50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Just posted the below on the newsgroup virginmedia.feedback - I'd welcome the same from the good people here! Please do consider this was addressed to VM's people:

---Too Long Don't Read Begins---

I know that the 50Mbit so far isn't exactly flying off the shelves.

I have spoken with a few people on this both on and offline. A recurring theme is that 50Mbit is all well and good, but 1.5Mbit upload isn't enough to back up that 50Mbit.

Selling a service for multitasking, etc, and giving it an upload rate like that really isn't working for the kind of people I speak to.

Right now the service is a genitalia enlarger with no practical applications over the 20Mbit service at all. There is nothing that can be done with 50Mbit that can't with 20.

This would change with a 5Mbit upload on the 50Mbit service, it would immediately provide a differential.

Anyways this is the feedback newsgroup and that's my feedback - I may purchase it anyway simply because I won't be paying for it, for me it's expensible, but I see very little that justifies 50/1.5 over 20/768k and a vague promise of higher upload, accompanied by possible shaping or throttling isn't really a turn-on to people.

Dealing with your advetising from the website directly:

Regarding HD movies, your own FAQs quote this:

'an HD movie at 5GB (e.g. HD movies from Xbox Live marketplace)'

I can already download with my 20Mbit service at more than enough to cope with smooth streaming of H.264 / MP4 HD with 10Mbit to spare, so what?

Gaming - your advertising is nonsense. There is no game that uses enough upstream to stress 768kbps upstream and 1.5Mbit will not give better latency, its' only use is for hosting of games, and it will not improve the experience of the hoster in any event.

Sharing the connection - Well it won't make much difference to that either, I can have 3 PCs running here, 2 of them gaming and 1 browsing with no issues at all. Even when 1 machine is downloading at full line rate the others are ok. The only issue might be where 1 machine is running a P2P app, so have to cap its' upstream. The 50Mbit doesn't really offer much beyond a higher upstream cap that will be needed, let the P2P app run unfettered and it'll smack the connection in the face same as the 20/768k.

The 50Mbit is also even more asymmetrical than my 20Mbit, it's likely that someone downloading at full speed would cause problems with responsiveness in both directions as they would be loading up most of the upstream as well as the downstream, which doesn't happen on the 20Mbit as there's more left.

Downloading - Sure it'll run faster, however the average VM customer apparently uses 9GB a month, so 50Mbit will save them a little over an hour over the course of a month, assuming of course that all websites and downloads are at 50Mbit speeds, which most will not be. Web browsing will not really be affected by this and it tends to be subject to delays due to the chattiness of HTTP, latency and time taken to deal with requests on the server side.

Would be good to see a service that offers new things and kicks off the internet revolution rather than a PR revolution of having the biggest front line number. At least increasing the upload along with the download would:

Allow more multitasking - someone could host a game with 16+ players on it, or P2P at 4Mbit upstream without in any way affecting others using the connection.

Downloads at full speed would not stress the upstream part of the connection, allowing for true multitasking in both directions.

Allow customers to not only download content from the Internet dramatically faster, but also upload it dramatically faster - the difference between sending those pictures, that youtube video, those files to someone else at 5Mbit instead of 768kbit is much more noteable than occasionally downloading at 50Mbit instead of 20Mbit.

It could also be mercilessly spun by the PR people. Virgin the ISP for those who love social networking, tell the world what you're up to, video conference with confidence, etc, etc, etc.

IMHO there is more of a market, and more of a case for 5Mbit upstream broadband than there is for 50Mbit downstream broadband, the sales of the 50Mbit product so far would seem to prove my point. Even Samuel L Jackson's magic hasn't been too potent yet.

If Comcast, UPC, Cablevision, JCom, Comheim, etc can with more limited technology in some cases do it I'm sure VM could. Comheim even offer over cable 2/2Mbit, and 10/10Mbit for a small extra cost, right up to 50/10Mbit.

The commercial case is a simple one - ask Bethere how many of their customers take their Pro package. The benefits of that pack are a static IP address, oh and an increase of maximum upstream from 1.3 to 2.5Mbit, it costs 4GBP/month. People *will* pay for the extra upstream, even if as in the case of DSL it costs them downstream.

Thanks for reading my excessively long posting.

BB

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Well said. :clap:

I will not upgrade my 10mbit as the higher you go, the worse the download/upload ratio is. I would gladly sacrifice some of my download speed for a better upload.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

If that's how people feel the simple solution is to post here or post on the newsgroup posting.

Hey they may not do anything but it only takes a minute to type 'I agree and would pay!'

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I agree with the posting also, and actually bought 20Mb from Virgin for the 768kbps upload speed at one point.
Right now, i'm pretty chuffed with my 3Mb upstream. I can host a 20-person Teamspeak server and play an online game, and the other half can also play online games and P2P if desired... Without anything slowing down.
I'm doing all this, and thinking... Wow.

