Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

...and a number of people in these forums said I would get congestion on Sky fibre too after it got more popular. Figured an update is in order.

Not a single day or hour of congestion in the whole time I have been with them...until now. Check out that evil blip at 3:30am this morning! :p:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...05-12-2015.png

In all seriousness though, there was a day outage in December 2013 (2 years ago) when copper thieves ransacked an important exchange and took tons of people offline in the process. Another time there was a 6 hour outage which affected the area.

So to summarize, 4 years of service, 1.3 days down time, no congestion at all, always hit the full download speed, latency has stayed rock bottom and there has never been any jitter issues.

So glad I moved from the horrible Virgin Media broadband which constantly had congestion problems over many years. Also glad the nay-sayers who said I would get congestion on Sky Fibre were wrong :)

Although it's refreshing not having the stress of bad broadband, I would like to try Andrews and Arnold out as an ISP but wish they were a bit cheaper. My extremely bad VM broadband experience has permanently made me worried about switching provider from one that just works flawlessly day after day though. Scarred for life :D

So how many of you VM customers who were not suffering before, have suffered their congestion since I left for broadband bliss?

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

I think I may have left VM for Sky Fibre at around the same time as you.

I am happy to report that I have had absolutely no issues with the service at all.

Yeah it's maybe a little expensive and the supplied Hub is pretty naff but all in all comparing it to the unreliable, congested and traffic managed VM service is like comparing Dell boy's 3 wheeler with a Rolls.

The best move I ever made for sure.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Pleased that you have had reliable service.

Sorry to tell you I am not suffering from congestion - oh, occasionally my 200Mb/s drops to 170/180 or so, but I can live with that...

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Apart from one or two issues in these last 10 years we are perfectly happy with our service and have no intention of jumping from the frying pan into the fire with our broadband.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

In 12 years as an NTL/VM customer I have only had a total of 3 days loss of service and my 150Mb connection rarely drops below 154Mb.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

I had an absolute nightmare with Sky Fibre and downtime (Speeds were really good though)

Virgin I had from 2mbit to 152mbit over the years and had downtime hours/day but nothing as serious as the trouble I had trying to get Sky Fibre in. Some things just weren't meant to be :D

I don't think I was ever throttled on Virgin either although I think where I lived played a big part in that, so much that I had an entire cabinet to myself. Was never throttled on Sky either though.

So it works both ways to be fair. Both products do what they're meant to do for the majority. Bound to get complaints for either.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

So you are getting congestion, but not "suffering" enough for it to count? :rolleyes:

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

and im sure his tbb graph mirrors Qtx's one above :rolleyes:

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Speaking of latency, took you a while to respond to that... ;)

I have more latency than qtx, but I really haven't got any tosses to give about it - I don't suffer from latency-envy.

I really don't understand the ISP flame-wars that some people like to take part in - it's like the silly Star Trek vs Star Wars fanboi disputes that seeme to be based on the false assumption if you don't like the same as someone, there's something wrong with you.

I am pleased that qtx is happy with his service/supplier, and would hope that is reciprocal.

btw, my speeds returned to consistent 200+Mb/s.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

At the end of the days it depends on what you are using your connection for.

Gamers would love qtx's connection whereas Hugh most likely doesn't do gaming and is happy with the speed and latency.

Horses for courses.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

when do you ever need 200mb? Give me examples of when you actually need 200mb?

I know what my internet download speed is, I know how many people live in my house. I know what our connection is used for. I cannot think of 1 time our connection was so maxed out it was unusable.

So 200mb users, what do you need 200mb for?

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Hugh is a horse and VM is a course?

Or is it the other way round

I'm confused

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Been with cabled services since Diamond cable in 98/99 and for the last 8 years I've had about 4 days downtime and pretty much zero congestion. 24/7 stability with VM is a blessing.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Why should anyone, who are you the internet speed police?

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Well I have had cable since the late 90's with Nynex. When the NTL/VM Broadband started it was good an dhas always been faster than anything else.

Right now though I think speeds are getting to a point where faster doesn't matter anymore but congestion and latency does.

We have a household of six including three teenagers and one nearly teenager, latency = bad gaming = grief for parents.

