In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

You describe yourself as a perfection junkie which frames your opinion. A loss of speed over peak period is normal on broadband networks, no customer on a mass market ISP in the UK is paying enough to assure line rate all the time.

Customers and myself aren't asking for an assured rate, specially at peak times of day, however going from 150Mb/s to 5Mb/s is simply unacceptable!

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

A quick look at the VM forums actually suggests that most of the issues raised there either already have plans in place for capacity relief or are at thresholds.

Plans are no good, actions are what makes a difference and my area has had "plans" in place for nearly 12 months (*for this fault) and were about to be delayed again for the 4/5th time!

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

I'm aware you can't post there as both the accounts you used have met the ban hammer

Yes that's right, my account was closed a year or two ago and my fathers was closed recently because they thought it was me and then when confronted by my father where corrected that it was actually him but I was supplying information on his behalf...

Still not quiet sure why I/He was banned... maybe because I highlighted an issues that they don't know about or are not at liberty to disclose to the public...

I've since got a direct point of contact regarding the issues and have a manager visiting tomorrow morning.

Just shows how close you are with Virgin Media considering a ban is not made public and the last post I posted was confirming that I would no longer discuss the issues with anyone else other then Virgin Media employee's at least a week before the ban was put into action...

The ban might of been put in place when a journalist started contacting them regarding the issues.. It was 24 hours after she submitted information to Virgin for info about issues and why customers where being "screwed" over

Either way the issues has now been highlighted locally and the customers are fighting back.....

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Virgin host Ookla test servers on their network, nothing more to this point than that.

Your point being?

Should be obvious. It eliminates the possibility of results being affected by 3rd party issues, such as connectivity problems to external speed tests or issues with those speed tests.

Whats to say Virgin's servers are more reliable than others... I tend to use Leicester Rapidswitch... very consistent testing.... funny how it shows better results than the one's in Croydon and Brentford and my connection is routed through both of them!

if the server is on the core Virgin Media network then it can help to identify external issues and peering congestion has been an issue for Virgin Media at various times. As we run our own large network we can tweak routing and prove issues like certain links being congested, but that is expensive in terms of our time, i.e. same reason you do not get to speak to a core network geek at Virgin when phoning up as a consumer usually.

Also the ookla algorithm tends to give a more peak figure, and some servers and the mobile app appears configured to give a peak rather than an average result, i.e. it can vary from server to service with no visibility to the end-user as to which it is.

Nothing stopping Virgin Media from hosting our locked down speed test appliances if that is what they want, one of various options that providers can discuss with us.

As for the support people, if its the front line phone people then I do not expect them to know every nuance, if you look at what they are paid it is only enough to ensure they follow the scripts and fault finding as permitted by call centre manager.

I've said it before on here. I got VM P&B last August and I should have done it years ago. I came from a flaky 7Mb ADSL connection to 161Mb up, 12Mb down in less than an hour. Sure its been off a couple of times but it comes back on after a hour or so back to full speed. On ADSL I couldn't get a connection for more than 24hrs without a drop.

H

This is result from automatic testing over the last few months...

http://tinypic.com/r/2i07io9/8

In December things got better... and then they dived at the beginning of the year

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Yes that's right, my account was closed a year or two ago and my fathers was closed recently because they thought it was me and then when confronted by my father where corrected that it was actually him but I was supplying information on his behalf...

Still not quiet sure why I/He was banned... maybe because I highlighted an issues that they don't know about or are not at liberty to disclose to the public...

I've since got a direct point of contact regarding the issues and have a manager visiting tomorrow morning.

Just shows how close you are with Virgin Media considering a ban is not made public and the last post I posted was confirming that I would no longer discuss the issues with anyone else other then Virgin Media employee's at least a week before the ban was put into action...

The ban might of been put in place when a journalist started contacting them regarding the issues.. It was 24 hours after she submitted information to Virgin for info about issues and why customers where being "screwed" over

Either way the issues has now been highlighted locally and the customers are fighting back.....

I agree with you regarding the performance of 5Mb being unacceptable. As do people in Virgin which is why, as I mentioned, they pushed back and resisted the temptation to push the network harder without spending a lot of money upgrading it prior to the next uplift.

Plans are just that and can go wrong. Virgin's capacity planning turned out to be insufficient for demand, they weren't the only ones caught by surprise by usage increases.

Your forum ban - you posted here and on Twitter about it, and I'm not convinced you were merely passing your father information.

