay network.

There's relatively little downstream congestion on the legacy network, it's largely overlay network upstream congestion that's the current bugbear.

Incidentally 300 x 10Mbit customers on 38Mbit is about 80:1 contention ratio :)

[Chrysalis]

ok but we know in le3 there is downstream congestion on legacy and even some on overlay albeit much less severe. its on at least 2 legacy ports as philce had it on legacy and I also had it on legacy. I expect many light takeup areas elsewhere in the country have much less than 300 per downstream as insufficent sales.

80:1 contention ratio is much higher than the amount I seen you post in another post, cant remember which site it was (think was tbb) and is quite a high number. Even on a large backhaul (eg. 1gigabit) that is high. We will disagree on if we think its reasonable, I have evidence to say it isnt in the performance we see here. Some VM areas have less than 50 on a downstream port.

So if resegmenting is sometimes only moving from one card to another (I assume the cards are in close proximity to each other) then why does it take many months to do the work? and what happens if all cards are saturated?

[Ignitionnet]

ok but we know in le3 there is downstream congestion on legacy and even some on overlay albeit much less severe. its on at least 2 legacy ports as philce had it on legacy and I also had it on legacy. I expect many light takeup areas elsewhere in the country have much less than 300 per downstream as insufficent sales.

You expect wrong :) If there are light sales what's the point in spending money on hardware and resegmentation to leave all that capacity unused?

At one time 200+ modems per upstream wasn't uncommon when the speeds were lower, 5,000 cable modems on a single chassis not impossible. Where areas have light utilisation VM simply wouldn't have split them as much as heavier areas, so same kinda number of modems online just more homes passed per card.

Your area is the exception rather than the rule downstream, as you will have noted from the forums the overwhelming majority of issues are upstream.

80:1 contention ratio is much higher than the amount I seen you post in another post, cant remember which site it was (think was tbb) and is quite a high number. Even on a large backhaul (eg. 1gigabit) that is high. We will disagree on if we think its reasonable, I have evidence to say it isnt in the performance we see here. Some VM areas have less than 50 on a downstream port.

The 30:1 I mentioned was for overlay network.

Your issues are upstream related I believe? No idea what the ratio in your area actually is. Probably somewhat higher than the number I mentioned.

I would like to see these areas with 50 modems on a downstream port, they would be few and far between indeed. 50 on an upstream port for sure, 50 on a downstream not so much. Certainly last year most ports that I saw were running between 300 and 450 modems, I wouldn't be surprised if that were 150 - 200 now in most cases.

Reasonable contention ratios are as high as companies can get away with, they have become largely meaningless due to the various bandwidth reducing methods used. In VM's case shaping and STM are the big ones that allow the network to run at higher ratios than would normally be feasible.

Regardless the levels of contention operators run their networks at are generally obscene :)

[Chrysalis]

I meant not upgrading to reduce to that level but rather that original sales werent enough to get higher usage.

why is legacy run at a different contention to the overlay network? thats an interesting one.

to me contention ratio is always relevent, its the ultimate measure of budgeted bandwidth. You said it yourself, the higher contention is only barely achievable due to STM and shaping been used to cut costs.

I agree on your last point.

[Ignitionnet]

I meant not upgrading to reduce to that level but rather that original sales werent enough to get higher usage.

You misunderstand how the network works. x customers are shared between y line cards. Where x is lower y is also lower to keep the number of customers per line card reasonable. There is no set formula for how many premises each line card covers, this varies depending on Virgin's needs.

They don't just throw in a line card for each 250 enabled homes and hope for good take up, the networks were originally thousands of homes passed per line card, even a 10% take up rate would have been ample to get 400 customers on a card.

---------- Post added at 15:59 ---------- Previous post was at 15:57 ----------

why is legacy run at a different contention to the overlay network? thats an interesting one.

to me contention ratio is always relevent, its the ultimate measure of budgeted bandwidth. You said it yourself, the higher contention is only barely achievable due to STM and shaping been used to cut costs.

To answer the first point that's easy, because the overlay network has far more bandwidth available. It can push 200Mbps to each fibre optic node while the maximum that the VXRs can push is 76Mbps.

As I mentioned contention ratio isn't relevant - that a ratio far higher than would be feasible is doable cheapens the value of that metric.

If you look at ISPs with strict caps and pay per GB overages they run on huge contention ratios because they can. Visible contention is what it's all about and is the only game in town. Whether the contention is made less visible due to a lower ratio, shaping, STM, whatever, that's the only valid metric.

[Chrysalis]

Thanks for the info so it seems legacy loses out quite a bit from overlay, in both a more fragile capacity size and over double the contention. I will defenitly not go back to legacy now if ever given the choice.

ignition interesting now that VM have released dates, leics has the latest possible aug 2011, I guess the build isnt as new and clean as you first thought? This makes what you said as unreasonable, if these upgrades do fix the area, another 9 months is far too long to wait.

I do fail to see however how STM and shaping reduce visible contention, they actually introduce it.

[Chrysalis]

getting beyond a joke now.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/78.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

service is seriously broken, I can load this site much faster on my adsl (which is fully utilised downloading) than on my idle so called 20mbit connection.

my up to 8mbit adsl service faster than my up to 20mbit VM service.

[Chrysalis]

Philce I have given VM 6 weeks notice (end of jan 2011), I have it free until then.

I will be getting a new adsl isp to replace ukonline when it closes, and have 3G as backup.

VM itself is way too variable and generally is slower for everything except bulk downloading (which itself is only faster mornings).

I have overlapped this and when I will be on my new adsl isp incase I have problems on the adsl and change my mind again.

Brief history of this current stint with VM (ntl) 20mbit service.

feb-may 2010 - high latency/jitter in day, low at night. speeds in day almost 0, often stalled, timeouts, streaming broken etc. unfit for purpose. unable to hit max speed even at 4am.
june-august 2010 - moved to overlay and things improved, speeds generally high, streaming etc. worked fine. 18mbit+ but still had high latency outside of dusk hours.
sept-mid oct 2010 - service was decent, jitter varied but was generally at least ok. speeds stable.
mid oct - now - service declined very fast and on top of this VM introduced traffic shaping which has brought extra problems, had mtu issues, browsing issues, streaming issues on way back, very inconsistent speeds even off peak, on peak starting to get very slow again approaching the 10% mark along with very slow browsing. jitter getting to the point where latency sensitive apps become unuseable. this time the slow speed is alongside VM shaping down p2p, nntp which should be an embarrasement to them.

proposed fix date of april 2011 by VM, likely to be delayed at least a month, I expect service would be adequate from may to august where it will then blow up on the speed upgrades. too much for me. :)

[Chrysalis]

tonight is just completely broken.

not using it for generic use now but I seen my ping graph was crazy high all day so tried to use it.

web browsing missing images galore, connection reset by peer error's, same error in ftp when trying to download.

I managed on 3rd attempt to finish a speedtest and it took 10 minutes.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/74.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/75.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30057615.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

[Chrysalis]

here is fastest (channel 54) at 2.30am

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/73.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

the other 2 channels 55 and 56 still sub 2mbit.

[Chrysalis]

11.40am on weekday.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/70.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30159624.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

[Chrysalis]

sloooowing down.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/69.png (http://www.speedtest.net)
http://www.pingtest.net/result/30176639.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

if I am up and can be bothered will do another 8-10pm.

[qasdfdsaq]

Umm sorry if you've already answered in this long thread but, why haven't you left VM already?

[Chrysalis]

I tried to give VM a chance due to having a poor line (which means a poor adsl service). I have now actually cancelled tho and VM will be gone end of jan. I am chaning adsl isp during jan so want VM up during that time incase of long adsl downtime.

I can still report here tho in the mean time :)

Me just leaving feels wrong tho, in that scenario VM get away scot free for what they doing other than losing my subs.

[qasdfdsaq]

Ah, good to know. I was in the same situation a little over a year ago, and didn't regret leaving VM one bit.

But as is always in the corporate world, it's far easier for them to screw us over than the other way round. Same with a billing error - you can't stop them taking it out of your account and it'll take months to get them to refund you.

[philce]

Id agree with you, but my speedtests are always near the 10meg I should have.

I have loads of stalled web pages, missing images and general slowdowns. I cant say anything to VM though as they will look at the utilisation and say its all OK. I may give the CEO office a call though as things are definitely getting worse.

My other option is a equally dodgy ADSL line (sub 4Mb if i'm lucky) that took me 2 years of BT faults visits to get me up to this speed from 2.5Mb, god only knows what has happened to the line in the mean time.

