Is the worst Internet I've ever experienced, one minute you experience beautiful connection speeds (speeds up to 10mb and I'm averaging 9), the next your internet is diconnected. Since Wednesday I havent been able to hold a connection for more than 5 minutes. It gets so bad in the evening I can't even start streaming programmes on BBCiPlayer. In the past it's been terrible too, all the L4D'ers moan about my connection, and frankly, I will never sign up with virgin media again, next year I will even be willing to pay the Ã,£100 and summit quid it costs to have your house wired up to BT.
I do expect my internet to fubar up every now and again when I want to game as my housemates occasionally do a bit of cheeky downloading and programme streaming, but this is a joke.
Maybe one of them over did the downloading and got us restricted for a while? Anybody have experience of this and know what to look for? Who knows, I don't download anything other than course in for in the form of PDF's and streaming youtube.
have you
- contacted support?
- done a speedtest? (they usually like to have a spread of 3 tests through the day)
do your housemates all experience the same problem?
Some years ago when I was on cable there were apps you could use to check the loading on the muxs. You could then reconfigure yourself onto the lightest loaded to help with any contention issues.
My 50Mb connection is the worst ever - seriously it's worse than ISDN64. Packet loss, and slow speeds are totally ridiculous. I've contacted 'support' about six times now in the last month or so and several times by email to their complaints department who claim to 'get back to you within three days' or something (they never do).
I'm about to tell them to take their service and shove it where the sun doesn't shine - problem is I don't know who to go with :(
Quote from: OldBloke;301854Some years ago when I was on cable there were apps you could use to check the loading on the muxs. You could then reconfigure yourself onto the lightest loaded to help with any contention issues.
And what is MUXS?
They really are rubbish, been having no end of trouble with Virgin, and they can't do anything about it, I contacted BT and even though I was not with them, they came out and inspected it and sort of sorted it out, I see a trend coming here :sideways: I really don't know what I'm paying them for, it's defo not for service, thats for sure! :angry:
Quote from: Jabbs;301856And what is MUXS?
MUXS is usually found close to BRASS :getmecoat:
On Virgin media too and have the same problem. In the past while my housemates were downloading would get problems but this year is a whole different league.
I think it's the packet sniffing they introduced a few months back on 40% of their customers. (l live in a student area so I'm sure to be in that 40%). I won't be signing up to them next year. downloads are just as good on ADSL when you factor in the times where the internet stops working.
I'm in an urban area so will probably get 6-8mb anyway, and next year will be shared 4 ways not 5. I'd recommend anyone changing services avoids virgin media for the foreseeable future.
Quote from: Jabbs;301856And what is MUXS?
Found my old link to the info ...
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/index.html
I suspect that this has been long superceeded.
Sorry to hear about your problems. I'm not fan of Virgin Media and work on the assumption that if anything did go wrong with my connection I'd get little useful help from them. However for the sake of balance I have their 20 meg service which has been faultless. Speed tests are not an exact science but I average between 17 and 19 meg whenever I run them. I've had a loss of connection before for a day but it was years ago.
You might want to browse http://www.thinkbroadband.com/
and specifically http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/virgin_cable.html
I to have a virgin 20Mb connection and have had no issues with it at all. I know that they use traffic shaping software that limits the connections of folks that do lots of downloading but im still getting good speeds. The only connection that doesnt get that is the 50mb one.
Quote from: Gh0st Face Killah;301870I to have a virgin 20Mb connection and have had no issues with it at all. I know that they use traffic shaping software that limits the connections of folks that do lots of downloading but im still getting good speeds. The only connection that doesnt get that is the 50mb one.
Except that the 50mb (for me at least) is next to useless. It's so slow that traffic shaping to (say) 20Mb would be a relief!
I had no problems with the 20Mb service so felt that upgrading wouldn't be an issue. As I've mentioned before in another thread, I wanted the 50Mb because of the no traffic shaping (I do lots of website work and lots of backups for customers etc so I felt it would be a useful upgrade).
Looking at alternatives now and a complaints letter saying I'm leaving to Virgin (though I doubt this will have much of an effect)
I've heard terrible things about the 50 meg service, which is why I'm sticking with my 20 meg. And again the issue of wondering who the hell could offer an actual download speed of 50 meg from their site raises it's head.
Virgins info is here
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
and they seem to be mucking about with the following areas
- Wigan
- Blackpool
- Acton
- Aldershot
- Preston
That being said the 20 and 50 meg allowances don't seem too mean unless you're downloading a load of movies etc. (although the 2 meg service limit is a complete joke)
I suppose the only issue would be downloading a new game on Steam and i just make sure I do that overnight rather than during the evening.
