PC speed fine, X360 awful - why?

[Moog72]

Hi,
I'm a long term user of Virgin Media for broadband and recently upgraded to the 50meg service along with the superhub. So far and fingers crossed the service has been good with only one drop out and I get a fairly solid 48 to 50Mbps connection on the desktop (wired), other machines which are also connected via a wire see similar performance.

So to take advantage of this bandwidth I hooked my X360 up to the hub (again wired) yet I'm getting a frankly dire 5Mpbs or thereabouts when I'm downloading demos off Marketplace.

I've trawled the 'Net and whilst there are plenty of threads I couldn't find anything that might offer a solution.

So does anyone on here see the same, or can offer a solution?

Cheers

[cimt]

You may need to open up some ports.

[Moog72]

I thought the need to open ports was only required for when you want to do some online gaming? Perhaps I'm wrong on that, in which case what ports need to be open for downloading demos?

I also get a similar throttling in speed when I connect my PS3 which suggests an issue with the router settings somewhere, unless there are more ports that need to be open for that too?

[pabscars]

Might be worth a read ;)

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33675733-virgin-upstream-throttling-angers-gamers.html

[Moog72]

Hmm, sounds like that trial was for upstream only and finished on the 9th March. I was downloading at around 11am so outside of those hours and being on a 50Mbps connection not subject to traffic management in any case (or so I believe)

Still can't understand why my downstream to the X360 is almost identifical to my upstream from the PC (coincidence perhaps) and why downloading demos from Marketplace is any different to downloading a demo to my PC

A speed test on the PS3 claims an estimated download speed of about 9Mbps (which is still way below what I'd expect) yet I don't get anywhere near that when actually downloading.

Any more ideas welcome

[Chrysalis]

could be xbox itself to blame, not ite ideal service to speedtest things :p.

how you monitoring throughput on it? as it has no speed display.

[zekeisaszekedoes]

Short answer: blame the Super Hub.

[alexcopeland]

Disable IP flood detection and the firewall with in the Superhub setting and see if that improves performance.

[Moog72]

Thanks for the input. IP flood detection and firewall were disabled the minute the engineer left last week and it improved the pingtest no end, so it's not that.

As for measuring the speed, stopwatch. Downloaded a 1.64Gb demo yesterday which should take around 5 - 6 minutes on a 50Mbps connection running at around 5MB/s. That demo took 50 minutes so it is running at approx 0.5MB/s or around 5Mbps

So it's not like it's a little bit slow which I can accept (it is an up to service after all), but it's miles away and slower than my old 10Mbps service over wireless which I can't figure at all.

Easy to blame the superhub, but the PC also connected to it is totally fine (50.4Mbps this morning on a speedtest), gonna try the X360 again now

[pabscars]

Vm are throttling P2P which is probably the problem, I too get the same speed when downloading demo's, which used to take approx 6 minutes. Which now seem to take an eternity.

Its only been happening for a few weeks which times nicely with the throttling trial, so I will let you come to your own conclusions Moog.

ps the throttling times end at 12 a.m. so give it a try after that time and see if it improves.

[Moog72]

Thanks pabscars, useful to get a confirmation that it isn' just me that is seeing this dramatic speed reduction for demo downloads, and I'll definitely try a download after 12am when I get a chance.

Let's hope this "trial" doesn't end up permanent as one of the selling points for me was the ability to download big stuff quickly (on all platforms). Or perhaps Virgin Media should look again at their tech implementation and tune it somewhat better than they have it at the moment :(

[pabscars]

Thanks pabscars, useful to get a confirmation that it isn' just me that is seeing this dramatic speed reduction for demo downloads, and I'll definitely try a download after 12am when I get a chance.

Let's hope this "trial" doesn't end up permanent as one of the selling points for me was the ability to download big stuff quickly (on all platforms). Or perhaps Virgin Media should look again at their tech implementation and tune it somewhat better than they have it at the moment :(

No worries dude, but I'm pretty sure the trial is over and the implementation has been rolled out with no plans to back track.

Personally though I don't have a huge problem with it because its for the greater good and in the long run should give VM broadband a bit more stability plus lower jitter which will help gaming.

Thinking about it, its no different to people who use torrents, and canning the crap out of their internet connection 24/7, virgin are trying to limit the impact of certain applications because its ruins everyone else's experience.

long may it continue in my opinion and about time VM took quality as serious as speed. The only real issue I have is when it effect's gameplay, something which uses very little bandwidth and should be outside the scope of being managed.