As a general rule posting on 2 different forums on exactly the same topic with the exact same latency graphs, the two posts paraphrasing one another, within 7 minutes of each other is a pretty good hint that it's the same person. This ignoring that both contain the same grammar mistakes, the English is in general very similar, and that both have the same non-working TBB BQM in the signature.

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/virgin_cable/t/4381...
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-152Mb/Why-...

Obviously if it came to it and you carried out your threat of seeking compensation, presumably through the courts, Virgin would have the source IP addresses of all posts from that account and could cross-reference against their DHCP database, which would show both the source cable modem and the source router being used if in modem mode. In addition Virgin could seek the IP addresses you post on TBB from, via a court order before you start thinking TBB will just hand it over, they won't, and cross-reference them with the source IP addresses on their own forum.

Of course if those 2 posts weren't you, and neither were the subsequent ones you've nothing to fear from this.

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Feb-15 14:10:12)

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Whats to say Virgin's servers are more reliable than others... I tend to use Leicester Rapidswitch... very consistent testing.... funny how it shows better results than the one's in Croydon and Brentford and my connection is routed through both of them!

Basic diagnostics Mr Network - you eliminate as many factors outside of your control from testing as possible. Virgin control the servers and the network between their customers and those servers hence have full visibility of the test end to end apart from the end user's kit.

All this is irrelevant as both me and my father share the same connection.

Anyway, I'm done talking about this now, I just realized I'm wasting my time chatting nonsense about something others can't understand without being affected themselves.... and I'm not talking about the utilization..

I'm obviously making sense to somebody as this matter is being handled in a more professional manner..

My plan was to publicize the problem and get people making demands, I've done that and will continue to also..

Virgin are the only people who can prove me wrong and they are yet to have done that...

This will be my final post on the matter, may no hard feelings come from any of the previous posts as we are both relying on relayed information and the truth is none of us know the truth and those who think they do might of been mislead also..

What I do know is that customer's aren't getting what was/is promised and that is my concern here.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

All this is irrelevant as both me and my father share the same connection.

Anyway, I'm done talking about this now, I just realized I'm wasting my time chatting nonsense about something others can't understand without being affected themselves.... and I'm not talking about the utilization..

I'm obviously making sense to somebody as this matter is being handled in a more professional manner..

My plan was to publicize the problem and get people making demands, I've done that and will continue to also..

Virgin are the only people who can prove me wrong and they are yet to have done that...

This will be my final post on the matter, may no hard feelings come from any of the previous posts as we are both relying on relayed information and the truth is none of us know the truth and those who think they do might of been mislead also..

What I do know is that customer's aren't getting what was/is promised and that is my concern here.

I am indeed surprised at the courtesy VM are giving you given the manner in which you treat their social media team. I guess companies in this social media age really don't like bad publicity. As a general rule telling people to 'do one' and calling them 'useless prats' isn't conducive to a constructive relationship.

You are also extremely presumptuous in thinking that no-one else can understand the issues. I have had issues with VM which were in one case resolved through my leaving and returning to ADSL, and in the other case I involved the local MP and the VM CEO's office. This ignoring my long and distinguished history with Openreach

I'll ask a few questions about Crawley and see what I can find out about why the first round of upgrades were inadequate and what the next steps are.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

Virgin Cable seems like a good idea. Like a kind of FTTH thing. But why do they cripple the upload speeds so much? Is there something in the technology that means they have to slow peoples uploads to get better download speeds? I'm not sure I understand.

Because they are very stingy with their bandwidth allocation across their network. Their network is also a lot more restrictive than a Copper Local Loop despite what people may think.
The restrictions being that every area shares a number of channels and every customer uses a certain number of channels which other customers use as-well. E.g. Upstream; last time I checked these are set at 20Mbps for each channel at Virgin Media and each customer (At least on the 30Mbps package) has two channels allocated to them which are bonded at the router.

These two channels will also be used by dozens of other customers in the area so if too many people swamp the channels, other people will suffer.

But then again the same applies to the downstream except the channels are wider and more are allocated at once.

Then you have the added backhaul contention like you do with the Copper Local Loop system if a provider inadequately provides enough backhaul.

In either case Virgin Media COULD (and really should) increase Upstream Bandwidth allocations for their products which is why I've labelled them "stingy" in regards to it. The network could definitely support a higher upload speed than what they currently use.

12Mbps on a 152Mbps package is absolutely pathetic.

I can't remember the last time I heard someone complain about Upload speed congestion. Plenty complain about Downstream congestion though.

So in conclusion; Because they are very stingy with their product download:upload ratio.