Latest Ping test
http://www.pingtest.net/result/30200080.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

TBB ping test (dosent look that bad)


http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/b9b7df7de527cbcc3523eb82be1fde2f-14-12-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/b9b7df7de527cbcc3523eb82be1fde2f-14-12-2010.html)

[qasdfdsaq]

That's interesting because I seem to have observed VM's network/equipment appear to have two operating "modes" - one with low latency, high speeds, and considerable packet loss just as you describe, and the other one with moderate latency, moderate speeds, and zero packet loss.

What I observed yesterday while I think they were doing some capacity upgrade work, was that at one point I reconnected to a different upstream channel to usual. At this point, I got slightly higher speeds than usual, and also slightly lower pings. But packet loss shot up from zero to about 10%, stalled web pages, etc. as you describe.

Then about an hour or so later, my ping increased again, and packet loss dropped to near zero in an instant - while still on the same channel. Clearly, something changed, whether deliberately or not, and not gradually either. And it wasn't due to congestion or high usage.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-large/0033024ed871a5e0253405d01520a80b-13-12-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/0033024ed871a5e0253405d01520a80b-13-12-2010.html)

If you look at the that graph, between about 9:30am and 10:45 packet loss was consistently high, but at 10:45 my ping increases and packet loss almost disappears (save for the further two reboots/loss of service at 11:00/11:20.

Incidentally during the periods of high packet loss, my ping would stay low. Normally when I saturate your upstream doing a big upload, my ping would increase to the 500-1000ms range but still not much loss. Yet in this period my ping would stay at ~30ms even while saturating the upstream, so it looks like something to do with VM's buffering/scheduling parameters.

I can't really explain it, but put simply, something VM did - some setting they may have been tweaking somewhere - managed to cause 10-15% packet loss all of a sudden, in some way that was completely unrelated to load, oversubscription, or line/signal quality. Maybe a QoS or timing parameter, maybe something else. But still, your problems might not be completely capacity related.

[Chrysalis]

yes I very rarely had packetloss but the latency/jitter is through the roof and speeds very inconsistent. But in the last few days I am starting to see low packetloss.

philce's graph looks very good with the latency now, as I said on the VM forums his port improved at the same time mine got worse and I wouldnt be at all surprised if it was a reseg that moved a busy node from his port to mine.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/3.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/fae7f1cb7a68f355f6971a92e9ae8f4f.html)

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30202805.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

trying to run speedtest now but keeps timing out, if it finioshes will post image.

---------- Post added at 23:56 ---------- Previous post was at 23:43 ----------

ok here

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/64.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/65.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/66.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

running these was fun, lots of retries and very slow.

---------- Post added 15-12-2010 at 00:07 ---------- Previous post was 14-12-2010 at 23:56 ----------

post midnight it becomes useable.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/67.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30203925.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

[Chrysalis]

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30226874.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

jitter is amazing today but speed maxing out flatline at 10mbit.

[Ignitionnet]

That's interesting because I seem to have observed VM's network/equipment appear to have two operating "modes" - one with low latency, high speeds, and considerable packet loss just as you describe, and the other one with moderate latency, moderate speeds, and zero packet loss.

The different hardware does handle congestion differently.

CMTS can respond to upstream congestion in one of two ways, they can either ignore the excess requests and force the modems to re-request and they drop traffic, or they can give them zero-length grants which tell them to wait and buffer the data they have to transmit.

The first scheme causes packet loss and a touch of jitter, the second latency and considerable jitter.

The first scheme can be overcome to an extent by transport level protocols so download speeds aren't necessary too badly affected, the second not so much.

[Chrysalis]

ignition you remember the time i reported to you changing behaviour? I had the odd day where latency would drop to very low levels but then the next day it would revert, so I agree with him I think VM seem to be able to change between different modes as I dont think I was switched to different kit just for one day here and there.

when latency was low (along with low speeds but not extremely low) overall the connection was better, most things felt snappier and ssh was fine to use. Only bulk downloading lost out. This was at the time i was able to always get full speed when jitter was high (before nov)

[Ignitionnet]

Nah SSH feels nasty with packet loss, that would have been something else, some load variation or congestion on downstream more than upstream.

Accompanying the low latency is packet loss, most things wouldn't feel snappier, SSH would suck, browsing feel nasty but bulk downloading would feel be better.

Interactive protocols suck mightily regardless of the queueing system when upstream is sufficiently congested.

[Chrysalis]

thats true, whilst I did have packet loss that day it wasnt continous.

[qasdfdsaq]

Thanks for the explanation Ignitionnet, that certainly does seem to explain what's going on. Interestingly though, this was 9am on a Monday morning, right after they'd done capacity upgrades, so curious that upstream congestion was sufficient to cause ~10% packet loss.

That said they might have still been in the middle of said upgrades at the time... Either way my upstream speed has now doubled (1.3Mb instead of 0.5-0.7) at peak time; slow progress but progress none the less...

[Chrysalis]

things were improved both wed and thurs and was even using VM on my laptop. today is very bad again tho.

[gondalio]

Leicester have been having some insane issues with their bb service, everytime i went to a bb job in leicester, 9/10 of them had to be reffered back to network. their network was in shambles for quite sometime but was told that they should all be getting upgraded. not sure if much has been done but if it hasnt been fixed yet you could still be waiting

[Chrysalis]

Leicester have been having some insane issues with their bb service, everytime i went to a bb job in leicester, 9/10 of them had to be reffered back to network. their network was in shambles for quite sometime but was told that they should all be getting upgraded. not sure if much has been done but if it hasnt been fixed yet you could still be waiting

nice to see some honest feedback from staff on here. I appreciate your post.

[gondalio]

yeh i worked in leicester for a few weeks and jeeez was there broadband issues or what, specially in the city center, a lot of students having plenty of issues with the bb. modem config pages were fine but just couldnt understand why people were getting intermittent speeds and connectivity. like i said though, at the time i was told that the issue was in hand and being dealt with but talking to my mate over there, there still seems to be some problems. now when they upgrade the network for the new upload speeds and 100mb, im not sure whether that might sort it out because the UBR's are getting re-arranged to accomadate the new 100mb and dedicated tivo modem.

[Chrysalis]

yeah possibly meaning channels be lost for these new services, can only speculate as its all hush hush. :(

I cant even get a fault number for my issue, I have asked the CEO office 4 times for it, and the VM forums 3 times, and get inconsistent replies.

eg. I was told some weeks ago now a new reseg is forthcoming and then eventually got told the spring 2011 date. If there is a date I would assume thereis a reference number so I have since asked for this reference number.

I then asked again on the VM forums and was told they raising it to the network team, which indicates there is no existing upgrade planned. They of course also wouldnt give me a reference number yet other customers get one, lots of weirdness about my area.

[gondalio]

what reference number are you reffering to?

[Chrysalis]

when people report faults they get a reference number that starts with F0.

[gondalio]

they must of ran out lol joke... Im not sure to be honest with you, only thing i can suggest is persist with the issue and dont sit and wait. I will speak to my mate tomorrow and see if he knows anything about whats going on over there. the network guys tend to know what the crack is across all areas lol dont hold your breathe on me though... but ill do what i can

[pip08456]

Fault reference I assume

Correct.

[Chrysalis]

they must of ran out lol joke... Im not sure to be honest with you, only thing i can suggest is persist with the issue and dont sit and wait. I will speak to my mate tomorrow and see if he knows anything about whats going on over there. the network guys tend to know what the crack is across all areas lol dont hold your breathe on me though... but ill do what i can

I gave up now, but one thing is a complete lack of proffesionalism from VM on this. The service has been unuseable for long periods of the day in the past week or 2 and most other isp's performing this bad would treat it as a matter of urgency.

The recent query on the VM forums was just to see if I got consistent information to match what I been told by the CEO office, it wasnt.

Rose on the VM forums perhaps said too much for staff and confirmed some overloaded ports are due to "too many modems".

I even read today someone's port upgrade got cancelled simply because the utilisation has temporarily dropped again, no doubt he will be reraising his fault when it increases again. This made me think about how leics has got so bad, do they close upgrade tickets every time the students go home and as such the area goes around in circles.

[Ignitionnet]

yeah possibly meaning channels be lost for these new services, can only speculate as its all hush hush. :(

No channels are being lost Chris, all 10k areas are going to 4 256QAM downstreams or better with all overlay upstreams at 6.4MHz 16QAM.

TiVo is getting no dedicated bandwidth so don't worry about losing out on capacity to it.

Of course whether this is enough we'll see, should improve things nonetheless.

[Chrysalis]

No channels are being lost Chris, all 10k areas are going to 4 256QAM downstreams or better with all overlay upstreams at 6.4MHz 16QAM.

TiVo is getting no dedicated bandwidth so don't worry about losing out on capacity to it.

