Left Virgin 4 years ago...

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Hugh

I really don't understand the ISP flame-wars that some people like to take part in - it's like the silly Star Trek vs Star Wars fanboi disputes that seeme to be based on the false assumption if you don't like the same as someone, there's something wrong with you.

Neither do I. I personally get a generally reliable 150Meg from Virgin (although it has been a little flaky over the last few days). I don't game online, so latency is not an issue for me (I realise there are other things that can be affected by latency, but these still do not mean latency is an issue for me). If you get good service on any ISP, good, I am happy for you. If you don't, and they fail to fix it, move. That's the beauty of capitalism, in most things, you have a choice of suppliers.

[nashville]

I have been with VM for a long time with an NTL address, I have had no problem at all.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Hugh

I really don't understand the ISP flame-wars that some people like to take part in - it's like the silly Star Trek vs Star Wars fanboi disputes that seeme to be based on the false assumption if you don't like the same as someone, there's something wrong with you.

I can and do understand it. You will always get those who say X ISP is better then Y ISP purely from their experience.

All ISP's have problems in one area or another and it will affect users in that area only or it will be a full network fault.

The problem is, if it is a local fault (such as congestion) only those in the area will complain and who is their first port of call? --India who say everything is OK. This is not just isolated to VM but BT and some other ISP's.

I see it happening on a daily basis over several forums (or should it be Fora?).

Of them all though it would appear to be the case that VM take longer than any other to resolve a congestion problem.

I'm willing to be proved wrong though.

[hedgie]

Originally Posted by nashville

I have been with VM for a long time with an NTL address, I have had no problem at all.

Consider yourself lucky, I would love to be able to say the same and until last autumn I could. I have been a cable customer since the Nynex days and its only in the six months that the service has imploded. !60Mb at from 09:30 to roughtly 15:00, then down to 2Mb to 8Mb between 15:00 and 22:30, building back to 160mb at 01:30.

if it was reliable I would be a happy camper. Its not reliable, I get no feeling of urgency or remorse on the part of VM. They seem to think its fine simply to push back the fix dates time and time again.

the last six months has undermined the previous nearly 20 years of service simply due to the attitude and lack of transparency. I can't even leave without a contract penalty even though I feel I have been totally missold this connection when I moved house.

[nashville]

What is the difference from X isp. And. Y isp. This is a puzzle to me

The way they manage their network behind the scenes can make a difference to how fast it runs, and how responsive it is. This is important if, for example, you play online games where you need response times to be as low as possible.

For most people, most of the time, it makes no difference whatsoever, all you would worry about is that it works, and how much you're paying for it. But for some people ... well, read this thread and judge for yourself.

[Pierre]

Working from home today and now, when there is no one else around, the connection bumbles along at between 145Mb and 160Mb.

Just bumbling along. :roll eyes:

---------- Post added at 22:22 ---------- Previous post was at 22:20 ----------

Consider yourself lucky, I would love to be able to say the same and until last autumn I could. I have been a cable customer since the Nynex days and its only in the six months that the service has imploded. !60Mb at from 09:30 to roughtly 15:00, then down to 2Mb to 8Mb between 15:00 and 22:30, building back to 160mb at 01:30.

So not bumbling along at 160Mb during the day then as reported by you?

[hedgie]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Just bumbling along. :roll eyes:

---------- Post added at 22:22 ---------- Previous post was at 22:20 ----------



So not bumbling along at 160Mb during the day then as reported by you?

Confused.....

My point is that my connections bumbles along quite nicely during the day on the OCCASIONS when I work from home, a service and performance I am quite happy with, Bumbling along is my slang for quite nicely. But, when the family want to use the service between 15:30 and 22:00 the network is crippled with slow downloads and very erratic latency.

When you think about the times of day when the majority of the six in our household actually need the service its totally pants.

