In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Probably the only compelling case for me to use VM is if it does not use CGNAT via Nexfibre. Is this the case for their service?

VM's IP network does not use CGNAT, it doesn't matter how you reach the VM network via Coax, or nexfibre. VM also does not have IPv6, widely reported.

There is the option of paying £5 extra a month for symmetrical speeds. I was paying £40.99 + £5 to get the Gig1 symmetrical speed.

I did a fair few speed tests yesterday during the day and early evening. with both my BT connection and the VM connection. I tested various speedtest servers, sometimes the same ones, sometimes whatever it thought was best and:

BT - All day. 910-920mb down, 110-115 up. Pings ranging from 4-8ms. 0% packet loss (one run had 1% loss). Responsiveness was about 31 down, 21 up.

VM - Day time, 1100-1140 down, 110 up. Pings ranging from 4-9ms. 0-5% packet loss. Responsiveness was about 40 down, 40 up.
VM - Evening time, 700-840 down, 105 up. Pings ranging from 8-15ms. 5-15% packet loss. Responsiveness was about 40 down, 70-130 up.

How odd.

Which speed test server were you using on the VM tests, and what is the address of your first hop on their network? Don't worry, this won't give away anything other than a very general location for you: it's likely a virtual interface / loopback on a BNG.

Ta.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Probably the only compelling case for me to use VM is if it does not use CGNAT via Nexfibre. Is this the case for their service?

VM's IP network does not use CGNAT, it doesn't matter how you reach the VM network via Coax, or nexfibre. VM also does not have IPv6, widely reported.

Yeah, that is the only positive. The only reason I expressed concerns is due to Community Fibre only removing CGNAT for their 3Gbps package but all others are under CGNAT so port forwarding will be an issue.

But if CGNAT is not an issue for all packages under VM then that's somewhat of a relief. IPv6 is not so important after-all. I think IPv4 with port forwarding is far more important for the majority of users (particularly gamers) than having IPv6 but being under CGNAT.

I can sacrifice IPv6 like I did with TalkTalk but at least the main FTTC ISPs don't restrict port forwarding.

Nexfibre however, doesn't yet have any other ISPs on the network, so that means VM is the only choice for now and if there are any restrictions then you'll be stuck.
Luckily for me Community Fibre do offer far more reasonably priced packages except for the fact that there's no CGNAT for packages under 3Gbps.

In reply to a post by chriscdotcodotuk:

There is the option of paying £5 extra a month for symmetrical speeds. I was paying £40.99 + £5 to get the Gig1 symmetrical speed.

I did a fair few speed tests yesterday during the day and early evening. with both my BT connection and the VM connection. I tested various speedtest servers, sometimes the same ones, sometimes whatever it thought was best and:

BT - All day. 910-920mb down, 110-115 up. Pings ranging from 4-8ms. 0% packet loss (one run had 1% loss). Responsiveness was about 31 down, 21 up.

VM - Day time, 1100-1140 down, 110 up. Pings ranging from 4-9ms. 0-5% packet loss. Responsiveness was about 40 down, 40 up.
VM - Evening time, 700-840 down, 105 up. Pings ranging from 8-15ms. 5-15% packet loss. Responsiveness was about 40 down, 70-130 up.

So that means if you pay £70+£5 extra for Gig2 symmetrical and that's total £75 a month. That's certainly quite expensive. The packages are already expensive enough but to have to add another £5 a month on top isn't fair. Then I'm thinking to myself that Community Fibre £56 a month for 3Gbps symmetrical is the best choice yet I don't need that fast connection as all I needed is 500Mbps or 1Gbps for a cheaper price but not have CGNAT.

This leads me to the second point, that if nexfibre brings in more ISPs maybe it will become more competitive and VM will not be a monopoly as the only ISP on the network.
It will be interesting how performance compares in future when more ISPs join. Openreach FTTP I think is a better choice than nexfibre, far more ISPs on the network.

My management opted to give wayleave permission for VM/nexfibre instead. I don't know the logic behind this, they are a more expensive service in general & not going to attract many customers especially from social housing. Only reason I believe this to be the case is because our communal aerial TV system is managed by SCCI Alphatrack and they are also the ones in charge of installing the fibre optic cables for nexfibre.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

if nexfibre brings in more ISPs maybe it will become more competitive and VM will not be a monopoly as the only ISP on the network.

That may be one reason why VM are dragging their heels on the wholesale issue. They'd have to deliver twice as many services for half the revenue per active line.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

My management opted to give wayleave permission for VM/nexfibre instead. I don't know the logic behind this, they are a more expensive service in general & not going to attract many customers especially from social housing. Only reason I believe this to be the case is because our communal aerial TV system is managed by SCCI Alphatrack and they are also the ones in charge of installing the fibre optic cables for nexfibre.

A kickback is probably involved somewhere.

Your building management could of course give permission for *both* Openreach and VM/nexfibre.

Yes, I also believe that to be the case with VM and Nexfibre trying to hold as long as possible to gain maximum number of customers first before allowing Nexfibre to attract new ISPs.

It is a marketing strategy to solidify their customer base first probably in collaboration with Nexfibre. I may be wrong, but I think this is a conspiracy tactic and Nexfibre are delaying this deliberately to help VM gain more customers first.