50Mbps down does not make me happy. 3Mb up? Well, that did.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Not to mention the reduction in support calls from people unwittingly running P2P services such as iPlayer and 4OD. I could certainly do with more upload, I have a backlog of photos and video to upload to flickr/youtube but haven't bothered because it takes so long.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Well said. I would happily pay extra for more upstream. I don't know how many times I've said it on this forum either... 50/5 sounds a lot nicer, and yes, people WILL pay for it, yet virgin won't give us it and I have to keep asking why.

I totally agree with your points about virgin wanting you to share you life over the likes of Facebook and sharing your photos/videos, but how can they expect us to do it with such a pitiful upload, or an upload that is penalised when you try to use it? I just don't get it. For the fastest ISP in the UK overall (for download speed), and matching Be*there's average, they sure have a bad attitude about making the service better.

If virgin were to offer an "upload plus" service, where they reduced the download in favor of upload (a bit like Be*), I'd even be up for that too. Either way, charging more or sacrificing the download for the upload, people would buy it or people would sacrifice download for it.

People like me who host websites on dedicated servers, and have hundreds of gigabytes of data to syncronise with the server (540gb in total for me alone), thats hard with 512Kbps upload, which I only get sometimes. I'd move to Be* but I'm too far from the exchange to get anything over 3Mbps on ADSL, so cable and virgin is my only option.

Virgin, please please please, listen to the customers for once!!! - You never know, you might actually make some money this way! :p:

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I completely agree, it is just a shame that they are never going to listen. Unfortunately broadband is marketed much as the same as pcs and also pc world advertise is "this pc has the lastest intel pentium quad core processor..............." and that is what uneducated customers go for without looking at the RAM or anything else. It is the same with BB, Virgin people who look at "how big the MB is" and that is it.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I would gladly pay more, and indeed did with Be, over 20% more along with giving up some downstream speed in order to get the better upstream.

I would happily give VM a 25 - 50% increment on my 20Mbit costs for a 5+Mbit upstream. I seriously doubt I'm alone, and it would certainly add to those very few who have taken the 50Mbit product.

VM could easily and correctly say that the only people who might want much higher upstream are geeks who are not the average user, then again these are the only people who will want to pay extra for 50Mbit. The 1.5Mbit upstream will turn them off, and is indeed turning them off.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Perhaps if they didn't just focus on the people who are uneducated, but people who actually require specific specifications of connection, and who are willing to pay extra or sacrifice download, they may make a little more money out of the people who know what they need and what price they should be paying. As stated above, I'm a web designer and I need as much upload as I can muster most of the time. Unfortunately ADSL isn't an option, and 10Mbps is all I (well, my Dad) can afford to pay for with its lousy 512Kbps upload.

I think a petition is in order for all of those people who know what they're talking about and why they need a higher upload than virgin currently provide. Perhaps that will give us a smidgin of a chance of virgin listening to us and realising "oh, there are some people who know what they're talking about wanting to use our services and give us their money for something we can provide"...

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

At the end of the day the only people who are going to be wanting 50Mbit with a very few exceptions will be people who are a bit geeky and do understand it all, and are going to be very turned off by a 1.5Mbit upload.

How many of them who will not take the XXL service because of that frankly derogatory upload could be swayed by a 5Mbit upload?

When you release a cutting edge service it reaches cutting edge customers who will criticise and review every aspect of that service, the upload certainly being a part of it.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I agree with everything except paying extra.

£51.00/month is quite enough for a 50/5 service IMO.

VM, as usual, are all hot air and no substance.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

If it's enough for a 50/5 service how do you feel about it for a 50/1,5 service?

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Or by scrapping the ludicrous £130 set up cost and then forcing you to take equipment you don't want or need?

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I believe the point you should be making is this:

VirginMedia like nearly all ISP's have symetrical internet links, whether they are optical or leased lines.

My point being, Virgin for example have a OC48 (Complete Guess) dedicated link to the internet, this link provides the same speed up as well as down, all inclusive within the cost. If Virgin can provide 50Mbit down to it's end users, why can't it provide 50Mbit up as well at the same time? The Docsis 3 standard can easily accomodate this, TBH I'd be quite happy with 5Mbit up as the point you are making, though seriously I cannot see why they cannot provide a decent upload speed as well as the more than sufficient download speed, I don't see the cost implications.

Currently I am on BeThere and quite easily get the 1.3Mbit up, though I only achieve around 8Mbit down. All this for £17.50 a month + Line Rental. I could have 2 phone lines installed and double that speed for about £4 extra as the 50Mbit VM are offering. Not that it's fantastic download speed I admit, but upload would be better than VM. The people who actually get 24Mbit on BeThere, could in theory get around 45Mbit download and a 5Mbit upload for the same money, ontop of that I believe you can upload and download at max speeds at the same time.

