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69kimbo
13-01-2010, 22:56
Hey,

Just a quick one,

I was Told by an Engineer that Brighton servers were over crowded, and he thought they were stupid for allowing as many connections here as they have.

He also said something that leads me to ask a question I wonder if anyone knows the answer to...

(Not publicly ofc (as they wouldn't want people to know this) They are getting two new servers in Brighton (doubling the number we had here before apparently) because they were so overcrowded. He said this would have been done by mid January, and should dramatically increase speeds across the whole of Brighton and especially in my area...

Does anyone know the update on this, and the specific date it is meant to be done by? Also does anyone know if the poor weather will have effected its ETA?

Cheers

frogstamper
14-01-2010, 01:50
I live by Withdean stadium in Brighton and have been on 20mb for a couple of years now, and have had no issues about the speed I'm getting its consistently around the 18mb to 20mb mark.

saabmania2
14-01-2010, 08:25
yeah i agree with frogstamper i also live in the brighton area and have no issues with speed when the 20mb service first got relesed ihad a few issue's but this was fairly common around the whole country but after a couple of months it settled downthat was around 2 years ago now and never had a problem since :)

stukey
14-01-2010, 11:00
69kimbo - I absolutely agree. I have been getting consistently poor broadband performance since the end of November last year. I am seeing constant packet loss and awful response times. I am in the BN2 Hanover area of Brighton. My immediate neighbours have exactly the same issues and other locals have been posting about the issue to the Virgin Media forums and newsgroups:

Poor ping and upload rate late afternoon/evening (Brighton area) (http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Fibre-optic-broadband-cable/Poor-ping-and-upload-rate-late-afternoon-evening-Brighton-area/td-p/15350)

BN2 UBR Fault (http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Fibre-optic-broadband-cable/BN2-UBR-Fault/td-p/13432)

On Monday 30th November there was an outage in the BN2 area (no TV or Internet for about 7 hours). Ever since that day broadband performance has been appalling. I am on the 20MB package and I'm lucky if I get 2MB at the best of times. By around 2pm everyday performance becomes so awful that its impossible to download small files, websites take forever to load and my VPN connection to my company's network (I work from home) disconnects constantly. For example, my antivirus app can't even download the pattern file updates - it just times out. And you can't download software updates or watch any kind of streaming media.

I spent many hours on the telephone to Virgin Media's offshore technical support department and they still insisted there was no problem in my area, instead telling me it was because I was using a router or because I had a Mac - even when I connected directly to the cable modem using a Windows laptop! Absolutely ridiculous. I was just about to give up all hope of getting any kind of support from Virgin Media when I decided to mention the problems on Twitter. Finally I started getting some assistance from some very helpful folks in Virgin's Twitter Customer Support team. After sending out an engineer to check my cable model levels, I was told that there is a apparently an issue with Virgin Media's network/infrastructure/equipment in Brighton and it needs to be upgraded in order to fix the issue.

Here's what they said at the time: "We've managed to identify what's causing the problem and our network team has implemented plans for your network to be upgraded. This will then be scheduled in for the upgrade to take place. With the Christmas period quickly approaching, I'm afraid the upgrade is unlikely to be done before the end of the year. They've told me it's likely to be early January/February 2010."

I spoke to the Twitter team earlier this week and according to them there's still no definite date for the upgrade and the performance issues are worse than ever here in Hanover. They have recommended upgrading me to the 50MB service as an short-term work-around, although I'm really not sure if this will make any difference (I have already been upgraded from 10MB to 20MB and that didn't help).

I've never really had any problems with NTL/Vigin Media in the past but this experience has been a nightmare. I am seriously considering moving to a different ISP because I can't work without a reliable and well performing internet connection. It is extremely frustrating that this has been going for almost 2 months now and has still not been resolved.

Sephiroth
14-01-2010, 11:20
I've always maintained a second internet service (in this case O2 ADSL2+ over BT to LLU) for the rare occasions that the VM service fails.

I flick a switch to wireless and a few seconds later, internet is back.

stukey
14-01-2010, 12:03
I've always maintained a second internet service (in this case O2 ADSL2+ over BT to LLU) for the rare occasions that the VM service fails.

