Virgin Media users

[Twyst]

I'm thinking of changing from Goscomb ISP + BT fibre & phone (£80pm) to Virgin 200 business & phone (£72pm) (prices inc VAT)
I need a business style ISP for static IP as I self host.

My question is this: I currently have 14mbs down and 200mbs (realistically maybe 170mbs maybe?) sounds very tempting.
But the 100mbs option is 10pm cheaper (ex vat) ... but even this is like 6 or 7 times faster than what I have .... even then upload is faster than my current down.

So my question is this:aside from downloading the latest Star Citizen patch faster what would it get me
Actually some more metrics - there are 5 people using the line on a regular basis and I use I a lot. I saturate 14mps at times.
The other 4 are ramping up their internet usage and as of this Christmas will all (except for my 1 y old ... he just smashes my phone on the sofa) will have internet consuming tablets/pc's etc.

I guess I don't want to lock myself into a 2 y contract and think oh damn. Commentary on this 1st world problem welcome

[Obsydian]

Hi Twisted,

im a Virgin Media customer and they're OK, but the thing to bear in mind is that the max speed they list is almost always unattainable for anything other than short bursts.

You also have the bear in mind that you're sharing the line, not only with those on your side of the modem, but also several other Virgin media customers in your road (up to 10 other households), and the further you are from the exchange, the slower your speed.

im on a 120Mbs line, and my average (whenever I check it) at prime time during the week is probably around the 40Mbs area.  I have seen it break 100Mbs at times but it is rare.  And I'm the third house in from the exchange which is at the end of my road!

All that said, I hardly ever have issues with streaming movies or downloading anything and on,y get buffering on the odd occasion.

[Penfold]

I have a 200mb line at the office which was installed about a month ago. I need to check the price but it's no more than £45 pcm.

I get 210mb down and about 15mb up with a static IP and a pretty decent phone service.

When they sold the service to me the price differential between 100mb and 200mb was negligible but apparently - and I mean apparently - the customer service is a lot different. i.e. you're paying for that extra level.

I have NO idea if that's bull and it could well be but for a few quid more it was worth the punt. Besides which it was the installing engineer which said it when he came to site and not the salesperson so who knows.

[Twyst]

Sorry, the prices i stated were after the initial sweenter 1st year deal. The 1st year prices are the same as yours Penfold, but the 2nd year (and subsequent years) are more and that's the figure i stated as it's a 2 year contract.

[albert]

Business services should be different in terms of sharing and contention than the consumer version Obsydian mentions. Best way to check is to compare their service level info. It should tell you what the contention level is like and what times of day they guarantee speed levels, upload and download limits etc.

The biggest thing I would say as someone who hosts websites as well, Fibre is Synchronous and you should get a far faster upload speed on BT Fibre than Virgin cable. This is important if you have customers taking content from your web servers. Cable upload speed is approx 10% of the download so 150Mbps DL on Virgin will give you 15Mbps UL. Normally there is an abundance of upload bandwidth because in fact they only restrict upload for consumers to avoid households hosting and sharing large amounts of data. Actually you could probably get 30 or 40Mbps upload out of a cable line if unrestricted.

(When you do a speed test you'll see upload bounce off 15.5Mbps right through the test showing it wants to go faster).

I would say compare the SLAs for BT, Virgin consumer and Virgin business then decide which suits on price, service and performance. In the end if you make money from your site, then you have to put your customers first.

[Gandalf]

Actually upload on VM is worse than that. I'm on business 155Mb and while I can get 155Mb down all day long, there's only two of the four channels available for upload so my upload speeds, on a good day are 12 Mb, but usually around 10Mb.

VM Cable are awful for uploads. Also, no static IP, but as I work in the industry, I have ways around that with the magic of IP tunneling, etc so not a problem for me, but may be for you!

[Twyst]

Also, no static IP, but as I work in the industry, I have ways around that with the magic of IP tunneling, etc so not a problem for me, but may be for you!

Yeah, that's the one sticking point.
The only benefit of using the business option is the static IP. But further research shows that VM don't support a static IP  very well at all.

It's a really large sticking point as I do self host my email, web site, etc etc (not for gain, but for pleasure) and I don't really want to lose this ability.
Trying to find a VPN (or heck, any tunnel) with rDNS is proving futile as well ......

[Twyst]

After many hours, the only tunnel service I can find that meets my needs is PRQ (https://prq.se/?p=tunnel&intl=1) - dedicated IP and rDNS.
512kbs for the basic package should be ok and the next stage up is 10mbs which is still cheaper than keeping the phone line and "free" internet.

But it does seem they have a rep for not so good uptimes and slack customer service when they are raided as they host WikiLeaks and the Pirate Bay.
Whilst I admire their political goals, I would admire more another IP tunnel provider that meets my needs

So I'm now looking at the VM 200 Gamer service ( + phone) + the IP tunnel, which is still cheaper than my current setup.

As to some other comments here ..... 10mb up is fantastic! That's better than my down some nights.
But I'll be going for the Gamer service now I think as it's the only residental without traffic management, which is important as sometimes I need to download a 10gig client database and maintain video conferencing while the kids stream a movie.

[albert]

Static IPs shouldn't be required in any situation if you use a dynamic DNS service and give your customers the hostname. If you have any particular apps or services that use static then I would advise getting rid of that anyways in preference for a DNS name.

I use https://freedns.afraid.org/ with my domain and it has no issues, free for a basic service and $60 a year for premium.

[Twyst]

For self hosting email you need Reverse DNS which requires the owner of the IP block map your address to a hostname. As such, this is generally done with static IPs. Technically it could be done with dynamic IP addresses as well but AFAIK no ISP does DDNS with their IP blocks.
https://www.rackaid.com/blog/email-dns-records/

[no peanuts]

I've been with Virgin for a several years now, without any major issues or complaints and would happily recommend them.
Started off on the 50meg deal, and am now on 300down, 20 up for 52quid a month.

Line saturation in my area is a non-issue, I always get my full 300meg down, sustained speeds, maxing out at around 39.* MB/s.
IP's are dynamic, unfortunately. But I believe you can request a static one, albeit at an additional cost.

ISP wise, virgin works well for me. For any kind of hosting (email/web/storage), I'd be looking at a dedicated server or cheapo VPS depending on your needs.

[albert]

For self hosting email you need Reverse DNS which requires the owner of the IP block map your address to a hostname. As such, this is generally done with static IPs. Technically it could be done with dynamic IP addresses as well but AFAIK no ISP does DDNS with their IP blocks.
https://www.rackaid.com/blog/email-dns-records/

I stand corrected/ educated. Thanks for that.

[Twyst]

I'd be looking at a dedicated server or cheapo VPS depending on your needs.

Yeah, that sadly does look like the way to go now.
OVH do a basic VPS for £2.49 per month which sounds really cheap.
Hopefully I can get rDNS setup for that and just host my email there with my personal projects with a nightly rsync backup to home.

[Twyst]

Bit the bullet! Getting installed this Saturday ......

[Twyst]

OMG THIS IS SOOO DAMNED FAST!!!!

OK, not quite 200mbs down, it's averaging at 170 during peak hours but it's 21mbs up
Looking forward to playing some games!