Virgin Media congestion these days

I'm potentially moving to a new place that only has VM and GFast right now.

I haven't used VM for over a decade - which was either excellent or abysmal depending on the area. I've then been spoiled by hyperoptic which has mostly been rock solid for 10 years.

Is this still the case? Are there a lot of 'hot' areas still (I understand it is a lottery to some extent).

Also, is Gig1 somewhat insulated from the problems as it runs on DOCSIS3.1 and therefore a different 'network'? It is not ridiculously unaffordable with an o2 contract, similar price to top end GFast (I'm going to be right next to the cabinet).

I have no problems with congestion in North East Hampshire, (former NTL / CableTel network build). Congestion was always different in different areas so you would need to post an approx location (town/city) for other customers in that area to respond.

I have to say, I have Virgin Media M100 talk weekend calls and fully unlimited oomph simand there were a lot of major congestion issues for a long time, the week GIG 1 became available everything improved dramatically.

I just recontracted with M500 (500-550Mbps down 36UP), The contract doesn't take affect until may 5th since I am porting my phone number to sipgate next week on thursday (14/04/2022).

I know lots of people will say to me, why have you done that to yourself again, well they gave me an offer so low no other provider can beat £31 a month. If openreach FTTP was here I would find it hard to go for it when they undercut it by £9.

I will say, if Virgin Media have any more issues in my area or if there is a price rise, I will either follow the ofcom procedure once I know full fibre is available (estimated september 2022) or leave it for the usual price rise. Then get FTTP.

My original plan of FTTC for a few months was good however virgin never go a few months without a price rise or problem that can let me leave so thought, might as well keep going until FTTP is here.

I'm in St Neots, cambridgeshire.

You can see my broadband speedtest data in the latest OFcom report by isolating region ISP and speed tier. You soon know which I am from the fact that I'm the only one out of 11 in the region with the lowest peak speeds.
I know my agent name but won't share it for various reasons but can say this data should help you find common areas with issues.

OFCOM REPORT

Some upstream congestion here and there, so not really helped by Gig1, but there is a deployment of DoCSIS 3.1 upstream on the way which should help quite a bit.

Further out there's the XGSPON overbuild.

My most recent experience (South London) was of the 350/35 product.

In mid 2020 I took out the service when it was the only thing available faster than 50/10 FTTC. I was issued a Hub 3 (DOCSIS 3.0). Service was fine outside of peak hours, but it worsened heading into winter as more people stayed at home. Customer support may as well be non-existent, promises to fix it were repeatedly broken.

In early 2021 a Hub 4 (DOCSIS 3.1) was sent out and from then until the end of the contract speeds were fine all day.

The 3.1 modems basically can access additional downstream capacity which should prevent peak time slowdowns (for now).

In reply to a post by ft247:

The 3.1 modems basically can access additional downstream capacity which should prevent peak time slowdowns (for now).

Virgin said to me "do you want a new HUB 5 to use your service or maybe just the HUB 4) for my M500 contract, do you think I should take it or see how I get on with my HUB 3 first. I use them in modem mode so either way I just want reliability.

The person I spoke too didn't really have a clue about much. Today I got a call from a senior network management team in London asking me for feedback on the Virgin Media Networks, one hour of non stop explanations of the problems and he agreed that the customer service on the 150 number is useless and gave me the direct line to the london team if I had any more issues not only with them but my services.

The reason they called was because of the number of complaints on the account and also the fact I was leaving virgin home phone and mobile and wanted to ask me questions about the experience with support, customer care, and the services themself.

You can just guess how the conversation went

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

Some upstream congestion here and there, so not really helped by Gig1, but there is a deployment of DoCSIS 3.1 upstream on the way which should help quite a bit.

Further out there's the XGSPON overbuild.

I'm personally hoping to be overbuilt sooner rather than later since my whole area is a big mess of reoccurring issues (every year or so)

Do you think they will upgrade existing customers upload speeds with DoCSIS 3.1 on the way, since the upload is so asymmetric it's just insane.

I mean I was seriously considering VDSL because the upload was double my speed tier at the time. I haven't gone that way since virgin did offer me a excellent deal on the M500 so couldn't justify downgrading or even FTTP options that are on the horizon.

I will say, I'm very unimpressed with the upload speeds I will be getting since they aren't exactly fast. To me 38Mbps upload is a bit useless 50Mbps would be a bit better, but I'll have to see how I get on.

I know I upload a lot of big files so I guess it will still be an improvement over the three day upload times I have had to upload 100GB of files while others use the connection.

I'm not really sure how virgin justify the upload speeds being so slow since I know someone on numericable (now SFR) in france they have 500Mbps down and 50Mbps up constantly over DoCSIS 3.0 They even gave the option to use both coax ports on their router but the person I know didn't want two coax even if it meant slightly better performance. (Don't ask me why they had two coax ports, my guess would be that they split the load in half or have some sort of failover, who knows)

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

Do you think they will upgrade existing customers upload speeds with DoCSIS 3.1 on the way, since the upload is so asymmetric it's just insane.

The most you'll get over DoCSIS is perhaps 2G down, 100M up. I do not think they'll upgrade any customers' upstream speeds, no. There's no need.

Never had congestion/speed issues here in N.Ireland, had several connections in different places and Cities.

Sadly I had an issue going to Gig1 which they couldn't resolve - and let me leave.

