Virgin broadband worse than it was in my old flat - any ideas?

greenspark

Thanks, I'll try the customer services again tomorrow.

No replies on the support forum yet, and my query is slipping down the board... Lot of peeved people on there! Strange, as I've had no problems with Virgin before now and assumed they were fairly good on both technical and customer service matters, but this is proving very frustrating!

spike7451

greenspark wrote: »

Thanks Spike, much appreciated

I've checked the white box, it's an ntl one and there's 2 holes but one is sealed off, so there's just one in operation which has the cable in it.

The VM helpline didn't suggest sending anyone out, they just seemed to think there wasn't a problem and everything was working okay, but it would be great if they could send someone out who'd be able to sort it. Do you have to specifically request/push for a visit..? It didn't sound like they were likely to offer it and they've got me tied into a year long contract so they've not got much burning need to make sure I'm happy with the service as I don't think I can leave.

I've just tried the speednet tests again three times over half an hour, not sure what good results should look like but these don't look very impressive

First try
Download 0.12mb/s
Upload 0.84mb/s
Ping 42ms

Second try
Download 1.01mb/s
Upload 0.99mb/s
Ping 89ms

Third try
Download 0.68mb/s
Upload 0.69mb/s
Ping 135ms

Tell them you're connected with the cable between the PC & the modem,you've switched the firewall off on the PC & ran the speedtest & the results are still the same.
As it's a week old job they should send out a service tech as norm,we got penalised on our annual KPI's for early life faults or repeat faults.I'd insist the send a service tech out as you should be getting near as dammit the speed you're signed up to,and with cable,the's no DLM period.Are you in a student type area & how many flats are there?
If you're in N.Ireland,I can give you the managers name for this area.

greenspark

Thanks Spike, it's useful to know there is an incentive for them to send someone out, and helpful to know the sort of thing to say when I ring up as I tend to be more along the lines of "my internet's being really annoying"! I shall use your post as a cribsheet.

I'm not in Northern Ireland, but thanks for the offer. My area is quite densely populated, not studenty but inner-city high street, and my flat is in a building converted into about 6 tiny flats, so there might be quite a lot of household and business users nearby. But just me and my laptop using my particular connection.

spike7451

greenspark wrote: »

Thanks Spike, it's useful to know there is an incentive for them to send someone out, and helpful to know the sort of thing to say when I ring up as I tend to be more along the lines of "my internet's being really annoying"! I shall use your post as a cribsheet.

I'm not in Northern Ireland, but thanks for the offer. My area is quite densely populated, not studenty but inner-city high street, and my flat is in a building converted into about 6 tiny flats, so there might be quite a lot of household and business users nearby. But just me and my laptop using my particular connection.

Right,I'm thinking that the previous install have used the same cable for a couple of flats,instead of one per flat.If that's the case then the signal loss per connection can be up to 6dBm/V in some cases,add that to 1dBm/V for an F connector & three for the isolator plus the cable distance & it soon drops the signal strength to the minus,so by the time it reaches your modem,the signals too week.This can be fixed by moving the connection in the street cab to a higher value tap & port or fitting a HDU booster in place of the isolator.
Insist on a service tech out.I'd use section c in the linke below;

http://shop.virginmedia.com/the-legal-stuff/terms-and-conditions-for-cable-services.html#general

C Looking after your services

Virgin Media Ltd and/or Virgin Media Entertainment will provide any maintenance services during normal working hours that we and/or Virgin Media Entertainment believe are necessary for the system and equipment to work properly and for us and/or Virgin Media Entertainment to provide the services to you (including the premium television services, where appropriate).
We and Virgin Media Entertainment will always aim to provide you with the best service possible, but neither we nor Virgin Media Entertainment (as applicable) will be liable for interruptions, reception, picture degradation or other problems with the television services and/or premium television services which are beyond Virgin Media Limited's and/or Virgin Media Entertainment's reasonable control. You agree that you will tell us and/or Virgin Media Entertainment about any fault in the services by contacting our customer services team, who will aim to respond as promptly as possible. In many circumstances it is possible to correct a fault over the phone. If this is not possible, Virgin Media Ltd or Virgin Media Entertainment (as applicable) will send a technician to correct the fault.
If you prevent necessary maintenance from being carried out (at a time previously agreed and arranged with you), or if the maintenance necessary is the result of any one or more of the following, we will be entitled to charge you a service fee (listed in the price guides):

mazza111

Dunno if this helps, but have found VM seem to do a lot of maintenance on there servers at the weekend, which seems to have too much traffic going through one server. Never noticed it last longer than a weekend. See if you have the same problem tomorrow.

