Virgin are fast this morning!

peter999

RumRat wrote: »

Quite a sweeping statement...Mine is rock solid, no down time and a constant 150Mb/s.
I do feel for people who have problems though, I have a theory that it depends who laid the original cable network.
They are beginning to lay fibre to the door across the whole network which will give huge speed boosts and more reliability, apparently. It will take a couple of years and I'm not too sure what I'd use the extra speed for. Something will come along that needs it though I'm certain...;)

Hopefully the regulator will step in & sort this out.

A lot of people are paying for something they don't need, don't want or subsidising others.

worried_jim

kwikbreaks wrote: »

local torrent freak gets wrist cramps.

Brilliant! I am going to use that.

stator

I've got Plusnet 'fibre' now. Bit pants TBH. Might just be the router though, needs restarting all the time.

John_Gray

RumRat wrote: »

I'm not too sure what I'd use the extra speed for.

Surely the only reason for broadband of that speed is to download Windows Updates faster?

Oblivion

Virgin are very expensive but I don't mind paying as long as the service remains reliable, which in my case it has been with a few very minor issues. I really don't understand why the average use would want extremely high speeds. I get a constant 54mbps down and 3mbps up and that is more than enough for our needs.

RumRat

John_Gray wrote: »

Surely the only reason for broadband of that speed is to download Windows Updates faster?

That would be handy....

kwikbreaks

Meanwhile over on the Broadband forum - https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5454370

The problem with the technology used by all cable providers worldwide is that the local pipes are very low capacity compared to the lowest gigabit and usually higher capacity pipes shared by ADSL/VDSL users. Just one or two users hammering the upstream (especially low capacity with DOCSIS) can completely screw up the local area of a few hundred customers. Those in neighbouring streets probably see their headline speeds whenever they check and can't understand what others are complaining about.

VM used to tackle the problem of a few heavy users by throttling them back if they exceeded set limits but then that got them into trouble with the ASA over their "unlimited" claims and rather than drop those they dropped their traffic management.

A downstream DOCSIS channel has 50Mbps capacity. Upstream it's only 18Mbps. When I left them they were using just 4 downstream channels and 1 upstream on a local group and they started selling 100Mbps packages. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to see that a couple such users running full tilt over long periods will take the lion's share of the available bandwidth. Even one will have an adverse impact for the several hundred others sharing those same channels.

Doubtless they have pressed more channels into use both up and down but they also increased the headline speeds of all their packages. Why would people buy faster speeds if not to use them? If that usage happend to be 24x7 torrenting then their neighbours aren't going to be happy bunnies. That sort of behaviour has far less impact on ADSL/VDSL because the higher capacity local pipes can usually take the strain.

Leo2020

VM is not always what is cracked up to be, we were meant to be getting either 150 or 200mb, can't remember which. We would get about 10-12mb. The area we are in is very over subscribed.

Moved to Sky and get 38 MB.

VM said they were were going to fix the problem with slow speeds for over a year and just kept pushing back the fix date.

donnac2558

I am on 50mb and getting that with Virgin. Never really had a problem with speeds since I have been with them back in 00s.

Now the problem with the OOKLA test is, showing Dublin as my ping point. There is one in Belfast as another speed test said its 3miles from me.

bingo_bango

donnac2558 wrote: »

I am on 50mb and getting that with Virgin. Never really had a problem with speeds since I have been with them back in 00s.

Now the problem with the OOKLA test is, showing Dublin as my ping point. There is one in Belfast as another speed test said its 3miles from me.

I'm in Belfast (on the 70mbps package, and getting ~75 constantly). I normally choose the Preston server along with Dundalk to check ping times, as they tend to have a fairly constant connection with little jitter. When it settles on a preferred server, you can then choose a separate server by clicking on the map.