I flick a switch to wireless and a few seconds later, internet is back.

That would be great, but like most people, I cannot afford to pay for two different broadband suppliers. And I have no problem with occasional outages - that's par for the course. But months of appalling performance and no clear fix in site is just not acceptable IMO.

absthechatter
14-01-2010, 12:51
I am just outside Brighton in Shoreham (BN43) on 20mb service. Everything has been excellent for years up until around last November. Since then, I have, along with my neighbours, getting slow down and outages at least once a week for several hours and sometimes up to three or four days a week. The slow downs mean that it takes several minutes for a webpage to load, much slower than a 56k connection was!! It's obviously unuseable.:(

Have had engineer out and have been told there is nothing wrong with my set up, it's just overcrowding. It's not the busy times when it always happens though eg this week, was not able to use Monday between 9am and 11am, then again between 2pm to 2.30pm, then between 9.30 and 11.30pm. It's similar to that most days now.

I don't want to go elsewhere, but as it's probably the most expensive broadband out there, it would be nice to have a stable connection at least most of the time. I just want it to go back to how it was pre November!

Abs

HSp8
14-01-2010, 15:51
69kimbo - I absolutely agree. I have been getting consistently poor broadband performance since the end of November last year. I am seeing constant packet loss and awful response times. I am in the BN2 Hanover area of Brighton. My immediate neighbours have exactly the same issues and other locals have been posting about the issue to the Virgin Media forums and newsgroups:



get back to your muesli, yer hippy :)

been on 50 meg for a year in BN1 area, and although the speeds sometimes drop to 5 meg for no apparent reason, I'm pretty happy with the service and get full speeds most of the time on the newsgroups - haven't had any outages

69kimbo
14-01-2010, 16:08
Stukey, as it happens I am also in BN2 area. Since the engineer told me it would especially help in my area, i'm guessing when they get it done it will help you too. He said it was a problem with overcrowding, which I'm assuming is due to the fact the University is just around the corner, with 10,000+ students living in housing around the area, most of which VM customers.

Anyway, this wasn't a debate for the quality of Brighton VM service or if it was going to happen... it was a question asking if anyone knew the ETA of the new servers... They ARE happening. I have been told by an engineer they are happening, so this isn't just me assuming or saying there should be...

stukey
14-01-2010, 18:33
get back to your muesli, yer hippy

I prefer Granola. ;)

... it was a question asking if anyone knew the ETA of the new servers...

All I've heard is the January / February 2010 timeframe. In addition, on the newsgroups, in the 'BN2 Brighton appalling connection; low speed, high latency' thread regarding fault F001146439 a VM support person posted the following last night:

Hi Matthew,

Apologies for the ongoing issues. I have some good news- your ticket was
updated yesterday stating that relief work is going ahead tonight. They
will take the UBR down for a few hours in the early hours and over the
next few days you should see a significant improvement in your connection
unless everyone in the area starts maxing out their connections again :D

--
Kind Regards
Paul McFly
VirginMedia Technical Support | http://status2.virginmedia.com
"Please Bottom Post when Replying to Posts."

Sephiroth
14-01-2010, 19:15
Hi Matthew,

Apologies for the ongoing issues. I have some good news- your ticket was
updated yesterday stating that relief work is going ahead tonight. They
will take the UBR down for a few hours in the early hours and over the
next few days you should see a significant improvement in your connection
unless everyone in the area starts maxing out their connections again

--
Kind Regards
Paul McFly
VirginMedia Technical Support | http://status2.virginmedia.com
"Please Bottom Post when Replying to Posts."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

... which they will!

Ignitionnet
14-01-2010, 19:35
Hi Matthew,

Apologies for the ongoing issues. I have some good news- your ticket was
updated yesterday stating that relief work is going ahead tonight. They
will take the UBR down for a few hours in the early hours and over the
next few days you should see a significant improvement in your connection
unless everyone in the area starts maxing out their connections again

--
Kind Regards
Paul McFly
VirginMedia Technical Support | http://status2.virginmedia.com
"Please Bottom Post when Replying to Posts."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

... which they will!

