Virgin Media 10 meg slow connection.

peter999

chrisj2006 wrote: »

Unfortunatley, we have the 10mb Virgin cable connection and over numerous speed tests over a period of 5 months, we have ONCE had the 10mb speed, we have had an average speed of 3.3mb which considering we are paying £35.00 for the privilege of this is appalling. We so far have had 2 new modems, 5 engineers come over to the house, many customer care people totally disbelieving what we tell them. The time we had the 10mb speed was when my OH phoned Virgin up to tell them if things did not improve we would be cancelling the service !!

What have NTL said is the problem ??

What did the engineers do & what did they say ??
The customer service people on the phone don't have a clue.

peter999

penniesforme

Yes..Problems with NT(HEL)L....same here...

however, my problem is slightly different, as the modem keeps losing the connection from NT(HEL)L. Happened 3 times this week, and i am getting a bit cross. But the good thing is that the technicians i spoke to over the phone was good at restoring the connection. (the connection lost its DNS or something, i was told...as if it will make sense to me)

Basically,...i called them up..then they ask for the modem's mac code, do something with it on the computer..switch the modem off for a minute, turn it on again,...and it WORKS... (it doesnt work if you turn it on and off yourself...they need to do something on their system.) But the whole process is fairly quick and painless..the calls last about 15 minutes each time, 5 minutes waiting time (aka listen to music and thank you for waiting).

the number to call is 08454540000. (enter phone number, #3, then #1).

hope that helps.

chrisj2006

peter999 wrote: »

What have NTL said is the problem ??

What did the engineers do & what did they say ??
The customer service people on the phone don't have a clue.

peter999

Virgin have given us 4 separate things now which they think is the problem, 2 technicians have said one thing, 1 another, one muttered something about a DNS server ?? (no idea what on earth he meant and he changed the subject when I asked) and a further one just said "We're lost now, we have no idea !!) gives you great hope doesn;t it ??

Point being however is that when my OH phoned to cancel the service, the speed went up - immediately (that was the first time we had our 10mb !!). That to me sounds like a problem at their end (admittedly it went back down to its normal 3mb after a week !!)

They have got until the end of April, if things do not change, we will be changing to Be from our brand new BT line

peter999

chrisj2006 wrote: »

Virgin have given us 4 separate things now which they think is the problem, 2 technicians have said one thing, 1 another, one muttered something about a DNS server ?? (no idea what on earth he meant and he changed the subject when I asked) and a further one just said "We're lost now, we have no idea !!) gives you great hope doesn;t it ??

Point being however is that when my OH phoned to cancel the service, the speed went up - immediately (that was the first time we had our 10mb !!). That to me sounds like a problem at their end (admittedly it went back down to its normal 3mb after a week !!)

They have got until the end of April, if things do not change, we will be changing to Be from our brand new BT line

Your area may sufffer from congestion (overload) at peak times.

As they increase speeds, numbers of customers increase & customers use internet more intensively (music, video, phone, gaming), the network cannot cope at peak times.

Are you certain problem is not your computer ??

This is how you test:
At times when you normally have problem,
Boot into Safe Mode with Networking
(reboot, press F8 key, select Safe Mode with Networking)

Run following Speed Tests

http://speedcheck.ispconnect.co.uk
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/speedtest.html -use "click here" link on page.

peter999

Capt_Slog

I'm not saying that this is going to fix your problem, it sounds as if there is a fault with your connection.

BUT

If you find your PC running slow on the Net, have a look at the 'settings'.
It is possible to store a copy of every page that you visit in the CACHE, depening on how your options are set in the browser. The cache has a limited size, and as you surf and therefore store new pages, I believe the PC has to sort out and overwrite the older ones. This causes your PC to slow down on the internet. Regularly clearing the cache by deleting the temporary internet files can help a lot.

This is written for the benefit of those who might not know; my apologies if I'm teaching "grandmas to suck eggs".

wabbit02

chrisj2006 wrote: »

Virgin have given us 4 separate things now which they think is the problem, 2 technicians have said one thing, 1 another, one muttered something about a DNS server ?? (no idea what on earth he meant and he changed the subject when I asked) and a further one just said "We're lost now, we have no idea !!) gives you great hope doesn;t it ??

