Horrendous service today in haringey

1. cpc2-dals19-2-0-gw.hari.cable.virginmedia.com 4.5% 90 952.9 626.1 118.8 1228. 225.1
2. hari-core-2a-ae4-626.network.virginmedia.net 22.2% 90 959.1 638.2 207.8 1267. 228.5
3. brnt-bb-1a-ae8-0.network.virginmedia.net 21.3% 90 950.4 639.0 112.5 1236. 214.5
4. brnt-bb-1c-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net 23.6% 90 947.2 630.5 172.7 1234. 227.5
5. brhm-bb-1c-ae8-0.network.virginmedia.net 20.2% 90 921.8 636.4 161.8 1325. 225.8
6. tcl5-ic-2-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net 65.2% 90 946.7 792.5 576.4 1251. 130.8

Been like this all day (and most sundays). Absolutely craptacular. Just moved from a flat with FTTC and this is woeful. Why anyone would choose virgin over FTTC is absolutely beyond me.

Edited by mr_mojo (Sun 09-Jun-13 23:44:41)

Shame it wasn't beyond you before you did it or haven't you been reading the VM forums?

I moved into this flat and there was already Virgin service with a contract left on it (expires in a couple of months). Just amazed at how bad the contention is, and this is with 8 downstream channels (the max the SH can take, I believe). Only 1 upstream channel though which may be causing the issue.

Either way, it's pretty damn awful. My phone is quicker...

Very odd. Looks like this is some crazy shaping or something going on:

Virgin media speedtest.net server: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2763180263.png (8ms ping, 30meg/1meg)

Ashford speedtest.net server (not VM hosted): http://www.speedtest.net/result/2763181021.png (horrendous)

Vodafone server: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2763183175.png

Anyone seen this before ?

It's not a local issue or they'd all be bad - must be their rubbish peering.

Is the contract with the landlord? Unless there is no BT line connected then you are stuck with VM.

Nah, it's a shared flat and they've been putting up with this for ages. It's surprising how loads of people I know of Virgin media think that 'this is the way the internet is at peak times'.

Anyone else in the area?

It's the way Virgin Media cable is everywhere - maximum takeup minimum maintenance

Yeah, im aware. I've had them before and it was always "bad" at peak times but this is more like dialup.

However, I restarted the SH a few times and seem to be on a different upstream channel now which seems a lot better.

Oddly, I have 8 downstream channels locked but only 1 upstream. That's a seriously asymmetric service. Does anyone know if I should be on bonded upstream? The double speed program says it will be done this month if that helps.

Your downstream pipe is 8x50Mbps and the upstream is 1x18Mbps and many areas are like that mine included. Once bonded upstreams (2x18Mbps) come in the upstream on packages will be increased to 10%. This is why just one or two torrent freaks evading the shaping can kill a network segment. It's also why FTTC knocks spots off cable - with FTTC you have no contention at all back to the fibre which serves each cabinet not an optical node serving many VM cabinets. It's probable that there is less contention post that too as I don't see much in the way of complaints about congestion on FTTC (mind you I don't spend all that long on BB forums these days)

Yeah, I understand. Hopefully by the end of the month the bonded upstream will be activated as per their timeline and waiting the last couple of months won't be as bad.

In answer to your question re FTTC contention, each of the cabinets (serving a maximum of either 144 or 288 lines - either inactive or active) has a symmetrical 10gig ethernet connection for backhaul.

Even in the absolutely unlikely situation that a 288 port cab had 288 active subscribers, everyone would still be getting about 35meg up and down allocated to them.

Yes I knew that with FTTC the initial backhaul offered a very high % of connection speed. I doubt that that sort of contention ratio exists all the way though. The usual problem with VM is their tiny local pipes and the high contention ratios they run at but as at least one of the speedtests showed full headline speeds it seems that in this case the problem is further back in the network and VM have form for running their peering links at levels that threaten to melt the fibre.

My area is problematic at times but cable + Vonage is a fair bit cheaper than FTTC. I might consider plain ADSL were it not that I've got used to 60Mbps most of the time (I tend to avoid peak times) and the fact that 5 Openreach visits failed to fix the line fault that lead to me switching to cable.

one note kwikbreaks.

in my days on VM it wasnt unusual for me to do repeated tests on one speedtest server and get random results, so eg. even just using the reccomended namesco server I might get 5 results in a row line this (on 30mbit service).

30
9
24
14
2

so to assess it as peering issues I would first make sure the fast result is repeatable, as it may not be.

True - massive speed variations are often encountered with high congestion - I got a bit carried away with the one showing decent speeds being hosted by VM. It was pretty much on the nail for download on 30 but the upstream was probably a bit low.

Even at 9.30am it seems to be all over the place.

http://grab.by/nukQ

Anyone seen this on torrents before?

If you mean you are using torrents to measure the speed you need to remember that VM use traffic shaping that will penalise torrents.

No, I'm not only but it's weird behaviour. It's absolutely [censored] again tonight, 200-500ms pings and stuff.

Total rubbish. No idea how they are going to compete going forward.

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

No idea how they are going to compete going forward.

Not very well. My area now has bonded upstreams and it hasn't made one jot of difference to the high jitter. My only reason for staying with them is that I now spend a lot of the time away from home and FTTC + a phone line would cost me quite a bit more.

That's not great to hear. Thursday night tonight:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2786656324.png

For what it's worth, bonded upstreams came online a few days ago and the service has been rock solid. Might buy us another few months of decent peak time service