Any Speed Tests for Vivid 200 yet?

I've seen a few reports of speed tests on the new Vivid 200 upgrade but just wondering if TB are yet in a position to give any reports on how its going and what kind of speeds people are getting.

I'm not due to get mine for a few weeks yet but from what I've seen VM are doing the usual over-speed and actually giving around 210Mbps.

Plenty of them

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

But are these users getting those speeds most of the time?

Will have a peek again this evening at peak times and see if anyone is a regular tester for you all.

We've seen some fairly consistent results for it on our tester too but as with VM, that can vary region to region

http://speedtest.uno.net.uk/result/1017049/

I was upgraded a couple of days ago and the speed seems fairly constant at around 200 sometimes under but mainly just over. Very pleased so far .

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Nov-15 20:20:24)

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Found some from the same user

http://tbb.st/144658767345500126295
http://tbb.st/144641304711955130480
http://tbb.st/14465188923899466655
http://tbb.st/144654030009973910017
http://tbb.st/144658767345500126295
http://tbb.st/144661629416615350618

Looks quite good, even with the a peak time dip he's getting better than previous 152 speeds.

Thanks, looking forward to my upgrade even more now.

Some users of the TBB forum will still complain about losing 35mbps at peak times.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Some users of the TBB forum will still complain about losing 35mbps at peak times.

They will soon post in about 3 hours when they come on at 4pm.

lol what about those that lose 135Mbps?

or as recorded recently -188Mbps?

They should probably be looking at alternative providers.

Ahh the old "Not Happy [censored] Off" Approach, I suppose thats a professional way to look at it :/

I assume your not a customer of Virgin's or not affected by such issues... or live in decent proximity to an active FTTx network.

I'm sure you views would be different if you where in the shoes of some where the HFC network provided by Virgin is the next alternative to 2Mb DSL!

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4799228038
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4806897180

Been pretty constant today..Even on 152 it was always pretty consistent.

Nice, but just found out my upgrade has been delayed, now expected by end of the year

They should be a bit naffed off but we're not talking about major issues.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

but we're not talking about major issues.

Depends on the area though really doesn't it... specially when you consider that unlike a normal phone exchange a headend can cover a whole city in may cases...

and may not have the latest links or may be hanging off the back of another headend.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Depends on the area though really doesn't it... specially when you consider that unlike a normal phone exchange a headend can cover a whole city in may cases...

and may not have the latest links or may be hanging off the back of another headend.

Could you elaborate on these points a bit? Not sure I get what you're saying given how VM's network is built.

Yes, apologies, my response could have been worded better...

In my response to "no major issues", it depends on the area due to the availability of other services and with regards to comments about Virgin's network, some area's are covered by multiple headends, where some are covered by one...

There's also the the networks that have been upgraded with 10Gig links and some still hanging around the 1Gig link mark...

So for instance, the network I was covered by in Birmingham had 11/12 headends and that covered between a 25-35% of South Birmingham, where I'm living now the network has been plagued with capacity and various other issues for a good 5+ years.

However the network here has 7 headends covering the whole city (maybe equivalent to whole of South Birmingham)... so utilisation issues affect area's differently depending on the availability of services from other providers and the headend availability.

One thing that is odd though, the issues with the network local to me are despite there being near 100% FTTx availability and my previous network that copes very well has 50/50 availability with one of its main area's having no coverage by FTTx at all (and ADSL averages of around 3-5Mb/s)

Okay, understood.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

In my response to "no major issues", it depends on the area due to the availability of other services and with regards to comments about Virgin's network, some area's are covered by multiple headends, where some are covered by one...

This isn't actually a problem. Areas are covered by multiple hubsites, customers don't necessarily connect directly to headends, these are a slightly different beast from the hubsites where most of the CMTS are.

The amount of customers on a particular hubsite / headend isn't an issue as long as there's enough equipment in that hubsite / headend. It's about the number of CMTS and CMTS ports available more than anything else.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

There's also the the networks that have been upgraded with 10Gig links and some still hanging around the 1Gig link mark...