Just my 2 penneth

[Chrysalis]

yeah the whitelist shaping policy may be affecting this also, maybe was hasty on my original reply sorry.

[Moog72]

I hear what you are saying about quality over quantity, but surely restricting a download to one tenth of what you are, after all, paying for is a little over zealous and a bit unfair. Sure, there are those people who abuse the service and download tens of Gb's of data a day via P2P and other torrent sources and that needs to be addressed, but Virgin Media shouldn't tar all services with the same brush in my view.

I don't use the online gaming side of things at all, so whilst these restrictions might help the gamers, I am now getting penalised as a result - we are all customers after all.

[Bman]

Xbox live uses p2p to distribute demos? I'm sure my xbox owning friend used to download stuff fine though when he used to have a BT connection and they throttled p2p down to almost nothing. Unless virgin see a huge amount of traffic to the xbox live servers and just put a 5mb cap on it, don't they have network peering for situations like this when a big % of customers are causing a lot of traffic to a particular source?

Maybe it's just the xbox live servers that don't have the capacity to give you a full 50mb download? Although you should expect them to have more than enough capacity since you pay a subscription.

[vmfriend]

It's the marketplace no more no less, there endeth the conspiracy.

[Skie]

Having the same issue myself since getting the superhub. Both PS3 and Xbox have issues with wifi speeds on the hub where they used to be more than happy on the previous 7 year old router.

[zekeisaszekedoes]

That's because unlike your 7 year old router the Super Hub fails at basic routing tasks and tends to fold under pressure. It's not adept at dealing with high speed transfers, which ironically is what it was built for. This might be fixed in future iterations, but it could take a while.

[Chrysalis]

my billion 7402 NX can push 800-900mbit on my LAN, the chokepoint seems to be my other pc as it has 100% cpu usage during this speed.

I plan to at least try to test out the superhub on lan, but I would need to do a little cable shifting to test it in between 2 pc's, my laptop doesnt have gigabit lan.

[Moog72]

Perhaps I should have counted my blessings - I've changed nothing and now the XBox won't even connect to the router. Getting a bit fed up with this now - 15 odd years with my Motorola Surfboard at 10Mbps and a Netgear router and never a single issue connecting. Minute I upgrade, it turns to instant pants. :td:

[pabscars]

Dodgy ethernet cable perhaps????

[Diesel2011]

The Xbox Live service is CAPPED at 10mb download max.

[Moog72]

Capped? OK, that does explain the slow downloads speeds to some extent - capped by whom? M/Soft or VM?

Aside from that I can't even connect to the XBL service at the moment. XBox will now connect to the Internet, just not onto XBL - guess it is an issue at M/Soft's end perhaps.

Ethernet cable is fine - hooked it up to the laptop in the other room, 50.4Mbps download, just under 5 upload

Many thanks for your input

[lowei]

Apparently some virgin customers are having problems connecting to xboxlive at the moment.from xbox.com forums.They must be doing some sort of maintenance.I hope this sorts out the problems I'm having at the moment

[pesty]

Yes my xbox live keeps going on and off today. I'm unable to play any game online.

[pabscars]

Apparently some virgin customers are having problems connecting to xboxlive at the moment.from xbox.com forums.They must be doing some sort of maintenance.I hope this sorts out the problems I'm having at the moment

Is this specifically a VM problem or are Microsoft doing a little work

[lowei]

Yes it's only virgin customers,in certain areas.

[pabscars]

Interesting, cheers dude, I might fire mine up tonight and give it some pago on Black Op's.

Then again :D:D:D

[Chrysalis]

I have the disconnection problem, its not noticeable if I playing a game for long time, but it seems it will disconnect at somepoint when game is running, and then not recconect until I go back to dashboard. I actually think its a superhub rather than VM network issue as it started when I got the superhub.

[Diesel2011]

Its Microsoft who cap Xbox Live at 10mb. Not VM.

You can test your bandwidth on Black Ops. Go to the options menu on multiplayer and click the select button. Will bring up all your info about your connection. Bandwidth should be 10000kbps for your connection eg 10mb capped as your on 50mb.

[zekeisaszekedoes]

I plan to at least try to test out the superhub on lan, but I would need to do a little cable shifting to test it in between 2 pc's, my laptop doesnt have gigabit lan.

