Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Ongoing problems with sub 1Mb speeds at peak times (all day during the school hols), packet loss etc, see the live graph from TBB ping tests.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/09/62.png


I have a complaint raised with the CEO's office who have admitted there is a capacity problem, and have promised fixes. These fix dates have come and gone 3 times now, latest is Sept 29th.

If anything things are getting worse, my latest speedtests are terrible!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/09/63.png

Can anyone with some inside information give me some confidence that something will be done and that these dates are not just empty promises?

Cheers

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

glad I got moved of the legacy its just getting worse, I can verify your report tho as when I first signed up to VM I was on legacy and it was not fit for purpose as your stats clearly show.

Hopefully more leics bods will show up here as I am aware of many complaints been made in the area.

The more I think about it the more I think I got moved because I complained rather as a matter of ongoing work. Its good that they react to complaints but bad they leave the service in this state to the silent ones.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Hello im currently in the LE33 area and have a fault logged under ref: F001337486 for high upstream utilization, The work started on the 17/09/10 and should be finished within about 3days i have been told.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Interesting. Didn't realise they did upgrade work on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. I'm pretty sure the guys who would be doing this work aren't aware they do these upgrades on Friday / Saturday / Sunday night either.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Exactly my point in the first post. I think we are being fed porkies by VM.

Although I am being compensated for the problems, if there is no fix insight then I will move. My crappy ADSL was better than this, at least I was getting my line speed all the time (decent ISP), this is a joke. I cant believe that there are only a handful of users complaining?

I have just tried to download a 18.5MB file and it has taken 5 minutes! Take a look at the TBB ping graph, its terrible!

Chrysalis, can you post a link to your graph so we can see what it should look like? (just to wind us all up here in LE3!)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Is this what yopu want???

My Broadband Ping

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Yes thats the one, compared to mine its a perfect connection!

I cant believe that there is only one other user on here with problems?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I have to go back to the begining of July for a bad one. All the rest are as flat as the one posted before.

My Broadband Ping

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

hah dude you not from leicester.

Live graph on overlay and after some kind of work was done a week or so ago.

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

Legacy is a strange one in leicester, I looked back at my graph history and I can defenitly say my tbb graphs for many days were better then my overlay was getting before the recent work, however 80% of the time on legacy speeds were hideous as in sub 25% of rated speed, during peak I would say sub 5% and at many times during the day data transfer would stall and just bottom out near 0. Lots of packet loss as well as connection drops, although not the modem dropping just tcp connections been reset. All these things happened when I was on legacy in the LE3 area. Whilst on overlay even when jitter got high, speeds were fairly steady usually in the 15-20mbit range but mostly around 20mbit.

Now its bliss, but this is 1-2 weeks of good service since I signed up at the start of the year.

here is a graph from my overlay before the work was done, 2 sundays back.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...05-09-2010.png

even with that jitter speeds were mostly ok however the jitter was noticeable on latency senstive stuff such as ssh.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Aren't I lucky! :D:D:D:D:D:D

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Indeed! Some consolation for living in Wales!!!!;););)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

is almost back to how it was before the change happened, so we looking at about 2-3 weeks of bliss only.

I expect most likely this is due to legacy users been moved over as legacy is so congested its unreal.

Download speeds also affected again, although only to the same level was was 3 weeks ago.

The OP is also on overlay now.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

my part of LE3 has got very bad again and this is the worst I have seen my overlay port perform.

I am seeing speedtests ranging from 5-20mbit during the day on weekdays. (20mbit been morning). Last night after 1am I couldnt hit 20mbit at all, maximum was 17mbit so back to unable to get full speed off peak. Today so far maximum I hit is 12mbit and is only the morning. Jitter is evident 24/7 never drops to normal levels even at 3-4am.

