Virgin 50meg speed and connection quality issues. 2 Technician visits, no fix.

[daaaveee]

Good afternoon all,

I have already posted my problems over on another forum, see my posts in this topic: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18158811 but have been redirected here for some more input hopefully.

To summarise the other topic, my connection had been a solid 50meg with no interruptions up until around a week ago. Now it very rarely can touch its full speed, mostly hovering around 35-40 on the better speed test websites out there. Also, website hyperlinks can take 2 or 3 tries before actually loading, any streaming like iPlayer and YouTube is very irratic, sometimes not buffering for 5-10s before buffering a bit, and then stopping again. Also, download speeds direct from servers and from Usenet are very poor, around 300-1000kb/s.

We found that the power levels are low, at around -10, outside of the normal range, and also the RxMER value is <35, which the first person I spoke to on Tuesday evening identified.

A technician called Dave visited yesterday, didn't check line stats (didn't even have or at least read the notes of the phonecall on Tuesday), did a speed test directly connected to the modem and got 41, which Virgin deems acceptable, then again connected through the router, and got 38, which he also said was acceptable, and then left after no more than 10mins. Whether or not these speeds are acceptable (they aint to me, and its been as bad as 8meg!), nothing was done about the packet loss and connection problems being experienced.

Pretty furious about the outcome of the visit, I called up last night and explained nothing had been done to try and fix the problem, and requested a different technician be sent out today to properly investigate and rectify the problem, with notes on powerlevels etc being out of normal range and the most likely cause.

Dave turns up again today (funny, thought I asked for someone else), says he has changed us to a different panel in the local box, my fiancee shows him the line stats (I work during normal office hours), which he says are fine (powerlevel -10, RxMER <35), runs a speed test which gives 28meg, and leaves saying that everything is fine, there is no fault, and if a technician is called out in the next fortnight then we will be charged £100.

I am completely dumbfounded that we could be treated like this, does anyone have any thought, advice, or ideas on where to take it from here?

Thanks for reading.

[weesteev]

Do you get the same problems when connected directly to the modem or are you only using the supplied Dlink router?

What time are you running these speed tests? A speed test at 7pm may not show 50Mb as the testing server may be saturated, this may not necessarily mean your not getting 50Mb.

If you have slow we page loading and timeouts then I would try an alternative DNS server first to rule out any issues with Virgins DNS. Open DNS is a good option and free, all the instructions are on their webiste.

I can understand if you have requested a different tech but its not possible for the staff in the contact centres to specify what staff gets assigned to a job, "Dave" may have been the principal technician and/or the only available tech for 50Mb callouts in that area.

If the tech has advised of a chareg for further callouts then it will be due to finding no fault, the signal levels look fine at first glance, I suspect the speed issues your experiencing may be caused by something else, although that doesnt excuse him if he was rude about the issue.

Hope you get this sorted, keep us posted.

[daaaveee]

Do you get the same problems when connected directly to the modem or are you only using the supplied Dlink router?

Same problems connected to the router or directly to the modem, wired or wireless on 3 different PCs, the same problem throughout.

What time are you running these speed tests? A speed test at 7pm may not show 50Mb as the testing server may be saturated, this may not necessarily mean your not getting 50Mb.

They have been run mornings, afternoons, evenings and middle of the night, using different speed test websites, mainly Speedtest.net, and 5+ servers at Speedtest, all of them that I previously hit 50meg on no problems.

If you have slow we page loading and timeouts then I would try an alternative DNS server first to rule out any issues with Virgins DNS. Open DNS is a good option and free, all the instructions are on their webiste.

Thanks, I will try anything to get it working :)

I can understand if you have requested a different tech but its not possible for the staff in the contact centres to specify what staff gets assigned to a job, "Dave" may have been the principal technician and/or the only available tech for 50Mb callouts in that area.

If the tech has advised of a chareg for further callouts then it will be due to finding no fault, the signal levels look fine at first glance, I suspect the speed issues your experiencing may be caused by something else, although that doesnt excuse him if he was rude about the issue.

Hope you get this sorted, keep us posted.

I understand that he would be the principal techie for the area, surely they could get another on request though, who is still pretty local.

Also, I don't agree with them charging us if he doesn't find a fault, even though there is obviously one somewhere. Him not finding one, and there not being one are completely different.

[Matt-08]

If the tech has advised of a chareg for further callouts then it will be due to finding no fault, the signal levels look fine at first glance, I suspect the speed issues your experiencing may be caused by something else, although that doesnt excuse him if he was rude about the issue.