The VM network isn't like an Openreach exchange. Each CMTS has multiple 1Gb connections back to a pair of core network routers at the very least, and these backhauls are upgraded to 10Gb as required. It's very uncommon for there to be issues with backhaul between CMTS and core, and nearly as uncommon for there to be issues between core and backbone though not unknown.

There are no hubsites relying on 1Gb links. The links where the 1Gb and 10Gb connections from CMTS to core routers aggregate are 10, 40 or 100Gb.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

So for instance, the network I was covered by in Birmingham had 11/12 headends and that covered between a 25-35% of South Birmingham, where I'm living now the network has been plagued with capacity and various other issues for a good 5+ years.

I don't think Birmingham would need 11-12 headends or, for that matter, hubsites. Birmingham has 7 hubsites and a single headend as that's just how the network ended up being built.

The entire city of Leeds, about 3/4 the size of Birmingham lives off a single headend and a couple of hubsites, Leeds Seacroft and Leeds South, Middleton Grove. Seacroft is home to 24 CMTS, Leeds South 12.

Aztec West has 32 CMTS and covers Bristol and surrounds on its own. Reading, with 24, covers a good part of Berkshire and Hampshire on its own including Reading, Basingstoke, Newbury, Thatcham, Wokingham and Bracknell.

Neither 10Gb or 1Gb would be much use trying to backhaul a couple of hundred thousand customers. Many Virgin Media hubsites are not equivalent to a single Openreach exchange and the headend / core sites would be equivalent to the 21CN core nodes.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

However the network here has 7 headends covering the whole city (maybe equivalent to whole of South Birmingham)... so utilisation issues affect area's differently depending on the availability of services from other providers and the headend availability.

Headend availability is irrelevant to utilisation issues. What's in the hubsites and headends, alongside how deep fibre is, is what it's all about.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

One thing that is odd though, the issues with the network local to me are despite there being near 100% FTTx availability and my previous network that copes very well has 50/50 availability with one of its main area's having no coverage by FTTx at all (and ADSL averages of around 3-5Mb/s)

Your issues are purely a symptom of problems at the Crawley hubsite. They aren't related to anything at Croydon, your headend, or the backbone sites deeper into the VM network.

It seems I've used the wrong word to describe hub site and ubr...

Kings Norton (hubsite?) has 11 UBR's and they connect to Birmingham (headend?)

Is there any information you can share about Crawley?

Think I have in the past.

Parent site is Croydon, 5 x uBR 7246VXR for TiVo / other STBs, 2 x Cisco 10k for DOCSIS 3.

Issues provisioning new capacity due to aircon, space and power restrictions. Being sorted.

Also original network build not great, so node splits a plenty needed, however these had to wait until the space and power issues at the hubsite were resolved. Can't split nodes and reduce congestion if there's nothing to split them onto.

Once all done the next generation CMTS can start to come online allowing more downstream channels per segment.

Headends are basically where regional TV content is injected and where VoD servers live. For broadband's purposes it's wherever the core routers serving the hubsite live. The hubsite is where the feed from the headend, alongside that from the CMTS, is injected onto the HFC network for delivery to customers.

Fantastic bit of information thanks... have you nay idea of the current stages of progress or any expected dates...

I didn't realise that the UBR's where split by DOCSIS type... 2 UBR's for DOCSIS 3.0 don't sound a lot, specially when complaining customers are getting bumped up to faster speeds for free...

Apart from the capacity for capacity (hehe ) I knew about the networks issues with layout from the area manager... I wish they could of said something about the issues with physical capacity in the first place, it would of probably kept me a wee bit calmer about the situation.

I placed an order for a 50/3 service last night, so might do a few tests, but I'm not going to get involved like I did last time, I think I expected too much.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Areas are covered by multiple hubsites, customers don't necessarily connect directly to headends, these are a slightly different beast from the hubsites where most of the CMTS are.

I think this explains a little about my area, Doncaster has always been on a feed from Barnsley, it does not seem to have it's own head ?

Really interesting...

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

This isn't actually a problem. Areas are covered by multiple hubsites, customers don't necessarily connect directly to headends, these are a slightly different beast from the hubsites where most of the CMTS are.