Will give the CEO office a call back on monday and ask for explanation.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

just got confirmation from VM staff UBR is oversubscribed. :( no fix date tho.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Ask them which direction its' congested in and how many customers are on it. :)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Still OK in Wales

My Broadband Ping

Sorry Guys I couldn't resist.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

they said upstream.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

My parents in the LE4 3 postcode area on 50mb service connected to Northfields Hub site have also been having lots of problems recently with low speeds and latency had an engineer visit who confirmed it was network problems and over subscribed but said he would raise a fault ticket but likely to take a long time to improve

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

LE11 has been dog rough the past few days. I don't really have the heart to call VM as I know the area is oversubscribed with st00dents...

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

no update from the CEO office today, things seem a bit faster tonight but still flaky, flaky all during the day as well. Ironically about 9pm I had speeds faster than I had in the day.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

still no update from the CEO office but today speedtests are back up and latency is lower.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

impressed with Neil, I sent a follow up email asking why the CEO office hasnt followed up and got a personal apology within 2 minutes. Seems he does read the emails.

No upgrade was planned for my area, so got some honesty but they said they going to start the motions for it. I asked if they got plans to bring in the traffic shaping soon to control it but no set date for it.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

things not good now at all, 1.30am also.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/10/1.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/27096649.png

missing images on web pages etc.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

hitting the 25% mark now.

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/res...095&v=11266701

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I went to my parents house last night in the LE4 3 postocode area and their 50mb service was only allowing downloads of 19-24mb from about 3pm until 10:30pm then suddenly went up to a more realistic speed of 30-40mb so obviosly some over subscription problems and just seems to be getting worse every time i go round and they say its the same everyday.

I wonder if anybody can confirm whether any works is planned soon on Northfields hub and UBR13 as part of new speed rollout so hopefully they can get the service they pay for. The whole of the network around Leicester seems quite flaky at the moment I ahve heard of lots of reports recently of bad speed and latency

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

It could be this

Nobody can confirm anything as to the upgrades as no schedule is publicly available.

Something to look forward to though, there have been no reports of problems (so far) in areas that have had the upgrade.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

last nights ping graph showed it went crazy bang on 2am as if a switch was flicked and stopped at 6am, this the time of day where the UBR should be under least load.

I am getting varying performance during the day up and down almost randomly, the same in the evening but down alot more and can get very low like a few mbit. After midnight it just stays low all night around 10mbit.

Deciding what to say to them now since a service that only for few seconds at a time is able to hit the 'up to' speed is bordering along misselling.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...01-11-2010.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

That is in the maintenance window, they may have been playing.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

ok thanks for the info, I suspected but obviously would just have been guessing.

---------- Post added at 14:03 ---------- Previous post was at 13:54 ----------

uno yes much of leicester appears to be problematic, especially on legacy but now we seeing more of it on overlay (50mbit network) is a sign its getting worse not better.

What I do know now is previous upgrade work was not resegmentation was just drip feeding extra channels (I think ignition said this used to be blueyonder practice).

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I know it doesn't help ATM Chrys but as Igni has told you the upgrade work that is being done should solve your problems.

I know you do not have a lot of trust in VM but as things are happening to you in "the maintainance window" then you never know!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Resegmentation was done recently in Leicester and should have mitigated the capacity issues, hence why there's no further capacity upgrades planned at this time.

If there are still issues sounds like it wasn't successful.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Then it can be safely said Leicester will not have the upload upgrade any time soon.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

That would go for the majority of the network though so nothing personal.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Is this just affected the Leicister area because i have been having constant problems here in Cardiff

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

What I told was different, this you speak off happened at every UBR in leics?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

No, resegmenting all of them at once would be an incredible task. I'm discussing LE3 specifically.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

so all of LE3 is under one ubr only? is quite a big area with high takeup and has 2 uni's.

I guess the improvement I had in sept may have been this resegment? but even right after the work was under heavier load than many other area.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I have no idea how much covers LE3, just what I was told.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Studentland perhaps?

I go through Cardiff hub with no problems so it may be better to open your own thread to explore further.

