Oversubscribed areas?
 

Just a random thought about oversubscribed areas (A friend of mine is in one makes playing games with him at peak time impossible because his latency is all over the place)


Wouldn't it make sense for VM to implement temporary STM/Throttling at peak time in these areas down to something like 5 - 10Mbit/s to reduce the congestion or will that not help?

As surely a slower connection that at least works would be better than the current mess you get where you're lucky to get a couple mbit/s and the latency is all over the place spiking beyond 500ms.

Obviously that wouldn't be a satisfactory permanent fix but it might at least maintain some kind of quality of service whilst the upgrades are being planned/implemented.

Edit:

Also VM would have to be transparent about what they're doing and the reasons behind it.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

3 (the mobile network) is doing that and it's not earning them a very good reputation, despite having the fastest web browsing speeds and lowest latency, all people see and care about is the crappy download speed.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Which would ironically probably be better if it Were throttled ;)

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

It is throttled, that's the point. People prefer unthrottled with crappy pings than throttled with decent pings.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

These people do not understand what happens when the backhaul gets congested :(

Or in the case of cellular the RF layer which is a lot harder to upgrade

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

its a good and bad idea.

There is nothing wrong with throttling to maintain latency and packet loss as long as its a temporary fix with the long term fix been more capacity.

The problem is isp's see it the ££££ signs, and if they manage to throttle successfully then they deploy it as a permanent strategy "in place" of extra capacity.

Three are the virgin media of mobile, they have a chronic congestion problem due to over utilisation of their network, so I wouldnt be happy with what they doing either.

Also if VM were to throttle bad areas they would be forbidden from selling unlimited broadband in those areas.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

That would be unlawful.

VM couldn't advertise unlimited and would likely have to change advertising of their packages in a big, and unattractive, way.

There are other ways to protect gaming traffic.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Shoo them off to BT?

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

What sort of changes? Far as I'm aware nothing major changed when they got rid of D/S STM in the first place, so the only changes I can see if they were to re-introduce it in some areas only, is changing some of the small print on the traffic management COP page, which is voluntary anyway.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

It isn't just gaming traffic, it buggers up streaming and voip as well.
Mobile is a bit different than fixed as whilst it should be possible to upgrade back-haul the actual radio side may or may not be harder.

Vm aren't the only one's with congestion problems for sure it happens from time to time it's how it's dealt with that's the important thing.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

although it makes sense to use it as a temporary fix (especially for short term large scale network faults) I think part of the condition of being able to implement such a policy would have to be that they advertise affected areas on some sort of status page and I think it would be very embarrassing to see the numbers tbh. As always, it is a balancing act with VM and I am sure they would rather forgo the negative publicity associated with stm and over subscribed areas (even if it maintains an excellent quality of service) and reap the benefits of advertising unlimited fibre bb where everything is perfect (including the shub).

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Yes I've been at various ISP's who feared putting stuff on the status page because "it will make us look bad" :mad:

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

They can rate limit the bottlenecked part of their network so it can max out at say 90% utilisation.
Reduce the buffers to remove buffer bloat.
Then prioritise small packets.

This I expect would go a long way to improve latency sensitive traffic and not fall foul of ASA guidelines.

But the VM bean counters would say thats a waste of 10% of capacity. :)

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

VM already avoid putting utilization faults on their status pages...

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Would help if they was logged first

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

They are often logged, they just don't show up on the status checkers as a rule.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

well yeah the page would be quite long if they did :)

I remember in the ntl days they used to show rebalancing maintenance which was about 2-3 times a month in Leicester. :)

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Not from what I used to see, also the checker online goes by postcodes and the tickets are logged via nodes so sometimes the system will think your not in that node because your postcode is just outside it.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Have you not seen the dozens of posts on this forum with people quoting fault references logged for utilisation issues (including my own)?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Yes but I have also seen the amount that haven't been logged

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Only higher-priority issues go on the status page. Utilisation and noise don't often count, as you still have "some" connectivity, even if it's useless.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

then it is a pretty useless status page then ..

it's like the Motorway traffic reports only reporting when the road is blocked and not when it is stop-start

Of course, the real reason is that it is not commercially viable to admit that your network has performance problems when you are selling the product based solely on it's performance.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

The real reason is that most people simply don't notice when their connection has gone to **** as long as google still loads up.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Congestion issues affect a relatively small number of broadband customers per issue so don't merit entry onto service status.

