Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Ah, good to know. I was in the same situation a little over a year ago, and didn't regret leaving VM one bit.

But as is always in the corporate world, it's far easier for them to screw us over than the other way round. Same with a billing error - you can't stop them taking it out of your account and it'll take months to get them to refund you.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Id agree with you, but my speedtests are always near the 10meg I should have.

I have loads of stalled web pages, missing images and general slowdowns. I cant say anything to VM though as they will look at the utilisation and say its all OK. I may give the CEO office a call though as things are definitely getting worse.

My other option is a equally dodgy ADSL line (sub 4Mb if i'm lucky) that took me 2 years of BT faults visits to get me up to this speed from 2.5Mb, god only knows what has happened to the line in the mean time.

Latest Ping test
http://www.pingtest.net/result/30200080.png

TBB ping test (dosent look that bad)


http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...14-12-2010.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

That's interesting because I seem to have observed VM's network/equipment appear to have two operating "modes" - one with low latency, high speeds, and considerable packet loss just as you describe, and the other one with moderate latency, moderate speeds, and zero packet loss.

What I observed yesterday while I think they were doing some capacity upgrade work, was that at one point I reconnected to a different upstream channel to usual. At this point, I got slightly higher speeds than usual, and also slightly lower pings. But packet loss shot up from zero to about 10%, stalled web pages, etc. as you describe.

Then about an hour or so later, my ping increased again, and packet loss dropped to near zero in an instant - while still on the same channel. Clearly, something changed, whether deliberately or not, and not gradually either. And it wasn't due to congestion or high usage.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...13-12-2010.png

If you look at the that graph, between about 9:30am and 10:45 packet loss was consistently high, but at 10:45 my ping increases and packet loss almost disappears (save for the further two reboots/loss of service at 11:00/11:20.

Incidentally during the periods of high packet loss, my ping would stay low. Normally when I saturate your upstream doing a big upload, my ping would increase to the 500-1000ms range but still not much loss. Yet in this period my ping would stay at ~30ms even while saturating the upstream, so it looks like something to do with VM's buffering/scheduling parameters.

I can't really explain it, but put simply, something VM did - some setting they may have been tweaking somewhere - managed to cause 10-15% packet loss all of a sudden, in some way that was completely unrelated to load, oversubscription, or line/signal quality. Maybe a QoS or timing parameter, maybe something else. But still, your problems might not be completely capacity related.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

yes I very rarely had packetloss but the latency/jitter is through the roof and speeds very inconsistent. But in the last few days I am starting to see low packetloss.

philce's graph looks very good with the latency now, as I said on the VM forums his port improved at the same time mine got worse and I wouldnt be at all surprised if it was a reseg that moved a busy node from his port to mine.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/3.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30202805.png

trying to run speedtest now but keeps timing out, if it finioshes will post image.

---------- Post added at 23:56 ---------- Previous post was at 23:43 ----------

ok here

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/64.png

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/65.png

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/66.png

running these was fun, lots of retries and very slow.

---------- Post added 15-12-2010 at 00:07 ---------- Previous post was 14-12-2010 at 23:56 ----------

post midnight it becomes useable.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/67.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30203925.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30226874.png

jitter is amazing today but speed maxing out flatline at 10mbit.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

The different hardware does handle congestion differently.

CMTS can respond to upstream congestion in one of two ways, they can either ignore the excess requests and force the modems to re-request and they drop traffic, or they can give them zero-length grants which tell them to wait and buffer the data they have to transmit.

The first scheme causes packet loss and a touch of jitter, the second latency and considerable jitter.

The first scheme can be overcome to an extent by transport level protocols so download speeds aren't necessary too badly affected, the second not so much.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

ignition you remember the time i reported to you changing behaviour? I had the odd day where latency would drop to very low levels but then the next day it would revert, so I agree with him I think VM seem to be able to change between different modes as I dont think I was switched to different kit just for one day here and there.

when latency was low (along with low speeds but not extremely low) overall the connection was better, most things felt snappier and ssh was fine to use. Only bulk downloading lost out. This was at the time i was able to always get full speed when jitter was high (before nov)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Nah SSH feels nasty with packet loss, that would have been something else, some load variation or congestion on downstream more than upstream.

