VM cable potential speeds?

Hi friends..

How can I check potential d/l and u/l speed with VM cable at an address I am planning to move to?

Speeds shouldn't vary according to area. Barring a fault you'll get full speed for whichever package you purchase.

There's no distance issue like there is with ADSL.

Unlike DSL lines that vary with distance from the exchange/cabinet, VM cable connections always provide the connection speed you buy (actually just a little over in the case of download speeds). However, actual data throughput will vary depending on how many subscribers there are in your immediate area and how they use it.
A lot of areas are over-subscribed and suffer from poor data speeds at peak times. Other areas suffer one or two 'bad' users who insist on downloading the internet all day, every day, and unfortunately VM appear unwilling to tackle this because they prefer to market their connections as 'unlimited'.
Your 'area' can be as small as a block/street/postcode, so realistically the only way to know how good your connection is going to be is to try it - they do offer a money back guarantee.
You might be lucky (like me) and have very good throughput, or you might be unlucky (like my daughter) and have big issues at peak times.

Edited by Daemon66 (Tue 15-Oct-13 09:50:44)

VM fixed all the congestion areas then?

I think they forgot to do mine. These are my SamKnows overall daily averages for the last week on my 60Mbps connection...

Downstream Throughput
Date Average (Mbps)
2013-10-15 33.08
2013-10-14 31.77
2013-10-13 43.18
2013-10-12 52.26
2013-10-11 49.25
2013-10-10 47.42
2013-10-09 47.57
2013-10-08 42.75

I'll be back home most of the time soon so maybe I'll see what they have to say on the forum about it. I'm not desperately concerned as it's pretty cheap thanks to a retentions deal.

Does FTTC suffer any significant congestion or does it deliver sync speed most of the time? What about cheap options such as TT? What about ADSL these days? Since moving to cable I've lost touch and tbh interest in broadband quality for other options.

DSL has the advantage of the service to the end user being dedicated rather than shared (as with cable and satellite).


ADSL of all flavours is uncontended back to the exchange.

FTTC is uncontended back to the cabinet. The cabinet connects to the aggregation node, which provides (multiple) gigabit connections to the handover node. At the handover node, BT Wholesale and any other networks present (which may include TalkTalk, Sky and Zen) connect with (multiple) gigabit links.

FTTP uses GPON - as I understand it, shared between up to 8 or up to 12 connections. This optical network connects to the aggregation node - then it's the same as FTTC. The optical network is compatible with 10GPON - indeed, both flavours can be deployed on the same optical network at the same time.


I've never noticed any visible contention or latency spikes on my Zen FTTC service (via BT Wholesale - Zen do not have presence at the relevant handover node) except for the three evenings three weeks ago where my connection was affected by a BT Wholesale network issue. I have a monitor running on my gateway, and have a thinkbroadband quality monitor running as well - the link to today's graph is in my signature.

In reply to a post by David_W:

ADSL of all flavours is uncontended back to the exchange.

It also has the disadvantage of the physical line quality depending on Openreach. It was a line fault that remained unfixed after 5 visits that pushed me to cable. I'd hope that I'd get a different physical connection after 4 years away but it's the worry that I may get either the same or another faulty pair which is beyond the wit of Openreach to fix that is keeping me on cable.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Tue 15-Oct-13 11:56:23)

thanks for all replies..
that opens up more options for me to move home..

i had to avoid certain nice areas as its not fibre enabled.. but i note those are VM cabled areas...Great!!

In reply to a post by kwikbreaks:

In reply to a post by David_W:

ADSL of all flavours is uncontended back to the exchange.

It also has the disadvantage of the physical line quality depending on Openreach.

Indeed. Ultimately, you pay your money and you take your choice.


It was oversubscription issues that drove me from cable broadband to Zen ADSL when this area was DSL enabled ten years ago, but I cannot comment on cable broadband here since.

Zen is a much better fit for our needs than Virgin - we have a routed IP block on a connection used for business purposes. Virgin Media can only provide this as part of a Virgin Media Business product, which is much more than we pay Zen each month.