Lastly, when Fibre eventually hits the majority of our homes, VM will be left miles behind, if they don't buck there ideas up.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I understand people wont higher upload but the actual upload is 1.75Mbit not 1.5Mbit

---------- Post added at 10:08 ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 ----------

You will find its £80 setup not £130

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Virgin are never going to have a good uptake on this product as it stands atm, sure your going to get people saying i've got it and downloads great on it (yes atm it might be with no app throttle or stm but WILL be capped faster in the long run), high installation fee which i got stung with years ago when broadband was new then they decided free installation which peed me off.

I just got my utilites bills in this month and with exception of water rates have doubled (god help anyone who hasnt recived there bills yet :( ) which to the average user puts more pressure on them to downgrade as they havent got as much cash to flash about and my vm bill is classed as another utility bill (thinking of downgrading myself now for this reason).

So for pounds on promotion and pence on product skimping 50mb from virgin wont be attractive for a good while for many, cant wait to see the uptake figures in next vm statement should make interesting reading like i said months ago.

Vm seem to be high on the ways to pee the customer off (stm, app throttling, possible monetirising the customer, bad support), while hovering the finger of doom over self destruct, perhaps if vm actually listened to what customers wanted and delivered it they would be in a much stronger position as they are now.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

£80 + £50 for the crappy router I neither want or need. = £130

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I'm presently trying to upload a video to my webspace for some friends. Over an hour to upload 385MB. :(

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

NO the router is included £30 Install £50 for activation mate you will find its £80

---------- Post added at 13:12 ---------- Previous post was at 13:08 ----------

You need to change your post to 1.75Mbit for the upload

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Then you forget the first month fee £51 so its actually £131 :P.

12 month contract paperless billing total cost = £692
12 month paper billing = £752

based on a 12 month contract is it worth it with that upload speed and flakey download not to mention the app throttle and stm incoming?

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

The £130 figure was quoted as SETUP COST and not SETUP and RENTAL ;)

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Nah - the downstream is actually capped at 53Mbit not 50Mbit too, it's extra to compensate for overheads but the actual service is sold as 50/1.5 not 53/1.75.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

At least when STM arrives that allows you to jump out of the contract, does it not? :rolleyes:

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

But the actual upload is 1.75Mbit tho as the trialist wasn't hitting 50Mb but with the newest config file been 53Mbit down and 1.75Mbit up then the trialist was getting over 50Mbit, I managed to hit 51Mbit before

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

It should be but you know vm they will argue the toss about there t&c's applying the fact that they can implement stm, phorm, app throttling or moneterising the customer's data at a moments notice without any breach of what you thought you were signing up for - then you will end up with the full bill pushed through you door for breach of contract then a nice court appearance or baliff summons - another reason for slow uptake.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Nope as STM is covered in the terms and conditions hence why when they brought STM it was cover but the T&C's

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Ah crap. Well it was worth a try. However I can see someone taking it to court if STM does go ahead and is extremely restricting like the other tiers. You're paying for a premium product, and thats what you should get. If VM can't afford to give you it 24/7, they should not be allowed to sell it. If was Ofcom this would be my first rule to put into effect.

I liked the good old days when you could run your connection at full blast 24/7 and just get slowed down with congestion instead... Rather have that sometimes to be honest. STM is too predictable and cuts in JUST when you don't want it to. Congestion is at least partially random...

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I have a dream that one day we'll be offered the same kind of services as another cableco are offering.

They actually give a speed range on their services which is why things will look a bit strange, but here's what they get:

---------- Post added at 13:37 ---------- Previous post was at 13:33 ----------

Virgin call it 1.5Mbit, who am I to argue?

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/50Mb/faq.html

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Did you convert that to £'s from another currency? If not, who is it with and where do I sign up?

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

As a 50mb customer, I would certainly give up download for upload. Or even pay extra for upload.

I bought the product for the upload and lack of STM (at present). Takes me half the time to upload my data now, which is nice, and the lack of STM means I can fire down a film or something quickly, any time of the day.

But if VM are to keep myself as a customer, they're going to have to buck up their ideas very soon, and offer a greater upload. Whether at a price or not. I'd pay.

Dundee has fiber on the way, expected next year; and with VM launching 50mb here before other places, that suggests they stand to lose a bit of money when the city goes fiber. Problem being, it's expected that 55,000 homes will have fiber available to them here, meaning the vast majority of the city will be able to sign up to what will most likely be one of the country's best. I'd happily take a 25/25 fiber connection in a second.

Can VM honestly afford to throw that sort of money away? Because although I've just started a new 12 month contract, it ends in January '10.
H2O will be just around the corner, and you've got to wonder if it'd be worth me staying with VM. Considering how much less of a service they will be offering (regardless of what they COULD offer).

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I'm afraid I did indeed convert from another currency :(

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

VM could offer 100Mbit down but upload is still going to very limited as the equipment doesn't even support channel bonding as far as upstream goes.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Is that regarding the DOCSIS 3.0 equipment they're using, or the modems themselves?

