Stuttering cable broadband

Jolly_Roger

I'm trying to watch some streamed tv from the US. I have 30 meg cable broadband provided by Virgin Media, which arrives on a dedicated cable (no phone or tv). However, if I watch streamed games in the evening, the signal cuts in and out, with the image freezing for a second, then unfreezing. It's almost as if VMedia is switching the signal on and off to share out available capacity to as many people as they can! Does anybody have any idea of why this happening. I don't think it's my equipment, since there are days when the signal is fine (during the day and late evening it always is).
VMedia claims that the average speed in this area is almost up to the headline rate, but I reckon they must boost this during the night, since the average is calculated over a 24-hour period.
Were I not paying £30.00 a month for this, I might not mind too much, but this is quality cash for a rubbish service.
What should I do?

John_Gray

Pause the streamed TV and do a speed test at the time you are experiencing problems. Try the Java-based tester http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html or its Flash-based companion http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/broadband.html.

On a good day I get 9.4 Mbps download, but now it varies between 4 and 6...

Jolly_Roger

I have done this and the average between 1800 and 2100 is no better than about 6-8, which is a real sham. I was told to switch to cable because of the lack of a contention ratio, but I don't think this is correct. Even cable capacity seems to be insufficient for the demand out there.
But why this freezing and unfreezing, with a whole load of data then shot through and whizzed across too fast that you cannot actually see it! Maddening when you're watching an American football game.

copier_guy

is it the superhub your using?

Jolly_Roger

I don't think so. I am currently watching another game, and the signal is fine. But it's now 11pm! My guess is that something is done with the capacity of the broadband... but I not a techie!

GunJack

cable has capacity issues as does adsl. Virgin's equivalent of the phone exchange in some areas of the country are truly up to capacity. The speeds you're getting are more than enough for streaming, so maybe traffic management is more of a factor than out&out speed....

Jolly_Roger

I just watched two NFL streamed games this evening. The early one stuttered so much I had to switch streams. None of them worked. The game after 9pm was virtually perfect all the way through to 1am. This leads me to suspect that broadband capacity is the issue here. What else could it be and how come Virgin can even legitimately offer 30 megs, if they know they can't deliver that at a time when customers need it? This seems like a con....

jayme1

I am more inclined to say that it will be the site you are watching it off that is the problem, factor in that they may limit the bandwidth to 'non paying' people and the fact the site maybe being hammered meaning the servers can't cope and you end up with a choppy picture.

was it a live game or recorded? you coud pay for 1Gb BB but if the server sends you it at 3Mb then that's all you'll ever get.

JABWootton

I dont have a problem with streaming getting very high speeds even during peak hours.
Mind you, I do not use the Superhub supplied by VM. still use the original modem I got when I went to 30mb with a netgear router

aliEnRIK

If you use P2P then youll be hit by the traffic management policy

Jolly_Roger

All the comments you make are valid. However, this is an ongoing problem. My children - now at university - got very angry that they struggled to watch any iplayer programmes during the evening because of this choppy service. But I go back to what I said before: watching game 1 early evening was extremely frustrating; while game 2, which went on to midnight 40 was unaffected (except very early on, when there was some disturbance).
I spend a lot of time in Brussels, where I have access to a 5Meg broadband cable service in a densely populated part of the city where there are dozens of broadband users. The choppy signal problem simply doesn't exist. I can watch anything l like.
My gut feeling is that the cable broadband capacity is being somehow managed by VM.