Quote from: Gh0st Face Killah;301870I to have a virgin 20Mb connection and have had no issues with it at all. I know that they use traffic shaping software that limits the connections of folks that do lots of downloading but im still getting good speeds. The only connection that doesn't get that is the 50mb one.
Makes sense that they use this, the more I downloaded, the worse my connection was, one thing that did help on one occasion was when they told me to switch the router on and off at the exact same time for 3-5 consecutive days, this apparently resets your profile, probably related to this traffic shaping :sideways:
Quote from: smilodon;301904I've heard terrible things about the 50 meg service, which is why I'm sticking with my 20 meg. And again the issue of wondering who the hell could offer an actual download speed of 50 meg from their site raises it's head.
Virgins info is here
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
and they seem to be mucking about with the following areas
- Wigan
- Blackpool
- Acton
- Aldershot
- Preston
That being said the 20 and 50 meg allowances don't seem too mean unless you're downloading a load of movies etc. (although the 2 meg service limit is a complete joke)
I suppose the only issue would be downloading a new game on Steam and i just make sure I do that overnight rather than during the evening.
Well as I do a lot of website work and much of it is backups and uploading sites of 100Mb+ on occasions the no throttling was of interest to me. Of course 50Mb was useful (if I could get it).
Downloading Steam games on this 50Mb has sometimes reached 36mb/sec, not bad when you consider all the issues I'm having with it.
How do I check the households downloads so i can see how much we've been doing? It seems like the internet either can't handle it in the evenings when traffic is busiest, or my housemates have downloaded a whole bunch of films and we're being restricted in the evenings. It was fine all today but it's starting to fudge up now.
well I can check my figures at my isp homepage/my account
Quote from: Toxteth;302007How do I check the households downloads so i can see how much we've been doing? It seems like the internet either can't handle it in the evenings when traffic is busiest, or my housemates have downloaded a whole bunch of films and we're being restricted in the evenings. It was fine all today but it's starting to fudge up now.
I'm not sure it's possible with Virgin Media unless your router has some form of diagnostics?
Oh, by the way I spoke to an English woman at Virgin Media last night who actually listened to what I had to say and asked what they could do about the problems I was having! Maybe because I went through to the 'Thinking of leaving Virgin Media' option on the phone system?
Anyway, she fired off internal emails to escalate higher than the standard support team so here's hoping!
Ohh i forgot to mention this. The 'Leaving Virgin' option really is the only way to actually get anything resolved, as it's only at that point you get to speak to anyone even resembling a competent person.
You'd think Virgin would have worked out what their customers actually want and rolled this level of customer service out over all their call centres :sideways:
It's not impossible to do as companies like First Direct prove to me all the time.
Just to add another side to the Virgin-Bashing....
I've had mixed experiences with Virgin/NTL in the 7 or so years I've been with them.
Back when they were NTL, they didn't really have any sort of customer service/tech support at all. Technical problems got you as far as someone from Mumbai/Delhi/Wherever enthusiastically telling you to reboot your modem, and then cutting the call off. Yay.
None of the customer services departments seemed to be able to talk to each other (I was once told I couldn't be transferred directly to their billing department, after being on hold for 20 minutes, because it was on a different floor. Nnnnyaaahh!), and were generally staffed with un-caring prats.
They've improved out of sight recently (though every ISP has a muppet somewhere on their helpdesk), but those Bad Old Days have given them a poor rep.
Luckily, I rarely had to call them because my connection was, and still is, excellent. I can't remember the last time I had an outage or even poor speeds. The last time I did have to call them, I was pleasantly surprised by the knowledge of the techie I got through to. Maybe I just got lucky..
I can only assume that those of you having connection problems with them are suffering from some sort of fault in your area as opposed to a more general problem with their service.
I think the best thing that happened to me when I was having lots of problems with ntl was one of the numpties gave me a direct number to the techies, it was so much easier & so much nicer to talk to someone that knew what they where doing & didn't talk to you like you had no clue about pc's.
The only thing I seem to have a problem with these days is bad loss or choke - I forget which, when playing cs, but then I discovered the magic of turning of the net graph & being blissfully unaware seems the best way to deal with it.
The problem that as I see it with Virgin Media is twofold.
1. It frustrates the paying customers when they get through to someone in a far off land, someone who they can barely hear because the line is quiet and someone they can barely understand and who barely understands you also.
2. There isn't a system of 'following up' or 'escalation'. Perhaps I should say there doesn't appear to be an easy way for this to happen. It should not be the customers responsibility to ensure something is followed up or escalated as they do not know how the system works.
