Virgin 50Mb miss selling

rossiboy001

Iv Just got the 50Mb package as an upgrade due to kids requiring more bandwith than me old 10mb package, used to get average 6-8 when not restricted, now get less than that and me best is 11Mb,but notice when i look up my ip address is no longer local rather about 250 miles away from where I live,Does this mean virgin havent really got 50Mb broadband in my area but are just taking my money and signing up everyone regardless?

Exhortation

If you are using a wireless modem then 11mb might be the fastest that it can handle. Try using an ethernet cable and pinging the nearest server. I recently switched from wireless back to ethernet and my speeds jumped from a standard 7.8 to 9.8 on a 10mb package.

spike7451

Cable broadband does not run the same as a phone based broadband.Unlike BT,where the ISP's have individual DSLAM's ect in the BT exchange & you have to be within a set radius of the exchange to get a good speed,the VM connection goes from your street cabinet back to a local Mux (Multiplexer for the phone) & DA (Distribution Amplifier for the TV & BBand) & from the Mux/DA it is converted from copper to fiber optic.These Muxes are basically two large cabinets sited next to each other & each one serves up to 500 separate homes & businesses.
From the Mux/DA your fibre optic goes back to either a 'Hubsite' which is a basically an exchange,or the much larger 'Head End'
The Hubsite can be many miles away from you & the Head End even further still.
The distance from the Hubsite/Head End to your home will not affect the speed of your broadband.The strength of the signal is boosted from the DA thru to the street cabinets & the loss from their to your home should be minimal.
The are other factors however that can affect the speed you get,the internal wiring if it is non standard CATV cable (ie-bought from B&Q) dodgy or loose F-Connections,Wired or Wireless & even they type of modem you have.IIRC,the old silver 200 modems cant handle speeds over 10Mb.
The are various things you can try like re-booting the modem & connecting with Ethernet.However,if your speeds dont increase,you'd be better getting a Service Tech out to check things out.

rossiboy001

Thanks, am using ehternet cable 1Gbps,my ip address is on the south coast and i live in the north of england,but if i use another site in manchester i get over 100Mbs??? confused im thinking there server sends me the internet from down south therefore im getting less broadband than i was when i was linked up to a local server??? confused lol

Exhortation

When you upgraded Virgin should've supplied you with one of their "super" routers/modems (capable of handling speeds over 100mb) and a USB receiver (that plugs into your PC) capable of handling N-type broadband. If you haven't received these then the chances are you have one of the slower routers. I would ring Virgin and check this out.

Both are supplied free of charge, by the way.

rossiboy001

yeah got all that and everything is up n running using a cat5 lead and my connectivity all checks out in windows,Strange how now I live in hampshire when my ip add used to locate me in my home town,but if i look for a more local server the result is much different,im guessing normal browsing,downloading internet usage is being sent to me from hampshire hence the slower connection?

kwikbreaks

Even if your connection did come from Hampshire (which it probably doesn't) that would only affect the latency and not the speed. Geo positioning of IP addresses is often very inaccurate.

rossiboy001

thanks,iv always used the same site which appears near the top of the google search,the one with the masked man logo,also tells you you ip address before i click on to a speed test,since iv upgraded iv been testing various sites all with different results,manchester server bamboozles me sometimes with 200Mbs,Dont know how to get an accurate picture???

kwikbreaks

No speedtest site is going to be 100% accurate all the time as they may have more people trying to test than they can handle or a link in the path between you and the site may be congested.

I find http://www.speedtest.net/index.php usually gives me consistent results. It has a sister site http://www.pingtest.net/ which will select the nearest server to where your connection joins the internet backbone based on ping time.

For Pingtest.net to be useful you will need to turn off the IP Flood Detection feature on your Superhub - login (default user/pass admin changeme) then take Advanced / services / then uncheck IP Flood Detection If you don't do that the router will block the returned "flood" of pings and the site will report massive packet loss. You may as well leave it unchecked as it is a pretty pointless feature anyway.

Using Kaspersky AV can give stupidly high speed test results. VM Internet security is based on Kaspersky.

rossiboy001

Thanks ill try those sites,Already cancelled the flood detection from day 1,understand everybody havin issues with that,Funny enough am using kasperscy AV,so ill disable and kick in windows defender while i test,Hopefully then i can get an accurate picture,Dont expect to get a headline 50mb know its only marketing,but i expect to get consistently higher speeds than before upgrading,to justify the extra £15 a month,Im gona have a go now many thanks for the advice.

kwikbreaks

I went from 20 to 50 for an extra £5 a month + £20 one-off charge. Now they've announced a one off £30 upgrade from 20 to 30. If I'd had the 30 would I have bothered with 50? Hard one to call but more that doubling the headline speed and removing all downstream throttling seemed a good bet at £5.

I usually see > 45Mbps whenever I test and 49Mbps+ quite often. I also see the odd slow test too at ~ 35Mbps. For the most part I think the speeds delivered and unlimited download allowance add up to VFM.