sp00d
01-01-2009, 14:24
Hi guys,
I got Virgin media installed as soon as I moved to maidstone in sep 08, being on ubr01.maid.blueyonder.co.uk. Having been with an ADSL based ISP that cost £30/month + line rental, the £30 Virgin were asking for 20mbit net + basic tv + basic phone seemed too good to be true....and unfortunately that seems to be the case. I get pretty much consistent, huge packet loss, to such an extent that I often can't even ping the BBC/google etc, and my ingame latency is being shown as 1500ms+.
I have phoned technical support about 5 times, often getting put through to India, and each time being told to try things like "boot into safe mode", "make sure you have no applications running that are using your bandwidth" and "try restarting your pc". One guy concluded that as we had been through his little check list of solutions, and none worked, it MUST be my pc that is faulty.
Now I am not a network engineer, but I am a technical consultant for a fairly large J2EE consultancy. I am fully aware of what is and isn't running on my pc, and before even calling I tried basic steps like connecting directly to the modem to rule out the router as an issue. I am not using wireless, I built the 2 pcs in my home myself, and I have checked the network adaptors on my internal network - no packets are lost.
As far as I can tell, my UBR is very over subscribed. One morning I got up at 4am to test this theory, and I got 0 packet loss, sub 40ms latencies on most games, and nearly 20mbit download speeds - exactly what I am paying for. If, however, I use the service at reasonable times, ie after work 6-10pm or at weekends in the evening, it is just unusuable. I wouldn't mind if Virgin even throttled me to 1mbit at these times, IF the damn thing was reliable with low latencies so I can play my games.
On one of my calls the Indian guy at the other end of the phone did say there is some upgrade work to be done at my URB, but I believe he was making this up as he coudn't provide me firm details and kept giving vague answers to any questions I had about this. Furthermore, when I called again about 2 weeks later, the new Indian guy I spoke to could find no mention of any upgrade work. This "work" was supposed to take place on December 15th, but it is now Jan 1st and im sat in World of Warcraft with 1106ms latency, and im getting 1-2 out of 4 packets to google being lost.
I am at the end of my tether really, because if I phone yet again, I am sure that 4/4 packets might get through when im on the phone, and maybe I will get 10mbit+ download speed from virgins own servers, or maybe a few packets will be lost but the download speed will be ok..... However, they do not seem to understand that reliability matters to me, and that this packet loss is an intermittent problem that occurs on and off at peak hours, but is too frequent to play any game for more than 15mins reliably. Just because it seems ok on the phone, doesn't mean it is ok. And the times when the thing isn't behaving while im on the phone, just means that I have to jump through yet more hoops to make "100% sure sir it is not your computer"....
I don't see why the service I get should be SO dependent on whether my neighbours decide to go online or not. Virgin need to spend less on advertising, and more on infrastructure. What really concerns me is that if is this bad with 20mbit being the max around here, then when then they go to 50mbit I believe a 56k modem will give more reliably latency!
Is there anything else I can do about this, or do I need to just keep calling India? I have already told them that what they have sold me counts as "false advertising", because I never get the service I am paying for when I actually want to use it. If they said "20mbit at unsociable hours, and sub 2mbit, with very high packet loss at most sociable times" then at least I can factor in whether I want such a service for the price offered.
Sorry for the rant and thanks for any replies.
PS Happy new year!
I got Virgin media installed as soon as I moved to maidstone in sep 08, being on ubr01.maid.blueyonder.co.uk. Having been with an ADSL based ISP that cost £30/month + line rental, the £30 Virgin were asking for 20mbit net + basic tv + basic phone seemed too good to be true....and unfortunately that seems to be the case. I get pretty much consistent, huge packet loss, to such an extent that I often can't even ping the BBC/google etc, and my ingame latency is being shown as 1500ms+.
I have phoned technical support about 5 times, often getting put through to India, and each time being told to try things like "boot into safe mode", "make sure you have no applications running that are using your bandwidth" and "try restarting your pc". One guy concluded that as we had been through his little check list of solutions, and none worked, it MUST be my pc that is faulty.
Now I am not a network engineer, but I am a technical consultant for a fairly large J2EE consultancy. I am fully aware of what is and isn't running on my pc, and before even calling I tried basic steps like connecting directly to the modem to rule out the router as an issue. I am not using wireless, I built the 2 pcs in my home myself, and I have checked the network adaptors on my internal network - no packets are lost.
As far as I can tell, my UBR is very over subscribed. One morning I got up at 4am to test this theory, and I got 0 packet loss, sub 40ms latencies on most games, and nearly 20mbit download speeds - exactly what I am paying for. If, however, I use the service at reasonable times, ie after work 6-10pm or at weekends in the evening, it is just unusuable. I wouldn't mind if Virgin even throttled me to 1mbit at these times, IF the damn thing was reliable with low latencies so I can play my games.
On one of my calls the Indian guy at the other end of the phone did say there is some upgrade work to be done at my URB, but I believe he was making this up as he coudn't provide me firm details and kept giving vague answers to any questions I had about this. Furthermore, when I called again about 2 weeks later, the new Indian guy I spoke to could find no mention of any upgrade work. This "work" was supposed to take place on December 15th, but it is now Jan 1st and im sat in World of Warcraft with 1106ms latency, and im getting 1-2 out of 4 packets to google being lost.
I am at the end of my tether really, because if I phone yet again, I am sure that 4/4 packets might get through when im on the phone, and maybe I will get 10mbit+ download speed from virgins own servers, or maybe a few packets will be lost but the download speed will be ok..... However, they do not seem to understand that reliability matters to me, and that this packet loss is an intermittent problem that occurs on and off at peak hours, but is too frequent to play any game for more than 15mins reliably. Just because it seems ok on the phone, doesn't mean it is ok. And the times when the thing isn't behaving while im on the phone, just means that I have to jump through yet more hoops to make "100% sure sir it is not your computer"....
I don't see why the service I get should be SO dependent on whether my neighbours decide to go online or not. Virgin need to spend less on advertising, and more on infrastructure. What really concerns me is that if is this bad with 20mbit being the max around here, then when then they go to 50mbit I believe a 56k modem will give more reliably latency!
Is there anything else I can do about this, or do I need to just keep calling India? I have already told them that what they have sold me counts as "false advertising", because I never get the service I am paying for when I actually want to use it. If they said "20mbit at unsociable hours, and sub 2mbit, with very high packet loss at most sociable times" then at least I can factor in whether I want such a service for the price offered.
Sorry for the rant and thanks for any replies.
PS Happy new year!