For many people, Virgin's consumer broadband is a good match to their needs and is always worth considering when available. It's certainly a good choice when the local BT metallic pairs are poor. We're blessed with a decent line - 14/1 Mbit/s on ADSL2+ and the full 80/20 Mbit/s on FTTC. The one fault we had was traced to dodgy crimps in a damp distribution point, which was fairly quickly found and fixed (new crimps and new dessicant packs in the DP).

Unfortunately, ADSL and FTTC depend on often historic infrastructure of variable quality, though the FTTC deployment is enabling for future deeper fibre deployment.

In reply to a post by David_W:

We're blessed with a decent line - 14/1 Mbit/s on ADSL2+ and the full 80/20 Mbit/s on FTTC. The one fault we had was traced to dodgy crimps in a damp distribution point, which was fairly quickly found and fixed (new crimps and new dessicant packs in the DP).

Did that fault become apparent when you changed to vdsl?

In reply to a post by 4M2:

In reply to a post by David_W:

We're blessed with a decent line - 14/1 Mbit/s on ADSL2+ and the full 80/20 Mbit/s on FTTC. The one fault we had was traced to dodgy crimps in a damp distribution point, which was fairly quickly found and fixed (new crimps and new dessicant packs in the DP).

Did that fault become apparent when you changed to vdsl?

No - it was a sudden drop of around a third in the downstream sync speed on ADSL2+. It took some perseverance by Zen and, I think, three engineer visits, before the fault was found and fixed.

What protocol / technology does cable use instead of ADSL? Is it TCP/IP over Ethernet?

No it's called DOCSIS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

This - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fibre-coaxial - shows how the components hang together between the consumer's modem via an optical node back to the CMTS at the local head end.

The guy asked about potential speeds. Every VM line can potentially hit maximum speed unless there's a problem. Actual speeds are obviously a different matter.

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-Oct-13 19:23:33)

ok fair enough

I think most dsl isps have improved significantly since we both moved to cable.

traffic shaping almost gone, visible contention much decreased. On BT I did see some visible contention early 2013 the time when they started true unlimited, but my guess is they did some network upgrades pretty fast as since march onwards I havent seen any visible contention except that one night on my tbb graph with ios updates.

Also peering quality is vastly improved on my BT connection over what I had on VM. Speeds from all EU locations I use are as fast as UK locations.

Sounds like I might need to reconsider ADSL or maybe FTTC. The thing is since retiring and getting a holiday caravan I'm only home for about half the year and cost is obviously more of a consideration than when I was working. The cheapest ADSL/FTTC option by far appears to be TalkTalk and their FTTC is still more than I'm paying for 60Mbps on VM.

TT has always had a pretty poor reputation for support but I don't see complaints about the service once it is working - my fear is could I risk them on a possibly dodgy phone line - it was an HRDIS which never got fixed despite 5 callouts each of which claimed to have swapped out a different line segment for a new pair apart from one who said he'd remade the joints at the top and bottom of the pole and the first who ran a new drop cable. The last said report it through the ISP as an ADSL engineer would have better diagnostic kit. The problem there was that O2 support was pretty much useless - my complaint was about the noise on speech. Their initial response was to set a massive target noise margin which clearly just reduced sync and made no difference to the noise. When I called back again they offered to replace the router (???) but refused to call BT. At that point I ordered cable and cancelled the ADSL and BT phone line.

that will always be the problem with dsl, you at the mercy of the line and if its a problem then have to deal with the openreach fault system, some isps seem better than others in dealing with these problems, plusnet seem good at line faults and they are cheap. BT on the other hand are firmly in the "if you higher than the estimated speed with no instability then no fault".

To give you more hope, you may remember on adsl I had a horrific service, as you have been a regular for a while the same time as me on these forums. the problems I had on adsl have not been present on my FTTC service, so the engineer who told me it was E-side was probably right. I am on 6db fast path.

Trouble is I suspect the cable run from the top of the pole to the bottom. The bloke who remade the connections there told me the cable was poor and that he'd logged a request for it to be replaced. Every other section was supposedly swapped for a different pair. I have no idea it the pole cable was ever replaced.

SamKnows figures and the TBB chart all point to oversusbscription on my VM connection but not really dire so at the price I'm paying I'll probably stick with cable unless it gets worse.