Upstream congestion
 

Thought I’d start a new thread rather than clogging up others.

Been getting a rise in average latency, just recently. Seems to be down to upstream congestion.

VM community thread: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5...n/td-p/3562884

Download speeds don’t seem to be affected but upload speeds are usually half ish of the 20Mb.
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/2359945289 Done over wifi but wired is the same.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/09/13.png

Is this likely to be easy for VM to fix? I’m hoping that when 4 upstream channels are bonded, it’ll help to alleviate the problem.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Ah, the live tbb graph isn’t actually showing the live graph for some reason. Clicking on it takes it to the live graph.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Wired speed test. Been fine most of the day until around 6pm.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/11/36.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Just moved up from Vivid200 To Vivid350 but everything seams fine with the upload.Area Code 28.Hope this helps.


https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/11/37.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Thanks. Think it’s probably just a local issue. Snapshot graph below, red stripe is me updating the router firmware:
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/11/38.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Just to update, the Hub rebooted itself last Wednesday and things have been fine since. No peak time rise in latency etc. Not sure what was changed, no additional upstream channels added, just a change in the frequency of the bonded upstreams.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I am back. I am now with VM VIVID 200 with Hub 3. Soon will get a speed boost to VIVID 350 :)

Re: Upstream congestion
 

why aren't you on vivid 500?

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Well, it didn't last very long. Back to rises in the latency.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2017/12/7.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Might want to consider a FTTC connection if latency matters.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I did consider it, actually had an order placed with PlusNet but cancelled it. Would of had to pay probably £200 to get out of contract with Virgin and even then, the BT master socket is in the wrong place and would ideally require moving. Otherwise I would of been relying on wifi for everything as there is no easy to way to run ethernet to where I would want it. Powerline was no good, connection was intermittent at best going from the nearest socket to a socket upstairs.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Does virgin media selling Static IP Address, if so how much per month?

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Only on a business account I think?

Re: Upstream congestion
 

That's right there are three options available for static IP addresses on a business account:-

Single Static
5 static IP addresses
13 static IP addresses

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I just don't understand why can't VM selling static ip address for residential customer as well as a one off payment just like Plusnet did. Because of CCTV need static IP Address.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Tbf, the IP address on Virgin rarely changes. But yeah, would be nice to have the option.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

My suggestion would to take your congestion issues up with the CEO office if it continues for longer to at minimum free you from your contract. If you go with a FTTC you can request a move of the master socket which would cost £99 I believe (Or if they are charging you the fee for the new line and an engineer is attending he might move it no issues.)

Depends how reliant on latency and peering you are plusnet were actually really good for me 14ms latency 0 jitter but when it came to 7-12pm on a nightly basis i'd lose half my speed on download and the ping would be worse. Seemed to be a BTWholesale issue at the exchange.

I've moved to IDNet who are switching me over to the TTB Network which will sort out those issues.



Just for a little advice as far as congestion goes.. I have vm business also my other line 350mb regularly until recently when 24 downstreams(from 16) were added i was getting drops in peak times on download to around 180-220. I was told this was to be 'accepted' and this is from business support.

Can only imagine from VM residential aslong as your download is fine they are gonna literally do nothing till they get X amount of complaints from customers in your area.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I do have a complaint open with CEO office. I've only received an acknowledgement email with a reference number. Nothing since. This was back at the start of November. Looks as though I'm going to have to send a letter via recorded delivery, to push things a long.


This is pretty much what is happening. The VM staff on their forum, who I have no issue with but seem to only be allowed to give out limited info, say that it can only be raised when it breaks a threshold. But they can't tell me what that threshold is. I'm guessing it's so embarrassingly high, that it would be damaging to VM if it was put on a public forum.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I was told by the pretty well educated guy on VM Business that my area was 96% utilised and that wasn't quite hitting the target.

If i were you and you can do without the download speed email the CEO and they call you back. In my exp i was contacted within a week of sending the email.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

That's not quite how they measure utilisation. I can almost guarantee that no area is 96% utilised because % utilised by itself is almost meaningless.

96% of the total capacity being used would either be completely unusable as that remaining 4% would be whatever's left over out of hours and at peak times congestion would be abysmal OR 96% peak capacity would be absolutely fine because everyone's getting full speed and there's still 4% of capacity left for growth.