I'm surprised mine does; it was made in 2005. And will *just* handle 1Gbps LAN transfers in Win 7, assuming nothing else (Flash video/Music player) is hogging the single core CPU.

[djstevie]

Just to add my tuppence to the debate. Im on 20meg with the D-Link router (havent got the superhub or upgraded to 30meg yet) and i've been having issues for the past few weeks/month.

Thought it must be MS issues as NEVER had any problems before but now i seem to get randomn disconnections, half the dashboard missing, slow downloads from marketplace etc.

Virgin have denied any issue at their end when i have phoned them and MS say they have no issue at their end. Someone MUST be lying.:mad:

[GazCBG]

Hi,

I have noticed this as well with my Xbox 360, when downloading demo and trying to watch stuff it buffers.

I am on 50Mb but with a modem.
I think it's VM and there p2p blocking which is slowing it down.
As it use to be fine, last year.

[djstevie]

Looks like its time to find a new BB provider then. Main reason i use my BB is for Xbox gaming.

Been with same provider since the Cabletel days as well.

[SimonB79]

Yep.... over the last few weeks xbox Live has been shocking..... laggy as hell..... parts of the dashboard missing.... slow / non existent downloads.... the list goes on...... :(

(virgin have screwed up my Live connection)

[philwhite100]

I wonder how many people this affects. My daughters boyfriend uses our 50meg connection wired via the superhub for his Xbox360 and has no problems whatsoever.

[Firmsky]

I haven't really noticed many issues and I'm on 50Mbps with the modem and an Apple time capsule. My connection to the 360 is wired and I haven't gamed on it for a while though as I have been on the PS3 since the release of Killzone 3 so it might affect me more if I were to use the 360.

However before Xmas I purchased "Get him to the Greek" on Zune and it stated my connection could stream it in HD. I presumed it would as I do have the so called fastest Internet in the UK. It stuttered throughout the whole movie, because I had chose to stream I could not change it to download the film so it ended up being a waste as the Wife and I could not put up with the stuttering.

After reading so many people complain about VM and Xbox Live I figured I had been hit by the so called throttling of Xbox Live!

[trickytree]

Yep.... over the last few weeks xbox Live has been shocking..... laggy as hell..... parts of the dashboard missing.... slow / non existent downloads.... the list goes on...... :(

(virgin have screwed up my Live connection)

Same here in the past couple of weeks with the missing content etc.
Then Saturday late night and Sunday early evening I had major issues with full disconnections from live and issues with matchmaking sayig failed etc.
It was the bad I looked into it on Xbox.com and there actually was a fault so the weekend probably couldn't be blamed on Virgin but seems other times it can.
Last night I had the some content missing again for instance :rolleyes:

[djstevie]

Well seems there is quite a few of us having the same problems but appears not to affect everyone. Is there anyone we could flag this up to (rather than us all calling individually?) and see if we can get something done about it?

[zekeisaszekedoes]

Judging that the "some, not all" problem applies to Super Hub units in general, and the solutions so far aren't ideal, I'd say no.

[Monkeylord]

The Xbox Live service is CAPPED at 10mb download max.

No it's not.



I have the same problem as the OP, but I don't have a Superhub. I have a Belkin Pre-N1 which is, and has been fine ever since I got it and was on a 20MB connection. I'm on the 50MB connection now. My 360 is wired, NAT wide open.

When Rock Band 3 came out I bought it and paid to export the tracks from Rock Band 2. I started the download (2.3GB if memory serves) at about 9PM(ish) thinking it'll take no-time on my 50MB connection. WRONG. It took almost 3hrs and I didn't get to play my game that night.

Last week I bought "The Arrival" add-on for Mass Effect 2. It's around an 850MB download. It took forever, but it was till finished before 10PM so I fired up the game. There was a problem and it wouldn't let me start up because it thought that some of my other DLC was missing. I redownloaded the licence keys to no avail, so as a last resort (this actually did the trick, BTW) I deleted the DLC it said was missing (Kasumi, Overlord and Lair Of The Shadow Broker) along with the new Arrival DLC and redownloaded. This was just under 3.5GB worth of DLC and I didn't get to play that night as it finished too late.

