Am I being ripped off? My 20mb Dilemma!

[Hinks]

I recently purchased a deal from a Virgin salesman at my University. He said he could give me TV, Phone line and XL Broadband for £39 a month.

Everything was fine until after the installation I realised that the Broadband which was apparently 20mb, was in fact the medium package (2mb?). I was fuming to say the least but I kept my nerve and contacted the call centre. The lady I spoke to was helpful and she said that my account had not been set up correctly and she would change it and I would receive the speed I was paying for within a few hours.

A day passed and still nothing had changed. So I phoned up again and spoke to India which I had no luck with.

Yesterday I phoned up the call center again, only to be told I had got the XL service active and I should be receiving it.

I know I wasn't as in the 'Upgrade Your Broadband' section, it still listed me as the medium package. She told me to phone up the broadband technical helpline which I couldn't actually get through to so that was a waste of time.

I decided in the end to upgrade my broadband through the website and hope it doesn't screw up my deal I got with Virgin as I am a student. All went okay, I was able to subscribe to the premium services BUT I still knew I wasn't receiving the 20mb connection I was paying for.

I have been using a speed testing website (speedtest.net) to test my speeds and they have clearly been around the 5mb mark which is unacceptable in my eyes.

Has anyone had a similar problem as me? I have already sent a formal letter of complaint to the head office and I will pursue the matter further if need be. Will try phoning the broadband technical helpline again tomorrow but some free help from anyone wouldn't go amiss! ;)

[v0id]

http://192.168.100.1/

Browse about to see what config file you have
20480000/768000 would indicate you're on XL

[Toilet-Duck]

If you are getting around 5 Meg then you will have most likely been upgraded to 20 meg, when did you test your speed?

If its in evening then your UBR (Like many others) may be overloaded thus getting a slow speed. Try testing your connect around 2am to see if it goes back to 20 Meg.

If it doesn't then it isnt an overloaded UBR then the problem would be elsewhere.

[smeagoly1]

E-mail tech support on the VM broadband help page. Iv'e had two problems in the past with the XL package. Getting through to India tech support was a joke. But each time i e-mailed tech support in the UK, it may take a few weeks but I got things sorted out with no problems, new modem in the post within 24 hours ext.

Also check your ethernet card is set to 100, this I think is shown in the "fine tuning your 20meg broadband" I was stuck on a constant 5meg but within a week of the e-mail, i am now maxing out at 20meg and no dropping offline. Just goes down to 10meg during peek evening times, but a far cry from next to nothing I was getting.

[Hinks]

http://192.168.100.1/

Browse about to see what config file you have
20480000/768000 would indicate you're on XL


Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 20480000
Maximum Upstream Data Rate : 768000

So I guess I'm on XL. But it sure doesn't feel like it, it's 9:42am and still I get the 5MB speed.

-mail tech support on the VM broadband help page. Iv'e had two problems in the past with the XL package. Getting through to India tech support was a joke. But each time i e-mailed tech support in the UK, it may take a few weeks but I got things sorted out with no problems, new modem in the post within 24 hours ext.

Also check your ethernet card is set to 100, this I think is shown in the "fine tuning your 20meg broadband" I was stuck on a constant 5meg but within a week of the e-mail, i am now maxing out at 20meg and no dropping offline. Just goes down to 10meg during peek evening times, but a far cry from next to nothing I was getting.

Will give them an e-mail now.

[xspeedyx]

Hey Hinks before you email them check out this thread

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33621823-rubbish-20mb-cable-speeds-try-these.html

[Hinks]

Can someone give me the e-mail address for Virgin? I can't find it anywhere.

[v0id]

http://help2.virginmedia.com/help/getContent.jspx?page=contactus

[Hugh]

btw, don't use the speedtest sites -they are notoriously unreliable on 20Mb links.

Download a large file from Microsoft or Blueyonder Games sites, and check your speed that way.

Are you plugged directly into the modem, or are you using a router?

If you are using a router, is anyone else accessing the link?

[Richy99]

also make sure that your machine is optomised for the conenction

[Hinks]

I get about a 512kb/sec download rate from Microsoft Game site. This is roughly the same speed I get elsewhere. Surely that isn't fast enough for 20meg?

[danielf]

Try running TCPOptimizer. (http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php)

[Hugh]

I get about a 512kb/sec download rate from Microsoft Game site. This is roughly the same speed I get elsewhere. Surely that isn't fast enough for 20meg?
Hinks, sorry to ask a dumb question, but is it KB or kb? (see attachment).

Either way it's a bit slow, but one is 8 times slower than the other.

Are you attached via a router, directly or wirelessly?

[Hinks]

I am using a Netgear WGT624v3 Router for the wireless capabilities as I am living in a student house. The router is 108mbps so I'm assuming it can handle 20meg Broadband and I have read elsewhere it can.

I've been doing all the testing whilst others aren't using the net and I have checked this through our router management. We've also tried connecting direct to the modem but still get the same old 5mb on speed tests and the 500+/KB download speed.

I've sent an email to the technical support guys - just hope they will contact me with some good news.

foreverwar - As for the KB and kb - I thought they were the same? But my speed is more or less the same as yours in the attachment.

[xspeedyx]

use a tcp optimzer and see if that does anything

[Hugh]

KB = Kilobytes (1024KB in a MegaByte (MB))
kb or Kb = Kilobits (8 bits in a Byte).

20Mb/s is in fact 2.5MB/s, so it makes a difference.

When you do your download tests, you need to do it (if possible) before you have hit the STM (Traffic Management) limits Link (http://abcde.co.uk/virginmedia/stm.html)
"During peak times (4pm till midnight), users on the Size: XL package that download at least 3072MB (3GB) of traffic each (uploaded data is not included in this traffic total).

Any users hitting this amount during peak times will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed (STM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_management)) – their download speed will be set to 5Mb (75% decrease), with their upload speed set to 256Kb (66% decrease). This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied, the data used to trigger traffic management is then reset. In some circumstances you could have to wait until 4am before your speed returns to normal, if STM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_management) was triggered at 11:59pm."

If you and your student compadres are exceeding the limit, your speed will be reduced.