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

The most you'll get over DoCSIS is perhaps 2G down, 100M up. I do not think they'll upgrade any customers' upstream speeds, no. There's no need.

I don't see how you can say that though, currently having 10Mbps up is a struggle, not only for video calls but for everything I do. Remote desktoping into virtual environments, remote desktoping into my servers remotely when offsite.
Then when uploading on youtube, onedrive, or when I collaborate with others files are constantly being uploaded and downloaded.

My onedrive network usage is 400GB on one of my machines in the space of 30 days. I know a lot of that is upload.

My max obtainable download is 100Mbps since the other 10Mbps is lost to background apps, on the upload i lose 2Mbps. It might not sound like a lot but this is just because of the amount of devices online, hitting 40-45 at times.
I know smart devices I have like dishwashers, echos, google nests and cameras, don't use much in comparison to other devices e.g. TV using between 40-60Mbs peek when streaming 4K HDR using 40 gigs today.

If i look at the upload a similar story presents itself.
e.g. all account data is stored locally on a NAS, then for extra precaution that is synced with 6TB of onedrive space and backed up onto another NAS.

I will say, the biggest files are 4K footage, small word documents and stuff like that isn't the problem, its photos, and 4K 60 or 120FPS video footage when we are hitting an hour or two of footage like that it takes an eternity to upload.

The biggest issue is when I'm not home since all my account files are on the NAS so when i VPN in windows file explorer freezes as its beyond slow.

….and yet you re-contracted with them, in the full knowledge that their upload speeds were severely limited (for your use case)?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

….and yet you re-contracted with them, in the full knowledge that their upload speeds were severely limited (for your use case)?

What other reasonably priced option did I have to choose from?

Virgin is unfortunately the only provider I can really choose at the moment for speed.

I will say I wasn't going to go with virgin again if they didn't offer me a faster upload since VDSL would have been better.

I know I had a long term plan, you know it too, but It's still the plan to go FTTP.

I will tell you this, I was given the option by virgin for a big bundle with everything, I said only broadband.

RR: I say upload since I upload lots of files and access my home server when I’m away
Virgin Media: As per checking here that I can I can give you the M500 for £31.00 the download speed is 510 to 545 and the upload speed is 36 to 34 Mbps.

The reason was, I wanted to seperate the services for an easier migration if there was a price rise or "issue" to get out the contract and then basically get FTTP when available.

Let's be honest Virgin Media increases the price so often I will have plenty of opportune moments to leave, I know in my area there have been problems, and its been okay for a while, but by the time its winter FTTP should be here so if there are any slowdowns leaving shouldn't be a problem.

I know even if i have to wait ages, its not a bad thing as FTTP prices are still quite high at the moment.


2 FTTC lines would have been worth it if virgin gave me a quote of 40 a month as I could get two 80 * 20 with load balancing routers and traffic management my end so the 140-160Mbps down and 35-40 UP.
This would also give me some increased level of reliability since two different providers on different backhauls and networks


I got a quote for a leased line and that was £270 a month for 100x100Mbps not exactly in budget.

I have had the odd issue with some packet loss on 1gig for the first couple of months but its been fine for the past 3-4 months.

Before that I was on 200mb when I moved to my current place, then on to 350, 500 then 1gig.

Never had any real issues with speed. I can recall a few times when I noticed the connection being slower than usual but a reboot of the router sorted that.

I can say there's no need quite easily.

They aren't losing tons of customers due to the lower upload speeds.

The obvious solution to upstream shortage on M100 is to pay more: there are 20, 35, 40 and 50 Mbit upload products available. It's not like 100/10 is all you can get unlike some and VM actively want to upsell you.

We got RFOG as part of Project Lightning (Doncaster, S. Yorkshire)

I take the 350/36 service and to be honest, its been almost faultless. The only faults have been due to sloppy engineers messing in the cabinet and screwing our connection up for an hour or so - never needed to call up to get them fixed.

I just re-contracted for 18months and I'm just going to use this as "fill-in" time until CityFibre becomes available (they're in the middle of building around here now).

I just find it a joke that you have to chase them for prices they should be giving anyway, after this 18-months at £45 (which includes TV, mobile bill, phone and broadband) it says it'll go up to £86/month, and I don't have sports/movies etc, so I find that rediculous. Anyway, thats by-the-by

Speeds have varied occasionally but nothing that grinds the connection to a complete halt - they might drop to 200mbps rather than 350 - but still completely usable connection. They also sort themselves out after an hour or 2.

Customer support is typical VM poopoo, if you want someone who you can talk to about techie stuff, choose another ISP

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

They aren't losing tons of customers due to the lower upload speeds.

The obvious solution to upstream shortage on M100 is to pay more: there are 20, 35, 40 and 50 Mbit upload products available. It's not like 100/10 is all you can get unlike some and VM actively want to upsell you.

I will mention for a long time in my area, they had capacity problems so they were not taking on new customers and the only service available to upgrade to was the M100.

I see you mentioned the M600 in your upload data, I can't really say that is a broadband product since it isn't. To get it you need a massive package that is so expensive its unbelievable.

I just looked at data on OFCom's spreadsheets and can see that there are comparatively less M600 customer tests compared to all others except M50, now I know this is only a rough indication but looking through all the data, to me, it gives an accurate representation of the divide on some speed tiers.

I also feel like if you compare virgin to other ISP's for the same or even slightly slower download speeds, the upload is almost always faster. Openreach FTTP network is definitely an example, openreach FTTC ISP's have faster uploads whereas with virgin the cost would increase so they could provide it.