I can't really see me having been upgraded without you but it is always possible.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Somebody mentioned about management but it was not that as parents are very light web users and only have 50mb really for the higher upload as have Vonage phone and Vodafone sure signal connected which suffered on 20mb service with not enough upload speed.

It seems then as per other posters that as first thought it is the Virgin network this isnt even a student area and is a large village and that nothing will be done soon so I think call to CS will be happening to raise a complaint

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

(more?) upgrade work is been scheduled but it will be months away and no date set yet. I hope this helps for anyone living near me with same issues.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

having to use my adsl as default again as youtube and iplayer both dont work without buffering, as well as missing images on websites.

---------- Post added at 18:20 ---------- Previous post was at 18:18 ----------

yep its not limited to student areas, my sister in Leics is not even LE3 and is not in a student area yet also has poor performance.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

people can still see my live ping graph here.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/35094657-post9.html
first graph

speed is higher than previous nights around 16mbit but jitter is very high, not something I expected with the new traffic shaping?

working day jitter is low until 4pm now.

malfunctioning shaping causing issue 4pm onwards?
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...ce/td-p/167998

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I decided to test before and after midnight on speedtest.net

before I was getting 13-16meg/sec
after it dropped to 1.2meg/sec
right now its about 6.5meg/sec

the shaping I guess is helping LE3, but the scale of the congestion looks very severe judging by the speeds right after midnight and that latency is still high right now and during shaping.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I saw some Virgin bods pulling fibre near Meridian business park yesterday.

Perhaps something to do with the upgrades? Probably just a business connection though.

I also notice that Hinckley has had the upstream upgrades done, so they get FTTC and now Vm upgrades! What a joke!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Well kind of predictable, FTTC is the reason these upgrades are happening, so is not a surprise they prioritise FTTC areas.

I have always considered that VM do their research and will be aware of what areas are good competition areas, short lines with LLU etc. LE3 is mostly at least on the west side long lines and the inner city exchanges also have no BE LLU. VM will be aware that they can slack on the maintenance and probably still keep customers because the competition is of low standard.

BT do similiar, they let exchanges with no LLU/VM presence get congested (amber or red status) and take their time on fixing it, but in areas with BE LLU and also VM, they will always be green status uncongested.

My service is now faster during peak then off peak, effectively peak is the new off peak.

during evenings I get ranging speeds but typically now above 15mbit. (on speedtest,net, lower in single stream stuff).
12.01 am last test which was this morning I got 1.2meg/sec.
12.40 am 6meg/sec
and 4am 9meg/sec
daytime usually 19-20meg/sec but still some variance.

oh and I also still have large ssh lag, missing images on websites and broken streaming. This all occurs even if speedtesting high.
so basically I now only get ok speeds when STM is on.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Oh well , spoke too soon!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...010/11/112.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/27492404.png

Things are getting worse again!

Latest Graph.

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

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

off peak speeds are now bearable after hopping to a new downstream port. Seems there is a bad balancing issue. around 16-17mbit.

will see later if it fixes the web browsing and streaming issues.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

How did you change port?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Turn the modem off, probably for at least 15 minutes. But before you do it check the modem status page first http://192.168.100.1/ and look what downstream channel you are on. Then turn it off 15+ minutes and turn it back on again, give it a minute or so to boot and connect and then check if you on a new channel.

On overlay you locked to only 1 upstream channel tho, so can only change the downstream not the upstream. This new channel I am on is still is all over the place during today but this morning between midnight and 6am was a lot faster than my other channel.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Cheers, ill try that next time things start playing up.

Thing is, its much better tonight, I dont get it! (perhaps everyone is at Abbey Park watching our council tax go up in smoke!)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

congestion can sometimes ease off, but is probably due to less people been online for any given reason or perhaps heavy downloaders taking a break.

VM's local network is fragile, 3 20mbit users downloading at full speed will saturate a downstream channel holding 100s of users. On the upstream it requires more users but of course there is only 1 upstream channel. Of course we also have the 50mbit users on the overlay as well.