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

VM are using a single upstream channel with a data capacity of 8.8Mbit. There are upstream channels in the standard with a capacity of 26.4Mbit, and they could run multiple upstream channels per node.

As I mentioned neither UPC nor the operator whose offerings I mentioned elsewhere are bonding either, yet they are offering up to 10Mbit upstream. The CMTS not bonding is no excuse at all.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Probably one of the main reasons as to why UK ISP's are very slow to offer decent upstreams might be the money they can make from leased lines.. In the end who'd want a n expensive leased line if a basic account would suffice...

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I feel the concept of a 50/1.5 service at any price to be quite ludicrous and I for one will not even be considering it.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

A fair point indeed - Easynet Connect offer some cheaper than leased line products while ntl:tw offer only business broadband via cable and DSL and leased lines, they don't have the portfolio of an Easynet Connect (ADSL, SDSL, Surestream, Etherstream, Leased Lines).

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

So what is the reason Virgin Media dont offer the higher upload, you have to also remember tho, other companies dont have as many customer Virgin Media do, so they need a **** load of bandwidth to serve us all and this other company only have say few hundred thousand customers which is less bandwidth than VM have to provide.

Whilst I understand VM arent knights in shining armour and they are no where near pumping in enough money to the network to make it stable, you just have to look at all side.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

VM get their bandwidth cheaper than other providers precisely because they are the size they are, economies of scale. Also this size hasn't prevented them releasing a 50Mbit downstream product, why should it be an 'issue' for upstream? The largest cable ISP in the world seems to not have issues offering 10Mbit upload on their 50Mbit product, 5Mbit on their 22Mbit product.

The product isn't there because they don't want it to be. They are waiting for a pervasive reason to do the necessary and analogue switchoff to make things easier on the RF side of things and reduce required investment.

Speaking with a chap I know on Comcast's 50Mbit he sent me this, one for the techies

Upstream Bonding Channel Value
Channel ID 2
Frequency 32400000 Hz
Ranging Service ID 6368
Symbol Rate 5.120 Msym/sec
Power Level 37 dBmV
Upstream Modulation [3] QPSK [3] 64QAM

Just a bummer that Comcast can do it with having lots of analogue, smaller upstream spectrum, allowing people to plug TVs straight into the cable and do whatever they want with it once it comes into their homes, use their own modems, etc, while VM who control what is connected to their network and have the majority underground can't :(

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Thats why am going with O2 cheaper, better and faster upload speeds.

The people I know who went for the 50mb, this service. Lets say, they soon changed back 10mb etc. Some of them even told VM to stick it.

With in the next week or so they get a letter saying " Free and offering " as giving a poor service for 6 mths of free Internet, just shows how much VM has total balls'ed up Telewest / NTL work they done over the years.

VM is going down the loo if it dont pull it shocks up and get it act together. Dont be tight on buying new gear rather than still using 1994 techology.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

The appealing aspect of the 50mbit service to me is the lack of download caps/throttling. Streaming an HD movie from Xbox Live is impossible on my current 20mbit connection as the download cap is hit half way through and the stream aborts.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Be changed their packages a while back, now Be Unlimited also gets a static IP.

Worth noting, there are people (like myself) who have a Be connection who aren't on Pro because the line can't support ADSL2M.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I'm on 10mb and I'd quite happily pay another £4 for a high upload. Say 2mb.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I think we are all wishing on false hopes for upstream to increase, all companies have always had low upstream even BE cant guarentee the 2.5Mb upload

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

You right about BE, I'm with them now, tried the 2.5Mbit upload for 3 days, couldn't get anymore than 1.5Mbit, download then dropped to 5Mbit.

The thing is though, BE only charge £4 for upto double the speed. VM can almost ensure doubling the upload speed and I'm sure many a person hear would pay that for double upload. £55 a month for 50/3.5 doesn't sound as bad as £51 for 50/1.75.

I'd pay it for sure, though I am going to get the 50Mbit as soon as it is available here in Essex anyway. Anyone know when ;-)

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

That's only down to line conditions, which are of course not an issue on cable :)

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I think we may have an explanation for some issues, I really hope this is a fault. This from a 50Mbit modem:

Upstream
Channel Type 1.0 Channel ID 3
Frequency (Hz) 25808000
Ranging Status Success
Modulation QPSK
Symbol Rate (KSym/sec) 2560
Mini-Slot Size 2

4.4Mbit of usable bandwidth on an upstream that could, in theory, be catering for several 20 and 50Mbit customers. Is the network really in such bad shape that it can't handle a more strenuous upstream modulation, or at least a DOCSIS 2.0 ATDMA wider upstream?

