Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I live in the Renfrewshire area, and most of the time I seem to share a range with 7 other local users.

I just have to say, having 20MB is wonderful, as downloading at full 2MBps just has to impress me. I also notice no traffic shaping, whether it applies to me or not, I always seem to have full speed.

Very happy customer here, one of many I imagine.

n/b. I never have had any problems at all since I started using cable a decade ago!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Nope..my 20mb has been great ever since I removed my router out of the equation. Very pleased too.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

If you have 20meg broadband, then you will have Traffic Shaping in place.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

That's the complete opposite of my experience. :Yikes:

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I'm pretty sure alot of people could say that.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I have shaping, i'm not happy about it. why bring us down to a quarter? and not half like the other packages :(.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

If I exceeded the limit, so its never "in place" for me :P

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

round and round in circles teddy chased the bear....................pointless!!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Renfrewshire- thats prob my one as well and 2mb has been crap. In saying that its been better the last few days!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I also live in Renfrewshire and have been monitoring my broadband connection for the last 4 weeks.

I had an engineer at my home last Friday to check my connection and he told me exactly what I already knew, "Your connection is running perfectly, levels are exactly right, the problem lies at headend - You would not believe how many callouts we are dealing with just now, and there is nothing we can do about it".

My connection has been running at 345 Kb/s for the last 4 weeks - I was also on the phone to India for over 30 minutes reporting the fault, the guy had me rebooting into Safe Mode and downloading files from Microsoft - when the download was dribbling down at 26Kb/s he finally admitted defeat and scheduled the techie appointment.

As already mentioned, the engineer conceded that the faults are the result of the 20Mb upgrade, nothing to do within customers' homes - The majority of his working day is visiting unhappy customers' homes, where he can find no faults.

Think about how many people who are unaware of these problems, people who browse the Internet or check their email a couple of times a week and just do not realise they are paying for a service speed which they are simply not getting.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

How much did VM pay you to post that.

My 20mb is total and utter crap.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I'm fed from Renfrew also. My speeds have been poor since the 20Mb upgrade, never getting above 4Mb. Until today that is!

Getting 15-16 Mb at Speedtest.net (on the French hosted servers) and over 2MB downloads from newsgroups.

Looks like some work may have been going on under the bonnet. Hope it lasts!!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Beat that ADSL!

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/res...5929&v=1918116

---------- Post added at 21:41 ---------- Previous post was at 21:40 ----------

Only God knows what I'm going to exploit that much speed on!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

And alot of people would say it's great also. To get a true balance of what speeds people are getting you would need to ask every customer. I feel that the vast, vast, VAST majority, are happy. Yes this forum seams to be of people complaining, but whats the percentage of those against customers. about 0.1% ?? :confused:

---------- Post added at 21:56 ---------- Previous post was at 21:54 ----------

Agree 100%. The other packages get "downgraded" to half the speed. So surely 20Mb customers should be put to 10Mb

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I have run 3 tests from both speedtest.net and Paul Marsden and taken the average from each. Here are my results:

Time – speedtest – Paul Marsden
10am – 17.27Mbps – 17.21Mbps
11am – 16.18Mbps – 15.23Mbps
12pm – 16.18Mbps – 15.47Mbps
2pm – 11.16Mbps – 5.42Mbps
3pm – 3.30Mbps – 10.46Mbps
4pm – 8.91Mbps – 4.61Mbps
Following the tests at 4pm, I downloaded over 3Gb, so that traffic shaping would kick in.
5pm – 4.52Mbps – 3.21Mbps (Being Shaped)
6pm – 3.70Mbps – 2.11Mbps (Being Shaped)
7pm – 3.77Mbps – 1.17Mbps (Being Shaped)
8pm – 3.80Mbps – 2.37Mbps (Being Shaped)
Shaping now turned off (I used speedtest.net to confirm when shaping was being applied, as the upload speeds reduced from 768k to 256k)
9pm – 5.86Mbps – 2.87Mbps
10pm – 2.18Mbps – 1.42Mbps – VERY POOR for 20Mbps connection not being shaped !!!