Loss of TV or phone are more likely to appear there.

---------- Post added at 14:00 ---------- Previous post was at 13:58 ----------

If it were to have every local fault on the page it would be pretty useless too. That's the nature of cable for better or worse, no large provider goes into that kind of granularity on general status pages.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I do not agree that utilisation faults are always so fine grained

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Unfortunately whether you agree or not doesn't affect reality. These issues can certainly come in bunches, such as when a new CMTS is late to be delivered to a site and is needed to relieve a number of areas, however each congested port is its own issue and each individual fault affects a relatively small area and number of customers.

There is no geographical mapping to speak of between areas and CMTS which complicates things too. To take in an issue such as a late CMTS enablement in Southampton causing some ports to congest would need an active fault covering a pretty large area well in excess of that actually affected.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Define a "relatively small number of broadband customers"? How many customers can one CMTS line card support?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

It's actually not such a bad thing that Virgin don't list the issues.

Here's what happens, someone has a connection problem/glitch. Let's say it's due to congestion. They go and look at the status page - now, if the fault was listed, quite a lot of people would stop there. "They're working on it, ok" they will say.
However, if the fault isn't listed, then most people will phone in to report the fault. This costs Virgin money. Virgin has to pay for that agent to answer the phone, they also have to pay for the good will credit that agent will probably give to the customer. It's in Virgin's best interests to keep calls as low as possible.
So when lots of people phone in, the issue's priority gets raised. As the priority gets raised, so does the urge to fix it, as it's assumed more people are affected (and thus more phone in, costing Virgin more money). You see?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Quite a few, however one line card serves many distinct sets of customers. With decoupled CMTS congestion is at a fibre node level, not at line card or even port level. There will be a very few hundred customers on each node generally.

Obviously not always the case; some will have way more on them, some for whatever reason less than 100.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

To be honest I've been a bit disappointed in Virgin Media lately - for years I've been getting the full speed without issues but recently I've been lucky to get above 10Mbps on my 150Mbps connection. Pings are often pretty high in the evenings too.

Perhaps the constant speed increases haven't helped? I should mention it was fine up until recently but I've noticed some posts from a bit of googling on other forums where people have said it's gone downhill since the merger.

To be perfectly honest there's a part of me that's now tempted by BT's offerings, but equally if VM is working on DOCSIS 3.1 I wonder if it's worth just waiting.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

It's never worth waiting. Either they'll do it, at which point you can just move back, or they won't, at which point you'll just miss out by waiting.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Indeed. Plus, anything 3.1 related is at least 18 months away from consumers buying it, if not longer. May as well jump ship to whatever's better for you today.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Yup as dragon said my area sucks big time for bandwidth etc. Makes playing games in the evening impossible, skype stutters, web browsing slows and i pull about on average 3-5mbp/s in the evening from a 100mb connection
Estimates time to fix late August, case open date, April.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

No idea if this is true but I've heard that the fix date isn't actually a fix date - it's a review date. Essentially the idea is that they may or may not increase capacity by then / people may leave or whatever and then in August they'll review it to see if the situation has improved.

Explains why people keep finding the 'fix' dates are pushed back.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Well that better not be the case!

This is what I have to deal with most evenings - http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4502512369
So much for super fast broadband speeds of 100mb.

Just seen that Virgin broadband advert about DOCSIS 3 it's the magic in our cables, well get the bloody magic out as it's clearly messing my connection up!!

I know Virgin State upto bla bla but this is taking the ****!