Of course whether this is enough we'll see, should improve things nonetheless.

in 8 months ;)

[Ignitionnet]

At least your area has a date dude....

[Chrysalis]

are 100mbit's getting new channels or sharing with the 50s and 20s?

[qasdfdsaq]

I even read today someone's port upgrade got cancelled simply because the utilisation has temporarily dropped again, no doubt he will be reraising his fault when it increases again. This made me think about how leics has got so bad, do they close upgrade tickets every time the students go home and as such the area goes around in circles.
This sounds suspiciously like my area a year or two ago...

[Ignitionnet]

are 100mbit's getting new channels or sharing with the 50s and 20s?

Sharing.

[Chrysalis]

ignition what happened to your little check into the area?

my modem is now rebooted with these stats, rebooted by itself.

Upstream Status
Operational

Channel ID 8

Upstream Frequency 47400000 Hz

Modulation 16QAM

Symbol Rate 384000 bits/sec

Power Level 44.0 dBmV

[Ignitionnet]

You've a 384kbps upstream, interesting especially considering you're on 20Mbps as I remember rightly.

Reboot it again, see if it comes back on the proper tier.

[gondalio]

spoke to my mate about the leicester area and he says there is heavy work going on to resegment all broadband tiers 10/20/50/100. It is being done as we speak but i was not able to get an estimated date as it seems LE3 area has one of the older networks so there seems to be a lot of work needing to be done. I know its probably not what you want to hear but there isn't much more info i can give at this moment

[Chrysalis]

ignition it stayed on the same, watching football at the moment so will try it again after.

[Ignitionnet]

ignition it stayed on the same, watching football at the moment so will try it again after.

Hahaha.

A mistake or VM's latest approach to upstream congestion relief, downgrade people's upload speeds? :D

[Chrysalis]

downstream is still set to 20480000

does seem effective for anti congestion, speeds way up now.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/23.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

[philce]

ignition it stayed on the same, watching football at the moment so will try it again after.

Does the ref work for Virgin? How the fook is that game still on!!

[Chrysalis]

to avoid controversy, 3-0. if was 0-0 it be off no doubt.

[Ignitionnet]

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Fibre-optic-broadband-cable/LE3-Upstream-Downgrade/td-p/237355

[Peter_]

You've a 384kbps upstream, interesting especially considering you're on 20Mbps as I remember rightly.

Reboot it again, see if it comes back on the proper tier.
I have this in my modem config pages

Upstream Symbol Rate : 5120 Ksym/sec

But my Upstream config is this which is the 2Mb upload.

Maximum Upstream Data Rate : 2080000

So what does the Upstream Symbol rate actually mean.

[Ignitionnet]

I have this in my modem config pages



But my Upstream config is this which is the 2Mb upload.


So what does the Upstream Symbol rate actually mean.

It's a cosmetic bug in some Ambits, they list the upstream bit rate in the symbol rate section.

You should know that :p:

[Peter_]

It's a cosmetic bug in some Ambits, they list the upstream bit rate in the symbol rate section.

You should know that :p:
I know that 2080000 is the 2 Mb upload but what has 5120 Ksym/sec got to do with it.

[Chrysalis]

I will update again if the config changes.

here is an outgoing traceroute from my freebsd virtual machine routed over VM.

root@vm net-snmp # traceroute -I virginmedia.com
traceroute to virginmedia.com (212.250.162.12), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 0.900 ms 1.246 ms 1.026 ms
2 cpc6-leic15-2-0-gw.8-1.cable.virginmedia.com (82.7.80.1) 38.219 ms 14.716 ms 16.196 ms
3 leic-core-1a-ae3-2234.network.virginmedia.net (82.3.33.73) 11.650 ms 11.687 ms 21.632 ms
4 leed-bb-1a-as8-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.172.17) 40.776 ms 14.110 ms 24.212 ms
5 manc-bb-1b-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.175.142) 70.588 ms 28.153 ms 26.090 ms
6 winn-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (212.43.163.190) 25.937 ms 36.526 ms 44.842 ms
7 win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.188.162) 20.247 ms 34.619 ms 52.626 ms
8 git-dmz4-css-4b-vip07.network.virginmedia.net (212.250.162.12) 25.448 ms 48.076 ms 23.472 ms

still jitter but all in 2 figures only.

I am not complaining about this change, if its deliberate VM should have done this weeks ago, better to have a slower speed thats more stable and useable then what I have had for the last 2 weeks.

[qasdfdsaq]

5120Ksym/sec is the underlying symbol rate used on the upstream channel. 16QAM modulation transmits 4 bits per symbol, so 5120,000 symbols per second = 20,480,000 bits per second = he's on a 20mbit (DS2.0+) upstream channel.

From what I understand it legacy upstream channels are 10mbit (2560Ksym/sec 16QAM) and a 20mbit upstream channel is a prerequisite for 10:1 upstream.

[philce]

I will update again if the config changes.

here is an outgoing traceroute from my freebsd virtual machine routed over VM.

root@vm net-snmp # traceroute -I virginmedia.com
traceroute to virginmedia.com (212.250.162.12), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 0.900 ms 1.246 ms 1.026 ms
2 cpc6-leic15-2-0-gw.8-1.cable.virginmedia.com (82.7.80.1) 38.219 ms 14.716 ms 16.196 ms
3 leic-core-1a-ae3-2234.network.virginmedia.net (82.3.33.73) 11.650 ms 11.687 ms 21.632 ms
4 leed-bb-1a-as8-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.172.17) 40.776 ms 14.110 ms 24.212 ms
5 manc-bb-1b-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.175.142) 70.588 ms 28.153 ms 26.090 ms
6 winn-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (212.43.163.190) 25.937 ms 36.526 ms 44.842 ms
7 win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.188.162) 20.247 ms 34.619 ms 52.626 ms
8 git-dmz4-css-4b-vip07.network.virginmedia.net (212.250.162.12) 25.448 ms 48.076 ms 23.472 ms

still jitter but all in 2 figures only.

I am not complaining about this change, if its deliberate VM should have done this weeks ago, better to have a slower speed thats more stable and useable then what I have had for the last 2 weeks.

Still on 512 here on 10Mb.


Tracing route to virginmedia.com [212.250.162.12]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms [192.168.1.1]
2 10 ms 9 ms 7 ms cpc7-leic15-2-0-gw.8-1.cable.virginmedia.com [213.81.68.1]
3 10 ms 8 ms 19 ms leic-core-1a-ae3-2233.network.virginmedia.net [82.3.33.69]
4 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms leed-bb-1a-as8-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.172.17]
5 14 ms 12 ms 12 ms manc-bb-1b-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.175.142]
6 19 ms 19 ms 17 ms winn-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.163.190]
7 25 ms 34 ms 20 ms win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.188.162]
8 22 ms 19 ms 20 ms git-dmz4-css-4b-vip07.network.virginmedia.net [212.250.162.12]

Trace complete.

[Chrysalis]

hmm move me to cpc7 please :(

[philce]

hmm move me to cpc7 please :(

Sorry! Looks like they are definitely upto something.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/19.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30460388.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/01cc1ced50bc94b7ab445083100387ce-18-12-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/01cc1ced50bc94b7ab445083100387ce-18-12-2010.html)

Ignore the loss from 5 till 7pm, was watching a joke of a football match!

[Chrysalis]

didnt think it be possible on reduced upstream but can get full speed on this new config.

4.30 pm 19.50 down 0.35 up
now 18.96 down 0.32 up

in between them I had a 11mbit down tho is still varying a fair bit. jitter high but not crazy.

[Chrysalis]

my sister's part of leics has improved since summer, latency is way down and about half of mine, not varying a lot. speeds are higher than they were in the summer but still flaky. Although I tested it over christmas eve and day and christmas usage seems to be a bit down on the average.

[pip08456]

christmas usage seems to be a bit down on the average.

Traffic shaping being in effect perhaps and of course people doing the "christmas" thing with friends and family rather than spending time on their PCs?

[Chrysalis]

unless their is a special xmas shaping profile it wont be that. Most likely people just having more family time.

[Peter_]

unless their is a special xmas shaping profile it wont be that. Most likely people just having more family time.
The will be less people online as Traffic Management is enforced 24/7 within the specified time ranges.

[Chrysalis]

this will widen peoples eyes.

My VM connection has been down since 4pm today (was asleep) and just hit renew dhcp on my router to get it back.

upstream back to 768000 and downstream channel has changed, however still on that same upstream. :( will report back in a bit on jitter etc.

--edit--

seems a lot better initially.

9ms jitter on pingtest and 19.43 down 0.73 up on speedtest.