In the letting agent I work for, I helped design the support system we have in place for all our tenants in the houses we manage. I have no doubt that we are way more effective than Virgin Media in this area. Our customers can raise support tickets through our website and can respond to tickets or to actions taken to their hearts content. The staff in the company can assign relevant staff or contractors to these tickets which provides effective 'escalation'. As for following up, each ticket remains on our dashboards until it is resolved.
I ramble on a little because it frustrates me that a company like Virgin Media could spend some money on a system like this and a lot of their customer service issues would fade away.
Back on track, so maybe I stumbled on the way to get something done by going through to the 'I want to leave Virgin Media' option. However, I currently do not have any faith just yet that this will provide me a solution.
I've got some Virgin 'engineers' coming to install (read; plug in a modem :eyebrow:) their 50meg service tomorrow.
I shall let you know if it's a disaster.. :blink:
Quote from: Tutonic;302703I've got some Virgin 'engineers' coming to install (read; plug in a modem :eyebrow:) their 50meg service tomorrow.
I shall let you know if it's a disaster.. :blink:
Oh god :sad:
Anyone notice my ping tonight? It was better than everyones for a bit, really nice speeds, then it goes up to 1500 for about a minute, then dropped again.
Quote from: Toxteth;302715Anyone notice my ping tonight? It was better than everyones for a bit, really nice speeds, then it goes up to 1500 for about a minute, then dropped again.
yeah, I can't fault the pings I get when it works. I'm happy with 40-60ms. But 999 popping in there in the middle of a game (usually the middle of a fire fight) ruins things quite a lot.
Have you tried using PingPlotter (http://www.pingplotter.com/) to run a trace-route to our servers?
You might find there's a troublesome node somewhere along the line which is causing your problems, then you can apply targeted whining to your ISP :)
Quote from: Tutonic;302720Have you tried using PingPlotter (http://www.pingplotter.com/) to run a trace-route to our servers?
You might find there's a troublesome node somewhere along the line which is causing your problems, then you can apply targeted whining to your ISP :)
Dear God.....there is no FREE option, you have almost caused me to have a heart attack, what were you thinking man?!!:doh:
Quote from: Dingo;302724Dear God.....there is no FREE option, you have almost caused me to have a heart attack, what were you thinking man?!!:doh:
Yes there is, at the bottom of http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html
If you're super lazy, here's a direct link to the free installer: http://www.pingplotter.com/downloads/pngplt_1.exe
Quote from: Toxteth;302715Anyone notice my ping tonight? It was better than everyones for a bit, really nice speeds, then it goes up to 1500 for about a minute, then dropped again.
I had the same problem, I actually thought the server had crashed as everything had stopped - but it was just me, went to see if my Dad was messing about on t'web & he wasn't & by the time I'd got back it'd settled down again.
Last time I had big problems with ping I sent Virgin a copy of my route to our servers using pingplotter - they never came back with an answer as to why I was going from the midlands to London via Germany. Infact I still have the pic - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martin.reed8/ping.JPG
That's some messed up routing.
I'm afraid phone is your best option to get this stuff done, stay on the line until they escalate you to a proper techie if neccesary.
Emails are too easily ignored...
(http://www.speedtest.net/result/697802163.png) (http://www.speedtest.net)
'Nuff said really.
Quote from: Tutonic;302763(http://www.speedtest.net/result/697802163.png) (http://www.speedtest.net)
'Nuff said really.
Words come to mind. If I get half that on my 50Mb I feel happy! Still, I am supposed to be receiving a call from someone senior on Monday afternoon.
(http://www.speedtest.net/result/699684679.png) (http://www.speedtest.net)
I can get the speed sometimes, that's not my problem. Just I find my self needing to reset the modem and suffering from spike in ping up to 999ms on CoD when I use the connection.
I live in a student area and it doesn't happen without the students here so they've either over stretched their resources, or they are shaping my connection for legal downloading via the likes of iPlayer and Steam and they switch it off outside term time.
EDIT: I'm only on 20Mb/s connection.
Quote from: T-Bag;302967(http://www.speedtest.net/result/699684679.png) (http://www.speedtest.net)
I can get the speed sometimes, that's not my problem. Just I find my self needing to reset the modem and suffering from spike in ping up to 999ms on CoD when I use the connection.
I live in a student area and it doesn't happen without the students here so they've either over stretched their resources, or they are shaping my connection for legal downloading via the likes of iPlayer and Steam and they switch it off outside term time.
EDIT: I'm only on 20Mb/s connection.
Mine is similar but I put some of the problem down to lost packets. I recommend doing a ping test (http://www.pingtest.net/) which shows packet loss too.
Should really be at 0%
Ping 60, Jitter 29ms, and packet loss 0%. I'll run it again when it's more problematic to show how bad it gets. Usually happens every night, though I'm out tonight so it might have to wait.