The last six months with VM have been truly awfull, cataclysmically bad with peak time, which I mean anything from 15:00 to 23:30 , service on my 152Mb connection chugging along at between 2 and 10 Mb. its so slow at times it might as well not be there.

I don't want 200Mb, I just want a fast reliable connection. After constant loyalty to the cable fold I am very close to changing to BT as we can get Infinity 2 and I am confident a stable 75Mb connection will suit our needs better than the peaky unreliable service I have today.

Working from home today and now, when there is no one else around, the connection bumbles along at between 145Mb and 160Mb. Just wish it was 100Mb 24/7
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...0-01-2016.html

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Neither do I. I personally get a generally reliable 150Meg from Virgin (although it has been a little flaky over the last few days). I don't game online, so latency is not an issue for me (I realise there are other things that can be affected by latency, but these still do not mean latency is an issue for me). If you get good service on any ISP, good, I am happy for you. If you don't, and they fail to fix it, move. That's the beauty of capitalism, in most things, you have a choice of suppliers.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

I have been with VM for a long time with an NTL address, I have had no problem at all.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

I can and do understand it. You will always get those who say X ISP is better then Y ISP purely from their experience.

All ISP's have problems in one area or another and it will affect users in that area only or it will be a full network fault.

The problem is, if it is a local fault (such as congestion) only those in the area will complain and who is their first port of call? --India who say everything is OK. This is not just isolated to VM but BT and some other ISP's.

I see it happening on a daily basis over several forums (or should it be Fora?).

Of them all though it would appear to be the case that VM take longer than any other to resolve a congestion problem.

I'm willing to be proved wrong though.:D

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Consider yourself lucky, I would love to be able to say the same and until last autumn I could. I have been a cable customer since the Nynex days and its only in the six months that the service has imploded. !60Mb at from 09:30 to roughtly 15:00, then down to 2Mb to 8Mb between 15:00 and 22:30, building back to 160mb at 01:30.

if it was reliable I would be a happy camper. Its not reliable, I get no feeling of urgency or remorse on the part of VM. They seem to think its fine simply to push back the fix dates time and time again.

the last six months has undermined the previous nearly 20 years of service simply due to the attitude and lack of transparency. I can't even leave without a contract penalty even though I feel I have been totally missold this connection when I moved house.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

What is the difference from X isp. And. Y isp. This is a puzzle to me

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

The way they manage their network behind the scenes can make a difference to how fast it runs, and how responsive it is. This is important if, for example, you play online games where you need response times to be as low as possible.

For most people, most of the time, it makes no difference whatsoever, all you would worry about is that it works, and how much you're paying for it. But for some people ... well, read this thread and judge for yourself. ;)

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Just bumbling along. :roll eyes:

---------- Post added at 22:22 ---------- Previous post was at 22:20 ----------

So not bumbling along at 160Mb during the day then as reported by you?

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Confused.....

My point is that my connections bumbles along quite nicely during the day on the OCCASIONS when I work from home, a service and performance I am quite happy with, Bumbling along is my slang for quite nicely. But, when the family want to use the service between 15:30 and 22:00 the network is crippled with slow downloads and very erratic latency.

When you think about the times of day when the majority of the six in our household actually need the service its totally pants.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Price, speeds, technology , reliability , content, customer service,

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Glad to see some of you have had no issues. Also seen that some of you although have had no problems have since switched to Sky anyway. I assume due to package deals, rather than broadband performance.

One thing I find funny and a bit hypocritical is someone talking about latency envy while making a point of saying how large their e-penis, I mean broadband speed, is :D Something they don't need and will hardly make full usage of. When they do, its likely throttled too :)

I have a 2.5gbit connected server but the disk write speed is a bottleneck when downloading, so I feel that pain and it's not even network congestion, but congestion none-the-less!

Although a small sample, I really thought more of you would have had congestion problems since. I don't keep up with everything so much so it's hard to get an overall view of the congestion situation from a peek at VM forums of people with problems here. Especially as most only post when they have problems. It makes me wonder if VM are actually getting on top of their local congestion problems.