Interestingly there are major differences between the two speed test sites from 2pm onwards.

Although most kids are now on summer holidays, it would appear that afternoon and evening browsing is much slower than before 3pm. More testing would be needed to confirm this though.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

You are in the minority. That is my belief anyway. Yes, there are problems, but why complain when it's working?? The op who started the post is a minority. Well done to the op I say for highlighting some praise on the company :tu:

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Mines rather good as well.

More than happy!

Well done VM! Put the £10 in the post now Richard! :D

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Done a few minutes ago - https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/23.png

Again, flawless - https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/20.png

---------- Post added at 23:41 ---------- Previous post was at 23:38 ----------

And done at 4.30 https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/24.png

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Scotland take me home.......all is forgiven:D

Thats the fastest of 3 speedtest attempts on here....
But this is the download at the same time.

And as usual the speedtests never quite tell it how it actually is:sleep:
I`ve still never seen the full 20Mb quota mind you but thats another £matter£

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I just used the broadbandmax speedtest and got just under 8megs......i then loaded up Newsbin Pro and updated headers and got 18.5 megs.....add overheads and thats my full 20 meg.This speedtest sites are so inconsistent and unreliable that it's not worth taking much notice of them really.

I wonder how many people (and this isn't aimed at anyone ) who are complaing about poor speeds only ever test using these sites and if they tested getting a largish file of Microsoft, or anyone else with a fast server and plenty of capacity ,would see totally different figures.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Yet again, is it really a crime to have a working service?

For the record my services from VM have been top notch at all times. VM don't pay me for saying that, I speak from experience. People I know with VM don't have problems either. I'd say that around 100/150 people on this site have dire problems, and because they keep posting the same thing on every post mentioning VMBB working fine it bogs the board down with complete crap. This thread was just informing people that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and VM does work, not "Haha I'm on 20mb na nar nana naaarrrrr".

Pathetic.

Oh, and don't judge your BB on speedtest.net. The majority of the time it's complete rubbish. Use the CF one, or the one at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker

You have to take into consideration there is a lot of lag and speed restrictions all over the internet, not just your connection!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

But can't you see that is totally meaningless ? What the heck does it matter if you can get 18.5 megs over nntp if http downloads are only 8meg ? Many people don't use nntp, most only care about http so the only relevant test is the speed tests.

There seems to be this fallacy that the speed test sites are inconsistent. Actually no, the sites are fine, it's VMs network which is at fault. You want to see what a proper 20mb connection should look like ?

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/17.png

(and that's at peak time on my work network). Not exactly shabby for a speed test site which is "inconsistent".

Run that same test from my home connection and I'd be getting 4mb max on a "20mb" connection.



This is the point, speedtest.net does have plenty of capacity. It's VMs peering or packet shaping or some other fault with VM's network which is slowing it down. So what if you can get 20mbit over nntp. Most people don't care. They care about real world day to day surfing and rarely if ever do I see the same speeds at home (20mb) that I do at work (20mb).

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I'm sorry to be negative, VM customer fault line is the terrible, and the 20mb line is rubbish

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

20Mb here is great also. always get full speeds when i use it. and i've been shaped once.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Been on BB since Oct 2001 and been happy with service provided up to now. Had a small problem with my old 120 modem when upgraded to 10 meg but that was swopped within a day of reporting the fault. Speeds were a bit wayward when upgraded to 20 meg but have been fine for a while now. Use Giganews and d/l at max speed apart from when the traffic shaping kicks in. :)

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

are you saying that surfing the web you dont need 20mb but can do it on 2mb so the majority dont care.....if thats the case those who are on 20mb and just surf give it back and go on 2mb....and say no to a free uplift.....i have always wanted the fastest and use the fastest, and i pay for that privelidge, i do all my downloading from 12am to 7am at 20mb thats enough but the network shaping is being done in areas to people who are obeying the rules, VM have not got the hardware to cope with the software restrictions and filtering...That is fact...ask any network engineer...that is what the problem is and VM is hiding the fact.....