Accompanying the low latency is packet loss, most things wouldn't feel snappier, SSH would suck, browsing feel nasty but bulk downloading would feel be better.

Interactive protocols suck mightily regardless of the queueing system when upstream is sufficiently congested.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

thats true, whilst I did have packet loss that day it wasnt continous.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Thanks for the explanation Ignitionnet, that certainly does seem to explain what's going on. Interestingly though, this was 9am on a Monday morning, right after they'd done capacity upgrades, so curious that upstream congestion was sufficient to cause ~10% packet loss.

That said they might have still been in the middle of said upgrades at the time... Either way my upstream speed has now doubled (1.3Mb instead of 0.5-0.7) at peak time; slow progress but progress none the less...

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

things were improved both wed and thurs and was even using VM on my laptop. today is very bad again tho.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Leicester have been having some insane issues with their bb service, everytime i went to a bb job in leicester, 9/10 of them had to be reffered back to network. their network was in shambles for quite sometime but was told that they should all be getting upgraded. not sure if much has been done but if it hasnt been fixed yet you could still be waiting

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

nice to see some honest feedback from staff on here. I appreciate your post.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

yeh i worked in leicester for a few weeks and jeeez was there broadband issues or what, specially in the city center, a lot of students having plenty of issues with the bb. modem config pages were fine but just couldnt understand why people were getting intermittent speeds and connectivity. like i said though, at the time i was told that the issue was in hand and being dealt with but talking to my mate over there, there still seems to be some problems. now when they upgrade the network for the new upload speeds and 100mb, im not sure whether that might sort it out because the UBR's are getting re-arranged to accomadate the new 100mb and dedicated tivo modem.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

yeah possibly meaning channels be lost for these new services, can only speculate as its all hush hush. :(

I cant even get a fault number for my issue, I have asked the CEO office 4 times for it, and the VM forums 3 times, and get inconsistent replies.

eg. I was told some weeks ago now a new reseg is forthcoming and then eventually got told the spring 2011 date. If there is a date I would assume thereis a reference number so I have since asked for this reference number.

I then asked again on the VM forums and was told they raising it to the network team, which indicates there is no existing upgrade planned. They of course also wouldnt give me a reference number yet other customers get one, lots of weirdness about my area.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

what reference number are you reffering to?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

when people report faults they get a reference number that starts with F0.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

they must of ran out lol joke... Im not sure to be honest with you, only thing i can suggest is persist with the issue and dont sit and wait. I will speak to my mate tomorrow and see if he knows anything about whats going on over there. the network guys tend to know what the crack is across all areas lol dont hold your breathe on me though... but ill do what i can

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Correct.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I gave up now, but one thing is a complete lack of proffesionalism from VM on this. The service has been unuseable for long periods of the day in the past week or 2 and most other isp's performing this bad would treat it as a matter of urgency.

The recent query on the VM forums was just to see if I got consistent information to match what I been told by the CEO office, it wasnt.

Rose on the VM forums perhaps said too much for staff and confirmed some overloaded ports are due to "too many modems".

I even read today someone's port upgrade got cancelled simply because the utilisation has temporarily dropped again, no doubt he will be reraising his fault when it increases again. This made me think about how leics has got so bad, do they close upgrade tickets every time the students go home and as such the area goes around in circles.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

No channels are being lost Chris, all 10k areas are going to 4 256QAM downstreams or better with all overlay upstreams at 6.4MHz 16QAM.

TiVo is getting no dedicated bandwidth so don't worry about losing out on capacity to it.

Of course whether this is enough we'll see, should improve things nonetheless.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

in 8 months ;)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

At least your area has a date dude....

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

are 100mbit's getting new channels or sharing with the 50s and 20s?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

This sounds suspiciously like my area a year or two ago...

