A way to get faster speeds on VirginMedia ADSL

No excuse for starting this thread again as it may help some new to this forum...

At peak times Virgin ADSL max can drop speed dramatically.
Perhaps from several Mb to 100kb or less.

By dropping your connection (disconnect from the internet network icon in your tray) and reconnecting you can often increase your speed by a factor of 4 or more.
This assumes you are using the Speedtouch USB modem they normally supply. This will not affect your Profile in any way.

A useful device for quickly checking your ping times (related to your speed) is PingPlotter; a free program...

http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html (choose the bottom Freeware one to try).

You can select a few UK sites to test with; I often use www.bbc.net.uk which has a fairly good server at the other end.

You can also test your speed with...

http://st.tstools.co.uk/ (use the test 3, 3Mb one, as this similarly replicates the BT tester site by downloading multiple files at the same time)

http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ (which gives the most accurate result).

This method has been tried and tested on Virgin and proved to be a way of getting away from an overloaded connection. Apparently Virgin do not spread the load at peak times and some connections (BAMs) can get grossly overloaded and result in ping times of 250ms or worse, whereas at off peak times connections (even with interlacing) can be as low as 40ms.

You will find they normally begin with brnt-bam, brhm-bam, etc. and represent the location of the equipment.

You normally get allocated 4 of these to choose from but if you disconnect enough times you can get another 4 to choose from.

It only takes 20 seconds or so to disconnect and reconnect and if you are suffering speeds of 100kb or less it is a worthwhile exercise.
I have also occasionally gone from 1Mb to 5Mb using this method at peak times.

Good luck with this method.

Mike.


P.S. Please use this thread for comments and let the old one drop off the board, thanks.

______________________________________________________________________________
Mike (Semi-retired Radio & Electronics Engineer)
VirginMedia ADSLmax, up to 8Mb.

You either read my mind (see post down below), or, saw my post (where I couldn't be bothered to re-post all this info, and just hyperlinked to it), and thought it best it *was* all re-posted!!

My unknown BAM (nrth-t2core-a-ge-wan63.inet.ntl.com) was <100ms until 13:30.
Currently 239ms.
Time to fire up the script...
...
4mins later...
debug: You are on BAM watf-bam-1.inet.ntl.com
debug: Latency to it is 49ms
debug: It took 4 attempt(s) to find a good BAM
debug: I'll stick with this BAM... for now

NB
BAM's I went 'through' to get here:
(the one I started on) - 239
hers-bam-1.inet.ntl.com - 210
glfd-bam-1.inet.ntl.com - 209
(the one I ended on) - 49

I've been using the disconnect/reconnect trick for a while. In the last few days, every time I try to reconnect, I get the error message:
Error 0734: The PPP Link control protocol was terminated
but when I click Connect again, I get connected fairly quickly. This did not happen before. Any reason why?

I occasionally get an error message and the retry then works the second time.
I think this can happen if you don't wait around 10 seconds between disconnecting and then reconnecting again.

Mike.

______________________________________________________________________________
Mike (Semi-retired Radio & Electronics Engineer)
VirginMedia ADSLmax, up to 8Mb.

My monitoring shows that latency went to pot around 11am.
I noticed just after 1pm, and ran my script (to automate the drop/reconnect trick).

Short story - Didn't work.

There are pre-defined parameters in the script. eg. the definition of a 'good' BAM is one where latency is <70ms. However, during coding I thought that I should add in a fail-safe. So, after 10 disconnect/reconnect attempts it starts to 'raise the bar', it adds 10ms to the target time, and then does this on each subsequent attempt.

Here's the tail end of the logfile, which speaks for itself:-

debug: Target latency now 230ms
debug: Found a good BAM. Going to wait 10secs and try it again, just in case
debug: Average latency to this BAM is 216ms
debug: Best BAM I found on my travels was manc-bam-2.inet.ntl.com at 102ms
debug:
debug: You are on BAM 194.145.148.5
debug: Latency to it is 216ms
debug: It took 26 attempt(s) to find a good BAM
debug: I'll stick with this BAM... for now
debug: 21/10/2007 14:00:47

Things are no better.


21:25:53 Target latency now 240ms
21:25:53 Found a good BAM. Going to wait 10secs and try it again, just in case
21:27:17 BAM tracert=2 210 ms 218 ms 210 ms 194.145.148.5
21:27:17 Average latency to this BAM is 213ms
21:27:17 Best BAM I found on my travels was 194.145.148.68 at 190ms
21:27:17
21:27:17 You are on BAM 194.145.148.5
21:27:17 Latency to it is 213ms
21:27:17 It took 27 attempt(s) to find a good BAM
21:27:17 I'll stick with this BAM... for now
21:27:17 21/10/2007 21:27:17



Took my script 50mins to tell me what I already know:
The network is now so congested/overloaded, that there are NO good BAM's.

Leeds BAM 1 is the only one I could find that was good this evening.

Strange that all the others were around 200ms+ at 5pm.
Could be kids are home on half-term.

______________________________________________________________________________
Mike (Semi-retired Radio & Electronics Engineer)
VirginMedia ADSLmax, up to 8Mb.

At 5pm I was on brhm-bam-1.inet.ntl.com - but, my monitoring showed that it had 'bad' since mid-afternoon!!!

Ran my script, and 16mins later (5 attempts) it found one of the non-tracert'able BAM's - next hop - nrth-t2core-b-ge-wan63.inet.ntl.com @ 85ms. Not brilliant. But, more than good enough for my needs this evening (for now)!!

Best I can find at present is manc-bam-2.inet.ntl.com @ 76ms.
But, I swear even that is creeping up.