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I have to agree with there ...
Uma or Ruby never mention the fact that we`ll also need some Newsgroup subscription if we actually want to see these full 20Mb download speeds they offer eh;)
We dont have 20(4-16)Mb for these super fast downloads anyway,we only have it so 3 or 4 machines can all use the thing without issue if needs be.

Not so sure about speedtests being fine though as any http dl V speedtest check i`ve ever done has been on par with the with the results in my above post 99% of the time.
Even when we had the 4 & 10Mb teirs(when the dl speeds WERE what they should have been)there was always usually a difference between the two.

I`ve still never witnessed the full 20Mb quota myself but of course seeing that on most http downloads is going to be very unlikely to say the least i think.

See what happens next month i suppose when i sack this NTL120 myself:)

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I think that's the reason. The kids... Probably doing msn and gaming and stuff with their friends.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

sorry, iv not read all posts but just noticed one which said speedtest sites aren't inconsitent... what?!?!?!?!?!!?

are u having a laugh?

iv seen ppl call up complaining a speed test site shows them at 10 meg, or a lot less, takes them onto gamefiles.virginmedia.com and hey presto 20meg!!!

they ARE unreliable, they will occasionally show ur correct speed, but cant b depended on. as mentioned on almost every slow speeds thread, download 2 files at the same time from a reliable site... that gaurentees showing u at ur correct speed

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

4 tests, 4 servers, 4 minutes apart.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/12.png
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/13.png
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/14.png
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/15.png

If it was Virginmedia's transit peering that is stuffed then presumably the results would support this, but they don't......

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I though the max upload speed was 768 kb/s on 20Meg, but you yours show 1879 kb/s and download just below 2Meg.
Below is my latest test from a 20Meg connection.
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/07/18.png

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I'm at work at the moment, 2Mb NTL:Telewest Leased Line.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

That explains the speeds. Business customer always get better service.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

The speedtest sites are not fine....i can get full speed from http.I test that by normally d/loading the latest graphics driver from ATI.I use leechget and get full speeds there as well so it's not just nntp.I also get full speed if i d/load anything from Microsoft as well.So...two companies with fat pipes give me full speed on http.....speed test sites don't......can you see a pattern emerging here......the speedtest sites will have nowhere near the capacity of either of those two companies and it's pot luck whether they're too busy to be able to give you full speed when you connect or not.
Why do you think VM support ask you to d/load 4 files simultaneously from their server to test your connection......just to **** you about or something,it's not,it's because they know that speedtest sites are unreliable.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

100% Agreed! Good post.

Internet speeds are not only affected by your service provider - the upload links of websites you visit will also affect how fast the connection appears to be.
You cannot say that speedtest sites are 100% reliable, the same as no-one in the world can have a 100% reliability factor! Of course they aren't reliable. The amount of traffic that is accessing the site will affect the speeds, the amount of available upload bandwidth will also affect how fast it appears to be. I can tell you (as a trained cisco network technician) that www.speedtest.net is absolutely shocking at times, and the "logic" that some of you guys produce is rubbish.

Sometimes it will work fine - no problems there, but most of the time it gives me speedtest results of 8meg on a 20meg connection. As soon as its finished testing, I would initiate a download from lfs.net of a 118mb file, and its downloading at 2.2MB/s constantly and completely reliably, so how can you have the cheek/nerve to come on here and say speedtest sites are the true speed of your connection? I suggest you go back and research, then you will find out there are many more factors affecting your speed, rather than "VM are crap because speedtest.net says its slow".