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Sharing.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

ignition what happened to your little check into the area?

my modem is now rebooted with these stats, rebooted by itself.

Upstream Status
Operational

Channel ID 8

Upstream Frequency 47400000 Hz

Modulation 16QAM

Symbol Rate 384000 bits/sec

Power Level 44.0 dBmV

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

You've a 384kbps upstream, interesting especially considering you're on 20Mbps as I remember rightly.

Reboot it again, see if it comes back on the proper tier.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

spoke to my mate about the leicester area and he says there is heavy work going on to resegment all broadband tiers 10/20/50/100. It is being done as we speak but i was not able to get an estimated date as it seems LE3 area has one of the older networks so there seems to be a lot of work needing to be done. I know its probably not what you want to hear but there isn't much more info i can give at this moment

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

ignition it stayed on the same, watching football at the moment so will try it again after.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Hahaha.

A mistake or VM's latest approach to upstream congestion relief, downgrade people's upload speeds? :D

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

downstream is still set to 20480000

does seem effective for anti congestion, speeds way up now.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/23.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Does the ref work for Virgin? How the fook is that game still on!!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

to avoid controversy, 3-0. if was 0-0 it be off no doubt.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I have this in my modem config pages

But my Upstream config is this which is the 2Mb upload.
So what does the Upstream Symbol rate actually mean.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

It's a cosmetic bug in some Ambits, they list the upstream bit rate in the symbol rate section.

You should know that :p:

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I know that 2080000 is the 2 Mb upload but what has 5120 Ksym/sec got to do with it.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I will update again if the config changes.

here is an outgoing traceroute from my freebsd virtual machine routed over VM.

root@vm net-snmp # traceroute -I virginmedia.com
traceroute to virginmedia.com (212.250.162.12), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 0.900 ms 1.246 ms 1.026 ms
2 cpc6-leic15-2-0-gw.8-1.cable.virginmedia.com (82.7.80.1) 38.219 ms 14.716 ms 16.196 ms
3 leic-core-1a-ae3-2234.network.virginmedia.net (82.3.33.73) 11.650 ms 11.687 ms 21.632 ms
4 leed-bb-1a-as8-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.172.17) 40.776 ms 14.110 ms 24.212 ms
5 manc-bb-1b-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.175.142) 70.588 ms 28.153 ms 26.090 ms
6 winn-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (212.43.163.190) 25.937 ms 36.526 ms 44.842 ms
7 win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.188.162) 20.247 ms 34.619 ms 52.626 ms
8 git-dmz4-css-4b-vip07.network.virginmedia.net (212.250.162.12) 25.448 ms 48.076 ms 23.472 ms

still jitter but all in 2 figures only.

I am not complaining about this change, if its deliberate VM should have done this weeks ago, better to have a slower speed thats more stable and useable then what I have had for the last 2 weeks.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

5120Ksym/sec is the underlying symbol rate used on the upstream channel. 16QAM modulation transmits 4 bits per symbol, so 5120,000 symbols per second = 20,480,000 bits per second = he's on a 20mbit (DS2.0+) upstream channel.

From what I understand it legacy upstream channels are 10mbit (2560Ksym/sec 16QAM) and a 20mbit upstream channel is a prerequisite for 10:1 upstream.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Still on 512 here on 10Mb.


Tracing route to virginmedia.com [212.250.162.12]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms [192.168.1.1]
2 10 ms 9 ms 7 ms cpc7-leic15-2-0-gw.8-1.cable.virginmedia.com [213.81.68.1]
3 10 ms 8 ms 19 ms leic-core-1a-ae3-2233.network.virginmedia.net [82.3.33.69]
4 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms leed-bb-1a-as8-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.172.17]
5 14 ms 12 ms 12 ms manc-bb-1b-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.175.142]
6 19 ms 19 ms 17 ms winn-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.163.190]
7 25 ms 34 ms 20 ms win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.188.162]
8 22 ms 19 ms 20 ms git-dmz4-css-4b-vip07.network.virginmedia.net [212.250.162.12]

Trace complete.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

hmm move me to cpc7 please :(

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Sorry! Looks like they are definitely upto something.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/19.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30460388.png

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...18-12-2010.png

Ignore the loss from 5 till 7pm, was watching a joke of a football match!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

didnt think it be possible on reduced upstream but can get full speed on this new config.