Bleh not likely, most peeps don't max their connections it was a light hearted joke I'm sure :)

Quick resegmentation and things should be muchly better.

Sephiroth
14-01-2010, 20:30
Bleh not likely, most peeps don't max their connections it was a light hearted joke I'm sure :)

Quick resegmentation and things should be muchly better.

You're kidding? Student land? Motorway effect? Me a Jesse?

Ignitionnet
14-01-2010, 20:32
You're kidding? Student land? Motorway effect? Me a Jesse?

No / OK / Maybe / Definitely.

They might have enough upstream to satisfy their seeding requirements now.

Sephiroth
14-01-2010, 20:33
No / OK / Maybe / Definitely.

They might have enough upstream to satisfy their seeding requirements now.

And downloading, streaming? Anyway, we'll soon find out; that is soon + a week!

Ignitionnet
14-01-2010, 23:00
And downloading, streaming? Anyway, we'll soon find out; that is soon + a week!

Given that the fault was upstream congestion who cares?

Sephiroth
14-01-2010, 23:18
Given that the fault was upstream congestion who cares?

There's an awful lot of complaint in Brighton & in this thread about download speeds. Those correspondents care.

Ignitionnet
15-01-2010, 14:39
There's an awful lot of complaint in Brighton & in this thread about download speeds. Those correspondents care.

Upstream congestion hoses download speeds. Fix upstream congestion download speeds should be fine, hence no reason to care about downstream congestion as none has been reported.

The thread you posted on in community relating to Brighton in VM forum shows poor upstream performance, the tech support newsgroup posts reference high upstream loading, nothing to suggest downstream congestion is an issue anywhere, so quite why it would become such an issue once the upstream issue is fixed I'm not sure?

Think you're perhaps being a bit pessimistic. The upgrade will increase capacity both upstream and downstream in any event.

Sephiroth
15-01-2010, 15:02
Upstream congestion hoses download speeds. Fix upstream congestion download speeds should be fine, hence no reason to care about downstream congestion as none has been reported.

The thread you posted on in community relating to Brighton in VM forum shows poor upstream performance, the tech support newsgroup posts reference high upstream loading, nothing to suggest downstream congestion is an issue anywhere, so quite why it would become such an issue once the upstream issue is fixed I'm not sure?

Think you're perhaps being a bit pessimistic. The upgrade will increase capacity both upstream and downstream in any event.

Yes of course. But my money's on the motorway effect - that's all I'm saying. You're saying I'm being pessimistic. That's true also.

Also I've never used the term "downstream congestion" in the context of this thread. Have I? I'm talking about the poor downstream speed complained of in this and other threads about Brighton.

Ignitionnet
15-01-2010, 17:12
Yes of course. But my money's on the motorway effect - that's all I'm saying. You're saying I'm being pessimistic. That's true also.

Also I've never used the term "downstream congestion" in the context of this thread. Have I? I'm talking about the poor downstream speed complained of in this and other threads about Brighton.

My point is the downstream wasn't getting filled before, so no reason why when more has been added it'll be getting filled even more now apart from perhaps the upstream congestion preventing people from downloading. That said on the tests I saw even when people's upstreams were pretty hosed some were still maxing downstream and the overlay network is horribly asymmetrical.

Either way, we'll see how things run at peak! ;)

Noirris green
25-01-2010, 10:30
have been redirected to this thread....had major speed ..latency problems over the weekend and recieved garbled tech support response about server upgrades leading to poor service at times of high utilization...I live in the BN1 fiveways area ...and have had very few broadband problems in my 5 years as a virgin media/NTL customer.

anybody clarify how long this will go on for...tech support gave me a £5.00 discount for broadband this month but I'm going back for more if this continues ...the service is atrocious even the speed test site take 5 mins to load up

Ignitionnet
25-01-2010, 10:49
No idea, though if it is that bad stuff discounts I'd be looking at other options to be honest.

---------- Post added at 09:49 ---------- Previous post was at 09:42 ----------

have been redirected to this thread....had major speed ..latency problems over the weekend and recieved garbled tech support response about server upgrades leading to poor service at times of high utilization...

