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View Full Version : 50mb Broadband in Leeds constant fluctuations in speed on DL... inconsistent service!


richardc1983
03-09-2009, 18:21
Hello everyone, had 50mb installed a week ago, new modem and netgear router etc and a wireless N dongle. Was previously on 20mb but sick of the throttling and traffic management policies at least we got the full 20mb outside of the the management times.

Well have done several speed tests on various sites and also ran the optimiser program despite this not being needed for windows 7. Speeds fluctuate constantly particulary with downloads... sometimes as low as 8mb.

This affects us if we use wireless, wired via ethernet or directly connected to the modem.

I may do a speedtest 1minute and get 34mb then the next it drops to 18mb if I repeat the same test or from diff sites etc.

Complained to virgin media, they have checked all signals and modem and I have spent around 5hours on the phone to them and they say there is not a problem as they say the levels are fine etc and modem signal is perfect for 50mb. We even had an engineer attend and he said he couldnt find a problem either.

The behaviour we see is almost as if after we start downloading it is slowed down. We use news groups to download and pay a premium to do this and we thought maybe it was the newsgroup servers slowing us down after a bit so we disconnect it and try to download files from microsoft and guess what slow speeds on there.

Websites will be slow to load as well sometimes getting page cannot be displayed. The modem lights are all as normal and looks fine. It will stay like this for a while then slowly start creeping back up again as if they have stopped throttling us, however were told theres no traffic management.

We downloaded several files at once from http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/demos/ as directed by faults to see the true download speeds, and these were also affected by it.

When the engineer attended though he saw it fluctuate once or twice on the 50mb speed test that is on the internal intranet at virgin media. It of course gave good results the rest of the time!!!

However start downloading and wait half an hour then you see the problems!!
Never had this on 20mb the service was consistent apart from the traffic management which is why we opted for 50mb.

Im told the service is only 10% utilised in my area LEEDS LS15 and the 50mb is on its own platform so wont be prone to the peak slow downs etc. We did a speedtest while on line to the overseas tech support call centre and we got 35mb, and she says that is good enough and that they only have to provide between 35 and 45mb and its "upto" not 50mb!!! Not a good enough response I think as its cable it should be constant speed in the area of 50 so maybe 47-50 but not below.

This is becoming really annoying we have 3 laptops and 1 wired computer and its affects them all. No we dont have spyware or antivirus slowing it down. Its purely when we seem to download that we slow down.

Im technical minded and work in IT so will not put up where we seem that VM want to pull the wool over our eyes, it was the same with 10meg when that was first launched it took us nearlly 8 months to get it sorted!

The bandwith monitor shows waves of fluctuation rather than nice consistent line... Got another engineer coming on Friday but feel this will be a wasted journey as they already say levels and that are perfect and there is no drop outs or packet loss, which I have seen myself!

Can anyone help as were seriously considering going back to 20meg, for a premium service it is very poor and the fluctuations are simply not good enough for the price we are paying!


Kind regards
Richard.

Zoolook
04-09-2009, 00:45
Im getting exactly the same problem in the Nottinghamshire area, and i have the same package.

Everything was fine when i first upgraded to 50mb in July, and now speeds are all over the place, and has speeds as low as under a 100k a second for long periods.

At some point after about 50 million phonecalls of compliant, they might realise that " Oh yeah that hub from 1985 needs upgrading ", and the idiot test they give you on the phone about unpluging modem and routers maybe a thing of the past. :D

Joking aside, im not suprised there are proplems as soon as the price dropped and all the dicounts etc etc, like a mass network speed invasion of people all demanding 6 megabyte a second.

Tbh its seems like traffic management gone wrong to me, because when i was on 20Mb line, and was under traffic management as soons as the PC was turned on and then around 9pm - 11pm it would go back to normal.

So much for DOCSIS 3.0 speeds.

richardc1983
04-09-2009, 00:57
The same problems happened when the 20mb uprade came out for 10mb customers and so on!

They are a useless company and they waste my time by having to go throug the same company each time but I am paying a cheap price for what I have but if it was working correctly I would be happy to pay more!

20mb consistent speeds outside ouf traffic management times and it worked great with this the connection slows down as soon as I get on newsleech websites etc they seem to reduce the speed but no probs on 20mb!!!

Zoolook
04-09-2009, 01:28
Its about 12:20am and has normal my speeds have gone back up, ive been watching this all week and its been the same, its got to be some kind of dodgy traffic management.

Always happens around 12:00am.

Tested from http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com

richardc1983
04-09-2009, 01:35
mine fluctuates and seems to be after downloading quite a bit but the thing is the speed isnt constant even when downloading its up and down more times than a newly weds knickers!

Ignitionnet
04-09-2009, 09:53
I have no recommendation or advice beyond going elsewhere if the service is that bad. Working in IT as you do I'm sure you can appreciate that speeds on shared networks will fluctuate, not to mention that having all those machines there's a chance while you're leeching DVDs that someone else is doing something on the network which will slow you down.