4.30 pm 19.50 down 0.35 up
now 18.96 down 0.32 up

in between them I had a 11mbit down tho is still varying a fair bit. jitter high but not crazy.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

my sister's part of leics has improved since summer, latency is way down and about half of mine, not varying a lot. speeds are higher than they were in the summer but still flaky. Although I tested it over christmas eve and day and christmas usage seems to be a bit down on the average.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Traffic shaping being in effect perhaps and of course people doing the "christmas" thing with friends and family rather than spending time on their PCs?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

unless their is a special xmas shaping profile it wont be that. Most likely people just having more family time.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

The will be less people online as Traffic Management is enforced 24/7 within the specified time ranges.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

this will widen peoples eyes.

My VM connection has been down since 4pm today (was asleep) and just hit renew dhcp on my router to get it back.

upstream back to 768000 and downstream channel has changed, however still on that same upstream. :( will report back in a bit on jitter etc.

--edit--

seems a lot better initially.

9ms jitter on pingtest and 19.43 down 0.73 up on speedtest.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Something definitely is going on.
Connection up and down all afternoon.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/4.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

same here mate been having terrible problems today, keep loosing connection :( , then i got Access Denied to network. Now it back up and working, checked service status seems their are faults with TV and Telephone :o:

P.S. Did anyone else notice no traffic restrictions these past days? I've downloaded a lot of stuff these past few days at full speed only today it seems i've been restricted

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I'm from the LE3 area and my net died earlier and has only just came back the modem was reporting these logs tho: if anyone knows what they mean.

MIMO Event MIMO: Stored MIMO=0 post cfg file MIMO=-1
ToD request sent- No Response received;CM-
ToD request sent - No Response received
MIMO Event MIMO: Stored MIMO=0 post cfg file MIMO=-1
ToD request sent - No Response received
No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP file complete - but missing mandatory TLV
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
ToD request sent - No Response received
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
TFTP failed - Request sent - No Response
DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received
Unicast Maintenance Ranging attempted - No response - Retries exhausted
Ranging Request Retries exhausted
No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
MIMO Event MIMO: Stored MIMO=0 post cfg file MIMO=-1
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
MDD message timeout
Lost MDD Timeout
Received Response to Broadcast Maintenance Request, But no Unicast Maintenance opportunities received - T4 time out
Lost MDD Timeout
SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Loss of Sync

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

here is my graph again (from page 7) so dont have to click back to see affect.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/12/3.png

traceroute also looking tidier. (note approx 8ms added due to interrupt polling on nic)

# traceroute -I virginmedia.com
traceroute to virginmedia.com (212.250.162.12), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 9.122 ms 9.590 ms 9.866 ms
2 cpc6-leic15-2-0-gw.8-1.cable.virginmedia.com (82.7.80.1) 19.877 ms 19.541 ms 10.126 ms
3 leic-core-1a-ae3-3496.network.virginmedia.net (82.3.33.105) 19.818 ms 19.823 ms 29.846 ms
4 leed-bb-1a-as8-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.172.17) 19.758 ms 19.566 ms 20.180 ms
5 manc-bb-1b-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.175.142) 29.608 ms 19.882 ms 20.556 ms
6 winn-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net (212.43.163.190) 29.153 ms 29.869 ms 29.538 ms
7 win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.188.162) 39.902 ms 30.080 ms 29.821 ms
8 git-dmz4-css-4b-vip07.network.virginmedia.net (212.250.162.12) 29.567 ms 30.181 ms 29.606 ms

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I also got the same as morley04

Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) TFTP failed - request sent - No Response
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Discover sent, no offer received

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

everything slowed down again and jitter higher again. was expected I guess since the upstream channel didnt change.