Point being however is that when my OH phoned to cancel the service, the speed went up - immediately (that was the first time we had our 10mb !!). That to me sounds like a problem at their end (admittedly it went back down to its normal 3mb after a week !!)

They have got until the end of April, if things do not change, we will be changing to Be from our brand new BT line

Hate to tell you this, but I'm on BE* and I'm only getting 4mb.

1. Cable is the most consistent connection medium, there is no real variation in speed due to distance/ weather etc.
2. ADSL (especially 2 + as used by BE*) is very dependent on a good connection medium, so if you live in an 80's house like me and the cheep builders put in aluminium cables it severely limits your speed.
3. ADSL has lower latency than cable - for games and real-time applications this is important, however for web browsing it doesn't help.

NOTE: I have never and don't work on NTL's systems, I have a fair amount of Telco knowledge (having worked on voice and ip solutions) and am making assumptions based on this.

All cable connections connect back to the local hub/ "headend", which is then backhauled to the core network and out to the internet. This is most probably by a 155mb/s link. I doubt that virgin are changing your connection settings, the profile is sent to the headend by the billing system, to change this as you think may be happening would be a pain (and probably isn't possible by your average CSA).

I believe that virgin offer 50:1 contention ratio (NOTE: so do BE and almost all other ISP's), so assuming that the headend has 155mb connection you can have 7750 10mb customers on it, the theory is that not everyone will be using their link so in real world applications this is acceptable. It could be that you have a particularly oversubscribed headend/ allot of people in your area are using the service. Do you know anyone else in the area that has 10mb BB that you could compare to?

Equally your connection to the "internet" is going to be affected by Virgins peering arrangements and routing. I know when I was with NTL so get to a UK based server - it was going to New York and back. This isn't uncommon and is generally why ISP's like you to use their speed tests as it accurately reflects their network as opposed to the wet bit of string that their forcing you down. Are you benchmarking against the same servers again and again? Get yourself DU meter and try downloading content from somewhere like akamai http://www.akamai.com/ which hosts server all over the world and should give a better throughput.

Lastly you have you check your local settings. Read Robin walker's http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/ sit on faster web browsing and transparent proxying. to start then you need to look at optimising things like your IP settings (MTU, window size's etc).

roders1234

I have been experiencing the same problem now. Im not sure how long it has been going on. Im in rented accomodation and in uni.
When i left for my easter holiday the speeds were 8mb+ all the time, now they average at 500kb. Theres no increase at off-peak times and likewise no massive decrease at peak times. I am yet to call virgin but i will have to today. I live in Stoke-on-Trent so if anyone else lives near or in Stoke with the same problem, please get in touch. Im a Computer Science major so i know what i am talking about and have tried pretty much everything.

theteapot

**VERY INTERESTING*

iv had the exact same problem and have been getting really annoyed by poor speed. Im on 10mb virgin.

been speedtesting regularly with results around 1-2mbs.

searching the web i found a post from a guy with the same problem, he said that in the end he found that moving the modem away from the router got his slow speed back up to full.

i just tried this and it worked !!!! i left my router on top shelf, and put the modem down on the floor.

I cannot understand why but give it a go. Im back up to full speed for the first time in ages. (i hope this works for others. i do not understand it??????).......

pathanos

theteapot wrote: »

**VERY INTERESTING*

iv had the exact same problem and have been getting really annoyed by poor speed. Im on 10mb virgin.

been speedtesting regularly with results around 1-2mbs.

searching the web i found a post from a guy with the same problem, he said that in the end he found that moving the modem away from the router got his slow speed back up to full.

i just tried this and it worked !!!! i left my router on top shelf, and put the modem down on the floor.

I cannot understand why but give it a go. Im back up to full speed for the first time in ages. (i hope this works for others. i do not understand it??????).......

I just tried this and it worked, my theory is that the heat from both units and or the "waves" given off by the router interfere with each other