[philce]

Something definitely is going on.
Connection up and down all afternoon.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/4.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/8b238e68396c0e46f53d8b2ce6c35bba.html)

[desi112]

this will widen peoples eyes.

My VM connection has been down since 4pm today (was asleep) and just hit renew dhcp on my router to get it back.

upstream back to 768000 and downstream channel has changed, however still on that same upstream. :( will report back in a bit on jitter etc.

--edit--

seems a lot better initially.

9ms jitter on pingtest and 19.43 down 0.73 up on speedtest.


same here mate been having terrible problems today, keep loosing connection :( , then i got Access Denied to network. Now it back up and working, checked service status seems their are faults with TV and Telephone :o:

P.S. Did anyone else notice no traffic restrictions these past days? I've downloaded a lot of stuff these past few days at full speed only today it seems i've been restricted

[morley04]

I'm from the LE3 area and my net died earlier and has only just came back the modem was reporting these logs tho: if anyone knows what they mean.

MIMO Event MIMO: Stored MIMO=0 post cfg file MIMO=-1
ToD request sent- No Response received;CM-
ToD request sent - No Response received
MIMO Event MIMO: Stored MIMO=0 post cfg file MIMO=-1
ToD request sent - No Response received
No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP file complete - but missing mandatory TLV
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received
Unicast Maintenance Ranging attempted - No response - Retries exhausted
Ranging Request Retries exhausted
No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
MIMO Event MIMO: Stored MIMO=0 post cfg file MIMO=-1
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 time out
Lost MDD Timeout
SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Loss of Sync

[Chrysalis]

here is my graph again (from page 7) so dont have to click back to see affect.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/3.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/fae7f1cb7a68f355f6971a92e9ae8f4f.html)

traceroute also looking tidier. (note approx 8ms added due to interrupt polling on nic)

# traceroute -I virginmedia.com
traceroute to virginmedia.com (212.250.162.12), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 9.122 ms 9.590 ms 9.866 ms
2 cpc6-leic15-2-0-gw.8-1.cable.virginmedia.com (82.7.80.1) 19.877 ms 19.541 ms 10.126 ms
3 leic-core-1a-ae3-3496.network.virginmedia.net (82.3.33.105) 19.818 ms 19.823 ms 29.846 ms
4 leed-bb-1a-as8-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.172.17) 19.758 ms 19.566 ms 20.180 ms
5 manc-bb-1b-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.175.142) 29.608 ms 19.882 ms 20.556 ms
6 winn-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (212.43.163.190) 29.153 ms 29.869 ms 29.538 ms
7 win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.188.162) 39.902 ms 30.080 ms 29.821 ms
8 git-dmz4-css-4b-vip07.network.virginmedia.net (212.250.162.12) 29.567 ms 30.181 ms 29.606 ms

[desi112]

I also got the same as morley04

Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) TFTP failed - request sent - No Response
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received

[Chrysalis]

everything slowed down again and jitter higher again. was expected I guess since the upstream channel didnt change.

looks like we had some kind of fault and there was a temporary normal service before modems recconected.

[Chrysalis]

wow my tbb graph is a right mess at 2.30am, the change back to 768kbit upload shows how bad things are or I wonder if a port is down and they merged 2 ports of users.

[philce]

wow my tbb graph is a right mess at 2.30am, the change back to 768kbit upload shows how bad things are or I wonder if a port is down and they merged 2 ports of users.

Nothing on my graph? Must be the port you're on? Im still on CPC7.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/f5ee74d44ba7dcc8316de729275b0708-28-12-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/f5ee74d44ba7dcc8316de729275b0708-28-12-2010.html)

[Chrysalis]

yes we on different nodes. I remember one of the early things I was told about my area. That VM will leave areas like mine to rot (let everyone fight for bandwidth) as their drip feed upgrades are ineffective. Quite as to why my node doesnt get split or reallocated I dont know and is why I am ditching VM as I have given up waiting for a fix that will probably never happen.

also I found out yesterday when sorting some signatures for the leics mercury story that a few people have managed to get moved to a new physical port, in that their ip range changed and had new up and down ports. One of them only managed to get moved after 2 years and said he signed up in 2006 and had congestion until moved in 2008. There is people on 50mbit saying they get under 2mbit on speedtests.

[Ignitionnet]

The overlay network went live in 2008, they were moved to it hence the IP and port changes. No preferential or special treatment at all just a migration along with however many other people to the new kit once available.

---------- Post added at 16:44 ---------- Previous post was at 16:43 ----------

Nothing on my graph? Must be the port you're on? Im still on CPC7.

CPC7 isn't a port it's just a pool of IP addresses. You could split the signal coming into your home to two cable modems, they can be on the same ports but take an IP address from a different pool so will have a different 'CPC' but share the same bandwidth.

[philce]

[QUOTE=Ignitionnet;35144520]The overlay network went live in 2008, they were moved to it hence the IP and port changes. No preferential or special treatment at all just a migration along with however many other people to the new kit once available.[COLOR="Silver"]

I was connected in April this year, onto Legacy, only put onto Overlay when I complained to CEO's office.

[pip08456]

[QUOTE=Ignitionnet;35144520]The overlay network went live in 2008, they were moved to it hence the IP and port changes. No preferential or special treatment at all just a migration along with however many other people to the new kit once available.[COLOR="Silver"]

I was connected in April this year, onto Legacy, only put onto Overlay when I complained to CEO's office.

Perhaps that was the reason?

[Chrysalis]

The overlay network went live in 2008, they were moved to it hence the IP and port changes. No preferential or special treatment at all just a migration along with however many other people to the new kit once available.

---------- Post added at 16:44 ---------- Previous post was at 16:43 ----------



CPC7 isn't a port it's just a pool of IP addresses. You could split the signal coming into your home to two cable modems, they can be on the same ports but take an IP address from a different pool so will have a different 'CPC' but share the same bandwidth.

not sure, I spoken to one guy over the phone, he was moved to overlay initially and then upgraded to 50mbit after he was told that would fix it, which it didnt. Then whilst still on 50mbit he got moved again and it was a lot better. So obviously he wasnt moved back to legacy as he is still on the 50mbit service so it could only mean a physical move of some sort, it also changed his ip address range.

[Ignitionnet]

not sure, I spoken to one guy over the phone, he was moved to overlay initially and then upgraded to 50mbit after he was told that would fix it, which it didnt. Then whilst still on 50mbit he got moved again and it was a lot better. So obviously he wasnt moved back to legacy as he is still on the 50mbit service so it could only mean a physical move of some sort, it also changed his ip address range.

Well there has been copious amounts of resegmentation on the Leicester networks so this wouldn't surprise.

[Chrysalis]

thanks to everyone who has helped in this thread, it is appreciated even if I dont come across that way.

my new adsl isp is online today, sycing at almost 2 meg higher than I did on ukonline although upload is down on speed. The new isp isnt quite living up to easynet's excellent network for jitter, seems to hover from 1-5ms mostly around 1-2ms but that is fine significantly better than VM, speeds fine on it.

So I will have VM until end of jan although may be earlier as I got warned since its free it can go off at any point in the month. It was useful for dusk hours bulk downloading and during sept for everything :) but thats history now so hopefully others in LE3 wont suffer as badly as I have done.

If anyone here wants to test out my connection and knows how to use unix command line PM me, and I can give you access to a freebsd vm I have setup on the connection.

[pip08456]

At least you have found a resolution which suits you better.:D

[philce]

my new adsl isp is online today, sycing at almost 2 meg higher than I did on ukonline although upload is down on speed. The new isp isnt quite living up to easynet's excellent network for jitter, seems to hover from 1-5ms mostly around 1-2ms but that is fine significantly better than VM, speeds fine on it.
.

Who did you go with?

Perhaps the faster speeds is due to less crosstalk because of the amount of users going to Virgin?

[pip08456]

I should imagine Chrys has gone with a LLU operator but until we get a reply who knows? (or infinity if in the area).

Bottom line if it works out better for his needs who cares?

And I don't mean that as a slight to you Chrys.

[philce]

I should imagine Chrys has gone with a LLU operator but until we get a reply who knows? (or infinity if in the area).

Bottom line if it works out better for his needs who cares?

And I don't mean that as a slight to you Chrys.

No chance of FTTC here (dont get me started on that one!)

Interested to see why the 2Mb speed jump, that would make me think again going back to ADSL and Sky.

[Chrysalis]

I went with Xilo who appear to have set it up using murphx bandwidth on a tiscali tail. So tiscali LLU at exchange with murphx backhaul.