looks like we had some kind of fault and there was a temporary normal service before modems recconected.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

wow my tbb graph is a right mess at 2.30am, the change back to 768kbit upload shows how bad things are or I wonder if a port is down and they merged 2 ports of users.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Nothing on my graph? Must be the port you're on? Im still on CPC7.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...28-12-2010.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

yes we on different nodes. I remember one of the early things I was told about my area. That VM will leave areas like mine to rot (let everyone fight for bandwidth) as their drip feed upgrades are ineffective. Quite as to why my node doesnt get split or reallocated I dont know and is why I am ditching VM as I have given up waiting for a fix that will probably never happen.

also I found out yesterday when sorting some signatures for the leics mercury story that a few people have managed to get moved to a new physical port, in that their ip range changed and had new up and down ports. One of them only managed to get moved after 2 years and said he signed up in 2006 and had congestion until moved in 2008. There is people on 50mbit saying they get under 2mbit on speedtests.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

The overlay network went live in 2008, they were moved to it hence the IP and port changes. No preferential or special treatment at all just a migration along with however many other people to the new kit once available.

---------- Post added at 16:44 ---------- Previous post was at 16:43 ----------

CPC7 isn't a port it's just a pool of IP addresses. You could split the signal coming into your home to two cable modems, they can be on the same ports but take an IP address from a different pool so will have a different 'CPC' but share the same bandwidth.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

[QUOTE=Ignitionnet;35144520]The overlay network went live in 2008, they were moved to it hence the IP and port changes. No preferential or special treatment at all just a migration along with however many other people to the new kit once available.[COLOR="Silver"]

I was connected in April this year, onto Legacy, only put onto Overlay when I complained to CEO's office.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

[QUOTE=philce;35144568]Perhaps that was the reason?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

not sure, I spoken to one guy over the phone, he was moved to overlay initially and then upgraded to 50mbit after he was told that would fix it, which it didnt. Then whilst still on 50mbit he got moved again and it was a lot better. So obviously he wasnt moved back to legacy as he is still on the 50mbit service so it could only mean a physical move of some sort, it also changed his ip address range.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Well there has been copious amounts of resegmentation on the Leicester networks so this wouldn't surprise.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

thanks to everyone who has helped in this thread, it is appreciated even if I dont come across that way.

my new adsl isp is online today, sycing at almost 2 meg higher than I did on ukonline although upload is down on speed. The new isp isnt quite living up to easynet's excellent network for jitter, seems to hover from 1-5ms mostly around 1-2ms but that is fine significantly better than VM, speeds fine on it.

So I will have VM until end of jan although may be earlier as I got warned since its free it can go off at any point in the month. It was useful for dusk hours bulk downloading and during sept for everything :) but thats history now so hopefully others in LE3 wont suffer as badly as I have done.

If anyone here wants to test out my connection and knows how to use unix command line PM me, and I can give you access to a freebsd vm I have setup on the connection.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

At least you have found a resolution which suits you better.:D

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Who did you go with?

Perhaps the faster speeds is due to less crosstalk because of the amount of users going to Virgin?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I should imagine Chrys has gone with a LLU operator but until we get a reply who knows? (or infinity if in the area).

Bottom line if it works out better for his needs who cares?

And I don't mean that as a slight to you Chrys.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

No chance of FTTC here (dont get me started on that one!)

Interested to see why the 2Mb speed jump, that would make me think again going back to ADSL and Sky.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I went with Xilo who appear to have set it up using murphx bandwidth on a tiscali tail. So tiscali LLU at exchange with murphx backhaul.

The package has a 75gig usage cap with no free usage off peak period so not for anyone who downloads too much :)

On ukonline I had a 4.8meg sync before they did the migration at 10db margin, when it synced up on tiscali it was nearly 6 meg with same stats, after I removed the snrm overide on my router and let it sync at 6db I got 6.8meg which held during the evening but with some small packetloss. With the packetloss it still was far more useable than VM. Without SRA ukonline was nowhere near as steady, I think the difference maybe due to INP been enabled on tiscali (noise protection). The latency is higher about 25ms but is low jitter and upstream I am back down to about 800kbit like I was before I went to ukonline.