I got a one off £16 credit off my bill to cover the service issues for the last 2 months an the next month when apparently it will be fixed apparently at the end of August.
If you ask me that's not enough. Been with them since the days of 128kb BB

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

That is correct. You will not be told the real fix date, if it exists .. If fact, from my own experience, the fix date bears no correlation with the real planning done by the Network group owning the problem. The area/segment that has the issue will get fixed when time, manpower and budget allows. Only then will the "fix" date match reality.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Indeed the review date for my problem started Nov 2014 and regular as clockwork it gets pushed back every month, just been bumped to August 2015, currently anytime day or night Im lucky if I get 2mb down / 1mb up on my supposed 100mb connection :td:

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I think I live in an under subscribed area. Have had consistently good broadband connection, only one day out in I think 5 years now?
Just downloaded world of Warcraft at a constant 21MB/s which I think is nearly 170mb/s roughly a 20GB dl.
To my knowledge never been throttled
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/07/7.png

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Always good to hear things are working well, i am in the same boat as you. Whereabouts do you live out of interest?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Chadwell St Mary in Essex, on the Basildon exchange

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Cool, i am up in the midlands. Nice to see multiple areas that are doing very well because most of the time we only here about over subscribed areas.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I'm in Leeds and haven't had any real speed problems at all...I have had the odd night sometimes but other than that it's clean sailing all the way

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I don't know how this is possible but I'm downloading something right now and it says it is going at 45MB/s which is what ..360mb/s
Is there some speed upgrade trial I've not heard about?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

what does the shub config say?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

No, it's an incorrect reading.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Blizzard wouldn't release buggy software, would they? WOULD THEY?!?!?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I've had a look around in the hub settings and can't find anything relevant?

---------- Post added at 20:04 ---------- Previous post was at 20:03 ----------

I guess you're right but it did only take 10 mins for 27GB

---------- Post added at 20:05 ---------- Previous post was at 20:04 ----------

I have only recently returned to WOW and the crashes are ridiculous

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/07/3.jpg

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/07/4.jpg

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/07/5.jpg

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Hmm - I wonder if you're one of those lucky people who has had the VM network start forgetting to police your speeds, so you're getting whatever everyone else isn't using.

Your modem won't say anything different, the download speed listed on the modem is cosmetic.

It happens very occasionally. Don't reboot your Super Hub.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

reading this thread suggests to me is the same old bad capacity management.

Showed it to my buddy who is showing massive loyalty to VM but he has faith VM will fix his utilisation issue that has lasted 2 years :)

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...5/td-p/2494921

note the guy was seeing severe issues even when still in the threshold (proof that the threshold is set too leniant) and is the usual several months of delays, what have liberty global fixed?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Profit margins

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Lol

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Virgin and Liberty have not dissimilar capacity planning thresholds.

Liberty have prompted Virgin to spend £3 billion over 5 years on new build, and CapEx on current build is going up and up as Virgin rebuild it.

Regardless the length of time taken to resolve some of these issues has been really, really bad.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Especially earlier in ex TW areas.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

yeah I agree they definitely upping the game in terms of new build, VM was dormant for so many years.

Also to be fair when I looked at the VM forums the amount of speed complaints does seem noticeably lower than say 4 years ago. Just is a shame is still some issues and really they not done enough to nip the problem in the bud.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Although, the speed and utilisation complaints that are on there - do seem to be long-standing ones where the review dates get pushed back 3,4,5 times before final fix.

I'm speaking from experience too. Our BB went through a nasty patch a few years back and was fine until late last year. It almost feels like every little tweak and fix-attempt that VM have done since then, makes it a little bit better but isn't quite fixing it properly.

It all sounds good, I'd just like to hope that fixing existing problem areas also has a reasonable budget too. Or to rephrase, that not too many fixes get held up by lack of budget.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

A few years ago I would have put the delays down to Virgin not investing enough, but given the recent investments, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest the delays are likely more than just cost (though I have no doubt that's a factor as well).