They certainly know what they are doing. Also, from what I am reading Nexfibre (admitted) that they are cherry picking all the areas that do not have an existing Virgin Media Coax DOCSIS 3.1 Footprint like in our case. So, it is not surprising that they targeted our area and have upgraded to the new Nexfibre service since we do not have neither Virgin Media Coax or Openreach FTTP.

I believe eventually my building management will give permission to Openreach FTTP. In fact, I also think Openreach might express greater interest themselves to reach out to my management as having Community Fibre and VM will mean a loss of FTTC/ADSL customers.
There will come a point in future when the FTTC customer base will be emptied out but it is a matter of time. Even though an 80/20Mbps is more than sufficient for most of our needs, people will naturally switch to FTTP Altnets over time.

I have seen several places that do have several FTTP overbuilds just as some are mentioning here of having Nexfibre and Openreach FTTP.

It's a funny situation, 10 years ago I couldn't convince my management to sign to 1 Altnet at that time (Hyperoptic). I was even the Hyperoptic Champion and couldn't do anything to persuade them saying FTTP wasn't in their priority.

But now they have given permission to both Community Fibre and Virgin Media. Probably they now realise this is not rocket science. Or maybe they have these Altnets where they live so they were naturally more accepting to give this permission.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Yes, I also believe that to be the case with VM and Nexfibre trying to hold as long as possible to gain maximum number of customers first before allowing Nexfibre to attract new ISPs.

It is a marketing strategy to solidify their customer base first probably in collaboration with Nexfibre. I may be wrong, but I think this is a conspiracy tactic and Nexfibre are delaying this deliberately to help VM gain more customers first.

Indeed you are. Nexfibre have been actively speaking with ISPs to sign them up and at least two have run trial deployments. They have nothing agreed yet for commercial reasons not conspiratorial ones. The necessary infrastructure to connect ISPs that aren't VMO2 is awaiting the first order, it's already been planned and budgeted. VMO2 will be building the infrastructure to allow others to connect to Nexfibre and compete with them.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Also, from what I am reading Nexfibre (admitted) that they are cherry picking all the areas that do not have an existing Virgin Media Coax DOCSIS 3.1 Footprint like in our case. So, it is not surprising that they targeted our area and have upgraded to the new Nexfibre service since we do not have neither Virgin Media Coax or Openreach FTTP.

Nexfibre are 2/3rds owned by the owners of VMO2, Liberty Global and Telefonica. They make extensive use of VMO2's network and they contracted out their build to VMO2. VMO2 are already upwards of a quarter through upgrading their existing cable network to full fibre. It would make absolutely no sense for Nexfibre to build in those areas in order to compete with their majority owners.

Basically Nexfibre are there to allow Liberty Global and Telefonica to cover more premises without incurring increased regulation and, even then, VMO2 are going wholesale themselves and separating their network into a new NetCo partly to try and avoid the ire of the regulator. This is not a secret or a conspiracy.

I went to run a few wireless speed tests as I've disconnected my device from my main network and the speeds were all over the place. London servers, Maidstone servers (I'm near sittingbourne so this is closest to me) and they were jumping from 650 down to 150 down and anywhere up to 6% packet loss and 4ms jitter. Its 4pm on a sunday afternoon.

Pings are all a bit worse than on BT (7-10ms) vs a steady 6ms. Throughput speeds are better most of the time on VM but I'm sat right next to the hub and my home wifi maxes out at 600mb (ish) most of the time vs the 5X which does far faster. I've seen wireless speeds of 900mb on it so this 650 is as fast as it's actually running.

brnt-bng-1-sub.network.virginmedia.net --> brnt-core-2a-ae15-11.network.virginmedia.net. -->

In reply to a post by chriscdotcodotuk:

I went to run a few wireless speed tests as I've disconnected my device from my main network and the speeds were all over the place.

If you post some names, happy to try on my doscis coax connection, but WiFi can easily be the the issue, more so on weekends when families are all using devices across your neighbourhood than mid week.

I don't know anything in sittingbourne, but bbc.co.uk is a staple for testing:

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.64.81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.64.81: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.64.81: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.64.81: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=59
Reply from 151.101.64.81: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=59
Ping statistics for 151.101.64.81:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 14ms, Maximum = 19ms, Average = 15ms

and Traceroute

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.64.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  my.home.router [192.x.x.x]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3    15 ms    12 ms    25 ms  glfd-core-2b-ae18-650.network.virginmedia.net [80.7.14.113]
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  5    16 ms    14 ms    12 ms  eislou2-ic-4-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.254.59.130]
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7    14 ms    13 ms    13 ms  151.101.64.81

Edited by jchamier (Sun 03-Nov-24 15:57:20)

Sorry I was simply pointing out my first hop out of the house was as I shared.

Wifi wise I'm quite fortunate in that I basically pick up my own network and very rarely one other if I'm at the back of my house.

Where I was located doing those tests I was less than 20cm from the 5X and >>5m from the nearest AP for my main network.

My previous tests were all done whilst hard wired via 2.5g (nics and switches) where the massive speed issues and latency issues became apparent during the evenings.

VM are happy for me to go elsewhere and I'm happy to stay with BT. The connection is far far far more consistent around the clock and consistency is worth more to me than a few hundred mb headline speed. Sure, the upload would have been epic but such is life.