I'm hoping this is an oversight, it's pretty concerning if the product is being released in places without the appropriate (or going by this any on the return path in this area) network work being done. Problem is this would explain why there's the wait for upstream bonding and even then it's only going to 2.5Mbit. :(

I will run with oversight for now I think. If that is the best that area of network can manage it's no business running the other tiers let alone 50Mbit.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

You hit the nail right in the head, VM obviously have the superior network, but they aren't using it correctly.. we need DOCSIS 2/3 asap, then we can hopefully get the extra upstream, not just 50mb that needs it, it's 20mb too.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

All of the tiers need it, not just 20Mbps and 50Mbps.

The tier speeds should be (In Kbps):

2000/512
10000/2000
20000/4000
50000/6000

Bare minimum...

More and more people are uploading things nowadays, not just downloading.

- Pictures are larger because of increasing mega-pixel capacity on cameras.
- Games are larger because of better physics engines and game data so multi-player game data becomes larger too.
- Videos in HD from high mega-pixel camcorders uploading to youtube.
- High quality graphics uploaded to your own websites.
- Sharing via p2p (legal of course) rather than using pre-defined servers which may have lack of bandwidth.

Without the larger upload capacity, the future of what the internet is becoming (highly interactive and media driven) will eventually come to an almost dead stop when people are finding it takes to long to realistically perform any task on the web, besides browsing ebay and checking their e-mail...

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Tech support inform that the above is a 'control channel' and that there are 3 other upstreams available for DOCSIS 3 customers which are bonded under this one.

I'm not sure about that and think he's talking about the downstream bonding group, which consists of a primary and 2 other downstreams, all carrying data, bonded, but we'll see.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

If they offered 20Mbit/4Mbit no one would want the 50Mbit, unless it was £5 more a month.

The price should be as follows as well:

2Mbit - £10
10Mbit - £17
20Mbit - £25
50Mbit - £35

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

To be honest 20/2 or 20/2.5 would be ok, but c'est la vie!

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Yep, Agree Completely,

More upload speed is required, not just because people are file-sharing :P but also because of websites such as Facebook, I have a 10mp camera and files are approx 3.5mb each and it takes ages to upload 1 photo, how long will it take to upload a whole holiday?

Also, YouTube - it would also take ages to upload your own video that you made, these are just the two most used websites - im sure other people will find other uses for uploading.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I do web and graphic designs, so I can quite easily find use for more upload. I also use Facebook and Youtube a lot myself so it comes in useful there too.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

While I agree more upload is needed if you're dumping 10 megapixel photos on Facebook you might want to invest in a resizing app, like Photoshop. 10mp is total overkill for everything except high end pro work.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Some people simply like having a record of their photos in high definition, can you blame them? If he wanted easily uploadable files I'm sure there's a size reduction mode on his camera.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I take all my photos at 8 megapixel no matter what they are for, it is great having the size and detail.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I have no uses for upload as I only play online and use torrents which I can keep my ratio as I just leave the files going but I can see why people would need it, if it was increased then that would be fine and useful for my torrents, I have to admit the uploads are bad but with the upstream channel bonding coming the end of the year we should see a increase.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

From my POV yes there might be an increase but they are still offering well short of what can be delivered without bonding due to not having an interest in the necessary investment to delivery higher upstream services.

Frankly 2.5Mbit isn't good enough, especially with bonding, and it may not even benefit your torrents if it comes with rumoured torrent throttling.

If someone like Be can deliver 2.5Mbit over rubbish copper cables to a percentage of their customer base then imho 1.75Mbit is not acceptable on 'fibre optic' broadband that's leading the broadband revolution and 2.5 isn't really much better either.

Be great to see upstream speed become more of an 'issue' and a competition tool. Up to 20Mbit/1.3Mbit costs less than a tenner a month from O2, and 20/2.5 less than 20GBP.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

They should keep in line with the likes of Be*, 24Mbps/2.5Mbps...

That equates to about 50Mbps/5Mbps, if you just roughly double the speeds. I think thats more then fair if you ask me. They can either do that for everyone, or make a special tier for those who DO want it and know why they need it. Either way, they do need to put it up SOON.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

An option for extra upstream for extra cash in the same manner Comhem have would rock.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

yup, they can do it in bolt ons like sms for mobiles, like an extra 1mbit up for £5 or something. If i am honest i would prefer to pay £50 a month for 30/5 rather than 50/1.75.

As for what broadbandking said, i have only ever wanted more upload speed for seeding torrents because the faster we upload the quicker it gets done and then we can move onto other things. With HD encodings becoming increasingly popular the file sizes have shot up which means even more time uploading.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Broadbandings,

You seem like a very knowledgeable guy as far as cable network infrastructure goes you commented on my post on the support groups. If I understand you correctly the QPSK modulation used on my (single chanel unbonded) return path is limited to 4.4mbit/sec so if like 4 people in my street are uploading thats this thing saturated?