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

So delays being due to competence is better?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Red tape and general planning, more like. Some areas are not just oversubscribed, but there's literally no room for additional infrastructure - sometimes even at the headend. It takes time to plan out adding capacity like that.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

In other words, they failed to see it coming and plan ahead.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Virgin (or even TW/NTL) may have bit LibGlob haven't been around that long.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

qas is right, in the url I linked to and ignition also confirmed on a tbb post that lib global still use the VM escalation thresholds, so it didnt even get approved as a capacity problem until the congestion was high enough, when the customer first raised it on the forums he had clear congestion but the support staff couldnt raise it due to it been below the threshold.

This is why I said if they need a year or so to fix the problem, the work needs to start at a much lower threshold.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

My oversubscribed area has made me leave now. Being going on 9 months and the date to get fixed keeps on getting put back. My amazing speed for 152mb!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2015/08/26.png

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

That's disgraceful, you are right to leave.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

The frustration is that I didnt want to leave as its a hassle to get other things in.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

More hassle than the pathetic speeds you're getting and the even more pathetic response Virgin is giving?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Just a spot of thinking out loud here, partly because my connection is often (but not always) congested at peak times and anything from 5>20Mb/s is the going rate for my 50Mb. I'm also on my 3rd or 4th review date. I had problems with TiVo 10Mb last year too, but that's been fine for a while.

So it seems that VM have been leaving the congestion trigger points too late which causes problems with long lead times. And there's apparently a rolling program to deal with these, fair enough. But what, if anything, is being done in the long-term to learn lessons? I'm thinking of the triggers being tweaked so that by the time the issues become customer-affecting, plans are already well in-hand.

I guess that, already, if "planned" capacity increases in a given area are upcoming, then they'll be done at the same time as a "congestion fix" job.. Mind you, the same was supposed to be the case in my area and it didn't happen.

Like I said, just thinking out loud.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Capacity planning and congestion relief are different sides of the same coin? VM appear to have developed/inherited a number of ryo back end systems so planning almost appears to become a "black art"!

Given NTL/VM and now LG always have run contention extremely warm (if not hot) then we don't know how much VM currently use MRTG, Cacti, NetFlow or OSS-Iris or similar capacity planning in conjunction with their own ryo predictive back end systems?
Apart from obvious 5 yr rolling trend analysis there must be RGU/"Customer churn" feeds because despite long/protracted "congestion relief works" the revenue hasn't dropped and churn has actually decreased in previous quarters business results?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

MRTG, Cacti and Netflow aren't used for these purposes at all as far as I'm aware.

Combination of own tools and feedback from Samknows boxes.

LGI use ServAssure.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

you have hit the nail on the head. I can remember a couple of years ago that there was an area which was absolutely diabolical for speed and oversubscription and it took them months and months to sort out. The sad thing was that the planned work was not capacity relief for the oversubscription, it was for the pending speed upgrades. One the extra capacity was added everything was great for a week or so before they doubled everyone's speed and then it went back to being **** again.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

maximus reminds me of my area some years back.

Constant upstream congestion for years on end, then was the 10:1 network upgrade program, and the upgrade work was carried out months before they upped the speeds. I remember for about 3-4 months experiencing the level of service some get on here all year round and was great, sadly they moved some users onto my node from the blackbird road node as those guys were getting congestion (instead of actually upgrading that node they did the cheapest option), then I was starting to see signs of congestion even before the speeds got ramped up, then the day they activated the higher speeds there was clear congestion the moment they flicked the switch. Either they were/are very incompetent or its the beancounters saying no go on upgrades unless is for marketing reasons.

Really this need to hit 90% utilisation is such a silly threshold, and its still in place now. :(

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

If it's 90%, then it's an improvement on what it used to be. It used to be (If I recall) 95% for more than I think 10% of the time.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

It also was 80% once upon a time. It may have been lower than that before.

95% is just plain stupid, only makes any sense if your only concern is cost.

The only time any of these figures makes sense be it 80,90,95% is if an upgrade is ready to go at a push of a button but with it taking VM dozens of months it should actually probably be an ongoing process so when one upgrade is done start on the next. Funny the two largest transit providers in the UK for broadband both dont have a clue on capacity planning, BT and VM.

If I was the CEO of VM this is what I would do.