Oh yeah, the above about upgrades causing poor service is total fiction, unsurprisingly from the VM Bangalore crew. Their politeness and number of apologies they will provide are matched by their pointlessness and time they'll waste if confronted with anything bar the most trivial issues.

Noirris green
27-01-2010, 10:22
service is still atrocious ..i have online gaming subscriptions going to waste...any techs on here can update as to what is going on?....utter 5hite gfor a week now...starting to look at alternatives

PowerUser
27-01-2010, 13:43
Same here. I started a thread thinking it was my router!...I didn't see this thread..

This makes sence now..

I'm having to reset my modem every 30 mins to get a stable connection, But that doesn't always work.

What the hell is going on!. Anyone managed to get any sense from Tech Support.. Or just the usual "Unless it's total loss of service were not interested and your broadband is fine," Crap.

Sephiroth
27-01-2010, 13:51
It's in the VM forum - a commitment from VM to fix the Brighton issue by a certain date.

Trawl through this lot:

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?location=Category%3ABroadband&q=Brighton+#message-list

pip08456
27-01-2010, 14:13
Same here. I started a thread thinking it was my router!...I didn't see this thread..

This makes sence now..

I'm having to reset my modem every 30 mins to get a stable connection, But that doesn't always work.

What the hell is going on!. Anyone managed to get any sense from Tech Support.. Or just the usual "Unless it's total loss of service were not interested and your broadband is fine," Crap.

Not the way you explained the problem in the other thread but at least you now know why.

Having said that I think this thread refers to 20Mb connection. Perhaps you may like to update your thread with the full problem and modem stats.

Ignitionnet
27-01-2010, 14:59
Same here. I started a thread thinking it was my router!...I didn't see this thread..

This makes sence now..

I'm having to reset my modem every 30 mins to get a stable connection, But that doesn't always work.

What the hell is going on!. Anyone managed to get any sense from Tech Support.. Or just the usual "Unless it's total loss of service were not interested and your broadband is fine," Crap.

No, this thread is about degraded performance not intermittent service. If you were suffering this issue you'd get nothing out of resetting your modem.

This reminds me why I dislike naming of areas in threads, the acknowledged fault is one upstream congested which will have perhaps 150 customers maximum on it, and suddenly every issue in Brighton appears to be down to this.

Don't assume your fault is this one, get your own :p:

blenky
28-01-2010, 21:27
Interesting - I'm in BN3 and on 50MB. Although still plagued by the download speeds suddenly plummeting to about 5-10 MB for no reason - overall I've had no issues. d/l speeds of about 40 - 45 MB so happy enough

horseman
31-01-2010, 19:39
.....
This reminds me why I dislike naming of areas in threads, the acknowledged fault is one upstream congested which will have perhaps 150 customers maximum on it, and suddenly every issue in Brighton appears to be down to this.
.....

Solution - name the reverse-DNS/hostname instead (obfuscating the customer number naturally).... Here's your "starter for 10":

Q1 Name the customer on the Motorola chassis -

and your Bonus questions:

Q2: Which L tier customer may suffer d/s intermittent utilisation for a couple of hours weekly?

Q3: Which XL customer suffers d/s utilisation for approx 30% of peak times

Q4: But which of these 2 is the only one to suffer u/s congestion for approx 20% of d/s utilisation restriction?


BN3 cpc2-brig9-0-0-customer1.brig.cable.ntl.com

BN3 cpc1-brig9-0-0-customer2.brig.cable.ntl.com

BN2 cpc5-brig15-2-0-customer3.know.cable.virginmedia

and sorry no prizes for spotting the customer on Knowsley DHCP....

Have fun.....

HSp8
02-02-2010, 14:00
Interesting - I'm in BN3 and on 50MB. Although still plagued by the download speeds suddenly plummeting to about 5-10 MB for no reason - overall I've had no issues. d/l speeds of about 40 - 45 MB so happy enough

yeah - I'm still getting this now and again when downloading from Astraweb

I'm in BN1

Noirris green
08-02-2010, 22:25
now a ten page thread on MY VIRGIN MEDIA

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Fibre-optic-broadband-cable/BN2-UBR-Fault/td-p/13432/page/10

and disgracefully the early february solution date looks like being moved to late march april....unbelievable.