The package has a 75gig usage cap with no free usage off peak period so not for anyone who downloads too much :)

On ukonline I had a 4.8meg sync before they did the migration at 10db margin, when it synced up on tiscali it was nearly 6 meg with same stats, after I removed the snrm overide on my router and let it sync at 6db I got 6.8meg which held during the evening but with some small packetloss. With the packetloss it still was far more useable than VM. Without SRA ukonline was nowhere near as steady, I think the difference maybe due to INP been enabled on tiscali (noise protection). The latency is higher about 25ms but is low jitter and upstream I am back down to about 800kbit like I was before I went to ukonline.

Phil if your 10mbit is steady with VM I would stay where you are unless you having problems of course. :)

After I resynced I am holding 6.2mbit with no packet loss now during the night. I never got above about 5.5meg on ukonline without SRA overnight even when my line was better and in recent weeks I struggled to hold 4mbit. Its worth mentioning tho over christmas many offices are closed and they are what cause most of the crosstalk on our exchanges as both are city centre based. I will have a better idea of what it will be like long term after the first working week in Jan.

[philce]

Sky have offered me 1/2 price for 6 months, Virgin phone calls are extortionate, the management applied to the Virgin connection is horrendous at peak times.

I was with AAISP and got full line speeds at all times. The way things are going with Virgin they will throttle everything except browsing soon, I use VPN for work and I can see that being next.

After waiting years for Virgin I cant believe I'm thinking of going back to ADSL!!

[Chrysalis]

yeah I almost forgot about the shaping etc.

seems you got reasons to change back then :)

[Chrysalis]

here is xilo's.

Download Failed (1) (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/a608758f92fef9e4240f8921f11c94e9-31-12-2010.html)

[desi112]

Sky have offered me 1/2 price for 6 months, Virgin phone calls are extortionate, the management applied to the Virgin connection is horrendous at peak times.

I was with AAISP and got full line speeds at all times. The way things are going with Virgin they will throttle everything except browsing soon, I use VPN for work and I can see that being next.

After waiting years for Virgin I cant believe I'm thinking of going back to ADSL!!

agreed virgin phone calls are way to much, I'm looking into VOIP or possibly taking calls back to sky and keeping virgin for broadband only.

Yes it took over 5 years for Virgin to upgarde the LE3 6 Area to 'Digital' and perhaps they just did a 'botch' job on the upgrade?

Being stuck on a 58db adsl line Virgin seems like the only choice :confused: for nearly all users in this area. No FTTC planned and cant see the area getting it for another 3 years at least.

[uno]

My parents have been having quite a few connection problems and low speed in LE4 3 area they are on 50mb service and connected to Northfields Hub site. They are only able to get 15mb download and 120kbps upstream have spoken to CS who basically told them to call back after the holidays

[philce]

here is xilo's.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/a608758f92fef9e4240f8921f11c94e9-31-12-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/a608758f92fef9e4240f8921f11c94e9-31-12-2010.html)

Looks like you had interleaving applied after the disconnections overnight?

Are you sure you are on LLU? (I recall you are on Leic Central? No Tiscali on Montfort)

I'd say you have been DLM'd by BT !! (one of the reasons I wanted Virgin!)

[Chrysalis]

Its LLU, but the behaviour is odd for sure.

I swapped my router twice this morning as I wanted to compare sync speeds and both other routers have higher latency (at first I thought was DLM also). But when the original router goes back in the latency reverts.

So

billion 7402nx original router - reports fast path, low downstream INP, the router can tune both INP and interleaving, however when I tried tuning INP it had no affect.
billion 7402r2 - tried this one out, same chipser but lower model, latency almost doubled, showed FEC errors which indicates interleaving.
speedtouch 585, old broadcom based router, like the 7402r2 higher latency and has fEC stats, in addition it specifically does say its in interleaving mode.

So currently 2 issues, a line mode that changes depending on what router is plugged in (so could be a weird DLM but isp says it isnt) and my exchange does have tiscali LLU. Also there is no BRAS profiling as I have experimented with low and high sync speeds with throughput changes been immediate (wouldnt happen on BTw). 2nd issue is the high base line latency of 25ms even on the fastpath router. Xilo will be playing with my line profile next week.

End of the day a steady 25ms is far better than a 15ms-XXXXms that I get on VM. But it seems unless I pay 100 notes a month to easynet connect I wont ever get the quality of service again I had with ukonline.

I am plugging the original router back in soon so the latency should drop again on that.

[Chrysalis]

today its just turned into a big yellow block since midday.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/f4dfac005ca3bd785afb27e2e49c87fa-01-01-2011.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/f4dfac005ca3bd785afb27e2e49c87fa-01-01-2011.html)

[qasdfdsaq]

Mine always used to be like that (before my reseg) every day but most of the time the issues I got weren't too bad - half marketed speed in either direction, or thereabouts.

[Chrysalis]

also it seems I have been paying full bill with no discounts at all even tho I was told that would happen.

cant be bothered to ring up about it, will take the hit but shocking customer service.

[desi112]

Just saw on HDUK VM have a special offer if you are an exisiting cust and want to upgrade to 50mb. I am very tempted and so far have a solild 10mb service (after being moved to overlay network).
Tempted to upgrade because I keep getting hit in the evening with the traffic management. Anyone in LE3 got 50mb?

---------- Post added at 13:18 ---------- Previous post was at 13:17 ----------

Just saw on HDUK VM have a special offer if you are an exisiting cust and want to upgrade to 50mb. I am very tempted and so far have a solild 10mb service (after being moved to overlay network).
Tempted to upgrade because I keep getting hit in the evening with the traffic management. Anyone in LE3 got 50mb?

[philce]

Just saw on HDUK VM have a special offer if you are an exisiting cust and want to upgrade to 50mb. I am very tempted and so far have a solild 10mb service (after being moved to overlay network).
Tempted to upgrade because I keep getting hit in the evening with the traffic management. Anyone in LE3 got 50mb?

Whats the offer?

Im coming to the end of my 12 months and Sky have made me an offer! Shame its ADSL for BB!

[Chrysalis]

VM dispite their already oversold service seem to be on a new recruitment drive, new offers coming out and people been offered refferal bonuses as well.

Philce you off back to adsl then?

[philce]

Philce you off back to adsl then?

With no prospect of FTTC within 1 year, and a poor ADSL line I will try to bluff with VM to give me a good retention deal for this year.

Hopefully with the upgrades coming later in the year this will fix the utilisation issues, hopefully this will result in some of the management being relaxed slightly, (not holding out much hope)!!

If I go for 50Mb and I get as little as 10% topline speed I am still better than ADSL!

[sollp]

VM dispite their already oversold service seem to be on a new recruitment drive, new offers coming out and people been offered refferal bonuses as well.

Philce you off back to adsl then?

Why is the VM network oversold??

[philce]

Why is the VM network oversold??

Because the network has been proven/admitted by VM to be at capacity/over capacity, yet they continue to sign up new users. The experience they receive is poor, resulting in compensation payments and bad publicity to potential users (word of mouth).

I see you are not a VM customer, you dont know what you're missing!!!!

[pip08456]

Because the network has been proven/admitted by VM to be at capacity/over capacity, yet they continue to sign up new users. The experience they receive is poor, resulting in compensation payments and bad publicity to potential users (word of mouth).

I see you are not a VM customer, you dont know what you're missing!!!!

Not in all areas. There are many of us who receive perfectly good connections.

[philce]

Not in all areas. There are many of us who receive perfectly good connections.

Yes I accept that, but as Chrysalis said, here it is over subscribed (high student population) and over sold.

Why add to the problems they have not fixed by creating more?

Capacity upgrades take so long that once implemented they are already saturated.

[Chrysalis]

Not in all areas. There are many of us who receive perfectly good connections.

That doesnt make it ok tho.

My issues arent actually related to students.

I queried as to why my connection seems to have little relationship to student terms and now I know why, I am not sharing with people in the uni catchment area's. My port load seems to peak when kids are off school eg. over the xmas holiday it got really crazy, this week its clamed down a bit but still high. My night time load 3am to 6am is now higher than my daytime load was a month ago.

[pip08456]

That doesnt make it ok tho.

My issues arent actually related to students.

I queried as to why my connection seems to have little relationship to student terms and now I know why, I am not sharing with people in the uni catchment area's. My port load seems to peak when kids are off school eg. over the xmas holiday it got really crazy, this week its clamed down a bit but still high. My night time load 3am to 6am is now higher than my daytime load was a month ago.

I never said it did.

I agree that no more customers should be taken on in an area if the network there can't support them.

I just get a bit miffed when generalisations are used for the whole network when in most cases it's area specific either due to the student population, a couple of heavy users hammering it for the rest or just the state of the network in a given area.

[philce]

I just get a bit miffed when generalisations are used for the whole network when in most cases it's area specific either due to the student population, a couple of heavy users hammering it for the rest or just the state of the network in a given area.