The amount of customers on a particular hubsite / headend isn't an issue as long as there's enough equipment in that hubsite / headend. It's about the number of CMTS and CMTS ports available more than anything else.

If the CMTS are all co-located in a few hubsites, what does the path look like between the user and the CMTS? How much is fibre, how much is coax, and what kind of distances?

And ... what changes in that path when re-segmentation (of whatever variety) is needed? What bottleneck adjustments get made?

Got my 100 -> 150Mb upgrade today

http://www.speedtest.net/result/4818222465.png

Happy with that over wifi

Looks good...

When you compare that to the 200 meg package, is there really any point paying the extra £7 per month...

Unless your area is mint then no. not at all. 207 is nice but i'd be happy with that too

Pete, I got your direct message but I cannot reply to u for some reason.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Really interesting...If the CMTS are all co-located in a few hubsites, what does the path look like between the user and the CMTS? How much is fibre, how much is coax, and what kind of distances?

And ... what changes in that path when re-segmentation (of whatever variety) is needed? What bottleneck adjustments get made?

Answering point 1 the distance between hubsite and the end of the fibre, the fibre optic node somewhere in the neighbourhood, can go up to 100 miles in the specifications but, obviously, running it close to that limit is a bad idea due to propagation delay changing due to environment.

Certainly runs of 40km+ of fibre aren't uncommon.

Answering number two it depend on the construction of the network. It's basically variations of splitting a node, physically or logically, by addition of fibre, with each fibre then leading back to new line card capacity.

Physical splits involve building new nodes, which may need to be deeper into the coaxial network, like an Openreach type FTTRN set up. Logical ones are where a node has 2 or 4 coaxial trunks out and a single fibre pair in, delivering more fibre pairs to reduce the number of homes passed by each fibre pair.

There's another kind of split which is where a node is optically combined. If the fibre is pretty deep it makes sense to combine nodes optically and have a single line card port feeding both of them. That is split by removing the combining so that each node then has its own dedicated fibre to hubsite, and removing the combining at the hub so that each node has its own line card ports.

That a simplification, I didn't want to go into modular CMTS architecture, CCAP etc. It'll do

In reply to a post by TMCR:

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Areas are covered by multiple hubsites, customers don't necessarily connect directly to headends, these are a slightly different beast from the hubsites where most of the CMTS are.

I think this explains a little about my area, Doncaster has always been on a feed from Barnsley, it does not seem to have it's own head ?

As far as the broadband goes Doncaster and, indeed, Barnsley, are fed from Bradford.

EDIT: I should clarify both have their own hub sites with their own CMTS for the cable modems to connect to. The CMTS then go back to Bradford, and in turn Bradford will probably go to Leeds and Manchester to get onto the VM backbone.

9 brad-core-2b-ae17-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.254.42.254) 19.897 ms 20.077 ms *
10 donc-cmts-12.network.virginmedia.net (82.7.207.80) 23.170 ms 23.582 ms *


9 brad-core-2b-ae17-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.254.42.254) 19.970 ms 20.106 ms 20.298 ms
10 * * barn-cmts-01-ge01.network.virginmedia.net (81.97.83.133) 21.380 ms

Edited by deleted (Tue 10-Nov-15 18:05:55)

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

As far as the broadband goes Doncaster and, indeed, Barnsley, are fed from Bradford.

Before Telewest days it was Bradford Cable, that sums it up I guess.

I called and got them to up me 2 days ago, this is the start of some tests

New 200mbps Test Results

Have a try with this tester as well : http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest This is also a multi-thread test

Remember and select the ' Cable ' option when deciding connection type.

.....................

My Vivid connection atm: http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/1918100

There was a user where that test reported faster than us, but turned out there was a configuration issue on the Virgin Media connection, which was swamped when using 24 downloads at once.