Keep the same "up to" packages. Take advantage of the very soft ASA guidelines which allow an isp to only provide the marketed speed to 10% of customers, then in high utilisation areas, roll out lower speed modem configs, if the ASA moan, point out 10% of the customer base can get the speed. I would say I would have a auto upgrade program for every single node, but I am sure someone would tell me that would bankrupt the company so I wont say that :) the business plan probably only works when parts of the customer base get screwed over.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

If your only concern is cost you'd run it at 100% and let congestion self-limit.

In my personal experience BT have been far better. Over the most recent 3 years with each ISP I've experienced a sum total of 4 weeks' of congestion on BT and about 24 months on VM.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

qas but they do let it run at 100%, as by the time it gets work raised it will then be 100% for many months before any relief work. Remember the problem still exists after its raised. Which is the point I was trying to make, any one with intelligence knows the capacity relief thresholds are inadequate by a large margin they clearly set at that level for congestion to limit usage.

My own experience BT is better also, it seems just about every address I witness a VM service there is congestion. But BT have let their service rot for some users for 6+ months also, the saving grace tho the congestion can be avoided via hopping thanks to redundant routing.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

If I wanted to be pedantic, I'd state that none of those figures make sense on their own. I dare say that even in the worst areas, "90%" utilisation rarely occurs because utilisation alone is almost meaningless without something else to correlate it. I.e. if a connection sits at 20% utilisation between midnight and 5pm during the week but skyrockets to 100% between 5pm and 10pm, then it's not going to have 90% utilisation overall but (in my opinion) needs capacity relief anyway.

Part of Virgin's issue (in my opinion) is the second figure is far too high even at 10%. I would happily tolerate 99% utilisation once in a blue moon, during a critical event or something but it shouldn't go above 90% more than 5% of the time.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I may be missing something here, but by that logic - 100% utilisation for 5 hours is nigh on 21% of the time, excluding weekends when it may be even worse. That breaches the 90/10 threshold quite substantially. I get your point entirely and agree with it - but my maths suggest your example would also breach.

Seems entirely reasonable.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

5% on its own seems a small number, but that will always be at peak so e.g. lets say peak is 4pm to 10pm, 25% of the day, that 5% becomes 20% of the time effectively of when most people will use it, or 10% of the time is then 40% of the time when most use it.

Not everyone is like myself using the net for varying parts of the day.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I started this thread:

Virgin are an absolute disgrace. They claim to have added "additional channels" and everything was fine for a while, but this period coincided with university students going home for the summer. Now they're arriving back in the city and speeds are as bad as ever. I simply don't believe Virgin have done anything in the year since I started that thread.

Recently somebody replied to the thread and pointed out that this is history repeating itself. A few years ago there were the exact same problems in the same area.

It seems that Virgin oversell the network until it's run into the ground and barely useable, then eventually undertake the minimum amount of work required to provide a short-term fix, then let the cycle start over again. There's clearly no work being done to future-proof this part of the network so it's able to cope with increasing demands.

This area is right next to a large university campus, and is therefore extremely popular with students as they can walk to lectures in just a few minutes. It should be pretty obvious to Virgin by now that we need vast increases in capacity, not the piecemeal fixes they've provided in the past.

[Edit]
A question for you knowledgeable people: Virgin fobbed me off several times saying they were waiting for planning permission, but do they even need that to add downstream channels? I understand if they were going to re-segment the network and build new cabinets that they'd need to wait, but adding channels sounds to me like something they can do with existing infrastructure?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Unless they needed to extend the hubsite that holds the routers the modems connect to, because they needed more space, they do not need planning permission to add downstream channels.

They also do not need planning permission to build new cabinets.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

But if they have to dig avcross a street, particularly a main street, isn't there then a process that delays things?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

There's a process for any street works, but it's not planning permission. The process is that instead of having to give 3 or 5 days notice you have to give 10.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I had a good few years of this myself on VM, back when I was living in a student-ey area. The running theme seems to be VM are incapable of managing capacity properly in areas where utilization varies drastically through the year.

