300 Mb now connected.
 

I have just had my 300Mb upgrade. No problems to report. One -year contract with a slight price reduction.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2016/07/6.png

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

sweet

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Is that the Homeworks+ 300Mbit?

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Yes, Homeworks. I don't particularly require their home configuration / troubleshooting service, but F-Secure comes as part of the package. I have ended my previous 8-device subscription to that. So, overall I have gained a few bob.:)

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

how much did you pay in the end for the service david

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Nice! I scored a 500 day trial of Eset security at a conference a while ago and have been happily using that. I did use F-secure before this (I think it came from Virgin) but was rather underwhelmed.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

F-Secure has served me well, in the sense that it has dealt with a variety of potential infections whilst using very little processor capacity.

F-secure comes out better in reviews. However, I do also run SpyHunter, (very very low on resources.) to deal with rootkits.

http://antivirus.softwareinsider.com...Smart-Security

We are getting a bit off topic now.

Thinking of Superhub 3, I have no issues with performance compared with SH2, but the TBB graph is a mess.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...18-07-2016.png

Having said that BufferBloat is better than on the 200Mb SH2. (B instead of C on DSL Reports.)

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Meanwhile here I am quite happy not using any AV software.

Some may say that's bad practice. They're probably right. That said on Windows you've got Windows Defender which seems to work rather well and on OS X Gatekeeper which I imagine most Mac users are happy with.

More on topic though, does the 300Mbps service offer some kind of SLA? If so I'd be more inclined to pay the extra and get a lovely speed bump out of it. Also that 20Mbps upload looks fantastic.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

HomeWorks + 300Mb is a residential service. So you get the same service and fault options as any other of the residential tiers.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Shame they dont just provide it as a speed upgrade at a lower price, I have no interest in all the fancy add on services and software.

In fact, not really that bothered about 300M v 200M, but i'd love the higher upload, I store a lot of stuff in the cloud including the nightly backups of all my PCs, so a faster upload of that data would be nice.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I came off homeworks a few weeks ago as i didn't think it offered value for money, i did not actually realise we where paying £20 a month and not the £13.99 advertised on there website until we took it off.

I tried to take advantage of the f-secure security software but i was told that i did not qualify for it as i had previously used it free years ago

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I had a good moan about that and got CS to admit that their Homeworks page didn't make it clear that previous beneficiaries of a 'free year' wouldn't get another free year. They agreed to contact F-secure who then let me start over as a new customer. It only save me £25 but was worth arguing in principle.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Exactly i was on chat to Virgin media yesterday about this and the best the could offer me was a small discount but on refection it I would end up still paying more than the advertised price. I don't need all the 24 hour IT support as i am capable of sorting any issues out with my computer myself and I personally don't trust anyone else poking around remotely into my system.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I'm pretty sure that shouldn't have happened.

HomeWorks is a paid package and F-Secure is part of that subscription payment. So whether you've had it the inclusive year or not, if you pay for HomeWorks (with or without 300Mb) you should get the F-Secure element.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

That`s what i thought but the person i was speaking to at the time was having none its an expensive upgrade and not being able to take advantage of the f-secure product made it just a £20 a month speed upgrade

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Sadly it did happen. Only perseverance on my part helped me win the point in the end.

Reading the Homeworks page now, there is absolutely no indication that those already subscribing to F-secure will NOT get a further free year. CS did acknowledge that the information was misleading.

I am now wondering about approaching the ombudsman after going through due process of course. ;)


http://store.virginmedia.com/discove...homeworks.html

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Also when i log into my virginmedia it says that homeworks is £13.99 for 2 years and then £19.99 after i could not get it for less than £20 a month ive even been quoted £28 a month previously.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

If it's only £9.99 extra per month I may take it out for 3 months to try it out.

[img][/img]

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

£9.99 is just for Homeworks. If you want 300Mb there's more to pay, i.e your £13.99 then, after a year, the £19.99. I'm still happy with it because I get 20Mb up!!

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I wanted this too but my area doesn't support it at the moment when I called :(

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Neither did mine until a few weeks ago. Hopefully you won't have to wait long.

Annoyingly, VM didn't notify me. I only discovered we had been enabled by typing in my postcode and clicking on a different house number than mine.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

My area should be enabled this summer, however I do not think I will be taking Homeworks+ given I will be keeping FTTC in addition.

Upcoming products also make me reluctant to contract in to Homeworks+. Unnecessarily large outlay for relatively little benefit.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

In your case that makes sense. You must already have at least 20Mb upstream.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I'm going to hang back for the product they release to compete with BT's G.fast rollout starting later in the year.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Isn't the minimum commitment 3 months?

That doesn't sound like too much of a risk

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

So they're releasing a product alongside their DOCSIS 3.1 modem, not just the modem first?

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Said future product will be DOCSIS 3.0. There is no need to deploy DOCSIS 3.1 for it.

This is DOCSIS 3.0 for example.

VM Ireland sell 360/36 on 3.0, too.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Yeah, with 16 channels I can see them pushing 500Mbit, I wouldn't imagine they'd want to push a whole lot more than that though.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Areas will be on more than 16 by year end.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Neat. The SH3 can do 24 Downstream, can't it?

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

It can bond 24 but obviously VM could deliver more than 24 and have modems load balance between them.

VM Ireland are doing 360Mb on 16 channels, Comhem have been selling 500Mb on 16 channel devices.

With the exception of Openreach, whose technology isn't shared anyway, many are selling closer to the full bandwidth than before. Hyperoptic for instance start off selling 1Gb on 1Gb backhaul.

VM in the past have sold 20Mb on 38Mb and 100Mb on 154Mb.

If you price the really hard core products high you get low uptake, low uptake means you need less capacity.