It was actually VM tech support that offered the student theory. In a city like Leicester with thousands of students it will obviously be a factor, however to use this as an excuse is unacceptable.

They know where the students are, and their habits, they should plan and accommodate them.

Offering cheap 9 month contracts in August is only going to obviously attract more users.

I really think that us here are the tip of the iceberg, most users dont even know there's a problem.

I just hope the delay in the increased uploads and 100Mb is to make sure the network is robust enough to cope.

[pip08456]

It was actually VM tech support that offered the student theory. In a city like Leicester with thousands of students it will obviously be a factor, however to use this as an excuse is unacceptable.

They know where the students are, and their habits, they should plan and accommodate them.

Offering cheap 9 month contracts in August is only going to obviously attract more users.

I really think that us here are the tip of the iceberg, most users dont even know there's a problem.

I just hope the delay in the increased uploads and 100Mb is to make sure the network is robust enough to cope.

I do not disagree with you.

Students do hammer the network for 9mths of the year.

There is no delay in the increased uploads and 100Mb rollout. Quite a few areas need a lot of work. The upgrades will continue in the areas that take less work. That's just common sense.

When eventually the upgrade is complete it should mean VM have a more robust network.

[Slyder]

quick question.

how do you produce those graphs? i went to the website and tried a speedtest, but it looked a lot different to what is has been posted

tia

[Chrysalis]

thinkbroadband has it as a free feature if you register there, is called broadband quality monitor. is nothing to do with speedtesting, its basically a latency monitor and they ping your modem every second.

[Slyder]

thinkbroadband has it as a free feature if you register there, is called broadband quality monitor. is nothing to do with speedtesting, its basically a latency monitor and they ping your modem every second.

all registered up and account activated. i have the monitor running but it dosnt seem to be doing anything. :confused:

[philce]

all registered up and account activated. i have the monitor running but it dosnt seem to be doing anything. :confused:

If its all red then you will need to enable piings on your router/firewall.

[Slyder]

If its all red then you will need to enable piings on your router/firewall.

router is a Linksys WRT54G2 but i cant find an option called pings? I dont have a software firewall either. bit lost now :(

[Chrysalis]

all registered up and account activated. i have the monitor running but it dosnt seem to be doing anything. :confused:

clicked enable? :)

think it starts as disabled.

if its all black its not running, if its all red its running but with 100% loss (pings blocked your end).

[philce]

router is a Linksys WRT54G2 but i cant find an option called pings? I dont have a software firewall either. bit lost now :(

Might be something like annonomous pings?
Or ping from lan?

[sollp]

Because the network has been proven/admitted by VM to be at capacity/over capacity, yet they continue to sign up new users. The experience they receive is poor, resulting in compensation payments and bad publicity to potential users (word of mouth).

I see you are not a VM customer, you dont know what you're missing!!!!

So your stating that the whole network is oversubscribed,Virginmedia have admitted this and they shouldn't sign any more subcribers!

Well they best close shop then.

[Chrysalis]

why do people get all defensive over this.

if an isp is partially over subscribed then yes then they have a general classification of oversubscribed.

if they dont like people saying that then the solution is there, reduce users on the congested points, kick of heaviy users on congested points (rather than just softy letters) or increase capacity.

[pip08456]

why do people get all defensive over this.

if an isp is partially over subscribed then yes then they have a general classification of oversubscribed.

if they dont like people saying that then the solution is there, reduce users on the congested points, kick of heaviy users on congested points (rather than just softy letters) or increase capacity.

People get defensive purely because it is not true. It only effects certain areas and is not representative as a whole.

Notwithstanding the fact that VM should not be selling to more users in those areas that are clearly oversubscribed until they have improved the network in that area to support it.

It does p**s me off when it is touted about as a generalisation.

I say that as a person whose only issue with VM is the traffic shaping they have introduced which even affects light downloaders.

Yes now and again I may grab a torrent or a file from usenet but why should I be affected the same as someone hammering their connection 24/7? I would prefer something like BT does 300Gb in a month then cut down to browsing speed.

I am considering moving from VM just because of that but I can't until May.

I will review my options then.

All that said the majority of the network is good for most.

[Chrysalis]

if we were to look at the flawed samknows data, even tho I think its flawed that suggests around 1/3rd of VM's customers have some form of congestion that affects download speeds.

upstream congeston I think is widespread enough in that it is quite possibly on over half the access network. I rarely see a uncongested jitter graph for VM ,they are few and far between.

I agree most customers seem happy as they they either dont care enough or dont know enough to know whats happening, eg. they load a web site it loads hence the service works.

But I wont agree with you on the point that I cant say VM is oversubscribed simply because it doesnt apply to 100% of customers.

Protocol shaping I have always said is bad, seems you realising that now as well. As it takes no account of to how heavy the user is and as to how heavy utilised ports are. I raised this in another thread tho and ignition raised it on VM's forums. Not many took notice.

To be clear I have never told anyone VM's entire network is oversubscribed and do often state it doesnt affect everyone. But I think its wrong to pretend its some insignificant part of the customer base that is only affected.

--edit--

With all that I forgot to post update.

not sure if more work is been done, yesterday latency and jitter significantly dropped, did sharply rise around 4pm tho but then dropped again just before 6pm and then my connection dropped. So I got no data for peak. Its back on now after I renewed the dhcp on the router.

[philce]

I wont repeat what Chrysalis has already covered, but I comment was not a generalisation, check the thread title.

LE3 is really having issues, my connection is great most of the time, but at peak times is a real pain, pages dont load and even downloading a update (to AntiVirus) comes down at less than 25k/sec! I restart the download and its up at 1000Kb (note the k/K). Even webpages stall and images are missing.

If this is the way forward with this level of management then VM need to tell people this is happening.

I had a fault open with the CEO's office for this for 4 months, it took that long just to move me to the overlay network.

OK so if i max out the connection 24/7 downloading torrents, but I use less than 10Gb a month and still cant use the connection at times. If I had a decent option to move to then I wouldnt be here moaning, but BT have decided that we cant have FTTC so I am stuck!

[Chrysalis]

it seems the lower daytime latency is due to kids been back at school and still goes crazy in the evening, speeds also stayed poor in day even with the lower latency.

[Chrysalis]

getting worse, I guess VM's new recruitment drive getting results in my area.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/9bca4527a2dbd0b7e67a5bef9b048b76-15-01-2011.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/9bca4527a2dbd0b7e67a5bef9b048b76-15-01-2011.html)

that was for yesterday, latency of the scale for over 6 hours.

3-4 months of growth before proposed fix date I wonder how many node splits etc. will be needed to control this. ;)

[Ignitionnet]

3-4 months of growth before proposed fix date I wonder how many node splits etc. will be needed to control this. ;)

One, to get you away from whichever area is responsible for the load. :)

[desi112]

sorry for delay in replying mate from HOT deals website. VM are offering 50mb for £35 a month on a 12 MONTH CONTRACT, all new contracts are 18 now. Plus free install and setup. Gunna give them a ring now as my contract is nearly finished see if I can get a good deal...
Will be moving telephone line rental back to Sky Talk as VM calls are far too expensive.

[Peter_]

sorry for delay in replying mate from HOT deals website. VM are offering 50mb for £35 a month on a 12 MONTH CONTRACT, all new contracts are 18 now. Plus free install and setup. Gunna give them a ring now as my contract is nearly finished see if I can get a good deal...
Will be moving telephone line rental back to Sky Talk as VM calls are far too expensive.
Do not move the telephone until you have discussed upgrading your contract as you may get a better deal with the 50Mb package.

[desi112]

Thanks for the advice. Rentions are closed today...will give a call tomorrow

[Chrysalis]

this really caught my eye, sorry I had to post it.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/da11841341d947619282543cdea9a7de-16-01-2011.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/da11841341d947619282543cdea9a7de-16-01-2011.html)

Will I get a day with that graph fully yellow before I leave or they upgrade it?

[qasdfdsaq]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/811a99be7f8f83e65ce7399f9a69e865-29-11-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/811a99be7f8f83e65ce7399f9a69e865-29-11-2010.html)
That was me before a reseg. Was mainly upstream congestion, connection was slow but not terribly so, yet yours looks remarkably similar.

[Chrysalis]

you got an after graph? so can see how much of a boost the reseg did.

[qasdfdsaq]

Sure, this was immediately (i.e. the next day) after. Mind you, this was just before the start of the christmas hols, so load had already gone down a bit.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/37c0733f11065e5faf5acf5ed3943a64-14-12-2010.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/37c0733f11065e5faf5acf5ed3943a64-14-12-2010.html)
Before reseg I was getting about 25/0.5, now it's about 30/1.6, so upstream has improved massively but downstream is still a bit congested.