Why not check your council's planning applications list to see if VM have put any entries in. And the council where the CMTS is sited too, if that's different.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

The problem is that first line agents don't actually get told why utilisation tickets get delayed. In the ticket, it'll just have a fix date of some time in the future. If you're lucky, you might even see a tech note mentioning why it'll be this date but 9 times out of 10 the ticket is completely empty. There's nothing to indicate if it's a BS date or if something is actually being done and no way of chasing it further for an update. You've got a ticket with a date on it and that's it.

So what agents are supposed to say is that the ticket is scheduled to be fixed on that date, but we can only speculate as to why it's taking so long - it can be things like planning permission but not necessarily. Unfortunately a lot of agents don't make it clear that they're speculating and just blame it on the councils, when the reality is that Virgin only clears so much capacity at a time and will push some areas to the bottom of the list.

I was caught out on more than one occasion where the fix date on the ticket was in the past - what on earth can you say, then?

Ultimately, as always with Virgin, they will try to minimise costs and maximise profits - if an area is oversubscribed but not many people are complaining or leaving, they will happily let that stay at the bottom of the list. The only way to force them to fix it is to demand money back each month and encourage anyone else to do the same. At some point it'll just be more economical for Virgin to fix the issue and they'll suddenly find the budget for it.

They were doing better over the last couple of years, but it seems since the LibGlob takeover, they're slipping again.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Things definitely seem to have gotten worse since the Liberty Global takeover.

With that said, I had some really terrible capacity issues with VM to the point where after 4 years (which is long by my standards) I was thinking of leaving. Then around the end of the summer they suddenly upped capacity in my area and things have been great since.

My only concern is if the speed upgrades will send it back to the point it was at.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Strangely people who took services from Telewest said exactly the same when they merged with ntl, which was kinda funny as the combined company spent a ton of money upgrading the Telewest networks, and people who had been on them both said exactly the same when the company was rebranded Virgin Media.

Virgin Media still use the same capacity guidelines they always have. Liberty Global aren't related to the issues.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Alternatively, if they have been progressively getting worse every year for the last fifteen years, it would be completely accurate for them to have gotten worse since every merger/rebrand.

Just like speeds got faster when they merged with NTL. And when they rebranded. And when they were bought by LG. And pretty much every year in between. :p:

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

The guidelines are the same, but is the amount being invested in relation to the demand on the network?

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Just to say i'm on part of the old Telewest network and before the takeover in 2006 the service was just appalling in this area and now it's so much better

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

My area was ex ntl, before VM (brand change) took over the service was really really bad I had at the time.
After a stint on adsl after I moved, I went back to cable after they enabled my area, and apparently my area should have had fresh empty utilisation as it was newly activated but was heavily congested from the day I had the installation (just weeks after area enabled), although not sure if was as bad as the previous address under ntl. They moved me to docsis3, which was supposedly new and under utilised but funny enough whilst it was a big improvement it was still congested. In my city I have checked VM performance at several addresses and all of them are congested, its only out of the city suburbs when into the blaby area I know one guy who is in a low utilisation area.
Remember when VM activated the 10:1 speeds and the upgrades for those speeds? well my area had the capacity upgrade about 6 months before they updated the modem configs, that was basically just about the only good 6 months service I have had from VM in probably 5+ years of service. Even before they updated the modem config's the last 4 weeks of that 6 months congestion was starting to show slowly.

Also a member of this forum (I think was qas but not sure) commented that when he visited Leicester and used a VM connection it was completely different to his own address he commented how slow and congested it was.

I still check on the people who have VM in my city, including my sister and they yep you guessed it, still have poor evening performance.

I think its clear certain VM policies are just broken, the need to wait for sustained 90% utilisation when it takes over a year to fix, and how small the capacity is compared to what people on the top package can do. This is ignoring the peering issues which seem to come up several times a year as well.

Plus sides?

