Hi all
I gather from our attempts at playing tonight that I'm not the only one who has Virgin Media's flagship all singing all dancing, super fast 50Mb broadband?
Well it's unplayable for gaming for one.
Here's my story so far:
50Mb installed about a month ago and I felt it wasn't as fast as I hoped. In fact it's slower than my old 20Mb connection!
I had an engineer out who swapped the modem to 'see if that fixes it' (it didn't)
I had another engineer who tested the line (no problems), the modem (no problems) and also did some speedtests using Virgin Media's own speedtest website - he got shockingly bad results.
The modem kept rebooting itself also. The last week or so I've been monitoring when this happens and it is almost exactly every four hours (minus a few minutes I think).
Now I could have called them when I got home from work to report this but I really didn't feel like going through the 25 mins waiting in queues and speaking to someone who I could barely understand. Yes of course, when you finally get through to 50Mb support you do speak to someone who speaks English and that's good but I really couldn't face it tonight :(
I'm going to call them tomorrow and see how I do. I shall be reporting my findings in the hope that there will be some bright spark who will look at the fact that my modem is rebooting every four hours and have a brainwave. Perhaps they will realise something from this? I don't know.
Anyway:
Anyone else on 50Mb Virgin broadband? Anyone else have very similar problems as I am? Please let me know here so I might have more ammuni...er information I can pass on to Virgin Media.
Thanks
I think I'm on the 10mb with Virgin, I get randomly horrible connections with our servers, sometimes awesome, most the time terrible, loss & choke all over the place the last few times I tried to play cs, I also noticed if I trace me to our servers I notice it goes through Germany - which can't be good, I asked them last time I had problems why this happened, strangely the never answered that bit.
I got nothing I can say to help with your probs, just thought I'd chime in my bit....
I'm another that cant help I'm afraid.
I'm on Virgin 20mb and its been absolutely flawless. It's never gone down in over a year, pings are always great, speeds are always as advertised. It's by far the best broadband I've ever experienced.
I have heard of people who's routers/modems haven't coped with 50mb though.
Despite the fact that the engineer "tested" it and said it was fine, the fact that it keeps rebooting itself sounds very dodgy. I'd ask to try another modem if i were you.
Were you on another Virgin package using that same modem before you got the 50mb service?
Quote from: The Moose;296313I'm another that cant help I'm afraid.
I'm on Virgin 20mb and its been absolutely flawless. It's never gone down in over a year, pings are always great, speeds are always as advertised. It's by far the best broadband I've ever experienced.
I have heard of people who's routers/modems haven't coped with 50mb though.
Despite the fact that the engineer "tested" it and said it was fine, the fact that it keeps rebooting itself sounds very dodgy. I'd ask to try another modem if i were you.
Were you on another Virgin package using that same modem before you got the 50mb service?
I was on the truly awesome 20Mb version. I loved it! With 50Mb they have to supply a new modem specially made to cope with the 50Mb service. As I said they've already swapped it once and the same problem is happening. I'm more inclined to think that there is something inheritantly wrong with the service. Something that causes spikes which the 50Mb service can't cope with?
I don't know. If I don't get it sorted soon, I'll be going back to 20Mb
Not sure if this helps but I'm on BT 8MB and it's like wading through treacle tonight. Might be a general interwebs fault adding to your original probs.
im the same and im on bt 8 ish (10 as a tester)
Quote from: Jabbs;296315As I said they've already swapped it once and the same problem is happening.
My bad. Ordering new spectacles as we speak :lmfao:
I'm on the 20 meg service and it's faultless (now it will go and break just to spite me).
I did consider going for the 50 meg service but then thought 'why bother?' I cannot get a 20 meg download from any one source. The best I ever got was 17 meg from Microsoft when it was nighttime in the US. Generally most download sites etc give between 6 and 12 meg. Game pings are not governed by bandwidth and streaming media (You Tube) works flawlessly on a 20 meg supply. So if no one can give me 20 megs why would I want 50?
So it might be an idea to go back to 20 meg. Until content providers are routinely suppling at 20 meg+ I don't see the point of 50 meg broadband.
Quote from: RizZy;296312I think I'm on the 10mb with Virgin, I get randomly horrible connections with our servers, sometimes awesome, most the time terrible, loss & choke all over the place the last few times I tried to play cs, I also noticed if I trace me to our servers I notice it goes through Germany - which can't be good, I asked them last time I had problems why this happened, strangely the never answered that bit.
I got nothing I can say to help with your probs, just thought I'd chime in my bit....
Exactly the same here, It seems that the ones who don't get problems are the 20mbers!
Quote from: The Moose;296321My bad. Ordering new spectacles as we speak :lmfao:
:D haha reading specs? :p
I'm on 20 here and have terrible problems. It's not the service that's fine. It seems to be the included router (not the modem) it's a netgear one and it needs resetting sometimes several times a day, down to as little as a couple of times a week.
I keep meaning to dig out my spare router but once I reset and it works it goes down my list of priorities.