Regards,
Nick

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

i think most ppl woud agree on that

though im sure this isnt the last thread where this arguement will come up

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

How's the upload so fast? Someone mentioned you being a business customer, is this true and would this mean the same upload as download?

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Premium price though, approx £700 per month.

---------- Post added at 13:27 ---------- Previous post was at 13:24 ----------

2Mb NTL:Telewest Leased Line @ £700 a month, it's a synchronous line offering 2Mb both ways.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

but the web site says there is no limit how could you they put your speed down?

---------- Post added at 13:34 ---------- Previous post was at 13:33 ----------

£700 a month just to have a good upload? not worth it

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

It is when the upload speed is business critical.

We probably do between 500Mb and 1Gb of website updates a day, upload is everything.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

with bethere you can have a 2.5Mbit upload for £40 a month ...

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

The business plans come with priority support, i.e. your line gets fixed before residential ones if there's a problem. I don't know about phone support etc.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

nice,, well you get what you pay for :)

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

That is still ADSL, i am talking about a 2Mb synchronous 1:1 contention lump of dedicated digital cable, no phone lines involved. It has to be as bulletproof as possible.

---------- Post added at 23:00 ---------- Previous post was at 22:59 ----------

You pay for what you need. :cool:

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

i have to say my 20mb service is also flawless and i downloaded over 4 gigs last night and never got shaped at all ! i even get a download rate of about 2.4 MB/s from pretty much any source ! i even managed to get that on bittorrent last night for a while ! G

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

yeah adsl does suck.. i regret leaving ntl at the time because they onl offerd 1.5meg while ukonline had 8meg.. bad move, once my 3 months for free ends i will move to v/m also back to cable

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Im now on virgins 20 meg service and i think its ok. Not the best by any means, but ok. Upload over cable is by nature of the technology pathetic. Before moving i was on a 24 meg adsl2+ connection admittedly only a spit from the exchange, and it never missed a beat, if you do a lot of torrent downloading then a high upload bandwidth is important to keep your ratios in order. I like this cable service but the latest adsl technology in japan is offering 50 meg synchronous possibility upto 6km from an exchange, cable WILL NEVER be able to offer this on the current infrstructure. Like my v+ box tho!!!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I sure do hope my new modems the same colour as yours;)

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

my god, the things people talk about when all I wanted to do was share my own experience that I have a flawless connection.

All thumbs up to VM. Im now on 10MB to save cash, and look - Flawless.

PS, speed tests are boring, and inaccurate.
PPS, these people that are being pathetic about their connection, get another ISP, or deal with the fact your modem could be cloned (it happens).
PPPS, Cable Rocks!

---------- Post added at 18:37 ---------- Previous post was at 18:35 ----------

agreed.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Long while since I've been here as I'm now on BE, seems like nothings changed, VM is over subscribed and want money in first before they upgrade their infrastructure.

I'm happy where I am now but VM have lost a cable customer of MANY years standing!

Not a complaint, just an observation.

BTW I get 16Mb connection on copper!!!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Some people seem to forget that the reason companies are in business is to MAKE MONEY. They're not a charitable organisation...

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

i'm glad you're happy with be alot of people say they are good,im on vm 20mb and i have to say that i'm pretty lucky i don't remember the last time i was shaped and i get between 16-19mb 99% of the time, but on the other hand it's a good job as i live 5.3miles to the local exchage so i prob wouldn't get more than 56k lol !!
unfortunately vm like many company's don't worry about loyalty they would rather lose you and just push for new customers, luckly for vm there main competition is bt for phone line's and bb, and alot of people like myself wouldn't go back to them unless it was a last resort (but that's another matter) :)

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Quite true but if a company advertises the quickest internet connection but doesn't provide it............

VM are a classic The Problem with this is "up to". I have "up to" 20Mb and receive a "minimum" of 16Mb with no traffic management whatsoever. Add to that the fact that if my exchange comes only near being oversubscribed then BE will stop any more customers until it is upgraded to take the load.