The behaviour we see is almost as if after we start downloading it is slowed down. We use news groups to download and pay a premium to do this and we thought maybe it was the newsgroup servers slowing us down after a bit so we disconnect it and try to download files from microsoft and guess what slow speeds on there.

A few people have complained of issues like this which I think related to modem firmware, however it should be noted that 'paying a premium' to a 3rd party to rip stuff off faster doesn't entitle you to better download speeds from VM unfortunately.

Also to note the load in your area cannot be '10%' - you use over 25% of it on your own when you start leeching.

---------- Post added at 08:53 ---------- Previous post was at 08:47 ----------

They are a useless company and they waste my time by having to go throug the same company each time but I am paying a cheap price for what I have but if it was working correctly I would be happy to pay more!

20mb consistent speeds outside ouf traffic management times and it worked great with this the connection slows down as soon as I get on newsleech websites etc they seem to reduce the speed but no probs on 20mb!!!

Sadly they know that for people who leech random crap 10s of GB at a time they are the only game in town that goes at those speeds. Captive audience.

richardc1983
04-09-2009, 13:41
So what is the 50mb to be utilised for then if you cant get those speeds when downloading?

I am not "ripping" stuff I am downloading programs etc that have already been on the tv that I want to watch in my own time and also programs from abroad they get deleted straight after.

2 of the computers are mine and the other is my flat mates, his is completly shut down during the day and my laptop or desktop there is only one in use, apart from when we are doing this testing so really during the day 1 machine in use and this still slows us down.

richardc1983
15-09-2009, 07:56
This is my latest:

Had engineer attend today he spent about 3 hours here testing one thing and another, new modem, router etc and still same problems, mainly on the newsgroups but he has seen it himself now and he says that virgin media are looking for proof so you need to escalate it as high as you can within virgin media.



He spoke to tech guys and he also spoke to the ppl who moderate this forum and they are seein it on the increase a lot and they are going to have to escalate it now.. but doenst know when.


he agrees the performance isnt good enough and they need to get their heads together now!



He is going to call me back next week but he says the network looks fine so its something to do with how the network behaves with newsgroups on the docsis 3 platform.

It got to Wednesday and Edwin the area manager had not called despite him saying he would ring me on Monday... Says a lot for virgin media doesn't it really.



So I had to chase it again, which is just not good enough for a premium service. Spoke to 50mb who put me on hold and tried to get in touch with Edwin for me. They managed to pass a message on and said Edwin would call me back later that day.



This did not however happen and on Thursday I had to chase again. Spoke to 50mb who put me on hold and came back and said that Edwin has said that the cable needs to be repulled? THis seems absolutely ridiculous as it was only done 3 months ago with a new cable which took them 6months to do because each time the wrong engineer was booked etc and different levels of engineer didn't think it was necessary... More messing about to come it seems.. Read on!



Anyway I said I do not believe for one minute its the cable because it worked 100% fine on 20mb so despite the modem and router both being swapped over to see if this was the issue this has not resolved the problem and from what Edwin the area manager was saying that this was something further up line on the VM side of things, something that didn't like the newsgroups and the fact we were downloading fast from the network despite it working perfectly on 20mb.



Anyway I asked the 50mb tech advisor if there was appnt on Friday he said yes between 12+4PM.



Waited all afternoon upto MPH and guess what no engineer, chased this YET AGAIN with VM who advise they were sorry but it was booked for Sat between 12+4pm!!!



Anyway they refunded £10 onto my account for the messing about, hardly worth it though considering it cost me an afternoons leave from work to be sat at home... Not impressed!



On Saturday an engineer rang me and asked me what the problem was, I said are you not aware that your coming to do a repull? He said I cant do repulls im just an investigating engineer. I said well what can you do that Edwin hasn't already done then? I was told a repull was being done. So he said theres no point in me coming again to do the same things that Edwin has already seen, he said he would ring Edwin and try to get in touch with him and let me know what was happening and call me back later that day... he did not!!!



Its official VM cannot organise a party in a brewery!



I will be ringing on Monday morning to complain and I expect some heavy compensation as its just not acceptable.


I also feel that its time to start looking elsewhere for BB a company that can offer what they promise and not fail to deliver engineer visits and promised work on the day etc.



Perhaps some moderators on here can look into this for me as the area manager Edwin agreed with me that the slow speed I was experiencing was something they were starting to see a lot of on the forums and also from customers phoning in.

There are many people reporting the same problems with 50mb however still no official word from VM to admit there is a problem! We know there is a problem the engineers know there is a problem but VM themselves there is no official word! its just misleading customers!



MY friend works for a newspaper and he also tells me a lot of people are writing in to complain about the same thing and they are going to run a report on this soon.

I have complained to watchdog and advise everyone to report this at

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-50Mb-broadband/bd-p/50mb