At the weekend, I downloaded a few demos, all were between 1 and 2GB. As it was the weekend I was up quite late. All demos downloading before 1AM were painfully slow, but all that STARTED after 1AM shot down the intertubes like a rocket. Before the clocks changed it was a 12AM threshold.


It can only be VM throttling. Plain and simple.

[craigj2k12]

VM have admitted their throttling targets games by accident

its annoying to say the least

[Diesel2011]

Yes, the xbox live service is capped at 10mb. As I said earlier, go and do the Black Ops bandwidth test. Dont matter if you are on 20mb, 30mb, 50mb. You wont get higher than 10000kbps.

[Monkeylord]

Yes, the xbox live service is capped at 10mb. As I said earlier, go and do the Black Ops bandwidth test. Dont matter if you are on 20mb, 30mb, 50mb. You wont get higher than 10000kbps.

Because it couldn't possibly only go up to 10000kbps on its speedtest? I mean... why would it need to?

Regardless, I don't have or want Blops, so the request is unfulfillable.



The downloads I get after 1AM is WAY higer than 10Mb. I can download a 1.5GB demo in less than 5mins after 1AM.

[Diesel2011]

Myabe its not downloads on the marketplace, but in terms of actual 'gaming'.

[craigj2k12]

marketplace probably downloads from a server, where as gaming is through p2p

[trickytree]

Played some Reach for an hour or so last night around 6pm and it was terrible. Seemed to be only affecting me though as I mentioned the lag and they all said it was just me.
Not using the connection for anything else at the time as nothing else was switched on!

50Mb connection still to be upgraded for upload but it's becoming almost unuseable

[djstevie]

Does anyone have a contact telephone number to speak to someone at tech that would actually know what im talking about?. Have called 6 times to VM now and keep getting passed all over the place with various operators obviously reading from a flow chart and have no idea what im talking about. Have yet to speak to a UK call centre.
Its getting REALLY frustrating.

[Harlow CM20]

Played some Reach for an hour or so last night around 6pm and it was terrible. Seemed to be only affecting me though as I mentioned the lag and they all said it was just me.
Not using the connection for anything else at the time as nothing else was switched on!

50Mb connection still to be upgraded for upload but it's becoming almost unuseable


Were you the only person in that game on a VM connection?

[trickytree]

Were you the only person in that game on a VM connection?

I don't know as the other guys were randoms and probably not even in the UK.

This situation continued on Tuesday night trying to play the bug ridden Poker. Just kept throwing me out of games and the room etc but this time I was with other people in the UK and with other Virgin users but I was the only one being affected.
Restarting the Superhub did improve the situation a bit but still not great

[djstevie]

Anyone still having problems with live? Mines had settled down for a few days but last night was back to normal with sky high pings, lag and random d/c.

[Chrysalis]

mine is fine since back to the vmng300 not one d/c.

[pip08456]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh the rock solid VMNG300.

Now supposedly discontinued.

R.I.P. VMNG300 you will be treasured by those that still have you!

[Peter_]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh the rock solid VMNG300.

Now supposedly discontinued.

R.I.P. VMNG300 you will be treasured by those that still have you!
It was made specifically for Virginmedia and superseded by the Superhub just like all previous Ambits have been superseded by the Ambit 256.

[paulontour]

Hi

I wasn't sure where to put this so apologies if this is not right!

I would basically like someone to give me an idea as to why this happens...

I am on 10mb virgin media, with a Belkin Play router attached to the cable modem. I wanted a central place to put all my videos, photos etc. When I attached a 1TB external HD to the Belkin Play router by USB, mostly the laptops do find the drive. However, sometimes they don't.

When I try to copy something to the drive, the internet connection slows right down so much that my wife won't be able to access the internet at all.

On top of this, I was thinking about upgrading to 50mb but I understand you have to have a superhub. I wanted to get a NAS drive to sit with this, but have read some terrible threads about this. Also, has the issue over the superhub and the PS3 been sorted? I would love to connect the PS3 to the NAS.

Many thanks for any help

Paul.

[pip08456]

If anything superhub problems have been made with the recent R25 firmware push.

I'd wait if I were you.

[Chrysalis]

seems that game I thought I downloaded wasnt downloaded, downloading it now.

here is speed according to router. so doesnt appear capped to 10mbit for me.

[jonop360]

im on super hub 50mg yet on black ops my bandwidth is always around 2200 kb thats with all the options unticked in the modem settings wish i know what it was on the normal 20mg