Are Virgin (Business) that bad? Or stick with Zen?

New premises. Options are Zen FTTC at around 75 down, business connection £41 + VAT or Virgin available at up to 500 but a 350/40 might be fine at £50 + VAT.

Currently have Zen, they are good. Stick or go to Virgin? Virgin have a poor reputation, is the business service better/worst?

Whatever, we need a fixed IP.

Have a look at this post, the general impression is that it's not good and the Static IP is unreliable.

Virgin Business

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

Have a look at this post, the general impression is that it's not good and the Static IP is unreliable.

Virgin Business

Yes, I saw that. Seems odd. We'd need more feedback, is it widespread, just this user or (as I've heard say) something affecting a certain area? (My impression is some VM areas are better/worst than others depending on the original franchise and how modern its network is).

If you need static IP's on the business service these are delivered over a GRE tunnel which has issues.

I don't think I've ever read a positive post about Virgins business service (the DOCSIS based business service that is).

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

If you need static IP's on the business service these are delivered over a GRE tunnel which has issues.

I don't think I've ever read a positive post about Virgins business service (the DOCSIS based business service that is).

OK, thanks, interesting. I don't know if the street I'm looking at is DOCSIS or whatever VM might call proper fibre. Can I tell?

Even the FTTP stuff is DOCSIS using RFOG (radio frequency over glass).
The business service shares the exact same infrastructure as the residential service.
If Virgin is available in the street then it's DOCSIS and will have the GRE tunnel for static IP's on the business service.

My comment about the DOCSIS based business service was because Virgin have 2 types of business service.
They also have their leased line products which is completely independent of the DOCSIS network and apparently quite good.

Shoulda asked TrustPilot before bothering folk here... Spoiler Alert: It ain't good.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

comment about the DOCSIS based business service was because Virgin have 2 types of business service.
They also have their leased line products which is completely independent of the DOCSIS network and apparently quite good.

Right, thanks. Just a small business, no need for a leased line.

I haven't really paid attention to Virgin in the past as it's never been an option in any of our streets before. Obviously I've picked up they don't have much of a reputation but I'll need to go and find out about DOCSIS. But maybe not!

Not sure if VM lease fiber from TalkTalk business or if it's the other way round but we had a 100Mbps VM business leased line and a 100Mbps TalkTalk Business leased line and when there was local outage, both went down.

We've now got TTB and BT leased lines, with a chosen (different) route back to the local pop / BT exchange.

At my previous work we had multiple point to point VM business leased lines and they were good. Support was generally ok. We paid for a decent SLA so they were generally 'on it' as soon as we called with an issue.

Edited by wolvesmad (Wed 26-Jan-22 12:36:05)

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Virgin have a poor reputation

Understatement of the century! Had a DOCSIS service from them for a year, I was not satisfied.

If you're considering doing business with them, keep detailed records of correspondence, performance and faults.

As a general recommendation to a small business I would say that the small claims court process is very efficient these days and worth familiarising yourself with.

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

At my previous work we had multiple point to point VM business leased lines and they were good. Support was generally ok. We paid for a decent SLA so they were generally 'on it' as soon as we called with an issue.

Seconded, VM's Business Leased lines (e.g. 100/100 symmetric) are very good as you would expect for the price.

They are not normally available to domestic areas where coax cable (DOCSIS) is in the ground, or the new project Lighting areas that are still DOCSIS but using fibre optics instead of coax. (RFoG).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

At my previous work we had multiple point to point VM business leased lines and they were good. Support was generally ok. We paid for a decent SLA so they were generally 'on it' as soon as we called with an issue.

Seconded, VM's Business Leased lines (e.g. 100/100 symmetric) are very good as you would expect for the price.

They are not normally available to domestic areas where coax cable (DOCSIS) is in the ground, or the new project Lighting areas that are still DOCSIS but using fibre optics instead of coax. (RFoG).

Funny you say that, i'm in a coax only area and I am eligible in getting a leased line with no cable pull's back to data centres required, i'm in a very residential area but there must be some spare fibre

At a guess close to where the fibre to coax conversion happens for a few streets. The coax network is always described as Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) in cable terms.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The coax network is always described as Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) in cable terms.

I am aware of that, i was trying to make it clear that I didn't have any existing leased lines

In the era BC (Before Covid) I got involved to help with installing internet and other networking at a church in the ML4 area.

It had been booked as a Virgin service. I think from memory it was their 350Mbps service. To include multiple fixed public IPs.

Cut a very long story short, it was a nightmare. After a long time, we got it changed to a single IP service. As others have mentioned in this thread, Virgin use a tunnel procedure to run their multi-IP service over the basic service. To say it's flaky is a huge understatement.

I would never get involved again in trying to make that work. Life's too short.

My take on it is that Virgin's service is such a mish-mash of services from all the various companies they have taken over. There seems a lot of inconsistency.

That's definitely not true.
I manage an MPLS network for a large company that use VM.
They have multiple sites that have a Leased Line with a Cable Modem backup circuit.