MikeBrighton
09-11-2010, 22:36
yup its still doesnt work, just posted this on that thread you mentioned too:


I am on brig15 in the Hanover area and I also get totally crap connections when the students are back.
It's completely unusable. Will this ever be fixed or should I go for BT ADSL now ? There's no point complaining as the customer support tell me to reboot my modem or unplug my wi-fi. Strange how the fault goes away when the students are on holiday.
It is in fact a complete rip-off as obviously Virgin know it is happening and has been going on for at least a year.

cheers

Mike

Chrysalis
10-11-2010, 02:03
seems to be a problem VM have had for many years that they are either incapable or unmotivated to shake off. All isp's have a student population but VM seems to be the only one that has such a big issue with it.

Ignitionnet
11-11-2010, 15:50
seems to be a problem VM have had for many years that they are either incapable or unmotivated to shake off. All isp's have a student population but VM seems to be the only one that has such a big issue with it.

It's also the only cable company of any scale within the UK. Have a look around the world for Virgin's peers in the cable industry and how they are performing rather than ISPs whose services are based around regulated price backhaul and lines which average less than 10Mbit and those whose services are subsidised by other business units.

I can assure you that student populations are the bane of cable companies world wide.

Chrysalis
11-11-2010, 16:03
It's also the only cable company of any scale within the UK. Have a look around the world for Virgin's peers in the cable industry and how they are performing rather than ISPs whose services are based around regulated price backhaul and lines which average less than 10Mbit and those whose services are subsidised by other business units.

I can assure you that student populations are the bane of cable companies world wide.

that regulated price backhaul you speak off is extorniote (too high) on BTw. I am aware of why its harder for VM, mainly due to the small localised shared ports, but you have already confirmed to me VM can do things like bad boy pipes if they chose to but have not chosen to. They could also choose to make their packages less attractive to students. How does jitter and speed compare on comcast's system in student areas?

Ignitionnet
11-11-2010, 16:55
that regulated price backhaul you speak off is extorniote (too high) on BTw. I am aware of why its harder for VM, mainly due to the small localised shared ports, but you have already confirmed to me VM can do things like bad boy pipes if they chose to but have not chosen to. They could also choose to make their packages less attractive to students. How does jitter and speed compare on comcast's system in student areas?

Comcast and every other cable company have nodes which suck in areas with large amounts of shared housing. I have little doubt Comcast's anti-congestion systems spend a fair amount of time keeping the students under control.

Comcast also have a 250GB cap which probably helps too.

Chrysalis
11-11-2010, 17:02
Comcast and every other cable company have nodes which suck in areas with large amounts of shared housing. I have little doubt Comcast's anti-congestion systems spend a fair amount of time keeping the students under control.

Comcast also have a 250GB cap which probably helps too.

So they are kept under control then? which was basically the question, on VM they are clearly not.

The things you just that you say improves things 250gig cap and better congestion control, is directly under VM's control, these are things VM can choose to do. So is not a defense of them. Like i said they appear to be unmotivated to fix it.

Ignitionnet
11-11-2010, 17:50
So they are kept under control then? which was basically the question, on VM they are clearly not.

The things you just that you say improves things 250gig cap and better congestion control, is directly under VM's control, these are things VM can choose to do. So is not a defense of them. Like i said they appear to be unmotivated to fix it.

By putting bitcaps on the service yes probably.

We'll see how the upstream channel upgrades affect things once done.

MikeBrighton
23-11-2010, 23:58
Have the upstream upgrades been done yet ?
Because it is still an unusable service in BN2

---------- Post added at 22:58 ---------- Previous post was at 21:49 ----------

lol hilarious !

http://www.stopthebroadbandcon.org/contact.php

mixxit
25-11-2010, 11:01
I created a thread on the virgin media forums regarding the BN2 server requesting that users with issue speak to Watchdog and OFCOM about their issue as this issue was reported back in January 2009 by the Brighton newspaper The Argus. Clearly they are overselling our bandwidth and it was in our rights to make a complaint.