[tweedle]

Originally Posted by nashville

What is the difference from X isp. And. Y isp. This is a puzzle to me

Price, speeds, technology , reliability , content, customer service,

[Qtx]

Glad to see some of you have had no issues. Also seen that some of you although have had no problems have since switched to Sky anyway. I assume due to package deals, rather than broadband performance.

One thing I find funny and a bit hypocritical is someone talking about latency envy while making a point of saying how large their e-penis, I mean broadband speed, is Something they don't need and will hardly make full usage of. When they do, its likely throttled too

I have a 2.5gbit connected server but the disk write speed is a bottleneck when downloading, so I feel that pain and it's not even network congestion, but congestion none-the-less!

Although a small sample, I really thought more of you would have had congestion problems since. I don't keep up with everything so much so it's hard to get an overall view of the congestion situation from a peek at VM forums of people with problems here. Especially as most only post when they have problems. It makes me wonder if VM are actually getting on top of their local congestion problems.

Anyway, another 6 months on and still a boringly simple graph of my connection

Originally Posted by Stuart

Neither do I. I personally get a generally reliable 150Meg from Virgin (although it has been a little flaky over the last few days). I don't game online, so latency is not an issue for me (I realise there are other things that can be affected by latency, but these still do not mean latency is an issue for me). If you get good service on any ISP, good, I am happy for you. If you don't, and they fail to fix it, move. That's the beauty of capitalism, in most things, you have a choice of suppliers.

[wildfruit]

I had 3 days out in 7 years with virgin. Consistently had 180-205mb downstream I love it, it's just too expensive now. Money talks. Now getting about 30-35mb on the sky fibre. The only difference I notice is downloading large files.

[JoelTheSuperior]

Feel like I should probably post here, having been fairly active on here in the past.

I finally left Virgin Media. I switched to AAISP and I can't be happier.

The speed is lower, but it's consistent and the latency is considerably better. People talk about Virgin Media's contention issues like "oh well it drops to 150Mbps from 200Mbps so it's fine right?".

Trust me, that's not how it works at all. What I'm mostly amazed by is how my VDSL line (running at 60Mbps) seems to be far more capable of streaming on Twitch / YouTube than my Virgin Media service ever was. The service in general just works better, with less random inexplicable issues.

But the real reason I quit is simple - Virgin Media customer service is utterly useless and after having over 2 weeks of no broadband from Virgin Media and having dealt with their useless customer service who could do nothing but book an engineer for dates far into the future I left.

I'm aware that there are *some* good customer service reps at Virgin Media, or rather, I'd like to believe that, but I was never able to reach anything close to one. That and it seems that if there's ever contention issues with Virgin Media, well quite frankly I'm not convinced they ever actually get fixed long term.

The VM service did resume eventually, but by that point I was a happy AAISP user. That and it doesn't help that it's not the first time the connection has gone down inexplicably, for hours or even days.

I wouldn't say everyone should make this switch - if you're happy with Virgin Media, that's fantastic, but if not you should definitely consider the other options out there. It's so incredibly refreshing to deal with a company with such excellent customer service who don't treat you like an idiot when there's a fault.

Oh also it's lovely to be with an ISP that sticks with their principles - no filtering, no traffic management or throttling anywhere on their network. Lovely.

I'm pretty sure Qtx's graph is one hell of an anomaly - during the 5 years I was with VM my connection was nothing even remotely like that. Jitter all the way across the sky.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by JoelTheSuperior

I'm pretty sure Qtx's graph is one hell of an anomaly - during the 5 years I was with VM my connection was nothing even remotely like that. Jitter all the way across the sky.

Qtx's graph is his Sky connection.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by JoelTheSuperior

I'm pretty sure Qtx's graph is one hell of an anomaly - during the 5 years I was with VM my connection was nothing even remotely like that. Jitter all the way across the sky.

As Pip said, that graph is my Sky connection. Been that steady for the last 4 years, even after a house move. Before that I had a couple of years of Jitter hell with VM due to congestion.