Hope you get this sorted, keep us posted.

Isn't the -10 downstream power level an issue though?

[daaaveee]

Isn't the -10 downstream power level an issue though?

I thought so too, I was advised over the phone they should be -7 to +7.

[weesteev]

I think it depends on your area, there is both Cisco and Motorolla headend gear across the country and 3 legacy transmission networks operating at different frequencies. My job stops at building the headend gear, cant help with the signal levels unfortunately, any of the other Virgin guys on the forum care to drop in and give some advice?

[daaaveee]

OK, cheers for your help weesteev, interesting to know they work at different frequencies.

I have read about updates to the infrastructure due to possible speed upgrades in the future, is it possible these works have affected my line?

[Peter_]

I would book an engineer if I spoke to you and would have asked for Networks to become involved in the notes for the engineer.

Not heard of a £100 callout charge before because you happen to have a fault, sounds like bull and I would be on the phone to Customer Relations and be complaining about this issue and the technician.

So from a Virginmedia phone line call 150 and choose the option "Thinking of leaving us" and tell them what has been going on as you are paying for a service that you appear not to be getting.

If you do not have a Virgin phone then call 0845 454 1111 and choose the same option.

[daaaveee]

Thanks Masque, I will do that tonight. I had been using 0845 454 1111 but we do have a Virgin phone.

Any chance I can get through to you when I call up?! Heheh :)

[Peter_]

Thanks Masque, I will do that tonight. I had been using 0845 454 1111 but we do have a Virgin phone.

Any chance I can get through to you when I call up?! Heheh :)
Not in this week, even we get time off.:D

[jb66]

Call up again and ask for a principal technician, they have a laptop that can rule out your computer being at fault

[daaaveee]

Dave who came out is supposed to be the principal technician, well at least both of the people when I called up said they would put a note down for it to be the principal due to 50mb service.

[daaaveee]

Trying OpenDNS now, nothings changed though, still same issues. Gone back to virgin dns now.


---------- Post added at 19:22 ---------- Previous post was at 19:09 ----------

Inside acceptable speed range for 50meg? I don't think so!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/07/30.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

---------- Post added at 19:35 ---------- Previous post was at 19:22 ----------

Anyone know what upstream powerlevels should be between? At the moment:

Power Level
(dBmV) 47.25

---------- Post added at 20:09 ---------- Previous post was at 19:35 ----------

Right, just been on the phone to customer relations, seems like we might get somewhere now.

For a start, she has said him threatening us with a charge for calling them out again is unacceptable, and they will work with us to solve it.

We have booked in another technician for saturday morning (I will be home at least this time), and she will check tomorrow which technician has been assigned, and if its the same one then we will reschedule. If its someone else then great, lets hope they have a good go at solving the problem. If they can't fix it or find something wrong, then they will get a booking in for the specialist know-it-all guy from sheffield (I think!) on the case.

The saga continues... :)

[Peter_]

Anyone know what upstream powerlevels should be between? At the moment:

Power Level
(dBmV) 47.25


Here you go just click HERE (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34896851-post3.html)

[daaaveee]

Here you go just click HERE (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34896851-post3.html)

Great thanks.

[Nedkelly]

Check your levels when you are getting good speeds and when you are getting poor speeds .Could you post the downstream freqs and levels there on the same page . I see you have the modem connected at 47 dbmv which is ok .Does this level go up or down ?Stuipid check have you got the right powersupply plugged into the modem the amount of faults that can be caused by this is high .VM have there own speed test site which the techs use i take it he did not use this .:)

[Chrysalis]

sounds like a lazy tech :(

I agree the 9mbit speedtest is defenitly not acceptable for the 50mbit service. The other speedtests is debatable but I would expect your downstream power issue to be fixed.

[daaaveee]

This morning my downstream power level was -7.5 and I managed 50meg speedtest... once. Went down to 35 upon the second test.