If this is the case this sounds like mis-selling on virgins part as I get serious spikes when undertaking latency sensitive tasks (gaming+voice comms)

Can you give me any more detail which I can use for going back to Virgin I don't want to be tied into a service which is worse for playing games etc. I never had a single latency issue on my 20mbit connection.

Are you aware of any upstream modulation parameters from other areas in the country which have a more suitable upstream modulation for providing a solid upstream cabability?

Regards,

David

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

that is the problem, it is shocking when you look at it. There is another post somewhere he has made (cant remember what about) where he worked out one line or something was 37mbit and you multiplied that by 4 and each ubr was 158mbits or something like that and you think "omg, that is only 8 people on 20mbits on an entire ubr" (I have probably got all of this wrong) but their arguement is that they can get away with it because most ubrs are only at 70% peak load which means they have got more than enough bandwidth. They would only have a problem if everyone tried to use their connect at the same time which is obviously what happens a lot of the time and you get everyone moaning they are only receiving 1mbit on their 20mbit connection.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I agree and would pay

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Hi,

Simple tests to see how things are running.

First try a nice traceroute or two to www.virginmedia.com

Then try a ping -n 100 www.virginmedia.com and see how that goes.

Also try the VM speedtest on your upstream and see how you score, go to http://www.vmpilot.net/ and use whichever one is nearest to you.

Should explain if the issue is with packet loss or saturation.

Other areas in the country use the 16QAM modulation upstream, which provides twice the bandwidth at 8.8Mbit. The standards go as far as a usable 27.2Mbit/s per upstream, some 6 times the performance of the upstream you appear to be connected to.

---------- Post added at 20:00 ---------- Previous post was at 19:57 ----------

Each area has 1 or 2 38Mbit channels usually. For whatever reason while some areas of the network can run on 51Mbit channels they tend not to.

2 20Mbit customers in the same area, usually around 400 customers per 38Mbit, will saturate.

It's contention, and in most cases it works ok.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

As would most, but will Virgin ever put our requests into products? I'm willing to bet "unlikely", wait scratch that, "very unlikely".

Does anyone on here have connections to get this escalated up to whoever is in charge of deciding these things? Some serious money can be made here, and some serious customers as well if they become the fastest upstream provider in the UK...

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I would pay an additional £5 a month to take my upstream from 768kbps to 2.5Mbit and £10 to push it to 5Mbit.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Or reduce the download in exchange for upload. 2Mbps download per 0.5Mbps upload perhaps?

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

The thing puzzling me is upstream utilisation does not appear to be an issue so bandwidth would appear to be available - I will have a look tomorrow and report back.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Nah. Can't really make it all that flexible due to a few restrictions but I think an extra upstream tier per version, say M+ L+ XL+ XXL+ should be doable.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Hi again,

Carried out the tests as you suggested looks ok. But to give you an example of what I'm experiencing when it happens if I'm talking on ventrillo people hear what I said to them up to 20-30 seconds after I say it then its fine for a while then does the same.

Traceroutes

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

1 4 ms 5 ms 5 ms 10.17.236.1
2 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms osr01glen-ge19.network.virginmedia.net [81.97.49.5]
3 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms osr01edin-tenge72.network.virginmedia.net [62.30.251.45]
4 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms man-bb-a-ge-400-0.network.virginmedia.net [195.182.178.90]
5 25 ms 19 ms 17 ms gfd-bb-b-so-200-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.252.192.94]
6 19 ms 17 ms 18 ms win-bb-a-so-010-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.172.129]
7 19 ms 17 ms 17 ms win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.188.162]
8 18 ms 18 ms 22 ms www.virginmedia.com [212.250.162.12]

Trace complete.

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

1 5 ms 5 ms 5 ms 10.17.236.1
2 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms osr01glen-ge19.network.virginmedia.net 81.97.49.5]
3 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms osr01edin-tenge72.network.virginmedia.net [62.30.251.45]
4 12 ms 16 ms 10 ms man-bb-a-ge-400-0.network.virginmedia.net [195.182.178.90]
5 18 ms 17 ms 17 ms gfd-bb-b-so-200-0.network.virginmedia.net 62.252.192.94]
6 19 ms 17 ms 17 ms win-bb-a-so-010-0.network.virginmedia.net213.105.172.129]
7 19 ms 20 ms 19 ms win-dc-a-v900.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.188.162]
8 19 ms 19 ms 20 ms www.virginmedia.com [212.250.162.12]

Trace complete.

There was 1 previous trace where the ping times @ hop 2 were 150ms+ but this was likely a blip. (but blip is what my internet connection is experiencing when doing activities requiring low latency on the downstream and upstream paths.

