Virginmedia for working from home?

hi,

I currently have ADSL and its a bit on the slow side. I get around 10MB which is fine for most things, Hd youtube etc but i know the average speed is slightly higher these days, around 12MB?.. anyway i need to work from home more often and I have a decision to make.

1) go with business fiber 80/20

or

2) Get virginmedia business 50MB

Now My exchange was in the last 19, and checking my exchange it says we get VDSL end of october. I get 10MB on ADSL2 so I should get around 50MB on FTTC?.

I know various companies offer business packages, and as it happens I know I can get VirginMedia in this area. Many moons ago I had the residential cable and it was pretty bad in terms of over subscription on my UBR. This was back in the day of 10MB connections with SB5100s.

I think things might have moved on now?, also with the business virgin media packages I _think_ you dont get lumped in with the residential guys so shouldn't feel the pain so much even if the UBR is over subscribed, right?.

Oddly there is VERY little info on public forums on the business connection side of things, plenty on the residential. I've been toying with the ideal of getting 120MB residential and because thats the top tier perhaps it wont be as bad as the lower down packages.

Does anyone have an experiences they want to share please?. I'll be remote desktoping to work, some SSH too.

Edited by deleted (Mon 21-Oct-13 18:03:28)

The speed you get on ADSL2+ cannot be used to estimate the FTTC speeds, that is down to your distance from the green street cabinet sample range versus speed table at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband....

SSH is really all about latency and no packet loss, which the FTTC will most likely beat Virgin on, and even the 10 Mbps ADSL2+ probably can. The higher speeds are only an issue if you need to move large chunks of data up and down the connection.

Thanks for the reply. I've found some of the stuff I tunnel over SSH is bandwidth heavy. So whilst you are correct SSH in itself is more about latency, the stuff i plan to tunnel in ssh is.

For example I will be tunneling RDP over it for the windows boxes I connect to, and also some X11 stuff from my box at work. Oddly I've found that some things I run on the linux box (mostly Java clients) tunnel poorly over SSH. Hence why I want to upgrade to something faster than vanilla ADSL2.

I've seen that chart for FTTC speeds, considering i'm getting 10MB on an all copper line from house to cab, to exchange then I'd imagine I should get a vastly greater connection where the lions share of the line is fiber (to the cab).

I'm still around 200 meters to the cab, but who knows how the copper's routed to me; as there are a few streets between me and the cab. I dont think i can use "as the crow flies" to estimate speed

Still odd that there is so little talk about the commercial cable solutions VM provide around the interwebs and on here. Either they are really good (and hence no noise) or very few people use them?.

Edited by deleted (Mon 21-Oct-13 18:41:09)

If it was me, I'd be edging for both connections anyway...
Why? When one breaks I can still work, though without the nice bits like static IP etc but can still be productive.

The upload on the 120 should be fairly good, but FTTC will probably beat it and be lower in price, but if working from home everyday the savings on travel mean running the two would make sense.

The business side for all providers is a lot smaller market segment, and there is a tendency to talk in person, rather than on Internet forums.

thanks for the advice. I dont think i could justify (to work) getting both, the whole point being that if its a business package then the turn around to getting it fixed should be much quicker than a residential package. i wont be working everyday, its every now and again. a few days a month if that, its more so I can do work on the servers at work out of core hours on a fast connection.

Sometimes when things break bad (i.e. lose all network connectivity to a server), I have to connect to the Dell KVM at the datacenter and thats one example where speed is a failing in the current setup I have.

The static IP is important for punching through the firewall at work, but thus far i've done without and at a push could do the same.

The issue is upload speed, reliability and a very distant third cost.

It boils down to Virgin Medias ability to supply the 50MB speed they quote, knowing that their network is creaking at the seams (from reading on this forum and others), and if they segregate their business users away from the hordes of heavy downloaders. Obviously their 50MB package is much slower than their top tier package on the residential side, but it should be a better package for my needs.

The other chink in the armour for the vm solution is the inability to run the box in modem mode, which might make things trick if their modems dont support DMZ's,

My current setup has ADSL modem from ISP in bridge mode and the linux gateway at home acting the firewall/gateway. Has worked really well for me so far, with the speed being the only issue.

Edited by deleted (Mon 21-Oct-13 19:58:47)

You might want to consider whether your "up speed" is important to you.

We aren't getting much more than 3 Mbps on our business 50 Mbps VM service, whereas Infinity 2 might well give you towards 18 Mbps up...

Edited by John_Gray (Mon 21-Oct-13 20:41:03)

If I remember rightly 3Mb is the correct upload for 50Mb business broadband.

Holy smokes thats terrible. Odd that its so bad compared to the 120MB residential package. which is why i'm thinking of going down that route.

Shame they dont offer a 120MB cable solution for home office use.

I thought it might be at least 50/6 infact i thought at a minimum cable upload was 10% of DL speed, this is almost 5%

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If it was me, I'd be edging for both connections anyway...
Why? When one breaks I can still work, though without the nice bits like static IP etc but can still be productive.

That's why I had both virgin media 120 Meg and ADSL2+ 16 Meg (backup) with both connection. (waiting for FTTC to go live next year)