I don't see why Virgin should charge more for a service others will often sell for cheaper.

Talktalk FTTP 500Mbps down 75UP is a perfect example of what i'm on about. I can't justify paying for a gigabit product with Virgin thats slower than Talktalk's 500X75Mbps product.

Like I said before I have only gone with the speed virgin offered me because its cheaper than FTTP deals and it would cost me the same to get FTTC until FTTP was here.
£30.84 for 6 months on an estimation of 74.2 down 19Up with NOW, my monthly price is based on the total install cost and additional charges.
Since the price was basically the same and they offered me a superior product, it felt stupid to go the FTTC route.

In reply to a post by BuckleZ:

Never had congestion/speed issues here in N.Ireland, had several connections in different places and Cities.

Sadly I had an issue going to Gig1 which they couldn't resolve - and let me leave.

Similar story here in N. Ireland. Many years with NTL/VM and no signs of poor performance or congestion. Currently on 200 as that's all I need with a Hub 5 in modem mode, which has a marked difference in latency on the BQM over the old Hub 3, btw.

Edited by Adduxi (Thu 07-Apr-22 10:23:46)

I did write a more fulsome reply but there's no benefit to anyone in it so deleted.

Edited by CarlTSpeak (Thu 07-Apr-22 12:10:25)

"I don't see why Virgin should charge more for a service others will often sell for cheaper."

Is cheaper better? The majority of users do not require fast upload.

"or leave it for the usual price rise"

With T&Cs as they are now I don't think you can leave because of a price rise.

Do you want cheap or good? If good then pay for it, if cheap then you can't complain about poorer speeds.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

With T&Cs as they are now I don't think you can leave because of a price rise.

Do you want cheap or good? If good then pay for it, if cheap then you can't complain about poorer speeds.

Virgin Media always send out a letter stating that there is a price rise, they do this a month ahead. They give the option to leave within 30 days of receiving the letter at no cost to the customer. This has been Virgin Media's approach for as long as I have been with them.
My contract with virgin is from 2018 they just do a contract update which keeps the fundamentals from back then, the only thing that is different is the package.


In regards for "cheap or good" what option do you suggest to me, I have the choice of FTTC, or Virgin Media Cable. FTTPOD is not available due to FTTP builds that started last year and won't be done for months.
Both FTTC and Cable are equally as bad as each other. The difference is FTTC is slightly more reliable but considerably slower overall. or cable which is unreliable has its own set of issues but as a whole is faster.

If I was given the option to get CityFibre I would take it. The reason I would take it is this, its actual gigabit, the service is gig down and burts up to a gig. To add to that the price is cheaper than the competition.

I also thought I should add why I didn't choose VM's gig1 package, The main reason was, how do they expect me to use a connection over gigabit with their HUB 4 doesn't support the package they are selling. I would have gone down that route if they had a 2.5 or 5 gig ethernet port since my network can handle it.

To me its like this, why should I pay for a service if the hardware supplied doesn't even support the service its meant to.

e.g. M500 = 550 down + 36 UP = 586Mbps of total bandwidth needed to connect to the HUB3 so its no problem. GIG 1 1130 + 52 = 1,182Mbps so would mean that I'm basically losing 200Mbps

For me it seems stupid getting GIG 1.

I'm going to stop moaning now, but Is it alright If i update you once the service is live in 4 weeks time, to let you know what the performance looks like. The guy that lives next door told me today that he's not getting full speed on his M500 so I guess i'll let samknows and the BMQ be the judge of my connection.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

stuff ......

What has any of this got to do with the original question this thread is/was about?

Original question "Re: Virgin Media congestion these days"

None...

In reply to a post by TheInstaller:

What has any of this got to do with the original question this thread is/was about?

Original question "Re: Virgin Media congestion these days"

None...

Sorry, would you like me to delete my posts or at the least the ones I can?

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

To me its like this, why should I pay for a service if the hardware supplied doesn't even support the service its meant to.

e.g. M500 = 550 down + 36 UP = 586Mbps of total bandwidth needed to connect to the HUB3 so its no problem. GIG 1 1130 + 52 = 1,182Mbps so would mean that I'm basically losing 200Mbps

Gentle reminder you don't add upstream and downstream bandwidth together, the connection is full duplex and they go in different directions. Alongside that you can port channel the Hub 4, and the Hub 5 has a 2.5G port.

If your network can handle 5G should be fine to just port channel a pair of ports facing the Hub.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

I also thought I should add why I didn't choose VM's gig1 package, The main reason was, how do they expect me to use a connection over gigabit with their HUB 4 doesn't support the package they are selling. I would have gone down that route if they had a 2.5 or 5 gig ethernet port since my network can handle it.

To me its like this, why should I pay for a service if the hardware supplied doesn't even support the service its meant to.

e.g. M500 = 550 down + 36 UP = 586Mbps of total bandwidth needed to connect to the HUB3 so its no problem. GIG 1 1130 + 52 = 1,182Mbps so would mean that I'm basically losing 200Mbps

For me it seems stupid getting GIG 1.

Didn’t you say they offered you a Hub 5 in your second post? That box supports a 2.5Gbps connection….

