I stream games but need advice on Virgin Broadband

Hi! I need some advice on my Virgin Internet and was advised to post here. (Thanks jchamier).

I stream games daily (1920 x 1080, general settings) and bought the quickest/ expensive fibre line I could have in my area, 1GB download and 50MB upload. Sounds great!...until I noticed that my gaming experience has not been that...great.

Download speeds in general, are great and upload speeds tend to be ok at 50 or slightly more or less...however, I somehow get packet loss and when I stream my favourite competitive games (like Apex legends/ COD warzone) there are many, many times I feel like something is off. For example, there are lag spikes, jittering on the line and recently started to rubber band in game.

I initially thought it was the game servers of said games that were the problem, but I had a few confirmations that it was connections on my side, rather than the game servers. (I get in game signals that tell me if its a server issue or a localised issue, ie my internet).

I get further confirmation when I stream, because I can literally see that I get packet loss of 0.5 to 2% via my streaming information data screen I have on my second monitor and this persists late into the morning hours. It happens more often than it should IMO.

It is super frustrating and it has been like this for...years and it is not just once or twice a month. It is literally close to daily. I shouldn't be getting any packet loss or jittering, the speed tests tell me I have fantastic internet...but I am having the worst times playing these online multiplayer games.

I have had the router recently changed because it had short circuited (which shorted the electric board and almost killed off my home network server, but it survived with data intact luckily), but I am still encountering these problems.

I wanted to add that when Virgin initially added the line to my house, the actual cable from the street (just outside the house, which is a long black cable) was connected to the house in the open and is semi hanging off the side of the driveway. Is this normal? Leaving a long black cable from the street to the virgin house box (located outside on the house wall, which connects the house to virgin)? I thought they would of at least put it into some kind of tubing, or thread the cable through a hole in the concrete driveway rather than to leave the line hanging out like that. I did not ask them at the time if that was generally how the cables were supposed to be fitted/ installed and now I'm beginning to suspect most of the problems may be coming from the installation of said outside black cable. The engineer who came to install the new router (after our previous one had short circuited) didn't seem to take much issue with it but I need a 3rd/ 4th opinion if possible).

This was todays chart:

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

and this was on the 1st of Jan:

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


I feel a bit stupid asking these questions but since doing stat checking on my streaming software for dropped frames due to network and seeing in game error messages/ codes in relation to local network problems, I am convinced there is something not quite right with the line.

Please help. I don't know what to do. I have called virgin before but other than changing the new router, they haven't really looked into the jitter stuff and rubber banding stuff because they do a speed test and that's it.

I just want a seamless, lag free gaming experience for me and my viewers.

Sorry for writing a long post but literally why pay for such an expensive line in general if things like this keeps happening, right? I dunno...sigh...

Also...Happy New Year and many thanks for any input.

I am now getting super packet drops, up to 9.6% . My God T_T

My internet currently...yay T_T

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

Edited by Marksman_m (Mon 02-Jan-23 19:16:23)

I changed my router to OPNSense and enabled fq_codel for queue management.

I only have an 80/20 line but I have not had an issue on Stadia since.


My Broadband Ping

Best to post over on the VM Forum. Get all the Hub stats and network log information to post up.
As for the cable outside, that shouldn't be a problem unless the connections are poor. My VM cable at the moment, is just lying across the grass in the garden. They are coming back "soon" to bury it......

VM IMHO is not the best platform for low latency gaming as it stands.

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband/ct-p/...

where would I need to go to learn about routers and stuff like this? Seems super advanced and wouldn't know where to start in terms of using an (independent?) router with modified settings -_-*!

I am currently going for a standard, (not quickest/ slowest) BT broadband being installed. Do you have any suggestions as to a better provider or are they all generally the same?

In reply to a post by Marksman_m:

I am currently going for a standard, (not quickest/ slowest) BT broadband being installed. Do you have any suggestions as to a better provider or are they all generally the same?

When you say "BT broadband" there are quite a few Openreach products they can use (e.g. ADSL, FTTC, FTTP options) and you can buy from many different ISPs as well as BT Retail. The main part of this site has a provider comparison tool that might help.

But a lot cheaper to post on the VM forums than get a second network installed. Unless you can get the 900 Mbps FTTP service, the virgin service is likely to be faster for game downloads (some are many gigabytes).

completely depends on your needs.

There are plenty of guides on Youtube but it will be a bit of a slog if you have no networking experience.
Maybe look to find a more consumer oriented router that supports it. One of the better Asus routers maybe but bear in mind that the faster your connection speed, the more CPU power required to keep it running well

In reply to a post by Marksman_m:

where would I need to go to learn about routers and stuff like this?

Try the US forum site Small Net Builder, but remember they don't know the UK internet technology.