Phil if your 10mbit is steady with VM I would stay where you are unless you having problems of course. :)

After I resynced I am holding 6.2mbit with no packet loss now during the night. I never got above about 5.5meg on ukonline without SRA overnight even when my line was better and in recent weeks I struggled to hold 4mbit. Its worth mentioning tho over christmas many offices are closed and they are what cause most of the crosstalk on our exchanges as both are city centre based. I will have a better idea of what it will be like long term after the first working week in Jan.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Sky have offered me 1/2 price for 6 months, Virgin phone calls are extortionate, the management applied to the Virgin connection is horrendous at peak times.

I was with AAISP and got full line speeds at all times. The way things are going with Virgin they will throttle everything except browsing soon, I use VPN for work and I can see that being next.

After waiting years for Virgin I cant believe I'm thinking of going back to ADSL!!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

yeah I almost forgot about the shaping etc.

seems you got reasons to change back then :)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

here is xilo's.

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

agreed virgin phone calls are way to much, I'm looking into VOIP or possibly taking calls back to sky and keeping virgin for broadband only.

Yes it took over 5 years for Virgin to upgarde the LE3 6 Area to 'Digital' and perhaps they just did a 'botch' job on the upgrade?

Being stuck on a 58db adsl line Virgin seems like the only choice :confused: for nearly all users in this area. No FTTC planned and cant see the area getting it for another 3 years at least.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

My parents have been having quite a few connection problems and low speed in LE4 3 area they are on 50mb service and connected to Northfields Hub site. They are only able to get 15mb download and 120kbps upstream have spoken to CS who basically told them to call back after the holidays

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Looks like you had interleaving applied after the disconnections overnight?

Are you sure you are on LLU? (I recall you are on Leic Central? No Tiscali on Montfort)

I'd say you have been DLM'd by BT !! (one of the reasons I wanted Virgin!)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Its LLU, but the behaviour is odd for sure.

I swapped my router twice this morning as I wanted to compare sync speeds and both other routers have higher latency (at first I thought was DLM also). But when the original router goes back in the latency reverts.

So

billion 7402nx original router - reports fast path, low downstream INP, the router can tune both INP and interleaving, however when I tried tuning INP it had no affect.
billion 7402r2 - tried this one out, same chipser but lower model, latency almost doubled, showed FEC errors which indicates interleaving.
speedtouch 585, old broadcom based router, like the 7402r2 higher latency and has fEC stats, in addition it specifically does say its in interleaving mode.

So currently 2 issues, a line mode that changes depending on what router is plugged in (so could be a weird DLM but isp says it isnt) and my exchange does have tiscali LLU. Also there is no BRAS profiling as I have experimented with low and high sync speeds with throughput changes been immediate (wouldnt happen on BTw). 2nd issue is the high base line latency of 25ms even on the fastpath router. Xilo will be playing with my line profile next week.

End of the day a steady 25ms is far better than a 15ms-XXXXms that I get on VM. But it seems unless I pay 100 notes a month to easynet connect I wont ever get the quality of service again I had with ukonline.

I am plugging the original router back in soon so the latency should drop again on that.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

today its just turned into a big yellow block since midday.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...01-01-2011.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Mine always used to be like that (before my reseg) every day but most of the time the issues I got weren't too bad - half marketed speed in either direction, or thereabouts.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

also it seems I have been paying full bill with no discounts at all even tho I was told that would happen.

cant be bothered to ring up about it, will take the hit but shocking customer service.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Just saw on HDUK VM have a special offer if you are an exisiting cust and want to upgrade to 50mb. I am very tempted and so far have a solild 10mb service (after being moved to overlay network).
Tempted to upgrade because I keep getting hit in the evening with the traffic management. Anyone in LE3 got 50mb?

