Considering Virgin Media .. here's my situation ..

Hi all.

Been an O2 LLU customer for sometime now, and have had a decent 12Mb download which has been unmetered and pretty reliable.

Moving to a new house (new build) which has a new exchange with limited LLU options..
TalkTalk only, but does have VM available.

My usage profile is .. work from home (so spend many hours connected to office via VPN), and often FTPing images around.
iTunes user - including films.

Is VM traffic profiled/monitored/capped?

Performance is pretty important.

The bundle pricing looks good ... I pay about £100 for O2, Sky (sports), BT.

Thanks for any comments.
Ian.

VM Cable?

The 100Mb/s package only has P2P shaping. All other packages have throttling and shaping.

Thanks for the quick reply ..

Yes it should be VM Cable ...

P2P shouldn't be an issue as I don't do any of that - I only use FTP.

Is there a site with more details about the throttling and shaping on the various packages?

http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.contr...
http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.contr...

Just found this on ..
Broadband: Virgin Media offers the fastest broadband download speeds widely available to UK consumers.
1Acceptable use policy: Acceptable use policy applies. Traffic Management operates from 4pm to 9pm and 10am to 3pm to ensure a consistent user experience.

The link for more details is broken though!!
http://shop.virginmedia.com/content/allyours/en_gb/h...

Another question if I may ...
I have my own email service + domain on 1and1 - are there any restrictions on accessing their IMAP/SMTP services for email?

O2 made me access SMTP on an alternative port number for example..

Thanks.

So according to this table
Usage Table
the 50Mb XXL package gets no shaping or restrictions at all ?
(Which is the package I would go for)

I'm on the lowest 10Mb Virgin package
I use email and the admin facilities of 1and1 for a charity I'm involved with.
POP and SMTP are at default settings on ports 25 and 110 and I can use email both ways.
If I am going to be transferring files I tend to do that mainly after midnight now as Virgin do operate a capping system, and if you breach it you really do know as everything grinds to almost a halt and stays that way for a few hours.
I edit music shows for hospital radio and transfer the finished audio between home and the station PC's regularly.

Out of date. Ignore the Google results.

Thanks for all the replies.

Have spoken to virgin who have confirmed I would be able to get the 100 Mb option as well.

I've asked what their best deal is if I go for an all in package, anyone managed to get something extra out of virgin?

Current offer looks good to include
free installation, free multi-room, free HD, free activation, free service & repair.

I have the VIP package with the 100Mb and am very happy with it. Good luck with your new install.

Ian

If you go through quidco you can get £60 cashback (I think).

No, there's no restrictions.

I'm on 50mbit, I host a vent server, a web server and an email server and a minecraft server all relatively low traffic but all operate on normal ports and work very well.

I don't know of anyone offering speeds comparable to virgin media, the only real downside of VM is they have some heavily over subscribed nodes so if you're unlucky and live in a high traffic area you might see some nasty contention until they upgrade capacity at that node.

I get full line speed more or less all the time on my 50mbit connection which is impressive, I push a lot of data because of large steam downloads and almost constant RDP connection to work, so it's an excellent service for heavy users.

In reply to a post by anon123456:

No, there's no restrictions.

I'm on 50mbit, I host a vent server, a web server and an email server and a minecraft server all relatively low traffic but all operate on normal ports and work very well.

I don't know of anyone offering speeds comparable to virgin media, the only real downside of VM is they have some heavily over subscribed nodes so if you're unlucky and live in a high traffic area you might see some nasty contention until they upgrade capacity at that node.

I get full line speed more or less all the time on my 50mbit connection which is impressive, I push a lot of data because of large steam downloads and almost constant RDP connection to work, so it's an excellent service for heavy users.

This is good to hear, and having spoken to work colleagues who use VM reflects their views that some get great speed, and other have experienced pretty slow performance and complete dropouts when trying to use iPlayer HD during peak times.

Contention still exists clearl in some situations.

Out of interest ... do Virgin publish their upgrade plans at all?
Or provide visiblity of service issues?

Cheers,
Ian.

I've a rock solid 30Mb cable connection, with all the other trimmings like tivo+ (which is *amazing* after xx years with only a VHS box) and there's a phone line in here too, somewhere�

Really happy - and my 1&1 email/web service works happily with no restrictions.

In reply to a post by Ian__H:

In reply to a post by anon123456:

No, there's no restrictions.

I'm on 50mbit, I host a vent server, a web server and an email server and a minecraft server all relatively low traffic but all operate on normal ports and work very well.

I don't know of anyone offering speeds comparable to virgin media, the only real downside of VM is they have some heavily over subscribed nodes so if you're unlucky and live in a high traffic area you might see some nasty contention until they upgrade capacity at that node.

I get full line speed more or less all the time on my 50mbit connection which is impressive, I push a lot of data because of large steam downloads and almost constant RDP connection to work, so it's an excellent service for heavy users.

This is good to hear, and having spoken to work colleagues who use VM reflects their views that some get great speed, and other have experienced pretty slow performance and complete dropouts when trying to use iPlayer HD during peak times.

Contention still exists clearl in some situations.

Out of interest ... do Virgin publish their upgrade plans at all?
Or provide visiblity of service issues?

Cheers,
Ian.

VM do publish rough update plans, they have a 100mbit rollout plan for their network, you can find the PDF linked from this page - http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband/up-to-100mb.html

They also have a new page online which gives you approx dates for the speed doubling they're doing later in the year

http://doublespeed.virginmedia.com/

It's just one of those things, either you're in a bad area or you're not, I've been lucky and been in a good area since I upgraded to 50mbit when it first launched and never had speed issues, obviously some people have different experiences, you can try their services and quit penalty free in the first 30 days I think, check their terms & conditions out.

Ian,

You be mad not to use the Quidco £142.50 cashback offer for new Virgin Media customers!!!

I just moved to Virgin from O2 LLI and managed to take up this offer. Activation and installation was completed yesterday and I am a very happy bunny on a rock solid 50mb connection

TD