kwikbreaks

greenspark wrote: »

No replies on the support forum yet, and my query is slipping down the board... Lot of peeved people on there! Strange, as I've had no problems with Virgin before now and assumed they were fairly good on both technical and customer service matters, but this is proving very frustrating!

The current turn-round on VM techs answering your post is about 3-4 days. Don't bump the post or you'll just restart the clock.

If you didn't read the sticky about what they need from you and include the modem power level info their first response may well be to ask for that.

As you are seeing huge speed variations over short periods of time I'll take a guess that your area is over subscribed. This can take months to fix.

I'm not sure if your 10Mbps would have been provisioned on the newer DOSCIS 3 platform or the obsolescent DOCSIS1. If it is DOCSIS 3 then moving to 30Mbps is unlikely to make any difference as you'll remain on the same oversubscribed platform - better hope that it was a sloppy install and the signal levels are incorrect.

greenspark

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your replies.

Kiwibreaks, thanks, I'll keep checking the VM community and see if they answer, it's useful to know it can take them a few days. I did notice that some other people have included a lot of complicated-looking stuff in their posts, tables and numbers etc, and I was hoping I'd get away without having to do that, as doing the speedtest has exhausted my quota of techy knowhow, but I'll brace myself for it...

I do hope it's fixable, it seems very annoying if being in an oversubscribed area means you get a dodgy service, as they're presumably making a lot of money if there's more users in an area... Wish I'd done a bit more research before moving

spike7451

kwikbreaks wrote: »

The current turn-round on VM techs answering your post is about 3-4 days. Don't bump the post or you'll just restart the clock.

If you didn't read the sticky about what they need from you and include the modem power level info their first response may well be to ask for that.

As you are seeing huge speed variations over short periods of time I'll take a guess that your area is over subscribed. This can take months to fix.

I'm not sure if your 10Mbps would have been provisioned on the newer DOSCIS 3 platform or the obsolescent DOCSIS1. If it is DOCSIS 3 then moving to 30Mbps is unlikely to make any difference as you'll remain on the same oversubscribed platform - better hope that it was a sloppy install and the signal levels are incorrect.

Not really,all they basically need to do is add another tap bank with low to medium attenuation to switch the doubled up connections to (sometimes if the cab is nearly full,the installers will split a port with a two-way splitter to get two feed out of the one,the downside is that affects both the connections off that tap & port) & decrease the attenuation in the Magnavox or increase the signal strength going to a secondary E-Cabinet if you're connected to that.

Bottom row of pics in the link below shows the Tap & Port banks with the various attenuation values/strengths for that particular tap connection & the Magnavox half way up the page.It's a TeleWest box but basically the same as VM/NTL.

http://chriswoods.co.uk/2010/01/photos-inside-a-virgin-media-cable-street-cabinet/

kwikbreaks

That will fix any problem sorting out power levels but nothing done in the street cab will fix an oversubscribed CMTS port other than adding a new port and splitting the oversubscribed one across the two ports. That can take months and is one of the most frequent complaints you'll see about VM - abysmal performance that lasts for months on end.

I think VM were hoping that all the new 100Mbps connections would be taken for willy waving rather than actually be used for the only thing a 100Mbps connection has any advantage over 10Mbps for - bulk downloading. They sure as hell can't support multiple flat out high speed connections because the local pipe is only 200Mbps/18Mbps and that is probably serving 100 or so customers.

spike7451

Maybe so,but one of the main issues especially in built up areas,is the network was originally designed for analog tv & phone not to mention that the digital cable tv boxes & Tivo also have modems in them as well,it all adds to the congestion.