Virgin Cable for Skype and Gaming?

Hi everyone,

I have been having massive problems with my current broadband ADSL2+ service. Have been thinking of switching over to cable.

How is Virgin cable for gaming pings, youtube video streaming / iPlayer, and also Skyping? I'm thinking of getting the line rental + 30Mb service. The only major downloads are probably the 720p youtube streams and also I like to experiment with Ubuntu releases sometimes, and perhaps Steam-downloads for new games once every 3 months or so.

Will I hit any usage caps or throttling with this kind of usage? And are pings stable enough to play decently?

I very much appreciate your advice and experiences,

Thanks so much,

Ping stability is very much down to the local area,

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5139-virgin-media...

Download more than 3.5GB between 4pm and 9pm and your speeds are halved.

Playing a game should never trigger this sort of limit, but the Steam and Ubuntu stuff may well do.

In terms of personal recommendation I would say Virgin Media is fine for downloading and ok for streaming (hopefully) but if a serious online gamer then they are not the best.

Hi thanks for the info.

Yeah not really a serious gamer, just play every so often when I get some free time.

As I say the ubuntu stuff is only like once a year when I feel like experimenting.

Otherwise major data usage is iplayer and youtube at 720p.

Is anyone else wiling to share their experiences with Virgin cable internet?

Thanks in advance

Have a look through their gaming forum for real world experience:- https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Computers-Gamin...

EDIT: And also look at the latest Ofcom report for latencyjitter etc

Edited by deleted (Wed 24-Oct-12 20:11:27)

I have a very good VM 100Mbps connection with low latency and jitter (excellent for gaming according to my teenage son), but from what I have seen here and elsewhere my situation appears to be the exception rather than the rule.
But you never know, you might get lucky like me
(My graph)

You don't say what sort of speeds you get on your current ADSL2+ service. For me it is a no-brainer to go with VM because even half-speed on their 30Mbps package would be better than ADSL2+.

And should be about 90 minutes of HD video to keep you busy while waiting for cap to lift

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Download more than 3.5GB between 4pm and 9pm and your speeds are halved.

On 100mbps that's a whole 13 minutes of use..

You get more on 100Mbps and half of 100Mbps is still 50Mbps.

The problem with cable for gamers/voip is mostly high jitter and sometimes packet loss. The problem for streaming is often congested links - people have been complaining about buffering on Youtube for months and months.

Thanks for the reply

I was on upto 8meg service for years, got steady sync at 5+meg down for that period. No problem with Skyping across continents and gaming, and youtube streaming was smooth. Solid DL speeds for game patches and stuff. No issues whatsoever.

Since July I'm stuck at ~2meg after some radio interference from someone down the street is blocking my ADSL signal. I've been forced back to the world of buffering video, slow web page loading, and ping skyrocketing when anyone else in the house is loading a web page. Ironically, last time I had speeds this low, youtube was streaming at ultra-low res so I didn't get buffering from that anyway!!!

BT aren't bothering to investigate/fix it, and O2 don't seem to be interested in chasing it up despite probably 20 or more phone calls about it from me. Worst part is that at the cabinet BT OpenReach tells me the sync speed is 9meg. House is 500m from the cabinet. Sigh.

Thanks so much

Thanks a lot for the info

I'm moving away from Virgin Media as their throttling, terrible latency and jitter, abysmal streaming media peering (as I write this I'm getting 70KB/sec from YouTube) and £30/month subscription are simply not acceptable in 2012.
I've *never* had a good experience with VM for gaming, not even from day 1, and I attempted to get thing rectified for about a month or two initially but gave up when I didn't see anything changing. I bought ADSL with Be for gaming and forgot about it.

Now that FTTC has arrived in my area I'm moving to Sky. A few friends also went with Sky FTTC and say it's excellent, and despite halving my theoretical bandwidth, my throughput and latency should be usable.

I'm in the RG12 postcode area, by the way.

I would suggest you ask your immediate neighbours who have VM for their view. Maybe ask them if you could run a few speed / latency tests. (for the price of a pint).
Make sure they are using a wired connection to their router / modem.

My experiences of VM are very positive with no problem with HD stream from iPlayer or Netflix. Online games play well and no problems with Skype.

It is very much down to you local network segment and how utilised it is.

It is certainly true that a good ADSL line will give better jitter but mine is typically < 7ms.

Some say its good, other say its bad, my personal opinion being on Virgin Media 100MBit, when its good its good, when its bad its terrible. When its good i can connect 4 computers all streaming video while im playing games, and everything is good. When its bad i cant even google. Gaming is out of the question. As other posters state. its very area dependent and its worth going on the virgin media forums to see what news there is for your area, search your post code or town name, and see what error posts there are. For my area there are currently people talking of issues.