Business install question

[icecoldcube]

Hi,

I did some searching across the forums and could not see a similar thread to my question, so thanks in advance for any comments/advice.

Currently I have Virgin Media at home, happy with the service and I would like to get this installed at my office premises. To date Virgin was not available at the office address, but we are moving to a new location. I visited the site this morning to check network cabling (I'm the IT manager) and I saw a Virgin Engineer outside, spoke to him and he confirmed the fact that the green cabinet outside was Virgin and showed me the duct up the premises.

Got back to my our current office address and thought great, I'll put a order in with Virgin media business. On calling I was told that unless the premises had cable before there was no policy to install. Strange policy I thought given the duct and box outside. The guy I spoke to on the phone said it was in place since October.

Has anybody experienced this, any thoughts on a way forwards?
Secondly is there a way I can order a consumer service, the offices do contain some living space but we had not planned to use this by default. I'm thinking if we can not install the business service, I should just order the consumer. Although I'm sure the systems/processes will stop this.

Maybe this situation will change in the future. Otherwise its ADSL or FTTC which is scheduled for activation in March. However reading the forums I see there is no confirmed option if your premises are connected to the actual exchange. Something which looks likely given the new premises proximity to the telephone exchange (Stafford).

Hoping I can get something sorted, the move to the new offices actually involved selecting a location close to the exchange and Virgin coverage.

Thanks for any thoughts on the business install option or anything else.

Regards,

Dave

[Stephen]

Hi, if the premise is cabled and connected to the cab by ducting then you should be able to place an order for VM Business products.

[weesteev]

Got your PM icecoldcube, have responded to you there ;)

[icecoldcube]

Thanks for the updates both!

Looks like no Virgin at the new premises, the ducting is there but no coax into building.

Dave

[ccarmock]

So if the duct is there why won't they pull a coax in?

Are VMB not installing any new Cable broadband services then?

[Matthew]

We've just had a fibre pulled into 2 buildings for our connection from Virgin.

[ccarmock]

It does look like they are not carrying out new Cable installs though - there is now a note ont he website to say they can provide cable broadband only if the builing has previously had cable.

Seems a strange policy!

[qasdfdsaq]

Wow, that's pretty strange indeed.

If there's cabling in the street and ducting into the building already, one would think it's cheaper than your average first-time residential install and should be fairly trivial to pull cable through the duct.

Maybe try put one in yourself and pretend it's always been there and the building "previously had cable"

[ccarmock]

A while back they were running in new coax for a business service - this is how I got thir business cable modem service originally. However it seems that since October last year they will not do that and will only provide service where the cable already exsists. Given they have install teams anyway I don't see the logic in this at all. Especially as they have just launched the new 30 & 50 Mb/s business cable services with a much improved static IP address service.

I guess if you really want the business cable modem service the way to do it is get a residential service of some kind installed first and then order business services.

[qasdfdsaq]

I guess if you really want the business cable modem service the way to do it is get a residential service of some kind installed first and then order business services.
Ironic, but that's actually a good idea that might just work.

[MovedGoalPosts]

I guess VM are just paying lip service to business, but for some reason don't see it as financially worthwhile. A bit dumb if you ask me when there was all that money invested in ducting streets.

We were perhaps fortunate to get VM installed to our office this time last year. But it did take a couple of months as they took forever to organise a crew to dig up our own tarmac path. Trouble is we have the service from last year 20meg. Can I speak to anyone about that now to get an upgrade. Nope nobody answers the phone and the email address given out by the recorded phone message gets no response.

[ccarmock]

I guess VM are just paying lip service to business, but for some reason don't see it as financially worthwhile. A bit dumb if you ask me when there was all that money invested in ducting streets.

We were perhaps fortunate to get VM installed to our office this time last year. But it did take a couple of months as they took forever to organise a crew to dig up our own tarmac path. Trouble is we have the service from last year 20meg. Can I speak to anyone about that now to get an upgrade. Nope nobody answers the phone and the email address given out by the recorded phone message gets no response.

It seems they are concentrating more on larger businesses now and not the smaller business market.

You can upgrade from the older services to new though since you have a cable service already. I did this just before Christmas - I had the 10 Mb/s fixed IP address service and changed to the 50 Mb/s serice with 5 fixed IP addresses.

I called 0800 953 0180 to order the upgrade.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Having just spoken to business sales to enquire about our own office's services (we're fortunate enough to already be cabled), I can confirm that Business are not doing any new standard cable broadband connections to premises. This is despite a building being located in a street ducted area. So if you are lucky enough to already be connected then great. If not tough.

The decision may get reviewed in the future but apparently someone has made the decision that new connections are just too expensive to dig even a few metres to the premises from a street in the current climate. It does seem odd to me since I would have though exploitation of the expensive street infrastructure is the only way to get a return. And if business are thinking like this then when will residential stop installing new cable too?

[ccarmock]

I agree this seems strange. However if you really need a business cable service (maybe due to alternatives being unsuitable) then what about having a residential service instaled - maybe TIVO for a short period to get cable in and then orderign a business product? Crazy way to do it given the caompany is all Virgin media at the end of the day!