Almost permanent discount due to confirmed high utilisation for years at a time.
Fixed access speed unlike dsl.
Generally more stable in terms of connection staying alive vs how bad my long adsl line was (without SRA).
Was fast at 4-8am.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Uddingston along with a bunch of other, mostly ex-Eurobell areas, was largely rebuilt by ntl:Telewest. Telewest refrained from doing it basically because they were waiting for ntl: to come get them :)

ntl:Telewest ended up doing a ton of rebuild and node splits in ex-Telewest areas, those areas having had everything possible done to sweat the existing fibre and copper.

---------- Post added at 13:11 ---------- Previous post was at 13:09 ----------

Yep.

---------- Post added at 13:33 ---------- Previous post was at 13:11 ----------

I think we've spoken on this before. Not really. The issue is how many people are on the same capacity, not the proportion someone on the top tier can take.

If you think Virgin are bad selling 152Mb out of 400, 600 or 800Mb you'd have an anaphylactic reaction to operators selling 300Mb out of 608Mb in North America and 500Mb out of 800Mb in Sweden.

If you think Virgin are callous in this regard I can tell you that they were asked whether they thought they would be able to release 300Mb on 8 downstreams, 400Mb capacity.

They refused. They won. It's not happening.

The heaviest VM have gone in terms of the ratio of capacity to access line speed was when they were selling 100Mb on 152Mb capacity in a very few areas where an upgrade was delayed. Apart from that they've never breached about a 1:2 ratio which is quite normal for cable.

It's also not that far off normal on FTTP, where 1Gb downstream services are sold on 2.4Gb GPON splits and 500Mb upstream services on 1.2Gb.

There is way more to this than simply maximum speed.

Lastly it can't be made clear enough - VM couldn't give a toss about download speeds. They are worried about QoE / Quality of Experience metrics. These alongside feedback from the Samknows kit they have deployed is what they work on. They unapologetically make no attempt to ensure there's no visible contention.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Ignition I thank you for indicating what non cable providers follow similar policies, but at the same time I hope you understand my criticism given the poor standard of service in my area not just myself but people in other parts of the city.

Funny enough tho I would not be bothered by reduced speeds as long as things kept working and it wasnt for excessive periods of time, but sadly most of the time when I experience congestion it tends to break stuff, especially streaming. I said on TBB I am happy e.g. for policing to be used which keeps QoE high whilst lowering utilisation.

However VM do seem to disagree with you, if maximum speed isnt important than why are they doubling it? Their historical and current behaviour suggests maximum speed is "all" they care about.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Because that's all most customers understand. Mention latency or throughput and their eyes glaze over whereas 300mbs is a great willy waver. :(

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Yet VM usually turn up last on every metric except download speeds... Upstream, jitter, packet loss, DNS, stability, shaping, bufferbloat, etc., pretty much everything measured by the Samknows box aside from download speeds.

Perhaps they should worry some more.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

They don't seem to care about quality of experience or speed here. At peak times I can't stream iPlayer or YouTube, browsing is noticeably less responsive, and you can forget about online gaming as latency is all over the place. In my opinion Virgin Media should be banned from selling broadband to new customers on any part of the network suffering these extreme levels of utilisation. That would soon get them to sort it out.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

:)

Dont worry, the headline speeds will save the day.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

I was writing in the context of capacity planning.

---------- Post added at 22:52 ---------- Previous post was at 22:50 ----------

Many of those are due to the joys of DOCSIS. Packet loss I don't think they're the worst for though.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Really interesting stuff, I'd long suspected that planning permission had nothing to do with streetworks but was just a good "catch-all" explanation.

Didn't realise streetcabs were exempt though. Sad to read in a few other posts that investment since the LG takeover's actually getting worse - I thought the opposite was the case. HO hum.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

There are complications in conservation areas. Where we live, BT has not enabled our local cabinet for FTTC even though all the cabs in the surrounding area have been updated for years.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

The rules for permitted development rights do vary from area to area, but in general unless it's a sensitive area most telecoms and utility street cabs are covered.

Re: Oversubscribed areas?
 

Not for 5 years. Cabinets are permitted development for a while even in conservation areas.