LE3 is oversubscribed I have little doubt, VM didnt even try to deny it, what I find sad is they dont have the moral to suspend new signups whilst fixing the problem, and twice now I had to tell them they overloaded so can start upgrade work when they claim they normally do it as a matter of course via monitoring. Last time was in early may late april time and the reseg didnt complete until september. I also think multiple reseg's are needed but I expect they will only do one at a time doing the absolute minimum required. This was proven already when the last reseg barely made things work for a month. Given it takes tham half a year to do a reseg they need to ensure there is enough capacity free for 6 months worth of growth after a reseg.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

my long line adsl has been outperforming my VM for about the last 6 hours, last speedtest was 4.71 down and 0.70 up. So even during traffic shaping hours speedtests dont even get above 25%.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

some have question if people like me who arent happy will do the only thing that hurts VM and leave.

Here are my speedtest and pingtest results from monday to today. Adsl side by side for comparison, (long line).

Ukonline has the slower maximum speed but is very stable in performance no matter what time of day.

speedtest
down up time day isp
14.27 0.72 9am monday VM
16.01 0.73 midday monday VM
4.56 0.73 2.50pm monday VM
16.24 0.72 11.55pm monday VM
0.34 0.73 12.05am tuesday VM
18.21 0.72 1.40am tuesday VM
14.96 0.70 3.30am tuesday VM
17.01 0.72 9.50am tuesday VM
1.34 0.58 6.20pm tuesday VM
1.21 0.72 8.10pm tuesday VM
9.41 0.73 11.40pm tuesday VM
4.65 0.72 5.30pm wed VM
15.02 0.45 3.30am thurs VM
8.76 0.48 3.31am thurs VM
14.96 0.66 3.32am thurs VM
6.02 0.72 10.15am thurs VM
13.89 0.72 0.06am fri VM

4.58 1.04 9am monday ukonline
4.60 1.03 midday monday ukonline
4.56 1.04 2.50pm monday ukonline
4.58 1.04 11.55pm monday ukonline
4.56 1.03 12.05am tuesday ukonline
4.55 1.03 1.40am tuesday ukonline
4,61 1.03 3.30am tuesday ukonline
4.59 1.04 9.50am tuesday ukonline
4.58 1.04 6.20pm tuesday ukonline
4.52 1.03 8.10pm tuesday ukonline
4.56 1.03 11.40pm tuesday ukonline
4.65 1.04 5.30pm wed ukonline
4.49 1.03 3.30am thurs ukonline
4.49 1.04 3.31am thurs ukonline
4.50 1.04 3.32am thurs ukonline
4.54 1.04 10.15am thurs ukonline
4.48 1.03 0.06am fri ukonline

pingtest no packet loss shown as always 0%
latency(ms) jitter(ms) time day isp
35 21 9am monday VM
38 16 midday monday VM
72 39 2.50pm monday VM
38 16 11.55pm monday VM
196 71 12.05am tuesday VM
45 12 1.40am tuesday VM
38 24 3.30am tuesday VM
39 29 9.50am tuesday VM
94 41 6.20pm tuesday VM
312 256 8.10pm tuesday VM
65 51 11.40pm tuesday VM
39 27 5.30pm wed VM
49 42 3.30am thurs VM
32 95 3.31am thurs VM
36 37 3.32am thurs VM
41 68 10.15am thurs VM
13.89 0.72 0.06am fri VM

17 0 9am monday ukonline
18 1 midday monday ukonline
18 1 2.50pm monday ukonline
16 1 11.55pm monday ukonline
17 0 12.05am tuesday ukonline
16 1 1.40am tuesday ukonline
17 0 3.30am tuesday ukonline
18 1 9.50am tuesday ukonline
18 1 6.20pm tuesday ukonline
18 0 8.10pm tuesday ukonline
16 0 11.40pm tuesday ukonline
18 0 5.30pm wed ukonline
16 1 3.30am thurs ukonline
19 1 3.31am thurs ukonline
17 0 3.32am thurs ukonline
18 0 10.15am thurs ukonline
18 0 0.06am fri ukonline

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

VM have another shot, my ukonline (easynet) has flapping routes (is broken) so VM is now my default again. For whatever reason by coincidence today the jitter is very low as well. So if it stays low it will give me an indication if the missing images etc. are down to congestion or the shaping. For the hour or so I have been using it I have not had browsing issues.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Things seem better at the moment, no stalls or missing images recently.
Im not using the VM DNS servers though, I use the google ones, and seems OK so far?