Thanks
Dan

The problem is as with most things :-users don't post about a product or service usually unless they are having issues so a company with a large customer base may get more neg comments than a small company but in reality the %age of folk getting a poor service from the large company may be lower than the ones from the small" better" company.
I am always wary of things like trustpilot also because I know from experience they ask you to review things too soon after purchase, often before the euphoria of buying something new has waned or before initial teething probs are sorted, honest opinions are best got from the folk who have bought the product or service and have used it for a while, I know that can be difficult,rather than repeated hearsay on the web

Edited by steve195527 (Thu 27-Jan-22 09:52:11)

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

That's definitely not true.
I manage an MPLS network for a large company that use VM.
They have multiple sites that have a Leased Line with a Cable Modem backup circuit.

Thanks
Dan

Yeah when I was going through leased line motions a year or so ago with 2Connect, they were planning on using VM tails. When it was surveyed the nearest fibre node was about 300 metres up the road. The VM cabinet is probably 60 or 70 metres away.

There was never any restriction on the fibre leased line as you say. The entire vicinity is fully VM02 HFC cabled.

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

That's definitely not true.
I manage an MPLS network for a large company that use VM.
They have multiple sites that have a Leased Line with a Cable Modem backup circuit.

Good to know its available to smaller sites. I hope they don't need to use that backup Cable Modem service if its using the GRE tunnel for static IPs. So many reports of pain on that service.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

That's definitely not true.
I manage an MPLS network for a large company that use VM.
They have multiple sites that have a Leased Line with a Cable Modem backup circuit.

Good to know its available to smaller sites. I hope they don't need to use that backup Cable Modem service if its using the GRE tunnel for static IPs. So many reports of pain on that service.

They have 41 sites using Cable Modem as their main MPLS connection with no issues.
It is only the up to 50Mbps service as the contract was originally taken out in 2011 so that is probably why its not a problem.

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

They have 41 sites using Cable Modem as their main MPLS connection with no issues.
It is only the up to 50Mbps service as the contract was originally taken out in 2011 so that is probably why its not a problem.

Is that the business with GRE tunnel or the consumer with dynamic IP using a third party VPN solution? I assume the former for consistency?

It's an end to end MPLS IPSEC VPN network I believe.
At least that's what Virgin call it.

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

It's an end to end MPLS IPSEC VPN network I believe.
At least that's what Virgin call it.

Thanks, sounds different to what I my company tried a few years ago. Which is a good thing!

Touch wood it's pretty good.
Only really get the usual faults you may get on a broadband connection.
The benefit the Cable Modem sites have is it is usually fixed same day rather than having to wait for Openreach.

Thanks
Dan

Post deleted by seb

For what its worth (only just seen this thread) I took them up last April (2021)...
And had nothing but (minor) troubles ever since.

The connection is incredibly unstable - brief (but annoying) drop outs - that occur seemingly randomly in a 24 hour period - perhaps more over night but I want my systems up 24/7.
Normally only for a minute or two - but if that happens mid zoom or work, its incredibly frustrating!

I was on relatively slow FTTC (38Mbps) so 350/40Mbps was too good to turn down - but I wish I had. I'm stuck in a 18mo contract and ironically CityFiber announced FTTP build about 3 weeks after I joined virgin (its just gone live - guess where I'll be in a few weeks - 6/7mo left on contract or not - virgin will be assigned to a slow backup!)

I DO have the GRE tunnel for multiple (5) IP's (crazy way of doing things and I suspect the main cause of all the problems). Not least reducing MTU which does cause problems with some services (most are OK though).

The ping times and jitter are pretty dire (compared to FTTC and hopefully FTTP). ~30ms with no load, under load (download something or do a test on fast.com) and it drops like a stone >300ms and all over the place!. Jitter is all over the place too. Not great if you have any low latency requirements! I believe this is a well known DOCSIS problem. On my slow FTTC I consistently got under 25ms although never really felt the need to check it!

Also note I'm not really a business user but the business account but it was the only way I could get >1 static IP (potentially even one?) as I run multiple servers (www/vpn/email/etc.) at home for both work and non work purposes and have done for many (15+) years ... I've pretty much given up on that requirement now and will drop to 1 static IPv4 and one IPv6 subnet which I might be able to cope with, alone (mail might pose a problem). If not I'll be looking at A&A routed L2TP range (even at +£15 a month its cheaper than virgin for 1Gb/1Gb (or 900M/900M!) including the £15 for 8 IPs from A&A. Plus that 8 IPs would continue to work over the backup 4G connection I have been forced to implement since Virgin is so unreliable!

Oh and support is dire - although probably slightly better than the residential support - at least you can call them and they did answer quite quickly (couldn't help though!).

TLDR; The speed is tempting for sure (and nice when it works), but have a backup option (I'm not sure if their offer of 4G backup would work, I worked out my own solution!)

Thanks everyone for all your helpful replies.

Consensus quickly became apparent and we ordered another Zen line.