Virgin Media --> Fibre something...

ChilliBob

Hey guys,
We're on Virgin Media at the moment paying around 20-22 or so per month (my partner pays, this is a guess!), and we want to leave them - the issues we've had with connection dropouts, continuous pings giving packet loss of between 5-10% on regular occurrences etc.  When it's working well it is fast though. We had plus net broadband before and it was woefully poor and slow.

Shell Energy 36mb - I'm dubious of Shell, never heard of them as a provider, and some pretty shonky ratings. Thoughts from people on here?
Vodafone - 62mb - 20.93 - Seems like it has better ratings and is more reliable?-  Again, thoughts?

Is there any more scientific way to do this? - Like any sites which collectively rank products by user submitted ping results, speed tests, and stuff like that? - Or is it just a case of choose a new deal, hope for the best

Oh and as we had Plusnet before we have the BT line and all that ready to go.

Any feedback much appreciated.

Neil_Jones

"user submitted pings" , speed checks and what not mean nothing.  They're just a snapshot of somebody's internet congestion at that point in time and doesn't actually tell you anything.  It's like asking about somebody's energy usage moving into a house they used to live in.  Interesting, but totally irrelevant to you as you may use more or less.

Speeds are "up to", doesn't mean you will get them.  If you can't get 36Mb on a BT line you won't get 63.

ChilliBob

Yeah that's a fair point, I just know from experience of many zoom calls with work colleagues those who had connection issues a large majority were with virgin media, and the issue wasn't speed but was drop outs. Which with both my and my partner wfh for the foreseeable I'm keen to avoid! 

Neil_Jones

Zoom and Teams always drops out in my experience regardless of the provider, especially on Wifi and is usually a wifi capacity issue (which is not a provider problem as such).  If you can make the calls using a wired connection from your device to the router it'll help.  However these video calls even drop out when they use them as two-ways on TV shows and what not so I think it will be par for the course unfortunately.

matelodave

We still get drop outs and freezing on Zoom & Teams & Whatsapp etc and we've got a BT Fibre to the Home (FTTP) connection running at 76mbit/s, so changing suppliers wont necessarily give you an improved service, in fact it might get worse and then you'll be signed up for 12-24 months.

Bear in mind that moving from Virgin to almost any other suppliers will still be using the same Openreach infrastructure as your poor PlusNet service. Whatever they offer will be similar and limited to whats is available so unless there have been significant improvements (like FTTP or FTTH) then you may still get the same. 

ChilliBob

All good points, comparing vm to plus net though, whilst plus net was much slower it was much more reliable. I was rebooting the vm box daily before Christmas! 

I'm not expecting corporate grade lines for 20 quid a month clearly, it just seemed odd how big drop outs and issues always seemed to be vm related, as if their infra or contention had changed or something compared to non cable 

JJ_Egan

As above with BT FTTP really the nearest to VM cabling .

ChilliBob

Any opinions on shell vs voda? Or is it the same infra rebadged? 

wongataa

ChilliBob said:

Any opinions on shell vs voda? Or is it the same infra rebadged? 

Everyone apart from Virgin use the Openreach network so connection speeds etc are pretty much the same with all of them.  Different providers will have different backhaul systems that can have different effects.

ChilliBob

Pretty much as I thought. So there will be differences between Shell and Voda but probably not tons. Virgin have just offered double speed for only £2 more per month, I've heard mutterings from people that the newest router can help with drop out issues? - Not sure if anyone here has any thoughts on that?

matelodave

Try doing as Neil suggest and run a cable between the router and the computer rather than relying on wifi and see if that improves it.  If it does then consider changing wifi channels (use something like wifi analyser to see how much congestion/interference there is around you). You could also try moving your router closer to your computer.

I use 5GHz for our stuff at home and get the full 76mbit/s on a speed test whereas, even up close to the router the best I can mange is around 46Mbit/s using 2.4GHz.

New routers are generally getting better than those that are now several years old so if you've had yours for several years it might be worth considering changing it especially if the direct cable link suggestion makes a significant improvement.