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

To me its like this, why should I pay for a service if the hardware supplied doesn't even support the service its meant to.

e.g. M500 = 550 down + 36 UP = 586Mbps of total bandwidth needed to connect to the HUB3 so its no problem. GIG 1 1130 + 52 = 1,182Mbps so would mean that I'm basically losing 200Mbps

Gentle reminder you don't add upstream and downstream bandwidth together, the connection is full duplex and they go in different directions. Alongside that you can port channel the Hub 4, and the Hub 5 has a 2.5G port.

If your network can handle 5G should be fine to just port channel a pair of ports facing the Hub.

Thanks for the reminder, I think I forgot because of past issues with gigabit in my local network. (in short I was only getting 500Mbps over gigabit ethernet when sending and receiving at the same time. I suspect it was a VLAN config issue. I also think there was a mix of issues with different bits of kit. Short story short I stuck some multigig switches to help with congestion and now its (10X2) 20Gig between switches, 5Gig for PC's, 2.5 for Access points.
Everything is better now and all the VLANS were removed when I changed some stuff around.

I will admit I knew the HUB 5 had a 2.5G port however I feel like the chances of me getting one are low.

I don't think I said that my ISP speeds are also bottlenecked by a Samknows whitebox which is another reason why i'm a bit hesitant going above a gig. I found a possible solution to have say 940Mbps down through the Whitebox then allow the rest to bypass it in a controlled and limited way, however this would mean using the rest for smart devices or guest network in its own VLAN.
I won't lie, there are a lot of things that could pose issues. I have ideas of how to get around them, its just having time to implement them while minimising impact.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

I also thought I should add why I didn't choose VM's gig1 package, The main reason was, how do they expect me to use a connection over gigabit with their HUB 4 doesn't support the package they are selling. I would have gone down that route if they had a 2.5 or 5 gig ethernet port since my network can handle it.

To me its like this, why should I pay for a service if the hardware supplied doesn't even support the service its meant to.

e.g. M500 = 550 down + 36 UP = 586Mbps of total bandwidth needed to connect to the HUB3 so its no problem. GIG 1 1130 + 52 = 1,182Mbps so would mean that I'm basically losing 200Mbps

For me it seems stupid getting GIG 1.

Didn’t you say they offered you a Hub 5 in your second post? That box supports a 2.5Gbps connection….

They offered me a HUB 5 but then the person speaking to me said "I can't give it to you though" "you will have to ring tech support and log a fault with your HUB3"

In reply to a post by TheInstaller:

What has any of this got to do with the original question this thread is/was about?

The great thing about threaded forums, you can just ignore a thread going in a different topic. (Not as easy as with an NNTP newsreader though).

There are still hot areas, your options are either to ask in advance on their forums or take advantage of the 14 day cooling off period if the service doesn't perform. After the 14 days you still have options but they take longer to action (complaint letters, CISAS escalation etc.)

The single DOCSIS 3.1 channel for the Gig1 service can help the downstream, but upstream is still DOCSIS 3.0 so you're using the same channels as every other customer. You're also not immune to RF noise on the network, so depending on the nature of any area fault you might not be any better off.

You're welcome to send me your LinkedIn profile. My network might be able to help you in future.

C.

Cardiff - pretty central, if anyone has any experience there?

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

Cardiff - pretty central, if anyone has any experience there?

Sorry, I have family in the Cardiff area, but they tried VM about 8 years ago and ended up swapping to BT FTTP that was available for more money but different service.

Gig1 can help in some circumstances I imagine but like others have said before, upstream issues are still common. My connection is FTTP via RFoG and if anything it got worse when upgrading to Gig1 and the Hub 4, packet loss came out of nowhere and now I'm booked to get my fibre reblown in a couple of weeks so hopefully that helps.

Also, seems like VM are having network wide issues lately, as per my BQM: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

This same spike in latency and packet loss has been on every VM BQM I've seen today

Areas of Cardiff fairly well served with OR FTTP with improved upstream than DOCSIS providing and less likely to suffer congestion.

mine is spiking at the exact same time as yours and starting again now.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

ignore the full redlines that was me rebooting the router a few times.

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

mine is spiking at the exact same time as yours and starting again now.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

ignore the full redlines that was me rebooting the router a few times.

My Graph here in St Neots, Cambridgeshire is literally the same, refer to my LIVE BMQ in signature. (Only M100 currently until the start of next month, just started changing my signatures )

I have just taken a look at the core network in london since I keep an eye on it and it's also got the same peeks.

are we sure this is a Virgin Media problem as I have just been analysing my Samknows Whitebox data and it all looks normal.
To be honest it looks better than it normally does.

Could it be a system error in thinkbroadband HQ? (unlikely)

(To add my my previous post MY packet loss at 6 was due to a scheduled network upgrade, configuration change and new cable implementation within my network)

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

Could it be a system error in thinkbroadband HQ? (unlikely)

If it was a problem at Thinkbroadband would affect other ISPs.

Whitebox and other testers are initiated outbound from your connection through the VM core to the internet. TBB’s BQM is useful in that it is initiated inbound to the ISP from outside of the network.

I hope its a short term capacity issue, perhaps whilst work is undertaken in a shared core. Surprising we all share a part of the network given the ISP is selling 500 Mbps and faster services you would think they would need regional cores.

From my own BQM, the packet loss was short lived, but the latency increases has been from mid afternoon through to about now, but at 10:30pm is when a lot of users will be shutting down for the night.

Hasn’t impacted any of my usage, but it may have annoyed a lot of gamers.

Edited by jchamier (Sat 09-Apr-22 22:25:14)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Hasn’t impacted any of my usage, but it may have annoyed a lot of gamers.