While the idea may make some people cringe 600Mb+ via the SH3 is perfectly feasible.

The moment they release DOCSIS 3.1, as a premium product, they can immediately sell a gig. The (up to) 192MHz OFDM block will supply all, or at least most, of what this tier needs. Sell it as a high price and take the PR win.

---------- Post added at 09:27 ---------- Previous post was at 09:23 ----------

Just to mention, with VM rebuilding networks as they are they'll have tons of room for DOCSIS 3.1 channels, something some of Comcast's networks lack.

VM are still using MP2 for video, so the change to MP4 will help a ton there and will recover bandwidth, as will changes to VOD to improve efficiency.

VM have fewer TV channels in use than Comcast.

VM are rebuilding to 1.2GHz. Given they have a bunch of 750MHz networks even without the MP2 and VOD efficiency changes they'll have a ton of spare bandwidth, more than enough to carry gigabits of DOCSIS 3.1 data.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I am surprised it took this long for them to dump MPEG2. I understand the need for backwards compatibility, but even so, it's such an old CODEC and better things have been around for over a decade. When you say MP4, is that H.264 then?

I wonder how premium 3.1 is going to be. Is it going to be like when 100Mbit came along, a new tier with a new cost that (eventually) gets merged with the lower tier as the network upgrades, or will it be the new "Vivid 200" tier or what?

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I would imagine it will be like the old 50Mb and 100Mb services were initially, with DOCSIS 3.1 CPE becoming more commodity hardware as time goes on. Think about the money VM are spending on the new 24 channel CPE. 3.1 renders those redundant. No way they'll be simply consigning every 'Vivid whatever' the customer is on the top tier at the time's SH3 to the scrapheap.

EDIT: I also imagine they will be wanting to bed the technology in and not throw too many punters on it at once. For a glorious but brief period I was the only customer on 3.0 on the entire Mortlake hubsite. Unsurprisingly, pings and jitter were rocking ;)

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I remember that when 50meg came out - glorious bandwidth, no STM, it was beautiful.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Just to point out that MPEG2 will still be used for SD content and channels as all the SD only boxes are only MPEG2 compatible.

MPEG4 is going to be used for HD only once the SA V+ HD swap activity is completed, as all the other HD boxes (V HD, Samsung V+ HD and TiVo) are MPEG4 compatible.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Makes sense. I'm guessing few/none of those have an MP4/h.264 encoder chip, to maximise space on the HDD?

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

All the MPEG4 compatible boxes will just record whatever format the channel is in, as I believe it's just a copy of the broadcast itself (with appropriate copy protection to stop it being ripped from the HDD).

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

That makes sense. Could be an interesting turn of events if recording in HD takes up less space than SD.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Depends on the channel broadcast quality I suppose. Not all channels in HD (or SD) take up the same HDD space even when all are in MPEG2 format.

So there would still be variables in size when HD swap to MPEG4.

Connecting that back to this thread, even when MPEG4 happens for all HD channels I doubt it'll be a direct halving of the bandwidth used.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

It all rather depends what bit rate (effective bandwidth) is used for the HD channels. After all it's quite possible to have an HD picture that is inferior to an SD that's been up-scaled if the bit rate is too low especially for motion. Same applies to 4K, if the bit rate is too low then the PQ will be crap irrespective of the codec in use.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Those were the days :p:

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

And my vmng300 :kiss:

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I'm beginning to feel a little nostalgic too. My 300Mb gloat, didn't last long.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Well I have given 300Mb a chance.

But the traffic shaping on usenet is a joke. 16Mb most evenings and then after midnight goes back to normal.

I don't leave it running all day either, my connection is not used while I am in the datacentre for 12 hours of the day, but if I want to come home and actually use Usenet in the evening to download say 5GB I get a whopping 1.64MB/s.

I have a server in France connected to exactly the same newsgroup provider and same connection settings and it maxes out at 30MB/s downloading the same articles which proves it is VM and their crumby network shaping.

Its an embarrassment to VM, I understand there is a need for traffic management, but because I want to use newsgroups in the evening I am basically paying for a 16Mb line.

Why should it matter if I want to download 5GB from Usenet or go to a FTP where I will get no traffic shaping and full speed?.

I am actually putting a complaint in with Ofcom, and that's being a customer for 20 years plus to VM.

Why should I be penalised because I want to download my files from Usenet in the evening?

In my town it is shaped the same every night, has been for a couple of months.

Then ring up VM and ask about if I have time left on a contract and they tell me 7 months, well we will see about that.

Ill give them one more chance tomorrow at Retentions before I start the ball rolling.

It shouldn't matter what protocol I want to use to download my 5GB a night, whether HTTP. FTP or Usenet. Its a joke! The whole reason I have 300Mb is because I want to download something fast, I'm out for 13hrs at work and when I get home I want to grab my whopping 5GB quickly not have to endure 1.64MB/s speeds.

Its an embarrassment to VM and I am......sorry used to be a big fan and advocate.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Ssh

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

Sorry ;) Anyone recommend a good alternative :D Have a nice evening all and ill report back on the conversation I have with retentions :)

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I meant SSH as in secure shell (encrypted) and not ssshhh as in be quiet.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

I'm on 200Mbit and downloaded 5.5GB on usenet last night at 16.5MB/sec which I put down to evening congestion as usually it maxes out the line at 25.9MB/sec. This was about 8.30pm using SSL port 443 to UsenetBucket in Holland

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

You mean SSL? ;)

I use newsgroups connecting on port 443 with SSL, don't usually see throttling.

Re: 300 Mb now connected.
 

thank you for the correction. I was thinking about it today and realised my mistake and thought "as soon as I get home from work I am going to have to fix it to avoid confusion" but you beat me to it :)