[qasdfdsaq]

And that you pay more for the equivalent business service anyway, and sign up to a longer contract too. So they make far more money off you but are willing to spend far less.

[APS]

I hope you don't mind me tagging on some questions to this thread relating to a BM install. We are in the lucky position of having an old BM connection and are looking to upgrade to the 50 MB service. I believe this is now possible and their computer systems can now cope with upgrades?

What we need to know are the details of changing to a new modem and how the modem deals with the fixed IP with a subnet option. We currently have a router firewall behind the old cable modem and some services which rely on the current "fixed" IPs so we need to manage the change. Specific questions, which sales were vague on last time I tried to ask:

1) is there still the need for someone to connect via the new modem to a registration website before it will function fully? I believe it is an installed service so if the answer is yes does the engineer do this?

2) I understand the new fixed IP service runs by establishing a tunnel to some remote gateway. The question I have is what machine deals with the ARP resolution for devices connected to it. Is it the cable modem itself or some remote gateway machine and if so what will be its IP address. I ask as we have had problems with another provider which does not use the normal gateway for ARP resolution - you have to put rules in the router to allow the traffic to get out otherwise you lose routing when the ARP table timesout.

Does anyone know if we get advance notice of our IP allocation too, or do you only find out the day an engineer turns up with the modem?

Hoping someone who has knowledge of the business service is visiting this site as there is no other online support to be found and even getting through to sales can be difficult.

Coming back to the original post, when we first had the cable modem installed (several years ago) they dug a trench about 20 metres long, but we did have to pay a £500 contribution to the costs. At the time it was the only option for us apart from paying for a leased line.

I thought they were trying to promote the new Cable Modem service - or thats what sales told me, infact they said new customers were a priority over upgrades! If they won't do cabling they won't get many new customers me thinks.

[Stephen]

Hi, without too much details. The engineer will install a new Superhub and activate it for you.

If you only pick 1 Static IP then its assigned to the hub. If you go for the 5 or above then there are 4 available for use as far as I can remember.

Also the IPs are assigned by the system as soon as its loaded on to the billing system, although they probably won't let you know them till the install.

[ccarmock]

Yes you are able to order upgrades for the business broadband services now. The ironic thing is to start with you could only order new services and not upgrades and not they won't accept a new install order unless cable is already there!

I had a 10 Mb/s with fixed IP adress service upgraded to the new 50 Mb/s business service with 5 static IP addresses in December.

I am in the same situation that you are where I have a router (Cisco) behind the cable modem and need that router to have a public rouable IP address on it. For that you need to take routed subnet option.

There is no registration page that the modem needs to connect to. The account is already setup to the MAC address of the Superhub.

You are correct - the fixed IP routed subnet is established by the Superhub forming an
L2TP tunnel to a gateway - in my case to brad-bam-1.network.virginmedia.net. The first IP address in the routed subet is assigned to the Superhub itself and the other addresses can be statically assigned to devices connected to it. In this mode DHCP is disabled on the Superbhub.

ARP resolution is handled by the Superbhub.

You get told of your IP address alloction on the day the engineer turns up. I asked in advance and was told it is only available on the day.


The Superhub you will get is the same hardware as the residential service, but it runs different firmware. It is still VM branded and not the native Netgear firmware. There is no modem only mode in this version. It has extra options for the L2TP tunnel etc. There are options there for a username/password that are used for the tunel authentication.

The installation engineer completed all of that config for me. When I asked for the username/password I was told they don't leave those with the customer, but later that day I received an email from VMB with those details!

The version on the devices at the moment is 5.5.2R04-BU

Note you do get full access to the config web pages of the device but can't access those via the IP you allocated to the Superhub from your fixed block. You still need to use 192.168.0.1 for that.

You can have your own reverse DNS entries created for IP addresses in your range by contacting the VM Business helpdesk.

Since I have the very same config you are looking to setup I will do my best to clear up any questions you have about it.

So far I have found the service to be very good. I have just two gripes though - latency has increased due to the tunnel. And also jitter is greater - often 40 ms of jitter. I am not sure if this is just a failing of the Superhub or the L2TP tunnel is causing it.


I think the new policy of only installing if a cable connection already exists is daft. It just doesn't make logical sense given the residential team will still install!

[MovedGoalPosts]

hmm, no modem only mode? That's going to be a problem for me as I've just ordered the 50 meg upgrade. I know we have to have the superhub but thought modem only would be on it. I have to connect the VM cable into a Draytek dual WAN router, so we can have the cable and ADSL broadband giving redundancy when one falls over. I don't need static IPs though as VM's IPs are very sticky and we don't host anything on site, other than occasional remote access to a server to give that a kick.

[ccarmock]

No Modem mode in the Business superhub firmware just yet. I gather it's coming but no dates when.

I am not sure if the firmware is a variant of the residential release R04 or not..... But definitely no modem only mode as yet. You can put a router behind it though. However if that router needs a public address you'll need the 5 IP block