re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

If that's the case, you should report it to Virgin and get a discount on your bill. When Virgin starts loosing money, they take notice.

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

THIS.

Imagine if VM sold electricity

"you will get up to 240 volts"

You switch on your tv and nothing happens as you are only getting 60v today, the network is "too busy"....try watching it at 4am instead :dozey:

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

That's probably a really bad example, because you will get ~240 volts from your electricity supplier but it can be 230v or sometimes less. Our UPS shows the current from our supplier and it does vary a bit, but the UPS is good in that it "cleans" it to give a constant 240v to our servers.

In any case, poor example aside, every consumer ISP out there does the "up to" thing.

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

Strictly speaking I was talking purely about the bandwidth allocation at the VDSL layer, on my ECI cab that's almost exactly 5.02:2.

Mind you, I've seen quite large differences from cab to cab, for example max of 82/30 on one line and 108/28 on another.
Not too shabby, though my line is like that when the cab's at 100% capacity :p:

---------- Post added at 11:28 ---------- Previous post was at 11:26 ----------

With ADSL(2) that's to be expected, upstream always uses the bottom-most frequencies which have the longest range and least attenuation. Downstream uses everything above the bottom few percent, so degrades more quickly. Bit like cable really.

VDSL(2) works differently, in that the downstream and upstream are interleaved, there's just such a huge overall bandwidth that using a fixed low/high split isn't effective.

---------- Post added at 11:31 ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 ----------

Imagine if that's actually how the real world worked. OH WAIT, IT IS.

You get nominally 240 V RMS, actually it varies from -320 to +320V every second but ignoring that, you are not guaranteed 240V. The target is 240V +/- 10% but can easily be as high as 265V or as low as 220V during normal operation. During busy periods you get brownouts and sometimes you get complete cutouts.

Perhaps you're a bit spoilt where you live but there are plenty of places in the world where electricity cuts out several times a day and always browns out during peak periods.

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

Living in the UK as you do else you wouldn't be a VM customer, I've never experienced a brownout. Last power cut was in the early 70's during the miners strike and the 3 day week.

You get the point though.

VM aren't supplying internet in some backwater 3rd world country are they?

If they could supply 90% of the rated speed and stick to it, that would be absolutely fine, heck even 80% all the time would be acceptable.

Between 5%-15% isn't.

---------- Post added at 11:40 ---------- Previous post was at 11:40 ----------

It was slightly contrived, but it makes the point though. :D

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

It's also a terrible example and makes no point.

During peak time and times of high stress (Kettles during the world cup/Corrie specials come to mind) the National Grid has to put inefficient and expensive power plants into use (See here: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30545091) to meet demand. This results in higher bills, and is also why the Eco 7 tariff exists.

If your analogy was correct, we would have 2 charges for Virgin Internet, off and on peak, and pay an extra amount for peak time bandwidth.

As we don't, your point is a little moot.

Your issue with local congestion is a valid one, but if VM only supplied 5-15% of advertised speed to everyone, Ofcom would've slapped them long ago.

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

Lucky you. In Edinburgh I had about 10 brownouts a year and at least 10 2+ hour cuts over 10 years.

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

That's the wrong way around.

With the Economy 7 tariff's, you PAY LESS if you agree to use it outside peak hours. Subtle difference.

If VM said, you may only get 1/2 what you pay for, but we'll charge you 20% less...

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

Modem rebooted itself earlier today, had an inkling there is probably work being carried out on the network in my area, tested my connection at trusty speedtest.net and on my 152Mb connection I was reaching 170Mb and the modem was itching to go faster!!

Fingers crossed Luton/Hemel will be one of the first areas to be upgraded, if anyone is in the know?

300Mb wowzers that will do me fine, even with traffic shaping! Can see a lot of those Linux Bluray ISOs lined up :D Might need to grab a couple of 5TB HDDs :) (I know eggs/all in one basket) :D

I have to say Virgin Media over my 25 years of using Internet and broadband has been superb!

Good job Virgin Media!

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

They do.

If you're affected by high congestion, they issue a fault ref and credit your account (Upon request, it should be automatic frankly) while the fault affects that area.

Eco 7 generally has higher on peak charges (My tariff is 4p/kWh higher than a standard tariff, but my off peak is far lower). It's there to encourage usage outside of peak times, VM could easily do the same thing. After all, part of why they had traffic management was to moderate peak time usage and we all know how they ended.

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

The windy mills will fix all that.

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

I see the FTTP work is in progress in Leicestershire. Blaby is one place for the curious. First but most definitely not last.

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

There has been some work going on in Dudley as I now have 3 upstreams and 8 downstreams although might of already had 8 downstreams but never 3 upstreams whooop hopefully I get my 200Mb or whatever 100Mb customers get sooner rather than later

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

Actually it's a brilliant example and you go on to define it perfectly for me. The National Grid ENSURE they always have sufficient capacity to deliver what you are paying for.

Or to put the current pointless willly-waving in perspective if VM ran the National Grid

"you will get up to 750 volts, but in reality it will be no more than 240!"

---------- Post added at 21:27 ---------- Previous post was at 21:26 ----------

That won't work either, it's always lovely warm and sunny in Scotland :cool:

re: Virgin Media 70, 100 & 200 Mb Upgrades
 

https://youtu.be/hzinGd6gXJw

Is why cable companies aren't overbuilding their HFC with FTTP.