Rather, "96%" needs to be qualified with another stat - the time it's at 96% for. Hitting 96% for 5hours+ might be cause for concern, but hitting 96% peak for a few mins is fine. There's always going to be times when all bandwidth is being used - think peak times when a major event is happening, like the world cup. It's generally accepted that you cannot expect Virgin to provision enough capacity for 100% of customers to get 100% of their speed at all times - that's just far too expensive to do. Instead, virgin (And other ISP's) allocate enough capacity so that the majority of the time, people get the speeds they pay for. It's hitting that balance between cost (to you and Virgin) and availability that's tricky.

Years ago, in the bad old days, it was something like 98% capacity used for greater than 90% of the time before Virgin would upgrade the area. When I worked there, it was something like >95% usage for >10% of the time in a 7 day period was when it got logged. Over time, they got more and more proactive with the stats but I don't know what they are today.

It's also worth pointing out that just because an area hit those thresholds doesn't mean it would get scheduled in, just that the ticket would get raised. Areas were prioritised based on budgets and need, i.e. the worst areas got fixed first or the most customers got fixed for the best bang/buck.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Thank you for the info. Just passing on the little information I was given by UK Business support.

Generally nobody expects 350 24/7 but when it drops to less than half what you pay for or even lower then questions needs to asked and when you're given some blase response that its to be accepted as that from 'Tech Support' it sums up how they work.


Luckily my area recently went to 24 Downstreams which fixed the issue until obviously they pack more customers onto the cmts or offer a free upgrade. only time will tell.

Having the 2 lines makes it viable for everything really and its under £120 a month total so it's working out atm.

One line for Streaming to twitch/Games/latency required applications.

One line for downloading large files and general YT/Prime/Streaming

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Bit of an update, had a reply from the VM forum staff with regards to an issue with SNR and FECS.

I guess this is upstream SNR. Wonder if it’s related to a bit of an issue earlier on which required a reboot.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/18.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Connection is totally down now. Nothing on the service status, so I’ll have to call in tomorrow morning if it’s still down.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Got a bit more info via the VM Twitter team.

Connection was down most of the night.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/21.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Does anyone know if this number is from Virgin?

01895 461320‬

Had three missed calls from it today. Quick Google suggests it’s tech support but it doesn’t seem to accept incoming calls. Just wanted to check it was genuine.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

That's because a lot of teams in call centers can only ring out. They dont want you to ring them directly because they need you to go through 1st line/customer services who can open and ticket and take your info and then pass it along. It is all about efficiency and time management.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

True, didn’t think of that. If it is technical support, they must be being pro-active as I’ve not requested it. Which is no bad thing.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

So, back to congestion again. Will have to see what is said on the thread I have running on the VM forum. Depending on that, I’ll have to seriously look at other providers. Not paying nearly £50 per month for a connection like this.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2018/01/2.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

that looks like peak time congestion (weekend + evening) between 5 and 10

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Weird thing is, I can still get around 300Mb on a speed test when it’s like that. I tried around 6 ish yesterday, where one of the first peaks is and got that, but the upload was around 6Mb. Then, it’s not always like that every evening which is probably why VM aren’t that interested in doing something about it. Seems as though a few people are hammering the upload at random intervals.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Maybe not, I would look at it as there is finite amount of upstream capacity which keeps everyone going normally during the day but when you get all the children online at the weekend twittering, facebooking, gaming and families streaming Netflix etc etc there just isn't enough juice to go around to sustain full speed. Tbh, because I can get full speed all the time and can achieve what I want to during the day, unless there was something specific I needed to do at a set time on a Saturday evening, it wouldn't bother me at all even if my upstream dropped to 25% (5mbits) as long as it went back to normal a couple of hours later (which yours does).

Re: Upstream congestion
 

It's more that it affects the latency that is the real concern for me. I'm not too fussed that the upload speed drops, but when it does, the average latency always rises. So anything latency sensitive, gaming etc. is just, well, crap.

Which has got me thinking, do I really need 350Mb? I don't generally tend to download loads, it's nice to have when I need to download a game or another large file but latency is more important to me now. If it is was more consistent then I'd be happy with it, as I have been for the last 10 years, until recently. I could downgrade to say a 100Mb but then I'll be tied into another 12 month contract, which with how the connection is at the moment, I don't particularly wish to do.