I'll text a couple of people tomorrow who live down the road, they both have different connections with Virgin Media, they tend to game extremely early morning to avoid issues the other late at night. One has higher latency but no disconnections, the other has a 2 -3AM disconnection.

They will definitely know if there's a problem.

I monitor a family members M200 connection and its also the same. The reason for this is so I know when there's a problem with my own or their network, but also for data comparison.

Here is one of the two core VM switches I often end up passing

Virgin media core nrth-core-2a-xe-1001-0.


London Core VM

I hope its a short term capacity issue, perhaps whilst work is undertaken in a shared core. Surprising we all share a part of the network given the ISP is selling 500 Mbps and faster services you would think they would need regional cores.

The way one of the VM network engineers explained the network to me was like this, St Neots is connected to Cambridge (since it was once a cambridge cable area), he then said there is a datacentre for our traffic. (Not sure how much i believe the guy). He continued to say that the leased lines in the area go directly back to cambridge in some local areas, but others go straight to london along the A1. (also not sure how true this is).

The guy did repeatedly say there is a capacity issues and gave a definitive date for a fix saying he was the one doing it. (turned out to be false)

I always take what their teams say with a pinch of salt (okay maybe a whole pack).

I just realised something else. I have another ping system to check for downtime and monitors my average ping (from the US)

This is another VM customers connection peak since I had downtime.

Latency peek

Edit: because

Edited by j0hn83 (Sun 10-Apr-22 21:27:16)

Looks like the same [censored] service from Virgin has resumed..



https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

Virgin raised the price this year by the maximum mentioned above (like most providers did) and therefore didn't give the option to let customers leave within 30 days.

Virgin Media sent me a letter (while in contract) this year telling me about the price rise and said you can leave penalty free within 30 days of the letter.

I am telling you what has happened and clearly this is still the case otherwise I won't be receiving these letters.

I can't speak if some customers didn't get the letter but I can assure you 100% that I did. I would try and find a copy however I have paperwork everywhere at the min so it's probably under a pile somewhere.

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

Looks like the same [censored] service from Virgin has resumed..



https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Do you think they know of the problem?

maybe and knowing virgin they don't care.

Indeed, my mistake.

No need to hunt out the letter, 1st hit on Google.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/01/virgin...

Identical here.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

maybe and knowing virgin they don't care.

I have just had a total loss of service.

Was not happy, I was mid watching a 4K HDR film then buffering, (thinking to myself has the subwoofer vibrated out an ethernet cable I follow the cables and all seems good. then my Router is RED and the VM hub is purple, then red, green white and keeps cycling. As you do in this situation. I flick off the multiplug with all the networking gear, then flick it on again, and after a few mins it works again. No idea why it stopped. It's all a bit random.

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

maybe and knowing virgin they don't care.

I'll raise it tomorrow, I am ringing up the 3rd line support, (they gave me a direct line). I am ringing since they have somehow messed up my new contract in under a week. Last Week i go a confirmation of 31 a month for M500 then today they did a contract update to a one month contract at 47 a month. The 150 team say everything is normal and promise it will be 31 a month but I don't trust them.

Have reached out to a guy who does care as it's his job to. Will be sorted ASAP.

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

Have reached out to a guy who does care as it's his job to. Will be sorted ASAP.

Glad to hear it.

3 instances this weekend, connection became unusable.

Friday 8/4 2000 to 2300
Saturday 9/4 1500 to 2300
Sunday 10/4 1500 to 2300

All give or take but same pattern as other graphs show. Was just trying basic web browsing.

In reply to a post by MattL:

3 instances this weekend, connection became unusable.

Friday 8/4 2000 to 2300
Saturday 9/4 1500 to 2300
Sunday 10/4 1500 to 2300

All give or take but same pattern as other graphs show. Was just trying basic web browsing.

Just wait for a massive game update, that will cause problems until its fixed.
All I can say is at least its not impacting leased lines (for obvious reasons) I keep track of a couple of VM leased lines and they look excellent except for the evening - midnight backup where the latency spikes for a few hours.

I took the liberty of diagnosing the problem and providing a contact at VM the information. I won't bore the forum with the details but BGP is incorrectly configured and rather than going via Liberty Global /Aorta some traffic is going via LINX direct to VMO2 which doesn't work so well as most of their LINX capacity is via Liberty Global / Aorta.

Shouldn't be too long and should mean the congestion doesn't happen tonight.

I always thought that Virgin Media were a competent core network outfit with dire customer support and access network departments, but I'm reconsidering now. This is an issue that should have been detected and resolved before customers saw the impact.

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

Shouldn't be too long and should mean the congestion doesn't happen tonight.

thanks!

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

I took the liberty of diagnosing the problem and providing a contact at VM the information. I won't bore the forum with the details but BGP is incorrectly configured and rather than going via Liberty Global /Aorta some traffic is going via LINX direct to VMO2 which doesn't work so well as most of their LINX capacity is via Liberty Global / Aorta.

Not boring in the slightest - I think I had seen before that AS5089 (Virgin) sat behind AS6830 (Liberty Global), but peeringdb for LINX 1 shows 5089 with 2x100G ports but 6830 only with a 10G port. Didn't pay too much attention at the time, but now that I look closer 6830 is present on many IXs but only at 10G. All private peering I suppose?

Maybe they are hoping that you'll leave.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Maybe they are hoping that you'll leave.