This was yesterday:
Download Failed (1) (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/adc87b942592cd9d4b180eeb31d5f76a-16-01-2011.html)

This, would be the best day I've had with most of the student population being back in town:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/527833dda8769b98a9a9200508700cc2-12-01-2011.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/527833dda8769b98a9a9200508700cc2-12-01-2011.html)

[Chrysalis]

acks been shaped upwards to maintain downstream performance?

I decided to do a speedtest whilst the graph in yellow block mode and got this.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/01/42.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

is repeatable as well, so basically it can just about maintain acks for that but upload is very slow. jitter on stuff like ssh is crazy tho and not useable.

[qasdfdsaq]

I don't think it's the shaping but rather the upstream grant mode. I think I mentioned before (can't remember if it's this thread or another one) but I had very similar issues immediately after my reseg, which only lasted a few hours before going back to normal.

From the tests I did at the time, upstream packets were being dropped instead of queued, which resulted in very poor upstream speed in speed tests, but reasonable downloads just like you're seeing. But something somewhere got changed within a couple hours and it disappeared...

[Chrysalis]

I think when my yellow blocks started they changed something, as before downstream was aweful. Now it seems to be reasonable but just the upload poor haha.

Overall this behaviour is better, web browsing seems ok on it (routing spare desktop machine over it).

[philce]

Uplink is still approx 300K, will this ever be fixed?

Anyone else on samknows testing group?

[Chrysalis]

philce I tried to get on samknows but got rejected after a low speedtest.

my uplink is perfoming around 300k but is actually now on a 768k modem config. I do wonder if they have capped discreetly after getting complaints trying to cap via modem config. As I always get 300k even during dusk.

[philce]

Just got off the phone from retentions, best offer is £40.49 per month for XL TV L BB and M phone. She said three times if I upgrade to 20Mb ill get 2Mb uplink now! I forced her to check and eventually got the right info.

She did say that there was a new 30Mb package due to launch Feb 1st though.

[Slyder]

Might be something like annonomous pings?
Or ping from lan?

well i found this under WAN

Block Anonymous Internet Requests ive unticked it now.. so fingers crossed i guess..

and yeah - the graph is enabled :)

i think its working now.. :) thanks for your help

[philce]

well i found this under WAN

Block Anonymous Internet Requests ive unticked it now.. so fingers crossed i guess..

and yeah - the graph is enabled :)

edit that - its still all red :(

That should be it, give it a few hours to show on the graph.

[Chrysalis]

qasdfdsaq while the boost at least looks decent, I would say you already need another reseg. the sad thing is they will probably wait for it to completely overload again before they even start planning it.

[philce]

philce I tried to get on samknows but got rejected after a low speedtest.

my uplink is perfoming around 300k but is actually now on a 768k modem config. I do wonder if they have capped discreetly after getting complaints trying to cap via modem config. As I always get 300k even during dusk.

Makes me think they have capped us all at 300K to try to improve performance for everyone?

You think you will get your 30Mb upgrade? Or will they just screw everything up? Im tempted just for the 3Mb up that we might get later this year!!

[qasdfdsaq]

qasdfdsaq while the boost at least looks decent, I would say you already need another reseg. the sad thing is they will probably wait for it to completely overload again before they even start planning it.
Yeah you may be right. Still, the problems in my area aren't nearly as bad as they were before, and certainly not as bad as yours. What makes me wonder is how long it's taking them to fix the issue for you - my "fix" only took a month and a week after I reported it, yet the techs admit this area is highly utilized and the network is in a dire state upgrade wise.

The fact that it's taking so long for you suggests either major network management screwups, or that they're planning a much bigger, proper upgrade rather than just moving people around like they did in my case.

Still annoys me they didn't bother checking for overutilization routinely, and only "noticed" when I reported it to second line and asked them to check.

[Chrysalis]

Yeah you may be right. Still, the problems in my area aren't nearly as bad as they were before, and certainly not as bad as yours. What makes me wonder is how long it's taking them to fix the issue for you - my "fix" only took a month and a week after I reported it, yet the techs admit this area is highly utilized and the network is in a dire state upgrade wise.

The fact that it's taking so long for you suggests either major network management screwups, or that they're planning a much bigger, proper upgrade rather than just moving people around like they did in my case.

Still annoys me they didn't bother checking for overutilization routinely, and only "noticed" when I reported it to second line and asked them to check.

april 2011 isnt even happening now, its delayed, I wasnt given a reason why.

they said they going to move me to a new upstream port as compensation for the delay.

---------- Post added at 20:37 ---------- Previous post was at 20:32 ----------

Makes me think they have capped us all at 300K to try to improve performance for everyone?

You think you will get your 30Mb upgrade? Or will they just screw everything up? Im tempted just for the 3Mb up that we might get later this year!!

I will probably get it but I expect it be after whatever date the official announcement is, will ring them up to make sure I get the superhub.

[Chrysalis]

I am using VM tonight since I been seeing weird issues on my xilo, like lagging youtube and slow loading of random sites, trying to rule out my pc been the issue. VM seems improved for sure on browsing and down speeds despite the jitter and upload issues.

[Slyder]

That should be it, give it a few hours to show on the graph.

excellent.. thanks for that.. this is mine currently,

Ive no idea how to read this, but

1, it dont look
2, currently been battling with VM since november to sort this out
3, dont mean to double post or hijack a thread (u can look for story in this forum) but thought i would post mine as its on topic

enjoy!!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/01/50.jpg

[qasdfdsaq]

Umm wrong link?

[Chrysalis]

browsing sluggish now so is still affected.

[Slyder]

browsing sluggish now so is still affected.

what will you do if this carries on? (or is that a daft question)

[Chrysalis]

I dont know, I have been promised another fix now as an alternative to waiting 4 or so months as the upgrade is delayed. So will likely wait to see if that works.

[philce]

Things here looking better?

(wife watching enders at 8pm!)

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/280454c75dc8f85b0e491e9f817908f5-20-01-2011.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/280454c75dc8f85b0e491e9f817908f5-20-01-2011.html)

[Chrysalis]

qasdfdsaq did yours ever hit 24 hours?

mine is getting close.

Download Failed (1) (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/c640eacd3313620900a900e70e2d372e-22-01-2011.html)

[Chrysalis]

ok I have been moved since about 5am this morning.

no new graph data yet but here some test results.

http://www.pingtest.net/result/32874936.png (http://www.pingtest.net)
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/01/17.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

there is congestion apparent on tracert however it seems at a much lower level, my guess is I am back on a legacy port and I also have very high downstream power level now. I will use this as prime connection on this machine today and see how it goes and report back on ping and speed tests later on.

---------- Post added at 09:57 ---------- Previous post was at 08:58 ----------

browsing is still ok, ssh was ok at first but increasingly becoming laggy and hard to use. pingtest already declining. speedtest dropping fast. The speedtest doesnt even spike/burst high but rather flatlining at a lower speed. So my guess is downstream congestion slowing it down.

http://www.pingtest.net/result/32876938.png (http://www.pingtest.net)
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/01/18.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/507f09f694fc84380aab5428d68836ab-23-01-2011.png (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/507f09f694fc84380aab5428d68836ab-23-01-2011.html)

---------- Post added at 10:56 ---------- Previous post was at 09:57 ----------

its horrific again, like last time was on legacy, will be asking to switch back tommorow and I expect to have to wait until next sunday for it to be actioned. Will be interesting if they refuse to move me back.

[Chrysalis]

I am not using the connection now, it is completely unuseable back on legacy. I am just completely shocked that they are able to get away with this, many must be complaining.

Tests done on spare pc.

http://www.pingtest.net/result/32897461.png (http://www.pingtest.net)
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/01/16.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

bear in mind speedtest.net is multithreaded so gets higher than real world performance.

[philce]

Why did they put you back on legacy? Part of a re-seg?

Worries me that they might do the same thing here.

[Chrysalis]

not a reseg.

I dont know the answer to your question, they would have been aware of the load and that it wouldnt improve things, but mislead me to think it would which has led me to think they are moving non 50mbit users of overlay again to get that back under control. With legacy been a lost cause as that is beyond simple congestion.

People are happy to talk about good speeds and how good their VM connection is but avoid threads like this as if they refuse to accept this kind of thing happens on VM. I have never witnessed another isp so congested as this. Not even close to it.

Maybe its LE3's way of preparing for higher speed tier's, dont upgrade but instead just shift people around.

[philce]

not a reseg.

Maybe its LE3's way of preparing for higher speed tier's, dont upgrade but instead just shift people around.

