Virgin Media in Oldham Area

Hi All,

I live in the Oldham (Moorside) area and am having VM's 60Mbps package provisioned next Saturday. Primarily because BT's FTTC rollout didn't happen to my cabinet, due to the weather (apparently) and there is no new confirmed date.

The questions I have relate to anyone in the area that also uses VM and can you give me any idea of what to expect, in terms of reliability, speed, latency during gaming and the general level of support from the provider.

I work for an ISP, so am familiar with the vernacular, although have never used a cable service.

Thanks in advance.

Mike

Spit away from u. Conncted on oldh9. Bamdwidth 24 7 50 to 60mb allways so no issue there. Past latency little loss but far from prefect jitter avg 20 to 30ms max spike 60ms.

But i ve just made this post on vm as yestrday at midday somthinh changed.
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-30Mb-broad...

Ha great post on there! Oldham seems to be quite lucky in the respect that everyone is trialling super fast round here. I know that BT is planning 330Mbps trials round here, assuming you can get it at the cab or FTTP, but also VM seem to be trying to keep in the game too.

I'm hoping this bodes well for me, come next Saturday when the engineer rocks up with my kit and plumbs me in!

Cheers for that mate.

That was me that posted that by the way.

Not sure if they fixed in latest firmware but its best to turn of ip flood detection in the services menu on the shub as it sends packet loss insane. Backup up ya settings an hard reset to jump upstr channels dont work every time but more times then vm load balancing kit decides to do its job. Let me know if you land on olhd9 cmts.

Yeah it's a good point man. Often the config on the router that causes grief. Just hoping I get a decent engineer. I've heard that it's all good until you ring them up for support. Then you want to wipe off Branson's beard with a rusty fork.

Part of the problem of knowing plenty about the internet is when you call up an ISP tech support robot and speak to someone that doesn't know anything about it.

Even Closer, OL1 4 (Sholver)
We had nothing but problems during the 6 months that we were with Vm, dropped connections for 2-3 hours per day.,..And Vm's response "restart your superhub and that will cure it" ye right!!!

Yeah just up the road from me. It seems from reading endless posts that if it works properly, it's great, but if you have any problems at all then you're at the mercy of some of the most incompetent customer/tech support known to humankind.

When it's provisioned, I'll still have a basic ADSL line as a backup, but it only gets 3Mbps, so I'm hoping I won't have to use it much, if at all!

hum didnt notice i was anon posting from my phone last night, wayne am on top shover, apart from a down period lasting from midnight to 5am with no info from VM even after asking on there froum, am use to plusnet sending a billion service status out over twit email ect. apart from that the year an half on 30mb an now 60mb has all been about TBB ping graphs as bandwidth is never effected as packet loss is not a issue its the ji tt er bug on the upstream that kills my connection for QOS.

somthing happend thursday midday as upstream chan 2 am on has improved, any one else getting same as me on TBB graphs. An 3mb turns to 1.7mb when the copper loop hits us up ere

Downstream Channels
Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Max Raw Bit Rate Frequency Power SNR Docsis/EuroDocsis locked
Locked QAM256 29 55616000 Kbits/sec 298750000 Hz 2.4 dBmV 42.5 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 27 55616000 Kbits/sec 282750000 Hz 3.4 dBmV 42.9 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 28 55616000 Kbits/sec 290750000 Hz 2.8 dBmV 42.8 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 30 55616000 Kbits/sec 306750000 Hz 2.3 dBmV 42.5 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 31 55616000 Kbits/sec 314750000 Hz 4.0 dBmV 42.6 dB Hybrid
Locked QAM256 32 55616000 Kbits/sec 322750000 Hz 3.8 dBmV 42.7 dB Hybrid
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV 0.0 dB Unknown
Upstream Channels
Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Max Raw Bit Rate Frequency Power
Locked ATDMA 2 20480 Kbits/sec 35800000 Hz 42.5 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Unlocked Unknown 0 0 Ksym/sec 0 Hz 0.0 dBmV
Primary Downstream Service Flow
Downstream(0)
SFID 336
Max Traffic Rate 66000000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 3044 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Primary Upstream Service Flow
Upstream(0)
SFID 335
Max Traffic Rate 3072000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 8160 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Max Concatenated Burst 8160 bytes
Scheduling Type Best Effort
Current System Time:Sat Jun 30 12:31:27 2012

live ping graph

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Jun-12 13:58:01)

3meg not bad, we get 4 meg hanging of the shaw exchange, till bt provision the fibre cab or we move which ever happens first( i have a theory which will happen first)

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Jun-12 14:09:07)

I can just about live with the 3meg when I'm the only one in the house using it, but more often than not it's at least two or three of us which kills it. One person surfing and another streaming is no fun, especially as at my last place in Derker we were getting The thick end of 76/19 with zero shaping or traffic management.