There is clearly congestion though, it is visible on the ping graphs, usual times so to be expected.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...17-11-2010.png


Anyone got any info regarding the upstream upgrades? Perhaps that is why things seem to have settled?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Beats mine:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...17-11-2010.png

Still, I'm not getting very big speed problems on mine, even with those latencies.

Sorry for the basic question, but what are your power levels like?

All I know about the upstream upgrades is they're increasing capacity by 6x (in the first phase) and individual speeds by just under 3x. So it should help things. I don't know if your modem config gets updated as soon as the upgrades are done or some time after though.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Browsing is still ok (not tried streaming but will do in few minutes), latency is of course high again and speeds dropped.

What I am finding odd since late oct is that in the past on this overlay port I have had high jitter but speeds were unaffected ie. I could still pull down 20mbit/sec. Now I have speed issues even when jitter is low. I suspect the shaping hw on my port may be getting saturated. As thats what got introduced around that time.

My power levels are currently around 2 to 2.5db. Previously was around 0db but I removed one of my atennuators. I read somewhere that on this modulation that -3 to +7 is the optimal range which puts the middle of that range above 0, I also figured since the port is highly contended having a louder signal may help things. Nevertherless after I removed the attenuator things seem better but not a huge difference. I still have a 10db attenuator in there as without that the power level is way too high.

I will take your graph for mine philce please.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...084aa30245.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Apart from the high minimum ping, I'd take my O2 graph over VM anyday.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...18-11-2010.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Want mine instead?

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

Note the peak time congestion :)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

hah iginition, trying to make us feel VM are good. :) All that tells me is O2 are simply aweful.

here is a good isp.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...18-11-2010.png

I thought you was on O2 llu? that looks like their BTw service.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Heh, wonder what's up there Ignition. Since yours is all over the place the whole day, it doesn't look like peak time congestion - I got the same 100ms+ "hump" in Edinburgh so I'm guessing national routing/peering/backbone problem or something. Certainly not local to you (London?) anyway.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Oh that's upstream utilisation apart from the big green stuff at peak.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

ignition related to the akamai BE issue I guess, so not a long term issue on llu O2.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Well in the hunt for the perfect ISP I'm started to get tempted just to set up a wireless link to my work and use their internet connection:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...20-11-2010.png

It's only about ~1KM LOS and we're experimenting with long-range outdoor wireless internet links anyway...

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I have got some news about LE3 which is shocking. Also check my graph for last night the jitter stayed high all night so 24/7 congestion.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

What's the news?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

So whats happened? I cant check my graph as I defaulted my router and forgot to re-enable wan pings!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

it needs confirming before I post it here as it could well be wrong. But nevertherless my jitter is now high 24/7 there is no low congestion period for my connection now.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Looking at my graph for last night I would tend to agree.

Worrying to say the least......

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I have started a campaign, the leics mercury say if I can get 200 names from my local area they will interview me, so me and a few others will be knocking on some doors to get feedback on VM performance.

The last VM local tech I spoke to says my area 2 out of 3 doors is VM. so 66% VM takeup for area. His words were "tons of customers in your area, is jam packed".

What do I hope to achieve? dont know, maybe some satisfaction of reducing VM sales from bad press. To me a march 2011 fix date is not acceptable, they probably adding new customers quicker then extra capacity on that date will cater for.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Nice, If you want me to do something similar round here let me know.