Here are my levels now:

Cable Modem Downstream
DS-1 DS-2 DS-3 DS-4
Frequency 299000000 307000000 315000000 N/A
Lock Status
(QAM Lock/FEC Sync/MPEG Lock) Y/Y/Y Y/Y/Y Y/Y/Y N/N/N
Channel Id 36 37 38 N/A
Modulation 256QAM 256QAM 256QAM N/A
Symbol Rate
(Msym/sec) 6.952 6.952 6.952 N/A
Interleave Depth I=12
J=17 I=12
J=17 I=12
J=17 N/A
Power Level
(dBmV) -10.13 -10.38 -10.47 N/A
RxMER
(dB) 34.35 34.63 34.77 N/A
Correctable
Codewords 3035 1830 1069 N/A
Uncorrectable
Codewords 273 276 277 N/A

Speed tests:

1

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:13:27 GMT

Test 1: 2048K took 527 ms = 3886.1 KB/sec, approx 31089 Kbps, 30.36 Mbps
Test 2: 2048K took 676 ms = 3029.6 KB/sec, approx 24237 Kbps, 23.67 Mbps
Test 3: 2048K took 666 ms = 3075.1 KB/sec, approx 24601 Kbps, 24.02 Mbps
Test 4: 4096K took 3778 ms = 1084.2 KB/sec, approx 8674 Kbps, 8.47 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 22150 Kbps, 21.63 Mbps

2

Timed out.

3

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:17:17 GMT

Test 1: 2048K took 1313 ms = 1559.8 KB/sec, approx 12478 Kbps, 12.19 Mbps
Test 2: 2048K took 1014 ms = 2019.7 KB/sec, approx 16158 Kbps, 15.78 Mbps
Test 3: 2048K took 2612 ms = 784.1 KB/sec, approx 6273 Kbps, 6.13 Mbps
Test 4: 4096K took 5432 ms = 754 KB/sec, approx 6032 Kbps, 5.89 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 10235 Kbps, 10 Mbps

[Peter_]

What about the upstream and include the T3 and T4's

[daaaveee]

Cable Modem Upstream
US-1 US-2 US-3 US-4
Channel Type 1.0 N/A N/A N/A
Channel ID 2 N/A N/A N/A
Frequency
(Hz) 47400000 N/A N/A N/A
Ranging Status Success N/A N/A N/A
Modulation 16QAM N/A N/A N/A
Symbol Rate
(KSym/sec) 2560 N/A N/A N/A
Mini-Slot Size 2 N/A N/A N/A
Power Level
(dBmV) 47.75 N/A N/A N/A
T1 Timeouts 0
T2 Timeouts 0 0 0 0
T3 Timeouts 1 0 0 0
T4 Timeouts 0 0 0 0

[jb66]

Even a rookie would know about your downstream power level

---------- Post added at 21:24 ---------- Previous post was at 21:24 ----------

upstream power level is good

[Peter_]

As jb66 says no issues on the upstream and that tech should know better.

[daaaveee]

Browsing is more or less impossible now, web pages are taking 30s or more to load! Early to bed I think! Thanks for all your help.

[daaaveee]

Ok, 3rd technician just left, same guy who installed it all, really nice chap who fixed out signal issues:

Cable Modem Downstream
DS-1 DS-2 DS-3 DS-4
Frequency 299000000 307000000 315000000 N/A
Lock Status
(QAM Lock/FEC Sync/MPEG Lock) Y/Y/Y Y/Y/Y Y/Y/Y N/N/N
Channel Id 36 37 38 N/A
Modulation 256QAM 256QAM 256QAM N/A
Symbol Rate
(Msym/sec) 6.952 6.952 6.952 N/A
Interleave Depth I=12
J=17 I=12
J=17 I=12
J=17 N/A
Power Level
(dBmV) -2.20 -2.37 -2.81 N/A
RxMER
(dB) 36.17 36.39 36.84 N/A
Correctable
Codewords 1 0 0 N/A
Uncorrectable
Codewords 290 859 263 N/A

And the speed seems to be back to what it should be!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/07/27.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

Huzzah! Lets hope it stays this way :)

He also said it looks like someone has reversed in to our local cabinet and possibly damaged it! He has booked networks to come out and have a look at it to see if anything is wrong with it. We are < 50ft away from it and he said the signal should be blasting in to the house as there is no splitters or anything obstructing it but its relatively weak compared to what he would expect.

Anyway, much happier now, we got a tech who actually did something!

[jb66]

Alot of folk on here are a little anal when it comes to signals, i.e +10db downstream CALL A TECH!!!! +10db should be fine for speeds (but still out of spec), but one thing that always affects speed that i've noticed is SNR and low signal (like you had)

The technician that came out the first time will be unhappy as he'll have had 2 repeat faults!

[Nedkelly]

lets hope it stays like that shame on the tech who came before if he was a principal tech tut tut :)