The thread was deleted. I spoke to the moderator and explained that the community forum was a place for us all to help each other out and we had a right to raise our concerns.

He considered our comments spam and warned me not to post again. Obviously I didn't accept this.

Fortunately, other members had also started similar threads so I posted below offering my support. Those threads also got deleted.

At this point I was starting to get upset so - fortunately using the open window I still had of the thread - I began to repost.

At this point I was banned from the Virgin media forums.

Chrysalis
25-11-2010, 11:13
I created a thread on the virgin media forums regarding the BN2 server requesting that users with issue speak to Watchdog and OFCOM about their issue as this issue was reported back in January 2009 by the Brighton newspaper The Argus. Clearly they are overselling our bandwidth and it was in our rights to make a complaint.

The thread was deleted. I spoke to the moderator and explained that the community forum was a place for us all to help each other out and we had a right to raise our concerns.

He considered our comments spam and warned me not to post again. Obviously I didn't accept this.

Fortunately, other members had also started similar threads so I posted below offering my support. Those threads also got deleted.

At this point I was starting to get upset so - fortunately using the open window I still had of the thread - I began to repost.

At this point I was banned from the Virgin media forums.

Indeed I would have more respect for VM if they suspended all sales in areas of oversubscription. People may say thats not a commercial reality but to me what VM are doing is plain wrong, which is to keep adding new customers to overloaded ports. I see no evidence of anything other than sales just go on and on and upgrades happen in response to complaints only rather than been ongoing. I wonder why VM are not very open in regards to UBR load levels :), someone had a good suggestion on the VM forums for a traffic light status page for UBR ports.

pesty
25-11-2010, 14:01
It looks like the upload has now been done. I usually get around 1.65 mg on my iPad. As of today I just checked my upload speed and I'm getting 3.64 mg.

MikeBrighton
25-11-2010, 22:33
this is what I get

http://www.pingtest.net/result/28883358.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

pesty
26-11-2010, 09:34
Owch. Mine is line quality A. Ping 10 ms. Jitter 9 ms. Packet loss 0%. that was when I checked it yesterday late afternoon about 5pm.

qasdfdsaq
27-11-2010, 22:33
Indeed I would have more respect for VM if they suspended all sales in areas of oversubscription. People may say thats not a commercial reality

Rubbish. ADSL providers (are forced to) do it when they run out of capacity in an exchange, no reason it's any more commercially un-reality-like for them than it would be for VM.

HSp8
29-11-2010, 13:18
It looks like the upload has now been done. I usually get around 1.65 mg on my iPad. As of today I just checked my upload speed and I'm getting 3.64 mg.

yep - pretty much what I'm getting now (I'm in BN1)

blenky
29-11-2010, 20:06
It looks like the upload has now been done. I usually get around 1.65 mg on my iPad. As of today I just checked my upload speed and I'm getting 3.64 mg.

In BN3 and getting about 3.5 ish

frogstamper
08-12-2010, 02:49
This is mine in BN1

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/85.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

http://www.pingtest.net/result/29729820.png (http://www.pingtest.net)

snedger
20-12-2010, 11:45
BN43 - on Sunday 20th my 50Mb service was out from about 3pm.
There has always been an issue where internet connection drops for several hours, every now and then, but it appears to be much worse since I upgraded on 50Mb.
Support people booked me an engineer for the 30th December and told me that the call would be automatically cancelled if my modem managed to light up the tick - and of course it is working again this morning.
I managed to get the support person to admit that there were problems with low power levels in my area - is that really due to cold weather?

Has anyone else in BN43 had these problems, as I am sick of the BS I get when I report faults and if VM can't fix it, then I need to try and find a better alternative - I say "try" 'cos I am a long way from the exchange and may already be getting the best possible service.

pesty
20-12-2010, 14:20
I've had a couple of minor disconnects over the past week but it's not been off for too long. I'm in the bn42 area and on 50 Meg but I have to say my connection speed is always very good, but I am pretty close to the junction box less than a 100 metres away.

snedger
20-12-2010, 15:22
Have phoned home and service has been up and down several times.
Engineer rebooked for tomorrow - vacationing students will just have to get up before noon :)