I bet 90% of users are unaware of how bad things are. (compared to ADSL)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Where did you get the March 2011 information from?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

ceo office again, is new fix date.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I assume thats the upstream upgrades then.

At this rate they will be saturated before they are connected!

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

no its just congestion relief, they are keeping shut tight on the upload upgrades.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Why not just do the upgrades then? Makes sense otherwise 2 lots of work instead of one bigger one?

WTF do Hinckley seem to get everything before us? (FTTC now the VM upgrades?) Or is that not a coincidence!!! ;)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Just the upgrades I expect wouldnt relieve the congestion. Or it could be the upgrades arent planned until late 2011.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

It may not be the tier uplift but at that time scale, conveniently at the end of the calendar quarter and 4 months away which is a long time for resegmentation, it's extremely likely that'll be the pre-uplift work.

I'll poke someone and see what I can find out.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

My parents are still having lots of problems with slow speeds in the LE4 3 postcode area and have spoken to a couple of people in their street and report same problems so Leicester as usual really seems to struggle and last tech i asked said the upload increase would not be until summer 2011.

It does seem that Virgin are hugely overselling the network or have fell behind badly with network investment in the city also everybody i speak to says also keep getting a VOD error saying area is too busy so i presume again lack of capacity

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Its because BT refuse/cant/wont upgrade to FTTC and now we have the option of stable and fast broadband obviously we have all gone to Virgin.

They obviously take the money and until enough noise is generated by disgruntled users will do nothing.

I suggest you and your neighbours complain to the CEO of Virgin, that way the people who can do something about this will know about it. I would ring faults to check that it isnt a modem or cab fault first though.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

My parents have had a tech out as have the neighbours he changed a couple of bits including the modem but then went back to normal even he admitted when pushed that the network was not as good as it should be at present.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I get the same story of local tech's they usually say things along the line of "area jam packer" "many customers in this area" "nothing I can do we ran out of capacity".

I can also confirm many people round here in same boat as me, I still got some work to do before I can get back to the newspaper tho.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

ok I would appreciate it if ignition or anyone with the answers can help here.

Currently we know LE3 has just 1 UBR.

Someone suggested on VM's forums that in busy areas UBR's would host 1000-2000 users, to me that sounds wrong. It would equal a 1.2% takeup for 2k subscribers. The takeup is over 60%.

So if every card slot was filled up in the UBR, and VM didnt oversubscribe what would be the max subscriber capacity?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

LE3 doesn't have just one uBR it's covered by at least 2, one legacy and one overlay network.

The legacy CMTS, there will be more than one of these feeding LE3, is good for 2,400 connections depending on loading levels, 300 customers per 38Mbps downstream seems reasonable.

The Cisco 10k is good for tens of thousands. It has 8 line card slots each of which can support 20 downstreams and 20 upstreams, or it can feed an external modulator.

There are 15 CMTS in Leicester hubsite, another 13 in Northfields, LE7, at least 2 of which in each site are 10k or BSR.

I'm confused by the statement about 2000 users being a 1.2% take up though.

LE3 LEICESTER Braunstone, Glenfield, New Parks, Groby Road (A50), Leicester Forest East, Westcotes

I doubt that that area is a population of 200,000 given that the city's population is listed as 300,000 and remembering that a 'user' for cable purposes is a cable modem, and there's only one allowed per property. Even at 100% take up there would not be 200,000 cable modems in the whole of Leicester, the average home having over 2 residents per premise.

Braunstone apparently has about 7,500 households, Glenfield 5,000, New Parks 8,000, Westcotes 4,000, unsure about the other two and can't be bothered to search that hard but nonetheless it's not 2,000 households, 26,000 + those two areas so at 60% takeup a next generation CMTS plus a couple of legacy ones would be fine! :)

Your issues stem from a lack of 16QAM upstreams and the DOCSIS 2 upgrades, once all that's done along with the ongoing resegmentation that's being done for downstream and network quality purposes your upstream capacity issues will be gone with no need for any further additional upstream ports.

