120M : Calling any/All VM Customers in area 20

[PowerUser]

Hi fellow victims of VM.

Today i would like to ask if I'm having the wool being pulled over my eyes again.

My 152Mb package now sits on 50Mb constantly without hesitation while the upload Speed sits at 10Mb (which is the true speed for 152mb upload package)

Before
http://uploads.im/H8axy.jpg

NOW
http://www.speedtest.net/result/3986793192.png

After Spending a long 25mins on the telephone to a rather charming young lady, she tried her utmost via Secure Rescue to resolve my problem.

Speedtest.net repeatedly showed us that my Super hub was now hitting a ceiling at 45Mbps.

Several Superhub resets, and a probing of my PC specs/capabilities revealed little to what was going on.

Eventually after a long hold, The lady came back to me and told me that she was informed by someone in her dept that my Entire area has this fault. And would therefore not send out an engineer.

So i would be given 1 week's credit.

If this was true, why has my connection been like this for 7 days, and nothing announced in any shape or form ANYWHERE!...

This is what I'm thinking, They don't have the resources to send out an engineer to me before Christmas, And so Concocted this story about an area effected problem that sees my entire city capped at 50MB..

Hmmmm.

So if there are any users on here, In or around Brighton, PLEASE tell me if your having this issue. Because if your not.. Then I'm going to have to take this further..

Thanks.

[General Maximus]

well she might be right (ish). There might not be an actual fault to repair but your area might be over subscribed/congested which wouldn't surprise me at all for Birmingham

[Kushan]

Area 20 is a huge area and likely not all of it is congested. You're better off giving more details of your actual area.

[joglynne]

I don't know whether I am in the same area as you PowerUser but I am in area 20 (Manchester/Baguley) and my download speeds on my >152mb service, as measured by Ookla, have been dire recently. 43.55 Mb/s .. 12.19 Mb/s

I had a very colourful ThinkBroadband graph graph a few weeks back then it seemed to settle down a tad but just checked it now and it is showing a great big red splodge this morning whilst I was off line.



I don't check often, only when my connection seems really sluggish, so I can't say how long the poor download has been going on.

Just tried using Croydon same as you did and my connection looks even more dismal. 21.48 Mb/s .. 12.23 Mb/s Think I refrain from doing that again. Most depressing.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3987456527

[PowerUser]

So Birmingham has the same area code (20) as east Sussex?.

Area code doesn't mean actual Geographical area then!.

[Foo Fighter]

Mines terrible tonight also area 20 but Blackburn, getting 40 down 12 up on 152mb

I've been getting owned on advanced warfare, i wasnt sure if it was me getting old but ive been getting killed around corners for the last few weeks.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by PowerUser

So Birmingham has the same area code (20) as east Sussex?.

Area code doesn't mean actual Geographical area then!.

Correct, they never have done. Some area codes cover huge swathes of the country, other area codes cover distinctly different areas (for example, Northern Ireland shares the same area code as 2 different parts of England!).

[horseman]

Originally Posted by PowerUser

So Birmingham has the same area code (20) as east Sussex?.

Area code doesn't mean actual Geographical area then!.

Originally Posted by Kushan

Correct, they never have done. Some area codes cover huge swathes of the country, other area codes cover distinctly different areas (for example, Northern Ireland shares the same area code as 2 different parts of England!).

Even a major code is not granular enough.... so in Brighton (as PowerUser alluded to his locale) a BN3 has many nodes/cable segments for example such that it's provisioned from at least brig15,16 and 18 CMTS's. Further more VM load balance so Brig15 also provisions at least one BN2 node as well!.

Even if you break it down into minor postcodes then cable segments may easily overlay more than one!

So if you suspect a utilisation problem then posting a more granular postcode (eg BN37Nx - redacting the last char for privacy) and deriving your provisioning CMTS (from "host" portion of reverse DNS of your public VM IP address) gives some crude comparative for others in same or adjacent postcodes?

Ultimately only VM ForumTeam/Level2 can identify your specific cable segment and authoritatively state whether you/others are affected by same utilisation Fault. Mix in a few SNR/FEC issues along with different HFC topologies, node configurations/combining et al and we find only specifying an "area" code is statistically meaningless!

FWIW I started recording just some of Brightons F00 numbers several years ago > Brighton VM problems

[Ignitionnet]

Interesting site.

FYI from a 5 minute flick through:

In fact we tend to have less TV channels anyway than our USA counterparts. In the USA they probably reckon oon any invidual node then probably only 300-400 TV channels of their 500 (they have more HD channels) are ever watched concurrently by all users. In order to maximise utilisation of spectrum then they can employ "Service switching" where same RF can be used by dynamically switching/multiplexing a TV channel onto particular RF channel on specific node according to user request.
How much VM (if any) deploys this feature I've no idea personally.