Ping

Ping statistics for 212.250.162.12:
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 17ms, Maximum = 32ms, Average = 20ms

Upload Tests

Upload #1
------------------------------------------------------------------
File size transferred : 10.0 MB (10485760 bytes)
Total time taken : 45.56 seconds (45562 milliseconds)
Throughput : 230.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 0.23 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 1840.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
= 1.84 Mbps [Megabit-per-second]

Upload #2
------------------------------------------------------------------
File size transferred : 10.0 MB (10485760 bytes)
Total time taken : 45.42 seconds (45422 milliseconds)
Throughput : 230.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 0.23 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 1840.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
= 1.84 Mbps [Megabit-per-second]

Just for fun 1 download test:

Download #1
------------------------------------------------------------------
File size transferred : 100.0 MB (104857600 bytes)
Total time taken : 18.5 seconds (18500 milliseconds)
Throughput : 5667.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 5.67 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 45336.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
= 45.34 Mbps [Megabit-per-second]

This all looks fine but your comments on the newsgroups that the QAM16 applied on my return path could be very easily saturated. My area is quite high in terms of cable usage a lot a few people on my street are already on the 50mbit serivce with a few others getting it soon.

Regards,

David

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Yer those all look absolutely fine.

It might be that very few in your street are on 50Mbit. No evidence there of saturation at all.

It was just a thought, however if the upstream is so narrow your blips could be caused by a burst of load, or even a burst of loss. Those first hop pings are great.

Very hard to detect unfortunately.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Genious idea. Have you got any old colleagues in a position of influence you could suggest it to?

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Here's a nice little quote from Barack Obama's infrastructure investment program relating to investment in broadband:

So of the VM residential portfolio only one product, 50M, even qualifies as 'basic broadband' and there are no 'advanced broadband' products with mass availability in the UK.

Ouch.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

If I was a major shareholder, I would be telling Virgin to stop upgrading the downstream, and start looking at the upstream. As it is, they don't seem to listen to customers.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Sadly there isn't necessarily an immediate financial return in that, which is all the short termist gimboids who appear to be the majority of shareholders infesting the holdings of telecomms companies care about - just note the BT shareholders who wrote to their boss complaining about a mere £1.5 billion investment in infrastructure saying they should retain the cash...

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

VM should compete on upload speeds and advertise it for what it is going to be used for - sharing.

Faster uploads of photos to Flickr or Picasa, faster sending large emails, quicker YouTube uploads, faster P2P. They already advertise fast downloads of things like music and video, so now it's time to move to the next level - sharing.

It's the direction things are moving in.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I beg to differ. Many of us use Xbox Live. This is essentially peer to peer gaming. If you play FPS, you tend to be limited to somewhere between 8 and 10 players on games which don't have dedicated servers (most games). With racing games, lag tends to spoil the fun when you host a game with more than say 5 racers (MotoGP being the exception, but it does less in terms of physics than say Forza). This is with a 768k upload. If you double that to 1.5 upload you could comfortably host 10 to 12 player races and maybe 20 player FPS gaming. If it were to be up'd to 5mb then you'd have a terrific time host full 25 to 30 car races, and massive FPS games, just like you find on dedicated servers that have better uploads than we have at home.

Your argument that current games don't stress uploads is utterly wrong. Fine, if all you do is game on a PC. The rest of us use consoles.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Reread your own quote of me zero - I said that it was only of use for hosting. As a client extra upload makes no difference, I fully acknowledge that it'd be of value for hosting, and even then the hoster's latency stays the same, obviously as they are the host.

'Experience' was perhaps a bad word to use, but certainly no point besides hosting in the higher upstream.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

You can't be playing any decent shooters then because all the ones I play are dedicated servers galore

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

On Xbox Live?

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

my bad, i thought we was talking about PCs. Shooters should be banned on consoles because there is no way you can play them properly, they have to dumbed down for consoles so it is pointless playing them anyway

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

OT: There's 250,000(on average) players of COD:WaW who'd disagree, me included and I'd played FPS' for over a decade on a PC before I got a 360.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Although I personally believe that the experience of a shooter on the PC is better, this thread isn't the place and is primarily a discussion of the limiting factors of the terrible upstream limits and throughput on the 50mb service from VM...

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

sorry dude but as good as games are becoming on consoles (because they are copying pcs for the game play experience) there is no way you can match the playability of a keyboard and mouse with a joypad. I could kick anyones ass playing on a console any day. You just cant beat flicking a laser mouse across the screen in a split second and getting a head shot.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I still play the original Unreal Tournament (UT99) online, that shows just how good the PC was ahead of consoles with online FPS...

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Half the problem was that the Xbox 360/PS3 are the first gen of consoles that are openly able to get online. There weren't many online games on PS2 and even then it was a bitch to set up because of the lack of decent networking equipment in the home (most people had USB modems etc.)