He says optimistically.

TLDR - the amount of chassis are fine.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

thanks for the reply, but whats this ongoing resegmentation? seems theoretical :)

I read on the VM forums that reseg's arent always upgrades but sometimes are just moving users around between existing line cards?

so 300 10mbit users on 38mbit? is about 19:1 contention right? if assume 1 in 5 users is a 20mbit customer it then becomes a bit higher tho around 24:1. That contention ratio seems reasonable but it is a very small fragile amount of shared bandwidth, evident by the downstream congestion on the legacy network.

Also you missing various areas under LE3, eg. I dont live in any of those areas. But thanks for making the effort to get the population count of the ones you found, I will do a bit more checking into it.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Yes, they are sometimes balancing load, say where there are 3 nodes on one card and a single node on another they will move a node to another card. This is an upgrade to the 3 nodes, all of them have more bandwidth per modem post-resegmentation.

The resegmentation programme is ongoing throughout that 'general area'.

---------- Post added at 12:02 ---------- Previous post was at 12:00 ----------

Due to the relatively small customer population it generally works fine. Most of the 20Mb customers will be on the overlay network.

There's relatively little downstream congestion on the legacy network, it's largely overlay network upstream congestion that's the current bugbear.

Incidentally 300 x 10Mbit customers on 38Mbit is about 80:1 contention ratio :)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

ok but we know in le3 there is downstream congestion on legacy and even some on overlay albeit much less severe. its on at least 2 legacy ports as philce had it on legacy and I also had it on legacy. I expect many light takeup areas elsewhere in the country have much less than 300 per downstream as insufficent sales.

80:1 contention ratio is much higher than the amount I seen you post in another post, cant remember which site it was (think was tbb) and is quite a high number. Even on a large backhaul (eg. 1gigabit) that is high. We will disagree on if we think its reasonable, I have evidence to say it isnt in the performance we see here. Some VM areas have less than 50 on a downstream port.

So if resegmenting is sometimes only moving from one card to another (I assume the cards are in close proximity to each other) then why does it take many months to do the work? and what happens if all cards are saturated?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

You expect wrong :) If there are light sales what's the point in spending money on hardware and resegmentation to leave all that capacity unused?

At one time 200+ modems per upstream wasn't uncommon when the speeds were lower, 5,000 cable modems on a single chassis not impossible. Where areas have light utilisation VM simply wouldn't have split them as much as heavier areas, so same kinda number of modems online just more homes passed per card.

Your area is the exception rather than the rule downstream, as you will have noted from the forums the overwhelming majority of issues are upstream.

The 30:1 I mentioned was for overlay network.

Your issues are upstream related I believe? No idea what the ratio in your area actually is. Probably somewhat higher than the number I mentioned.

I would like to see these areas with 50 modems on a downstream port, they would be few and far between indeed. 50 on an upstream port for sure, 50 on a downstream not so much. Certainly last year most ports that I saw were running between 300 and 450 modems, I wouldn't be surprised if that were 150 - 200 now in most cases.

Reasonable contention ratios are as high as companies can get away with, they have become largely meaningless due to the various bandwidth reducing methods used. In VM's case shaping and STM are the big ones that allow the network to run at higher ratios than would normally be feasible.

Regardless the levels of contention operators run their networks at are generally obscene :)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I meant not upgrading to reduce to that level but rather that original sales werent enough to get higher usage.

why is legacy run at a different contention to the overlay network? thats an interesting one.

to me contention ratio is always relevent, its the ultimate measure of budgeted bandwidth. You said it yourself, the higher contention is only barely achievable due to STM and shaping been used to cut costs.

I agree on your last point.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

You misunderstand how the network works. x customers are shared between y line cards. Where x is lower y is also lower to keep the number of customers per line card reasonable. There is no set formula for how many premises each line card covers, this varies depending on Virgin's needs.