Anyway, another 6 months on and still a boringly simple graph of my connection

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...23-09-2016.png

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

:tu:

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

I had 3 days out in 7 years with virgin. Consistently had 180-205mb downstream I love it, it's just too expensive now. Money talks. Now getting about 30-35mb on the sky fibre. The only difference I notice is downloading large files.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Feel like I should probably post here, having been fairly active on here in the past.

I finally left Virgin Media. I switched to AAISP and I can't be happier.

The speed is lower, but it's consistent and the latency is considerably better. People talk about Virgin Media's contention issues like "oh well it drops to 150Mbps from 200Mbps so it's fine right?".

Trust me, that's not how it works at all. What I'm mostly amazed by is how my VDSL line (running at 60Mbps) seems to be far more capable of streaming on Twitch / YouTube than my Virgin Media service ever was. The service in general just works better, with less random inexplicable issues.

But the real reason I quit is simple - Virgin Media customer service is utterly useless and after having over 2 weeks of no broadband from Virgin Media and having dealt with their useless customer service who could do nothing but book an engineer for dates far into the future I left.

I'm aware that there are *some* good customer service reps at Virgin Media, or rather, I'd like to believe that, but I was never able to reach anything close to one. That and it seems that if there's ever contention issues with Virgin Media, well quite frankly I'm not convinced they ever actually get fixed long term.

The VM service did resume eventually, but by that point I was a happy AAISP user. That and it doesn't help that it's not the first time the connection has gone down inexplicably, for hours or even days.

I wouldn't say everyone should make this switch - if you're happy with Virgin Media, that's fantastic, but if not you should definitely consider the other options out there. It's so incredibly refreshing to deal with a company with such excellent customer service who don't treat you like an idiot when there's a fault.

Oh also it's lovely to be with an ISP that sticks with their principles - no filtering, no traffic management or throttling anywhere on their network. Lovely.

I'm pretty sure Qtx's graph is one hell of an anomaly - during the 5 years I was with VM my connection was nothing even remotely like that. Jitter all the way across the sky.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Qtx's graph is his Sky connection.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

As Pip said, that graph is my Sky connection. Been that steady for the last 4 years, even after a house move. Before that I had a couple of years of Jitter hell with VM due to congestion.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

My Sky BB that was installed 2 days ago

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...14-10-2016.png

My VM BB

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...14-10-2016.png

---------- Post added at 20:30 ---------- Previous post was at 20:27 ----------

Was on 200Mb, but tbh, I don't need that speed anymore as I stream never everything and VM connection was giving me grief on certain MMO's and FPS's.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

I'll be on Sky fibre max later on today. VM couldn't offer a deal. So sad.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Hopefully, like me, you will have no regrets.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...18-10-2016.png

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

argh the joy of living in a flat lol the installer couldn't get access to a communal cupboard which I never knew of being on VM since moving in. Anyway its going to have to be booked in again. I do look forward to these pingys lol :D

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Bollards :(

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

New install date of 31st October. I hope all goes well or that door is getting taken off or even the damn lock! I'm surprised OpenReach or even I don't have the key for the cupboard. It does have drop cables in it that look BT :shrug:

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

had VM bb for over 20 year only had 1 prob we had a big area fault would not change BB ever

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

How does it take for Sky customers to get the broadband up and running from the date of install of Sky line? I've had the telephone installed today but I've been told to wait for the broadband, it should be up and running shortly after the install of the telephone. The installer said my broadband wasn't tagged at the cabinet so I have to wait for the broadband which sucks ! I have the Sky Hub up awaiting a nice smiley face on the hub it's currently flashing orange.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Finally up and running

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2016/11/5.png

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...11-11-2016.png

also 14k posts :woot:

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

:tu:

Looking good :)

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Which I had FTTC available on my street!! :(

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

your back :shocked::D:LOL:

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

His back? What about it?

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

Hi Thenry, Nice to have you back

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

How do you set the long test up on Sky Fibre?

I can never get it to work.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

The Sky Hub is set to respond to ping so it should be fine. Have a look at your settings via 192.168.0.1

Howdy :D

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

I already tried it but after I went out and checked on it later I just had a big red block.

Re: Left Virgin 4 years ago...
 

192.168.0.1

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