Quote from: T-Bag;296340I'm on 20 here and have terrible problems. It's not the service that's fine. It seems to be the included router (not the modem) it's a netgear one and it needs resetting sometimes several times a day, down to as little as a couple of times a week.
I keep meaning to dig out my spare router but once I reset and it works it goes down my list of priorities.
Netgear are usually good too (my personal fav)
Do you know how to check your power levels on your modem?
If you don't find out and see if they are high and keep and eye on them.
I am on 10mb would go to 50mb but there are a couple of reasons why i can't.
These are not in your router but your actual 50mb modem from virgin.
The 50mb service is a bit flaky i have seen lots of posts about it on "cableforum.co.uk" have a search over there.
Also if your using anytype of router see if theres a new firmware if its a belkin throw it in the bin and get something decent.
I have seen belkins do a whole host of things without you evening telling it to do it such as block google refuse to reset the works.
Also heres a special priority number for you to get through to the uk 50mb team.
i have put hashes in to secure it because i don't have a virgin phoneline so i want to keep the number working :).
0#800#052#0#43#1
Lastly use the modem only and no router.
For two days solid gaming leave everything else unplugged. No network cables to other pc's or routers, no extension leads no hubs just you and the modem into one ethernet port connected by one ethernet cable.
If that doesn't work clean your computer, thats probably already been done as your computer savvy keep me up to date with how you get on.
Quote from: GhostMjr;296355Do you know how to check your power levels on your modem?
If you don't find out and see if they are high and keep and eye on them.
I am on 10mb would go to 50mb but there are a couple of reasons why i can't.
These are not in your router but your actual 50mb modem from virgin.
The 50mb service is a bit flaky i have seen lots of posts about it on "cableforum.co.uk" have a search over there.
Also if your using anytype of router see if theres a new firmware if its a belkin throw it in the bin and get something decent.
I have seen belkins do a whole host of things without you evening telling it to do it such as block google refuse to reset the works.
Also heres a special priority number for you to get through to the uk 50mb team.
i have put hashes in to secure it because i don't have a virgin phoneline so i want to keep the number working :).
0#800#052#0#43#1
Lastly use the modem only and no router.
For two days solid gaming leave everything else unplugged. No network cables to other pc's or routers, no extension leads no hubs just you and the modem into one ethernet port connected by one ethernet cable.
If that doesn't work clean your computer, thats probably already been done as your computer savvy keep me up to date with how you get on.
Thanks GM
All the evidence points to a Virgin Media problem. Prior to the 'upgrade' my 20Mb Service was great. I'm using the same Netgear router (Ã,£120 of top quality). Done the testing straight to modem but no change there. Computer is clean and I'm not going to reinstall because it was fine with 20Mb.
This is definitely a weird Virgin Media issue. They are coming on Wednesday to possibly renew the cables going into the flat. Personally I think there is a problem at the node or the server that governs my connection.
We'll see.
Oh, I hope they get it right soon. I was having a proper old chinwag with one of the support guys and they were talking about 200Mb tests in Kent! Nice if it works!
200mb seems a little bit of overkill to me, I never thought I'd ever say something like this, but I'm not even sure at the moment 50mb or even 20mb is needed.
Quote from: RizZy;296396200mb seems a little bit of overkill to me, I never thought I'd ever say something like this, but I'm not even sure at the moment 50mb or even 20mb is needed.
Unlimted download was a carrot and up speeds of 1.5Mb are also nice to have especially when you (if like me) you manage and edit a lot of websites. When you download two or three websites a week and each happen to be several hundred Megabytes then perhaps you can start to see why it would be useful :D
My point still stands that your internet connection is only as fast as the speed another site can feed you data. I might have a 200mb/sec connection but if the site I'm downloading a 4 gig file from is only supplying 5 mb/sec that's the speed I'll get the file at, regardless of whether I'm on a fifty meg or a 10 meg line. Unless I'm completely missing something about Internet connection speeds?
Quote from: smilodon;296399My point still stands that your internet connection is only as fast as the speed another site can feed you data. I might have a 200mb/sec connection but if the site I'm downloading a 4 gig file from is only supplying 5 mb/sec that's the speed I'll get the file at, regardless of whether I'm on a fifty meg or a 10 meg line. Unless I'm completely missing something about Internet connection speeds?
I agree, however there is the other important point (for me) of unlimited bandwidth. The 50Mb service is supposed to be unrestricted with NO throttling etc and seeing as I am only paying Ã,£3 a month more for this services I felt it was a good idea. :)
Been learning a lot about cable modems and troubleshooting where the problems lie by reading modem information direct from modem (power levels and whatnot), using pathping to see where I get packet loss and so on...
I'll keep you all posted and give a full report of the problem once I have this one sorted (confidence eh?)
Well I guess the unlimited side of it makes sense for you.
I was going from more of the same point of view as Smilo, on whatever connection I'm on here it's very rare I get the speeds I should - it's the rest of the net that needs speeding up not individuals connections.