They don't just throw in a line card for each 250 enabled homes and hope for good take up, the networks were originally thousands of homes passed per line card, even a 10% take up rate would have been ample to get 400 customers on a card.

---------- Post added at 15:59 ---------- Previous post was at 15:57 ----------

To answer the first point that's easy, because the overlay network has far more bandwidth available. It can push 200Mbps to each fibre optic node while the maximum that the VXRs can push is 76Mbps.

As I mentioned contention ratio isn't relevant - that a ratio far higher than would be feasible is doable cheapens the value of that metric.

If you look at ISPs with strict caps and pay per GB overages they run on huge contention ratios because they can. Visible contention is what it's all about and is the only game in town. Whether the contention is made less visible due to a lower ratio, shaping, STM, whatever, that's the only valid metric.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Thanks for the info so it seems legacy loses out quite a bit from overlay, in both a more fragile capacity size and over double the contention. I will defenitly not go back to legacy now if ever given the choice.

ignition interesting now that VM have released dates, leics has the latest possible aug 2011, I guess the build isnt as new and clean as you first thought? This makes what you said as unreasonable, if these upgrades do fix the area, another 9 months is far too long to wait.

I do fail to see however how STM and shaping reduce visible contention, they actually introduce it.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

getting beyond a joke now.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/78.png

service is seriously broken, I can load this site much faster on my adsl (which is fully utilised downloading) than on my idle so called 20mbit connection.

my up to 8mbit adsl service faster than my up to 20mbit VM service.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Philce I have given VM 6 weeks notice (end of jan 2011), I have it free until then.

I will be getting a new adsl isp to replace ukonline when it closes, and have 3G as backup.

VM itself is way too variable and generally is slower for everything except bulk downloading (which itself is only faster mornings).

I have overlapped this and when I will be on my new adsl isp incase I have problems on the adsl and change my mind again.

Brief history of this current stint with VM (ntl) 20mbit service.

feb-may 2010 - high latency/jitter in day, low at night. speeds in day almost 0, often stalled, timeouts, streaming broken etc. unfit for purpose. unable to hit max speed even at 4am.
june-august 2010 - moved to overlay and things improved, speeds generally high, streaming etc. worked fine. 18mbit+ but still had high latency outside of dusk hours.
sept-mid oct 2010 - service was decent, jitter varied but was generally at least ok. speeds stable.
mid oct - now - service declined very fast and on top of this VM introduced traffic shaping which has brought extra problems, had mtu issues, browsing issues, streaming issues on way back, very inconsistent speeds even off peak, on peak starting to get very slow again approaching the 10% mark along with very slow browsing. jitter getting to the point where latency sensitive apps become unuseable. this time the slow speed is alongside VM shaping down p2p, nntp which should be an embarrasement to them.

proposed fix date of april 2011 by VM, likely to be delayed at least a month, I expect service would be adequate from may to august where it will then blow up on the speed upgrades. too much for me. :)

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

tonight is just completely broken.

not using it for generic use now but I seen my ping graph was crazy high all day so tried to use it.

web browsing missing images galore, connection reset by peer error's, same error in ftp when trying to download.

I managed on 3rd attempt to finish a speedtest and it took 10 minutes.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/74.png

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/75.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30057615.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

here is fastest (channel 54) at 2.30am

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/73.png

the other 2 channels 55 and 56 still sub 2mbit.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

11.40am on weekday.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/70.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/30159624.png

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

sloooowing down.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2010/12/69.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/30176639.png

if I am up and can be bothered will do another 8-10pm.

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

Umm sorry if you've already answered in this long thread but, why haven't you left VM already?

Re: Terrible performance Leicester (LE3)
 

I tried to give VM a chance due to having a poor line (which means a poor adsl service). I have now actually cancelled tho and VM will be gone end of jan. I am chaning adsl isp during jan so want VM up during that time incase of long adsl downtime.

I can still report here tho in the mean time :)

Me just leaving feels wrong tho, in that scenario VM get away scot free for what they doing other than losing my subs.