Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I know this has been alluded many times and in many places, but the 200Mbit service is being particularly affected, it seems:

Sauce: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...eak-times.html

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I have noticed this as well.

If it keeps up, I will be contacting Customer Services.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Interesting, I'm moving back to a VM cabled area shortly and was planning to go for the 200Mbps package, I'm thinking I might as well go for the 150 now...

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I have yet to see 200mbit, fastest I've seen is about 180Mbit, it seems to hang around 170Mbit. This is actually an improvement than before where I was often hitting speeds of less than 50mbit during peak times.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Hmmm, can't decide whether to give it a go and downgrade if the 200 is no good.

In the past we've always hit the top speeds 99% of the time in our area (NE6) on 50, 100 and 152 so I was hoping it'd be the same for 200 but this issue seems more widespread than the usual area congestion.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I must be one of the luckier ones, I haven't seen my 200Mb/s drop below 200 really, it's generally 209.5Mb/s.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Igni just posted these stats on the VM community forum and someone accused him of not knowing what he was talking about. I love a bit of good comedy, but when someone says:
When the source is clearly stated as the SK speed box system is oh so fun.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Just when I thought I could finally stop insulting VM for having the most visible contention and peak-time congestion of any UK ISP, they turn around and do this.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I agree with Qas, my connection may be fine but there's tons of issues with Virgin Media, the peering for one can be absolutely terrible at times and I have noticed a degradation of speeds and pings to other countries (USA & Europe) since some of it has been migrated to Aorta/UPC - Liberty Globals network, my pings have doubled in the last few years too, I used to consistently get 5 - 10ms to London but now it is 15 - 25ms, that may not sound bad but compared to what it was, to have that kind of network degradation seems poor form.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

You probably do right. I'm on 150 and always get about 158.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

150 comes with 10meg upload, I dont think an extra 2meg upload justifies £7 extra per month for 200meg

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Speed tested 10 minutes ago, can't complain:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4859781241

I can certainly believe that VM hasn't done enough network improvement in busier areas to enable the upgrades.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Not surprised about this.

Here is my Sam Knows data from the last 7 days, make of it what you will ;)

Attachment 26395

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

This is far worse than the "average of 130Mbps" during peak periods .. I have requested to join the SK project and I suspect I will get a similar graph.

I have tried in the past complaining to the VM CEO but since we are into the 4th year of overutilsation, this did not have the desired effect :(

Should we email the CEP of Liberty Global to see what happens?

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I don't pay any extra.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Some people do

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Yep not worth the £7/m extra, 150 will do us (more than) fine :)

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I've got my letter now to say the bill is going up and was going to ring and kick off and try and get the 200MB early, but not sure I will ever see it if I even bother.

I also seen that guy you're talking about Stop It, seems to have hushed up a little.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

There is no 150 package now .. it's 50 100 and 200

---------- Post added at 16:20 ---------- Previous post was at 16:16 ----------

And just to let anyone that's on Vivid200 know . if you were on 152 and got upgraded to Vivid200 then there is no going back to 152 if you have problems with the 200 service. They don't have access to 152 config codes anymore so you need to go down to Vivid 100..

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I thought the new speeds were 70mb , 150mb , 200mb is that not correct ?

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

SuperFibre 50

Vivid100 and Vivid200

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

We've got a solid 70, actually topped out at 73Mbs when I saturated the link with torrents today. :)

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

The guy was asking about new speeds . if you were on 50 you got upgraded to 70 but you cant order 70 ..


http://store.virginmedia.com/broadba...u_click_bbonly

50 100 and 200 are the only 3 speeds new customers are able to order

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

I've been able to upgrade customers to xl150

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Just going by what i was told today when i called regarding issues with my Vivid200 connection .. i was told by 3 different people that i could not be put back on 150 if i decided i never wanted Vivid200 anymore.First call was to retentions the other 2 were to the tech guys..

i had a rock solid connection when i was on the 150 before.The Vivid 200 is borked and has been since day one..

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

If your on bug kahuna then you can't downgrade to 150

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Well an average is an average. If the average is 130Mbps then you know 50% of people are getting less than 130Mbps. You could reach that average by 50% of people getting 200Mbps and 50% of people getting 60Mbps.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

That's not what I learnt at school, remember mean, mode, median all have definitions of 'average'. You are using median, the default is usually mean?