I will say the engineers want me to, they told someone who lives down the road, everytime they see my street on the work order they get scared and dread coming as they know there's actually an issue.
They said to the person down the road "one of your neighbours know more than us and we just don't know what's wrong, everytime we see this street we pray it's not him".
When this was sent in the group chat everyone was saying they weren't surprised, I picked up on a core network issue locally, the Fiber Optics connecting one of the cabs had been cut. Basically meant we were getting 10Mbps in the evening, when the team investigated after 20 engineer appointments (I'm not bothered how many it takes, if there is a problem they will solve it), they found that there was a capacity issue (I wonder why, cough cough).
I show the VM engineer the BMQ and he goes, its irrelevant that shows the whole VM network. (ME: that's like the whole point I shouldn't be seeing more packet loss than the lowest ping I get).

Now everything is a little more stable so there's no need for 20 engineers a month, more like one every three if everything is semi stable. I know my HUB 3 is on the way out, it keeps rebooting and won't go 14 days without a reboot, so I'll wait till the new contract starts then I'll get a swap for a HUB 4 or 5 (if lucky).

In reply to a post by ft247:

Not boring in the slightest - I think I had seen before that AS5089 (Virgin) sat behind AS6830 (Liberty Global), but peeringdb for LINX 1 shows 5089 with 2x100G ports but 6830 only with a 10G port. Didn't pay too much attention at the time, but now that I look closer 6830 is present on many IXs but only at 10G. All private peering I suppose?

6830 want others to pay to peer. The return path was via LINX but outbound Aorta / NTT transit.

Just seen that the dreaded latency peek is coming back again tonight.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Maybe they are hoping that you'll leave.

I know my HUB 3 is on the way out, it keeps rebooting and won't go 14 days without a reboot, so I'll wait till the new contract starts then I'll get a swap for a HUB 4 or 5 (if lucky).

Sounds like a normal hub 3 to me.

Yep its back for me too .

In reply to a post by gary333:

Sounds like a normal hub 3 to me.

My neighbour managed 78 days on there's once. I saw it in my WiFi uptime app.
I was a bit surprised. The only thing that stopped it being longer was a power cut.

And me..

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

And also, me.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Me to, same pattern.

Same.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

No problems on discord (screenshare & voice chat) and downloading from steam though, managed to hit 117.5 mb/s....

Edited by Redayejedi (Mon 11-Apr-22 23:50:41)

Looks to be sorted now?

My connection is back to normal now.

Looking good to me!

same here, lets give it a few hours just to be on the safe side

I'll tell you what, the Virgin Media community is extremely pleased, my thread over there is getting hammered.

Don't want to be the bearer of bad news but DNS requests are now failing half the time.
Not sure if something else is broken I think i will do a reboot and see how it goes, let me know if its not just me.

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

In reply to a post by ft247:

Not boring in the slightest - I think I had seen before that AS5089 (Virgin) sat behind AS6830 (Liberty Global), but peeringdb for LINX 1 shows 5089 with 2x100G ports but 6830 only with a 10G port. Didn't pay too much attention at the time, but now that I look closer 6830 is present on many IXs but only at 10G. All private peering I suppose?

6830 want others to pay to peer. The return path was via LINX but outbound Aorta / NTT transit.

In case peeringdb isn't updated you can see the actual member info on for LINX and a little bit on LONAP.

https://portal.linx.net/members/members-ip-asn (tick at least service speed, switch slot and maybe location)
https://www.lonap.net/members (I don't see VM on here, useful to include anyway)

AS5089 = 2x100G LINX LON1 and 1x100G LINX Manchester
AS6830 = 1x10G LINX LON1

Edited by miken06 (Wed 13-Apr-22 12:52:54)

VM are using the same route inbound as outbound now. Doesn't use the LINX public LAN.

As was demonstrated to me Liberty are a tier 1 now and can get anywhere without paying for transit.

Looks like it's back to playing up again as of 8pm tonight, going by my monitor and those of some others linked in this thread..

Same here, not noticed any issues browsing yet like I did last time.

In reply to a post by MaffewE:

Looks like it's back to playing up again as of 8pm tonight, going by my monitor and those of some others linked in this thread..

It's happened again, time to send another message to VM about how unhappy i am.
MY BMQ

VM CORE

VM Core london

VM Core london 2

VM CORE

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Edited by Brunel (Tue 19-Apr-22 23:43:18)

This issue is beyond a joke now, it should have been fixed in hours not weeks.
Does anyone at VM actually know how to fix things, all they do when I speak to them is break things.

looks like the congestion is back....

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

Does anyone at VM actually know how to fix things, all they do when I speak to them is break things.

Maybe they actually need to buy another "fat pipe", perhaps lots of customers have been upgrading to Gig1 ??

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

Does anyone at VM actually know how to fix things, all they do when I speak to them is break things.

Maybe they actually need to buy another "fat pipe", perhaps lots of customers have been upgrading to Gig1 ??

Presumably if Liberty Global are Tier 1, as noted, they have (substantial) private peering in place already at their disposal too...anyone care to provide insight? 😎

Congestion again tonight Gaming is a no no. VM are a joke..

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

Congestion again tonight Gaming is a no no. VM are a joke..

You should look at the Virgin Media community they are all having it out Page 5

It's the best comedy, it starts on the bottom of page 4

Edited by RR_The_IT_Guy (Wed 20-Apr-22 22:03:36)

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

looks like the congestion is back....