I was told the minimum speed I could expect BEFORE I moved to them and they have exceeded that.My thoughts are that all ISP'S should at least advvise a minimum speed to their customers rather than the "up to" option.

I have even gone so far as getting in touch with the governing authouities
on this and I do believe they will be taking some action.

I do NOT knock anyone who is happy with the service they receive from VM, I wasn't and I went elsewhere. I'm happy with what I have now because they were totally truthful in what they could supply.

VM retentions told me I would NOT be able to get more than 8Mb connection via copper connection. WRONG

BT wholesale also told me the same as they wanted my business.

BE have done everything they promised and although their support is in Rumania it is more professional than BT or VM in India!

Rant over!

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I am on the 20Mb connection, and I don't have any problems with upload/download speeds, plus I've just got a new 12 month contract saving £29P/M and a wireless router that would have cost me £40 but I asked them to give it to me for free. It only took five minutes.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

10Mb appears to be particularly knackered at the moment in alot of areas.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

1.3mb on £36 xl contract....... va va va vrooom :rolleyes:

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

£25 for continuous 2.5mb here - capped without the comp being on at all - checked emails, then capped. Pretty fed up of it now. Mind you, it's pretty rock steady at 2.5

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

wow 2.5 you lucky lucky bugger lol:cool:

think i got rubberband installed instead of broadband,was going to give them a ring complian agian:mad: pfff wast of time:td:

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

I have to agree with you nutella, my 20mb connection has always been above 19mb so no complaints down here, credit where its due eh!!:D

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

i was up to 4mb last night well done vm keep up the great service.:angel:

:erm:

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/res...5711&v=5523673

seriously something wrong there!! web browsing is painful and downloads are a joke! i have 20mb with the netgear wgr614v9 router. it's been getting progressively worse over the past 2/3 weeks! i don't know what to do :(
i'm in withington, south manchester.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Virgin 20 mb sux big style. Barely faster than a modem here tonight. Been getting slower steadily every week since I first signed up.
Over subscribe ubr and no plans to do upgrade until December if then.

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Yeah, 20mb is crap in SE London. I'm not expecting 20mb all the time, but to go down to a 10th of what I'm paying for is not on really.

Not sure if its due to cloned modems or oversubscribed UBR's but the point is moot. If it doesn't improve soon I'm going to switch over to Sky ADSL

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

My 20mbit connection used to be really good, I would download at between 1.8mb/sec and 2mb/sec usually. Over the past 6 months though it has been going steadily downhill, particularly over the past month where my speeds have dropped at times to 2mbits or lower.

I've spoken to Virgin about it and they claim things will get better in December...

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

my super dooper 20 meg is very slow again tonight, checked from blue yonder games about 20 mins ago and was getting 4 meg and slowing, i live in the warrington, cheshire area.
thanks vm
ive also checked ive not been stm'd

anybody else in my area suffering at the moment?

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

aren't we going off topic?

there are plenty of threads for the 'my downloads are slow' customers ?

this one seems to be for reporting good performance - 2390 kB/s downloads, personally, for example.

- please post poor performance in the appropriate thread, rather than hijacking this one - thanks :)

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

Today 00:11 19726 kbps (2.47MB/s) 735 kbps (91.9kB/s)
Today 01:42 19727 kbps (2.47MB/s) 735 kbps (91.9kB/s)
Today 02:10 19726 kbps (2.47MB/s) 735 kbps (91.9kB/s)

---------- Post added at 02:18 ---------- Previous post was at 02:16 ----------

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

Re: Virgins 20MB is excellent..
 

dont get me wrong, i have had days when my connection is fantastic, out of peak hours for example, and when my 20 meg service is working well its untouchable, ive downloaded demo's from xbox live in 9 minutes where previuosly on my old isp it would take an hour or two.

its encouraging to see positive posts regarding vm's 20 meg service, i just hope mine gets sorted out soon and i too can post in this section and be a happy chappy.