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Yea i know that bud lol if you look at my sig you can see i'm on standalone bb here.. They were adamant on the phone to me today that they don't have access to 150 config codes anymore.They have a choice of 3 codes now and that's it .50 100 and 200 ,


If you think that is incorrect then that's good news for me lol :) if you can confirm that then i will have a go at them again tomrw and try and get put back on the 150 product again :)

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Given the normal distribution of these things the three are close enough for most people, especially in the absence of more accurate figures.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

You are right. It would be good to get a graph from SK profiling the peak speeds :)

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

SK certainly have the graphs but ultimately it requires VM(or any ISP if we want a comparison) to authorise their release.
However you haven't clarified whether you literally want UK monthly average "peak downstream rates" and/or "peak upstream rates" or perhaps download speeds during peak hours for weekdays during calendar month, by week or even days?

Many (undisclosed) stats I can blame VM for but I can't blame them for not publishing until all their ISP competitors agree to do likewise!

As Disraeli once said: "There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics"
As already stated/implied by others 130Mps is only an "average" of 3 SK "normalised" hourly plots of 8,9 & 10pm for the percentage of 700 to 1400 SK trialists contributions UK wide on V200 tier for a October calendar month (of weekdays) which represents 65% of headline speed.
However Sept yielded 107 for 152 Tier = 70% and you find lower tiers varied between 83% for 100Mbps and 96% for 50Mbps.

All that illustrates is what some of us already know and most already suspect that there's a percentage of cable segments in congestion and thus higher tiers typically suffer the worst percentage degradation on headline during peak hours.

That doesn't mean VM is not addressing "congestion" in ALL areas. If I compare my V200 SK D/S speeds for
October = 118(8-10pm) 173 daily avg
November = 156(8-10pm) 189 daily avg

Whereas using a SK monitor on another Brighton node/cable segment:
Oct = 124(8-10pm) 194 daily avg.
Nov = 180(8-10pm) 201 daily avg

Neither of these indicate which of the two cables segments had an Arris E6000 and 16channel upgrade on 15th October.... or whether the Hubs were on same 8 channel or 16channel bonding group for the whole period?

VM (nor SK) publish how many samples (SK Trialists) exist but from OfCom figures the active samples (for all BB ISP's) appear to be ~1400.
My own unauthoritative guess is only a max of 700-1000 samples are included at any one time and because we also don't have the average Tier demographics either I personally suspect these are in a 60:30:10 ratio which yields max 100 Vivid200 across UK.

Thus I have no way of formulating how the remaining 98 on V200 Tier compare nor how quickly upgrades/speedboosts will rollout but as crude dipstick to meet 90% rollout (VM advertisement) of V200 by year end then I'd expect the Oct 130 peak will need to raise to 143 in Nov, 156 in Dec and 169 there on.

As stated I'm not sure what "peak speed" profile you're seeking and for all the aforementioned reasons I'm not sure exactly what conclusion you'd draw from it even if VM unilaterally provided it?
However fwiw here's hour-of-day average for one BN3 node in November:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/egs14jbhtx...38.28.png?dl=0

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

OFCOM do publish peak speeds last I checked...

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Ours is getting better. Data from SK shows peak time downstream on 152/200 service has increased from 1Mb to 80Mb but most of the time we do get just over 200Mb as reported by SK.

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

This is really interesting, thank you. I guess the metric that I would be interested in, as it affects us directly, is what percentage of segments are overutilised. Now how you define "overutilised" could be subjective of course but maybe a crude definition is how many segments have peak speeds that drop below the headline speed of the tier beneath. Or, you could use the definition of segments have open utilisation related fault tickets ..

VM would never release this numbers but if you look at the VM Speed forum (http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Speed/bd-p/Speed), it seems a lot more active with possible utilisation related complaints than when I was last frequenting the place ..

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

They seem to have sorted out our area.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/at...6&d=1448984645

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator

Re: Virgin Media’s New 200Mbps Package Drops to 130Mbps at Peak Times
 

Thank you.