6 downloads is more than enough for even a Gigabit connection

In case the issue is a Flash bottleneck our other tester at http://labs.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest is worth a go.

i get the same pattern of bandwidth on my networx bandwidth monitor graph as i get from the results using the dsl speed tester ..

it's the same when using the tbb one as well. the pattern on the graph on networx almost mirrors the ttb results graph. only problem i am finding is the tbb one is all over the place.even when doing tests at 3-4 am as an example. it's kinda weird and unsure what's cauising it.

i will do 3 dsl tests and 3 tbb tests one after the other :

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/1918883 215/12

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/1918898 196/12

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/1918912 203/12


now using the tbb speed test link you supplied :

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html... 99/13

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html... 135/13

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html... 98/13


Something a bit strange somewhere... but as i said a min ago when i look at my networx graph as each test is getting done it shows the exact same pattern as the end result from the speed test

The DSLReports tests are far from perfect and that is with 24 downloads running. The numbers displayed may be nice, but look at the graph and you can see a lot of the time you are only seeing transfer rates in the 100 to 160 Mbps region.

So if we quadrupled the number of downloads we would like show the same, i.e. DSLreports is a LOT less sensitive to congestion and that is our aim to provide a tester that is close to what you are experiencing.

By doing more downloads at once you actually grab a larger share of the shared bandwidth that is available locally, and thus graphs should be a sharp rise initially and a flat throughput there after.

http://tbb.st/144648127699210632592 a good flash example
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html... a good test, though they did have a small dip in the speed at the end.

So both testers are doing things right, and seem to be reporting correctly, the issue is why your speeds are a bit variable. If you try a specialised single thread download version you should be able to see the variation.

On a good clean connection and decently configured TCP/IP stack and reasonable PC over Ethernet no reason that single thread download should not be able to fill a 200 Mbps connection.

Thanks for getting back Mr S.. i wish i had more time to reply but in the middle of something atm ..

i am not saying the tbb test is borked and i am also not saying that the dsl one is 100% correct either.. now i could be wrong here and most of you guys know a lot more about things like this than i do lol

my network monitor measures the data moving through my network card at any given time yea ? it is independent from the speedtester of choice ? so if i base my connection speed when maxed out on the live real time graph i can see what the speed of data is in Mbps .

when doing speed tests on tbb or dsl or speedtest the graph on the monitor shows what data is flowing through the network card and it matches the graphs on the speed tests

so if dsl is saying im getting 198 then its the same on the monitor

if tbb says 134 then its the same on the monitor as well

so if any one of the testers is borked and not giving true results ? how is it possible for the monitor to also report that the same amount of data passed through the netowrk card at the same time as the test was done ?

i can't get my head round how that is possible



Sorry for the quick reply and you are a brave man if you read it before lunch


Edit : i never got this problem when i was on the 152 product before the Vivid upgrade .. nearly every speedtest on tbb was spot on.i was getting 160/12 90% of the time 247.and the monitor was showing the same ( if i had a penny for every time iv said monitor ) .

Edited by djfunkdup (Thu 12-Nov-15 12:51:33)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

So if we quadrupled the number of downloads we would like show the same, i.e. DSLreports is a LOT less sensitive to congestion and that is our aim to provide a tester that is close to what you are experiencing.

.

Where does the congestion bottleneck ? is it on my side of the VM network ? or is it outwidth the VM network Thanks i am just trying to get my head round it a bit

If the graphs are exact copies of the ones the speed test showing then shows both speed tests are working correctly in terms of how they handle their maths.

But looking at the graphs for the dslreports it is clear they are reporting not a mean or median speed but something that is like an upper quartile result. We report the median speed, and a burst speed that is the 85th percentile.

As we use less test files our test is more sensitive to congestion and everything even the DSLReports graphs is suggesting congestion. If the DSLreports test just showed the numbers you would have the simple conclusion that everything is perfect, when looking at the graphs (i.e. they seem to understand they are important like we do) you can see something is wrong.

The question is where, and given the wide variety of source files DSLReports uses and they should use different peering links at Virgin Media then points towards local loop issues, or maybe a configuration issue locally not giving enough capacity to new 200 Mbps customers. If our peering link to Virgin Media was congested we would see it affecting all our virgin testers and we are not and we know its not in our network as we can see others with good results too.

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/4862221431.png[/IMG]

Installed today and it does fly!

Could you do a speedtest on the tbb tester please http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/speedtest2.html and post the results Thanks

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