BT attempted to rig out our cab on April 30th apparently, but couldn't do it because of the steep incline it's on and also the heavy rain. Not sure exactly why this was a problem, but Oldham Council has prevented BT from coming back until a review period of three months is finished. All bureaucratic as far as I can see, but it means we won't see FTTC here this year. So it's VM or nothing.

I'll post the performance tests on here when the engineer hands it over to me.

Doesn't surprise me for oldham council !!

It's something called a Section 58 which gives Councils the power to prevent road excavations going ahead if there's other work planned or if it might cause problems in the area.

It does make me think that broadband provision should be a factor to consider when moving home, if the internet is important, which let's face it, it is.

BT is generally unhelpful when you call, but speaking with BT Wholesale or Openreach directly is cool. Given I work for an ISP I have the luxury of knowing who to speak to, even though all I got was bad news.

Is the whole of the est able to use shaw loop. Ran post office on oldham at 63db+ atten would of switched if it was possable. Sayin that got 32ms day an night to bbc on post office damp copper tech

Not sure to be honest. I know that 75% of my street are FTTC, but the remaining 25% (including us) fell foul of the April visit. What was misleading was that samknows.com reported that the BT line was FTTC enabled (not just the post code), but it clearly isn't. That's dented my opinion on their availability checker.

My number when checked a couple o years ago said i think 16mb but i went vm as my option back then was trail fttc on plusnets 60gb peak adsl2 package. With 5 kids that anit a option so had to go vm to get more than 1.7mb unlimted, finger crossed latency stays bareable on vm an fttc fttp mature even more before switch back to the better vdsl latency kit. Was nice to see sky an co move to fttc for better unlimted packages

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Jun-12 23:27:24)

The latency only really affects my Son, who's the gamer. I'm more concerned with streaming and downloads etc, so it's the bandwidth I'm interested really.

Only got to wait until Saturday to find out. At least there's no 'settling' period with cable. You get what you get straight away.

Well i dont get no moaning from my 2 boys playin theres an mine. Am picky with latency because i only play battlefield 1943 an only fly in planes so i notice when jitter gets touch an go. Overall for gaming it anit bin to bad an if the improvment stays for good which when jus checked is still looking mighty fine

Bandwidth same. only stressful night i remember is bout month ago when netflix wouldnt hd an was swicthing from low med high streams constantly. Could of bin out of hands as all else was good at time. Running hd netflix to xbox an pc 37in past few nights with mobs an odd other download all with out any pc tech help from the un paid dude called day.

So your use to speaking to BTw. Open reach then. Throw that book out window an get your self on rosseta.com an learn the lingo. Bandwidth an speedtestnet are the only two english words most overseas reps know. Network fault teams seem to b hidden deep in cave as not yet found a rep that can talk direct to um in any other form than clicking to book a vist. even ceo office failed to keep to word when told a network engnier would fone to discuss the latency issue that got pretty bad for few months which made for unhappy top gun momments. Use to slate btw when i was with plusnet but learned the truth when i found vm comunity an 150

Haha yeah that just about sums it up.

I'm kinda excited to be back getting fast speeds again. I just hope it's reliable! I do expect some level of traffic management (it's only the same as BT), but I hope when they say it's up to 60meg, I get nearer that than where I am now on ADSL.

I hope I'm not disappointed, but it sounds promising, based on the fact you have a decent QoS and live fairly nearby. Saturday morning can't come soon enough!

Well, so far so good. The engineer came early and I'm up and running.

Current downstream is 61Mb and 3Mb upstream. Pings to news.bbc.co.uk return an average of a 16ms round trip.

Streaming nice and smooth with Sky Go and I'm about to try downloading a monster file. One I own

Are you on oldh9 cmts. http://tools.virginmedia.com/

I certainly am mate. Had a problem with the router today, but it was a simple case of switching wireless channels and that sorted it. Strange though since it was working fine and there's only one other wireless network with any strength nearby.

Working fine now, so all is cool.

Yeah wireless has bin the hubs letdown. Not noticed any issues my self but only started using wireless after xmas. 2 xboxs running was a big hub issie at start. Current got zbox s an 2 androids plus many other devices on eth lan. All good here on chan 1 with another hub sat on chan with a low signal. Prob post again when 10 to 1 upload happens to see what tour connection is lile. Prob pass u street many times before then