Upgrade not planned till August, looks like its gonna be a fun 8 months!!

[Chrysalis]

giving it till about 1-2pm then sending yet another email to Neil to bang some heads together.

[desi112]

Hi Guys thought I would post an update. After weeks of trying to get a good deal from VM the best I could get is 20mb with free new super hub and self-install/no activation for £28/a month also its a montly contract.

Rebooted ambit modem yesterday and its syched at 20mb, first speed test was 9mb...second was...10...third was 11...I'm guessing I've been moved off the overlaynetwork. I did these speedtests at 8pm. Pingtest is showing B grade,
The upload is around 300k.

Will post full details when I get back tonight, also should hopefully have new superhub today.

[philce]

Hi Guys thought I would post an update. After weeks of trying to get a good deal from VM the best I could get is 20mb with free new super hub and self-install/no activation for £28/a month also its a montly contract.

Rebooted ambit modem yesterday and its syched at 20mb, first speed test was 9mb...second was...10...third was 11...I'm guessing I've been moved off the overlaynetwork. I did these speedtests at 8pm. Pingtest is showing B grade,
The upload is around 300k.

Will post full details when I get back tonight, also should hopefully have new superhub today.

Whats the £28 a month for? Any Tv and phone?

Im seeing that you also have 300K upload, I think that they have throttled us to try to improve matters.

What are you getting on upload now Chrysalis?

[desi112]

Whats the £28 a month for? Any Tv and phone?

Im seeing that you also have 300K upload, I think that they have throttled us to try to improve matters.

What are you getting on upload now Chrysalis?

sorry I meant the upload speedtest showed 300k, the upload sycn was 786k. The £28 a month is only for 20mb broadband, (£2's cheaper than advertised)

[philce]

sorry I meant the upload speedtest showed 300k, the upload sycn was 786k. The £28 a month is only for 20mb broadband, (£2's cheaper than advertised)

The upload is not even 50% of the advertised figure! Id complain if I was you, make sure they know we know what they are doing.

You will get a better deal if you keep the others, esp phone.

We dont use ours for outgoing calls at all except at the weekend, mobiles have laods of inclusive minutes, and work pays for mine!!

Someone on the 30Mb thread says hes got XL everything for £39 a month.

[Chrysalis]

Whats the £28 a month for? Any Tv and phone?

Im seeing that you also have 300K upload, I think that they have throttled us to try to improve matters.

What are you getting on upload now Chrysalis?

that 300k cap is on overlay, as I am still on legacy I am getting higher upload speeds. However I have a pending move back to overlay as that is way better than legacy. I can live with 300k upload speeds.

[desi112]

The upload is not even 50% of the advertised figure! Id complain if I was you, make sure they know we know what they are doing.

You will get a better deal if you keep the others, esp phone.

We dont use ours for outgoing calls at all except at the weekend, mobiles have laods of inclusive minutes, and work pays for mine!!

Someone on the 30Mb thread says hes got XL everything for £39 a month.

I did have the phone and XL talk but I find sky Talk much cheaper and line rental is less (sky give a discount if you pay 12months upfront). The tv on sky is also much better.

Anyway so Am i correct in saying everyone on the overlay network is now only getting 300k upload?

I will complain once i've installed the new super hub...

[Chrysalis]

I did have the phone and XL talk but I find sky Talk much cheaper and line rental is less (sky give a discount if you pay 12months upfront). The tv on sky is also much better.

Anyway so Am i correct in saying everyone on the overlay network is now only getting 300k upload?

I will complain once i've installed the new super hub...

I am not going to make such a comment.

All I am saying is the last week or 2 I was on overlay my upload speed never went above about 320kbit. Prior to that I actually was capped to 384kbit on the modem config. When the upload speeds slowed down to 320kbit my download performance went up quite a lot however jitter remained high. So make of that what you will.

Incidently now on legacy, upload speed is typically higher although still does slow down with congestion, but download performance is abysmal during daylight hours and evenings, I am back to stalling throughput, timeouts on web pages, broken streaming and mass packet loss. Jitter bottoms out to a lower level than overlay when quiet periods, but also goes way higher when busy. Cant wait to be moved back as at least overlay was in a working state when I was moved off it. In fact with the supposed 300kbit throttle it was not too bad for everything except ssh.

[philce]

I am not going to make such a comment.

All I am saying is the last week or 2 I was on overlay my upload speed never went above about 320kbit. Prior to that I actually was capped to 384kbit on the modem config. When the upload speeds slowed down to 320kbit my download performance went up quite a lot however jitter remained high. So make of that what you will.

Incidently now on legacy, upload speed is typically higher although still does slow down with congestion, but download performance is abysmal during daylight hours and evenings, I am back to stalling throughput, timeouts on web pages, broken streaming and mass packet loss. Cant wait to be moved back as at least overlay was in a working state when I was moved off it. In fact with the supposed 300kbit throttle it was not too bad for everything except ssh.

Checking through the SamKnows test results it looks like its been 300K up for some time, months. I suspect since I was changed over to Overlay.

[Chrysalis]

VM hard at work selling capacity they not got. Just had a door to door salesmen.

[desi112]

okay guys i'm at home. Installed new Virgin Super Hub. Tested Download speeds they are looking much better than yesterday

OFF PEAK

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1127101021.png

PEAK

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1127509238.png


Very chuffed until I rang a ping test!

http://www.pingtest.net/result/33066042.png

Is this right? 91% packetloss??


http://www.pingtest.net/result/33066218.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/33066270.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/33066317.png

Very Shocking indeed, Could this be a problem with my setup perhaps or the new Virgin Super Hub?

cpc7-leic15


Startup Procedure
Procedure Status Comment
Acquire Downstream Channel 307000000 Hz Locked
Connectivity State OK Operational
Boot State OK Operational
Configuration File OK
Security Enabled BPI+


Downstream Channels
Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Max Raw Bit Rate Frequency Power SNR Docsis/EuroDocsis locked
Locked QAM256 130 55616000 Kbits/sec 307000000 Hz -2.6 dBmV 40.0 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 129 55616000 Kbits/sec 299000000 Hz -2.3 dBmV 39.7 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 131 55616000 Kbits/sec 315000000 Hz -3.0 dBmV 39.7 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 132 55616000 Kbits/sec 323000000 Hz -3.2 dBmV 39.4 dB Hybrid
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown

Upstream Channels
Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Max Raw Bit Rate Frequency Power
Locked TDMA 3 10240 Kbits/sec 47400000 Hz 43.4 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV


Primary Downstream Service Flow
Downstream(0)
SFID 12240
Max Traffic Rate 20480000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 10000 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Primary Upstream Service Flow


Upstream(0)
SFID 12427
Max Traffic Rate 768000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 3044 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Max Concatenated Burst 0 bytes
Scheduling Type Best Effort

I've just started a thinkbroadband graph will post it tomorrow, sorry for all the info !

[philce]

okay guys i'm at home. Installed new Virgin Super Hub. Tested Download speeds they are looking much better than yesterday

OFF PEAK

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1127101021.png

PEAK

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1127509238.png


Very chuffed until I rang a ping test!

http://www.pingtest.net/result/33066042.png

Is this right? 91% packetloss??


http://www.pingtest.net/result/33066218.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/33066270.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/33066317.png

Very Shocking indeed, Could this be a problem with my setup perhaps or the new Virgin Super Hub?

cpc7-leic15


Startup Procedure
Procedure Status Comment
Acquire Downstream Channel 307000000 Hz Locked
Connectivity State OK Operational
Boot State OK Operational
Configuration File OK
Security Enabled BPI+


Downstream Channels
Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Max Raw Bit Rate Frequency Power SNR Docsis/EuroDocsis locked
Locked QAM256 130 55616000 Kbits/sec 307000000 Hz -2.6 dBmV 40.0 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 129 55616000 Kbits/sec 299000000 Hz -2.3 dBmV 39.7 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 131 55616000 Kbits/sec 315000000 Hz -3.0 dBmV 39.7 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 132 55616000 Kbits/sec 323000000 Hz -3.2 dBmV 39.4 dB Hybrid
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown

Upstream Channels
Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Max Raw Bit Rate Frequency Power
Locked TDMA 3 10240 Kbits/sec 47400000 Hz 43.4 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV


Primary Downstream Service Flow
Downstream(0)
SFID 12240
Max Traffic Rate 20480000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 10000 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Primary Upstream Service Flow


Upstream(0)
SFID 12427
Max Traffic Rate 768000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 3044 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Max Concatenated Burst 0 bytes
Scheduling Type Best Effort

I've just started a thinkbroadband graph will post it tomorrow, sorry for all the info !

Oh dear!!! not looking good!