I get YouTube keep saying I’m not connected to internet and I’m offline then 10 seconds later it works on its own. When I do a speed tests I get max speed (even when YouTube says no. It’s more frustrating that it’s so intermittent, slow speed wouldn’t bother me, timing out though is most annoying

Back again.. https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Networking-and-...

Thanks for the ref to my post, It's a joke.

Does VM even know there is a problem, everyone says they know, but chances are they are just lying to people

Back again for me too Virgin won't fix this like the rest of their rubbish network and charge the most for it!

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

Back again for me too Virgin won't fix this like the rest of their rubbish network and charge the most for it!

I think we are past the point of having the chance to fix it, does anyone have an ofcom contact to get some pressure on this

Ofcom are not really there to enforce network quality, they are sort of a commercial regulator and they will likely just point you in the direction of ADR (CISAS in VMs case).

In reply to a post by jpm:

Ofcom are not really there to enforce network quality, they are sort of a commercial regulator and they will likely just point you in the direction of ADR (CISAS in VMs case).

This has got to be beyond ADR, its a national issue.

It's getting stupid

Started again.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Mines worse

clicky

Think my line also has a fault getting lots of pre and post rs errors and t3 timeouts

Edited by DG834MAN (Mon 25-Apr-22 21:30:25)

In reply to a post by Brunel:

Started again.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

It never stopped.

I'm thinking its not getting fixed now. Maybe if the whole of virgin media do speed tests at once then we can see how much impact that has.

A community project it can be called

ooo me too

My Broadband Ping

EDIT:

Looking back I can see these spikes most days from 8pm to 10pm....

Edited by Seansmit17 (Tue 26-Apr-22 01:53:44)

And again tonight with the congestion.

tell me about it, I have been setting up VOIP phones, somehow its been okay (the BMQ is the first thing that comes up on the polycom)

Ofcom are not going to care about this, hence VM been able to have congestion faults that span for years in certain areas.

They would only maybe care if this affected phone services.

I got a quote for a leased line and that was £270 a month for 100x100Mbps not exactly in budget.


I agree. I get 500 down and up for that price - and they were doing a double free speed deal at the time so I actually get 1Gbps up and down for that price. They were ripping you off from the start what a terrible company

In reply to a post by lockyatlrg:

And again tonight with the congestion.

and again, I am completely losing the will to live.

Is there a way to check congestion / overutilisation in specific areas? I will be bashing my head against the wall if I run into the same issues I witnessed years ago.

I have had enough of faults developing on my FTTC broadband line. Quietline tests have always been fine but I seem to suffer from niggling faults all of the time with FTTC (not crosstalk related) so I put in a order for gig1. I have had a troubled history with Virgin Media in the past unfortunately. This was back in 2015-2016 when many areas were affected by overutilisation. I was on their highest package at the time 150Mbps but the connection speeds used to dropdown to 5-15Mbps download at peak time with a 0.2-1Mbps of upload. You literally couldn't do anything between 15:00 and 00:45.

I really hope they have improved since then in the area I'm in... I'm stuck between FTTC and Virgin Media. FTTC as only ever been down once in 6 years but I have had loads of problems with PPP sessions being dropped and struggling to resync for hours and the issue with faults developing on the line causing an inconsistent amount of errors making the internet unstable. Where is the stability, reliability at?

In reply to a post by Swift0r:

Is there a way to check congestion / overutilisation in specific areas? I will be bashing my head against the wall if I run into the same issues I witnessed years ago.

I have had enough of faults developing on my FTTC broadband line. Quietline tests have always been fine but I seem to suffer from niggling faults all of the time with FTTC (not crosstalk related) so I put in a order for gig1. I have had a troubled history with Virgin Media in the past unfortunately. This was back in 2015-2016 when many areas were affected by overutilisation. I was on their highest package at the time 150Mbps but the connection speeds used to dropdown to 5-15Mbps download at peak time with a 0.2-1Mbps of upload. You literally couldn't do anything between 15:00 and 00:45.

I really hope they have improved since then in the area I'm in... I'm stuck between FTTC and Virgin Media. FTTC as only ever been down once in 6 years but I have had loads of problems with PPP sessions being dropped and struggling to resync for hours and the issue with faults developing on the line causing an inconsistent amount of errors making the internet unstable. Where is the stability, reliability at?

So as far as I know the best way to check for local congestion / overutilization or area issues is to speak to the neighbours, it's a really effective way of isolating faults.

Today I had a VM engineer to replace my HUB 3 to a HUB 4 as the HUB 3 failed (loads of issues with it).

Since I got the HUB 4 today, I have had no issues in a small amount of time (3 hours 10 mins) on the HUB 3 by now i would have PRE RS errors and modulation drops.

As a whole my service is better.

The national fault seems to be fixed (for now).

Put it this way, I am getting 550Mbps constantly or at least every time I have checked and I live in an area known for congestion.

10Mbps on a 100Mbps connection for a long time, I have heard it all before.

A Virgin Media engineer I have had in the past stated that there is a lot of network congestion issues but because money is needed to fix it, no one wants to spend it.