It's way lower than 60-80% of channels in use, and VM don't use Switched Digital Video at all.

1. Modify the existing upstream channel plan from existing 27.4/35.8/45.8MHz RF channels to 24.4/31.0/37.6/44.2MHz as a minimum. This gives 4channels in almost the same spectrum occupied by existing 3!

The gaps are there for a reason - likely they are working around potential ingress.

You also didn't mention in your list upgrading upstream lasers where needed to avoid their being overdriven, along with adjusting network line up to take account of the lower maximum upstream transmit power running at 64QAM, and the even lower maximum from running >3 channels.

There's also a whole bunch of node splits to be done. As I'm sure you can tell from historical issues Brighton's nodes can be a bit on the large side.

In any event, VM's top tier next year won't be 200Mb

---------- Post added at 09:31 ---------- Previous post was at 09:29 ----------

Originally Posted by PowerUser

So Birmingham has the same area code (20) as east Sussex?.

Area code doesn't mean actual Geographical area then!.

They map to historical billing systems, not to geographical areas. Legacy cable companies obviously did their own billing, these systems were then integrated into Harmony (ntl) and ICOMS (Telewest) and finally into ICOMS as Harmony was a custom built, expensive mess.

[horseman]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Interesting site.

FYI from a 5 minute flick through:....
It's way lower than 60-80% of channels in use, and VM don't use Switched Digital Video at all.
....
The gaps are there for a reason - likely they are working around potential ingress.

You also didn't mention in your list upgrading upstream lasers where needed to avoid their being overdriven, along with adjusting network line up to take account of the lower maximum upstream transmit power running at 64QAM, and the even lower maximum from running >3 channels.

There's also a whole bunch of node splits to be done. As I'm sure you can tell from historical issues Brighton's nodes can be a bit on the large side.

In any event, VM's top tier next year won't be 200Mb .....

Many thanks again for the input/critique - I'll update my notes over Xmas with grateful attributions to your goodself. Have a Merry one in the interim...

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by horseman

Many thanks again for the input/critique - I'll update my notes over Xmas with grateful attributions to your goodself. Have a Merry one in the interim...

Ah no need for attributions. Unless it's my thesis or a paper I co-author knowledge is entirely free

EDIT: While I'm thinking about it also the 'old' uBRs should, by now, only have STBs connecting to them. There may be some legacy really old broadband CPE on really old legacy tiers but the VXRs are there purely for DTV interactive functionality now. Any CPE that can handle DOCSIS 2 should be on the DOCSIS 3 overlay network.

Been a while since I called it the 'overlay network'. It's really just 'the network' now given all the segmentation is for broadband.

[slowcoach]

25 Mb/s here tonight, put the prices up, destroy the Home Page with advertising, nice one L.G.

Yanks go home!!!

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by horseman

Many thanks again for the input/critique - I'll update my notes over Xmas with grateful attributions to your goodself. Have a Merry one in the interim...

I love it when you 2 interact as we can glean more knowledge inbetween.

BAH HUMBUG!!!

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by slowcoach

25 Mb/s here tonight, put the prices up, destroy the Home Page with advertising, nice one L.G.

Yanks go home!!!

There's a big wave of investment thanks to LG going primarily into the network, both existing and new.

The Yanks are home anyway - Liberty Global is incorporated in London now

[sollp]

Originally Posted by PowerUser

Hi fellow victims of VM.

Today i would like to ask if I'm having the wool being pulled over my eyes again.

My 152Mb package now sits on 50Mb constantly without hesitation while the upload Speed sits at 10Mb (which is the true speed for 152mb upload package)

Before
http://uploads.im/H8axy.jpg

NOW
http://www.speedtest.net/result/3986793192.png

After Spending a long 25mins on the telephone to a rather charming young lady, she tried her utmost via Secure Rescue to resolve my problem.

Speedtest.net repeatedly showed us that my Super hub was now hitting a ceiling at 45Mbps.

Several Superhub resets, and a probing of my PC specs/capabilities revealed little to what was going on.

Eventually after a long hold, The lady came back to me and told me that she was informed by someone in her dept that my Entire area has this fault. And would therefore not send out an engineer.

So i would be given 1 week's credit.

If this was true, why has my connection been like this for 7 days, and nothing announced in any shape or form ANYWHERE!...

This is what I'm thinking, They don't have the resources to send out an engineer to me before Christmas, And so Concocted this story about an area effected problem that sees my entire city capped at 50MB..

Hmmmm.

So if there are any users on here, In or around Brighton, PLEASE tell me if your having this issue. Because if your not.. Then I'm going to have to take this further..

Thanks.

There is an issue but i wouldn't say they,"Concocted the story". Call centres can be miss informed or like most people don't quite understand the terminology or problems on the ground so faults can be misinterpreted.