A FTTC/VDSL2 connection is looking more appealing at the moment, just for the potentially more consistent latency. But then there'll be the cost of getting out of the current contract with VM, which I don't think has too much longer to run.

Oh and whilst I'm having a mini rant, I did eventually get a reply from the complaints team. Completely ignored what I wrote in the email I sent to the CEO and focused solely on the SNR fault. Which wasn't even present at the time I sent the email.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

give sky a buzz and see what deal they'll do you for tv and internet.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Although they will do a good deal - I think there fastest broadband will be <100Mbps

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Yeah, definitely will be. Max that I could get with FTTC is 56Mb supposedly. BT seem to be the cheapest with their Infinity 1, after activation fees etc.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Latest reply on the thread on the VM forum.
A little bit confused by this. I thought if there was a higher order modulation on the upstream channels, this would increase the capacity of each channel? That coupled with further bonding of channels would increase the free capacity of the network?

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Ish. Bonding channels doesnt add more capacity to the network, it just makes more of the existing capacity available to you and potentially screws someone else over. As an example, there are 3 upstream channels in my area which are going to provide a finite amount of capacity/throughput. At the moment there are only 2 channels in a bonding group so if i was having issues with congestion adding the third channel may help providing it wasnt being over utilised. The same capacity is still there, it is just being more widely distributed to a greater number of customers.

What will help is the increased modulation and adding more channels to the network as opposed to bonding existing channels. Going back to my previous example, there are 3 upstream channels in my area so adding a forth and then increasin the size of the bonding group which be increasing capacity.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Utterly amazing this evening.
https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/02/17.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I can beat that. My congestion is unusable atm. I was playing a game and barely made it through. I gave up for the night and thought I would watch a couple of vids on youtube before I settle down and nothing would load and just constantly buffers. I thought I would run a speed test and although it took forever to load it came back okay. My graph tells a different story though and explains why my game was spazzing.

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/02/19.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I’d say yours is more likely to be a fault somewhere (hopefully). Mine is more because Virgin don’t give a **** about the quality of the network around here.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/03/16.png

Been ok for the last couple of weeks and then off we go again. Literally like flicking a switch with the way it starts, no gradual build up.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Got perhaps a bit of an odd question. I swapped out my Asus AC88u yesterday for a Netgear XR500. Ignoring the fact it's branded as a "gaming" router. Mainly bought it as DumaOS looks potentially a interesting router software. It may just be a coincidence, but the TBB graph seems more consistent.

Asus from last Saturday:
https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/03/18.png

Netgear so far:
https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/03/19.png

There's perhaps a bit more yellow on the graph but it seems consistent. The odd tiny speck of packet loss every now and then but that could be noise on the connection (it happens every now and then). There isn't as many spikes in the average and max latency. So could it just be that there is something wrong with the Asus router? It seemed to work ok otherwise. Would kind of tie in with the forum staff telling me that the traffic is low on the connection despite the connection going cack every so often. Probably need more time to see if it was just the router.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I wouldn't use last Saturdays graph to make an accurate comparison, especially given all your troubles in the past. As you have got a reasonable picture of what your latency is like atm (regardless of router) I would swap them over now (if you really want to know) so you can do a side by side comparison in the same day where you can keep the conditions/variables the same as much as you can. I think that apart from the red bar you are going to get for the disconnect, I think they'll look the same.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I’ll give that a try but it’ll probably be sometime during the week. The last few Saturdays have been like the Asus graph though, so it’s possibly representative of what it was like using the Asus router, but certainly not conclusive.

I’m just as skeptical that a simple swap of a router would solve it. Unless for some reason it was intermittently faulty or something was triggering it to go to pot.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Just had it confirmed on live chat, that the contract period has now finished. Probably going to get a VDSL connection installed and just cancel Virgin. Don't see the point in giving Virgin any more money if they can't be bothered/interested in sorting the issue. Thinking of going with AAISP, expensive but seeing as I'm paying £57 a month at the moment for a mediocre service, it's not too bad.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

:banghead:

Will be with AAISP next Wednesday.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Got setup with AAISP yesterday and everything looks good.

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/04/14.png