---------- Post added at 13:18 ---------- Previous post was at 13:17 ----------

Just saw on HDUK VM have a special offer if you are an exisiting cust and want to upgrade to 50mb. I am very tempted and so far have a solild 10mb service (after being moved to overlay network).
Tempted to upgrade because I keep getting hit in the evening with the traffic management. Anyone in LE3 got 50mb?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Whats the offer?

Im coming to the end of my 12 months and Sky have made me an offer! Shame its ADSL for BB!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

VM dispite their already oversold service seem to be on a new recruitment drive, new offers coming out and people been offered refferal bonuses as well.

Philce you off back to adsl then?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

With no prospect of FTTC within 1 year, and a poor ADSL line I will try to bluff with VM to give me a good retention deal for this year.

Hopefully with the upgrades coming later in the year this will fix the utilisation issues, hopefully this will result in some of the management being relaxed slightly, (not holding out much hope)!!

If I go for 50Mb and I get as little as 10% topline speed I am still better than ADSL!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Why is the VM network oversold??

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Because the network has been proven/admitted by VM to be at capacity/over capacity, yet they continue to sign up new users. The experience they receive is poor, resulting in compensation payments and bad publicity to potential users (word of mouth).

I see you are not a VM customer, you dont know what you're missing!!!!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Not in all areas. There are many of us who receive perfectly good connections.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Yes I accept that, but as Chrysalis said, here it is over subscribed (high student population) and over sold.

Why add to the problems they have not fixed by creating more?

Capacity upgrades take so long that once implemented they are already saturated.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

That doesnt make it ok tho.

My issues arent actually related to students.

I queried as to why my connection seems to have little relationship to student terms and now I know why, I am not sharing with people in the uni catchment area's. My port load seems to peak when kids are off school eg. over the xmas holiday it got really crazy, this week its clamed down a bit but still high. My night time load 3am to 6am is now higher than my daytime load was a month ago.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I never said it did.

I agree that no more customers should be taken on in an area if the network there can't support them.

I just get a bit miffed when generalisations are used for the whole network when in most cases it's area specific either due to the student population, a couple of heavy users hammering it for the rest or just the state of the network in a given area.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

It was actually VM tech support that offered the student theory. In a city like Leicester with thousands of students it will obviously be a factor, however to use this as an excuse is unacceptable.

They know where the students are, and their habits, they should plan and accommodate them.

Offering cheap 9 month contracts in August is only going to obviously attract more users.

I really think that us here are the tip of the iceberg, most users dont even know there's a problem.

I just hope the delay in the increased uploads and 100Mb is to make sure the network is robust enough to cope.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I do not disagree with you.

Students do hammer the network for 9mths of the year.

There is no delay in the increased uploads and 100Mb rollout. Quite a few areas need a lot of work. The upgrades will continue in the areas that take less work. That's just common sense.

When eventually the upgrade is complete it should mean VM have a more robust network.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

quick question.

how do you produce those graphs? i went to the website and tried a speedtest, but it looked a lot different to what is has been posted

tia

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

thinkbroadband has it as a free feature if you register there, is called broadband quality monitor. is nothing to do with speedtesting, its basically a latency monitor and they ping your modem every second.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

all registered up and account activated. i have the monitor running but it dosnt seem to be doing anything. :confused:

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

If its all red then you will need to enable piings on your router/firewall.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

router is a Linksys WRT54G2 but i cant find an option called pings? I dont have a software firewall either. bit lost now :(

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

clicked enable? :)

think it starts as disabled.

if its all black its not running, if its all red its running but with 100% loss (pings blocked your end).

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Might be something like annonomous pings?
Or ping from lan?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

So your stating that the whole network is oversubscribed,Virginmedia have admitted this and they shouldn't sign any more subcribers!

Well they best close shop then.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

why do people get all defensive over this.

if an isp is partially over subscribed then yes then they have a general classification of oversubscribed.

if they dont like people saying that then the solution is there, reduce users on the congested points, kick of heaviy users on congested points (rather than just softy letters) or increase capacity.