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Unreal Tournament 2004 is highly addictive, I cannot stress that enough ^

You can host alot of players on the 20mb upload, I wonder what 50mb would be like, with twice the upload.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

yup, that is why i want 20/2 or 50/5, it isnt just for torrents, it is for games as well

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

you can wish but it will never be true :p

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Well I must say I love these constructive comments

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Lovely, lovely game.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

i loved the original UT, I bought my first 3d accelerated graphics card for that game; my Voodoo 3 3000 with 3dfx glide, it was amazing at the time. I never took to UT2003 because it reminded me too much of the Quake style gameplay and I moved over to avp2 after that. The very first game I bought and played over the internet though was Unreal, that was just amazing and playing it co-op over the internet was even better.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Thought I'd post some comments about my 50Mb service in Purley, Croydon after the install on Tuesday. Blazingly quick at first in the morning but come the evening it came to a grinding halt, at daytimes intermittently but evenings mostly making my connection seem like dial up. After daily frustrating phone calls with 'techies with accents' reading flowcharts today I finally got through to a dedicated 50Mb team on 0800 052 0431. I was most relieved to hear a scouser down the line (who didn't want me to reinstall Windows and insist on fitting the VM supplied router which is inferior to my own!) After 10 minutes holding he noticed that the s/n ratio further up the network in the Croydon head end was intermittently spiking all over the shop which he's escalated up to fix which should be very quickly cos VM have made it a priority to sort out any glitches asap.

When it works properly though christ it's quick. 5Gb in 22 minutes.:D

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

There have been 'glitches' of this kind in Croydon, Newcastle and Glenrothes. Newcastle has had issues for a couple of weeks that I'm aware of in different areas, Croydon has had at very least intermittent issues for a similar period.

I hope that for you it gets fixed quickly but there issues are I'm afraid happening in a few areas on the 50Mbit product and in some cases not being fixed too quickly - in the case of both Croydon and Newcastle as I said above these issues have been intermittent in some cases and constant in others for at least 2 weeks.

You might be seeing similar problems to this guy in Croydon, who is also on the 50Mbit service:

HTH - Let me know if you want some more explanation of why this is happening.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

Newcastle NE5 still gets really painfull drops or snail pace latency on the 4th hop mainly osr01gate-tenge71.network.virginmedia.net and it afects other hops after that its been happening for ages and ages now last 2 weeks its been really bad between 5-9pm the times when it always goes to pot, sometimes the whole weekend.

I thought they had at least upgraded this ubr by now i've been telling them the same thing over and over on support to no avail, one of the techs midway last year said it could take upto 2 YEARS to fix and put the kit in place as it needs signed off blah blah wth is happening during the times you want to use it - websites not loading and gaming being craptastic during those hours or a weekend really really not sure if i can put up with this much longer think its time to bite the bullet.

p.s the latency was still there last night so it hasnt been fixed no matter what the vm website says :P.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

On the Croydon UBR, apparently some of the customers aren't experiencing 'full' or near full speeds until the techies 'exit their job', might be coincidence though as some guy from despatch said it just takes time to move ubr, (could be correct, i was on ubr03, now on 19)

Speedwise, I don't trust Speedtest sites and i've tried downloading some linux distros as you do, and I get a full 50mb, if not 52.

I'd like to know how you can access the modem though (used to be the 192.168.100.1)

By the way, my tech tested the modem on my old 2.8ghz P4 machine and it couldn't handle it, so slow users might not have a fast-enough machine (especially the disk-cache) - It was first getting about 20mb download / and the full 50mb upload speed when he installed the modem, but then as above, he exited the job and we waited for a bit and got near the 50mb, I tried a few distros of my own using Internet Download Manager to segment the file into pieces and a full 50mb appeared!

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

That seems quite odd, you should move as soon as you plug in the new modem. It locks onto the primary D3 channel then bonds the others. Modems search the channels from bottom to top and the primary D3 channel is at 299MHz, the legacy channels (such as CMTS 03) are up at 331 and 339MHz. Sounds like provisioning took a while rather than 'moving CMTS', I can imagine you won't get full speed until the modem's registration has been completed.

The people who aren't seeing full speeds are not seeing them due to technical issues as confirmed by VM above. Nothing to do with which CMTS people are on, well, it's everything to do with which CMTS they are on and how they are getting there really ;)

I think also there are 3 CMTS that DOCSIS 3 is running on in Croydon, and these'll be further segmented. You are ok and will hopefully stay that way, the other couple of unfortunate chaps aren't :(

I'd be interested in the numbers from your modem if they're available, especially upstream as that's where the fault lies in the other cases, thanks.

Re: 50Mbit Service Upstream Discussion
 

I work for a large ADSL internet service provider and they are now doing Boost packs.

if you live within 1000meters of the telephone exchange then you will automatically now get 8128kbit/sec down and 1017kbit/sec up. For free... or pay £4 extra and get [up to] 23766/1017. 67% of the "populated areas" live within 1.5km of their telephone exchange...

anyone who knows about ADSL will know which company i am talking about... makes my £37 for 20/768k seem rather boring...