He said the lockdown was perfect to show this, he said "during the first lockdown we lost so many technicians to cityfibre and most of them never came back" "our teams are getting abused because of network capacity issues we can't deal with, how am I meant to fix a problem when its been created on purpose, every time I report it, it comes back to me as 'its not a problem, give it a few days and it will fix itself', that's what we are up against" He proceed to say "Virgin Media's network is so fragile, any minor change in usage can make the difference between customers having issues and service to them not." "Those that don't often take it out on us as they think we are the ones making decisions, customers like yourself understand but the majority don't"

I think that speaks for itself. Even their staff are fed up

Is this still an issue? Just had a letter through the door saying Virgin will be cabling my street soon. There's no FTTP here, so Virgin would be my only option for faster speeds. Don't want to sign up if there's going to be a load of problems though.

I'm currently with BT (FTTC) and get around 50Mb.

In reply to a post by _Resonance_:

Is this still an issue? Just had a letter through the door saying Virgin will be cabling my street soon. There's no FTTP here, so Virgin would be my only option for faster speeds. Don't want to sign up if there's going to be a load of problems though.

I'm currently with BT (FTTC) and get around 50Mb.

Hi,
Sorry for not spotting your message just got back from Norfolk and and off to France to dig a trench to do a fibre pull with Orange over the next two and a half weeks.

I have been on VM M500 for 4 Months or so now and everything seems to be working alright, my samknows whitebox shows no drops recently, only two and they were power cuts this week, Virgin don't have UPS's whereas my house does.

I will say I use my own router with the HUB 4 in modem mode as the defult ISP routers are generally poor and restrcited.

In terms of speeds like I said its consitant, here is some data for you Download speesds M500

The upload speed is a bit more inconsitant but its not a majour issue. Upload M500

The Latency aswell for you Latancy
Packet loss Packetloss

As you can see the data looks alright now.

I will say while the speeds do look fast there, there are points it drops between tests, as I do spot checks ocasionally, although I suspect this could be to do with my QOS and bandwith throttling with my config, but haven't got round to checking my theory.

Thanks for the reply and taking the time to provide the info RR.

Looks like it may be worth taking the risk then.

Not sure exactly when I'll be able to order. The generic letter saying that they will soon be starting work on my street was put through the door on Friday.

In reply to a post by _Resonance_:

Looks like it may be worth taking the risk then.

If you don't have VM in the street today, then it is almost certain they will be installing fibre into the road, and when you order they will use a convertor to coax on the outside of your home. This is "Project Lightning" expansion. It is still a DOCSIS connection and the modem or TV box in your home is the same as everywhere else.

These areas appear to have less issues with variable latency and outages (from looking at other BQMs), as the cabling in the ground is not 30 years old. Unlike mine and RR's areas, where the ground has coax cabling originally designed for TV and tweaked to handle broadband.

Always worth posting a new thread with your town name asking for other people's experiences, e.g. I'm in Farnborough, Hampshire, and the Virgin Media network here is run from Guildford, separate to the experiences of friends just down the motorway.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 31-Jul-22 16:05:13)

Interesting. Thanks for the info jc.

Just looked at my BQM for the first time in months and its been shocking for weeks from what I can tell.
Broadband is very flakey, came from Sky FTTC and lots of complaints in the house about reliability since the change.
Music and radio streaming drops several times per day.
Teams and Zoom aren't all that great either.
I'm on the new FTTP build.

BQM

Edited by bubblegun (Sun 14-Aug-22 12:11:21)

That looks awful, do you know to get the line stats from the router?

Is it this?

Downstream bonded channels
Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) SNR (dB) Modulation Channel ID
1 331000000 -3.2 38 256 qam 25
2 203000000 -1.2 38 256 qam 9
3 211000000 -1.2 38 256 qam 10
4 219000000 -1.2 38 256 qam 11
5 227000000 -1.5 38 256 qam 12
6 235000000 -1.5 38 256 qam 13
7 243000000 -1.9 38 256 qam 14
8 251000000 -2 38 256 qam 15
9 259000000 -2.4 38 256 qam 16
10 267000000 -2.5 38 256 qam 17
11 275000000 -2.9 38 256 qam 18
12 283000000 -2.9 38 256 qam 19
13 291000000 -3.2 38 256 qam 20
14 299000000 -3 38 256 qam 21
15 307000000 -3.2 38 256 qam 22
16 315000000 -3.2 38 256 qam 23
17 323000000 -3.2 38 256 qam 24
18 339000000 -3 38 256 qam 26
19 347000000 -3 38 256 qam 27
20 355000000 -3.2 38 256 qam 28
21 363000000 -3.2 38 256 qam 29
22 371000000 -3.4 38 256 qam 30
23 379000000 -3.4 38 256 qam 31
24 387000000 -3.2 38 256 qam 32


Downstream bonded channels
Channel Locked Status RxMER (dB) Pre RS Errors Post RS Errors
1 Locked 38.6 0 0
2 Locked 38.9 5 0
3 Locked 38.9 4 0
4 Locked 38.9 4 0
5 Locked 38.6 4 0
6 Locked 38.6 5 0
7 Locked 38.9 0 0
8 Locked 38.6 5 0
9 Locked 38.9 0 0
10 Locked 38.9 5 0
11 Locked 38.6 6 0
12 Locked 38.6 5 0
13 Locked 38.9 5 0
14 Locked 38.6 5 0
15 Locked 38.9 3 0
16 Locked 38.6 5 0
17 Locked 38.6 4 0
18 Locked 38.6 6 0
19 Locked 38.6 4 0
20 Locked 38.6 5 0
21 Locked 38.9 5 0
22 Locked 38.9 5 0
23 Locked 38.6 4 0
24 Locked 38.6 6 0