Re: Upstream congestion
 

Tbf, the IP address on Virgin rarely changes. But yeah, would be nice to have the option.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

My suggestion would to take your congestion issues up with the CEO office if it continues for longer to at minimum free you from your contract. If you go with a FTTC you can request a move of the master socket which would cost £99 I believe (Or if they are charging you the fee for the new line and an engineer is attending he might move it no issues.)

Depends how reliant on latency and peering you are plusnet were actually really good for me 14ms latency 0 jitter but when it came to 7-12pm on a nightly basis i'd lose half my speed on download and the ping would be worse. Seemed to be a BTWholesale issue at the exchange.

I've moved to IDNet who are switching me over to the TTB Network which will sort out those issues.



Just for a little advice as far as congestion goes.. I have vm business also my other line 350mb regularly until recently when 24 downstreams(from 16) were added i was getting drops in peak times on download to around 180-220. I was told this was to be 'accepted' and this is from business support.

Can only imagine from VM residential aslong as your download is fine they are gonna literally do nothing till they get X amount of complaints from customers in your area.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I do have a complaint open with CEO office. I've only received an acknowledgement email with a reference number. Nothing since. This was back at the start of November. Looks as though I'm going to have to send a letter via recorded delivery, to push things a long.


This is pretty much what is happening. The VM staff on their forum, who I have no issue with but seem to only be allowed to give out limited info, say that it can only be raised when it breaks a threshold. But they can't tell me what that threshold is. I'm guessing it's so embarrassingly high, that it would be damaging to VM if it was put on a public forum.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

I was told by the pretty well educated guy on VM Business that my area was 96% utilised and that wasn't quite hitting the target.

If i were you and you can do without the download speed email the CEO and they call you back. In my exp i was contacted within a week of sending the email.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

That's not quite how they measure utilisation. I can almost guarantee that no area is 96% utilised because % utilised by itself is almost meaningless.

96% of the total capacity being used would either be completely unusable as that remaining 4% would be whatever's left over out of hours and at peak times congestion would be abysmal OR 96% peak capacity would be absolutely fine because everyone's getting full speed and there's still 4% of capacity left for growth.

Rather, "96%" needs to be qualified with another stat - the time it's at 96% for. Hitting 96% for 5hours+ might be cause for concern, but hitting 96% peak for a few mins is fine. There's always going to be times when all bandwidth is being used - think peak times when a major event is happening, like the world cup. It's generally accepted that you cannot expect Virgin to provision enough capacity for 100% of customers to get 100% of their speed at all times - that's just far too expensive to do. Instead, virgin (And other ISP's) allocate enough capacity so that the majority of the time, people get the speeds they pay for. It's hitting that balance between cost (to you and Virgin) and availability that's tricky.

Years ago, in the bad old days, it was something like 98% capacity used for greater than 90% of the time before Virgin would upgrade the area. When I worked there, it was something like >95% usage for >10% of the time in a 7 day period was when it got logged. Over time, they got more and more proactive with the stats but I don't know what they are today.

It's also worth pointing out that just because an area hit those thresholds doesn't mean it would get scheduled in, just that the ticket would get raised. Areas were prioritised based on budgets and need, i.e. the worst areas got fixed first or the most customers got fixed for the best bang/buck.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Thank you for the info. Just passing on the little information I was given by UK Business support.

Generally nobody expects 350 24/7 but when it drops to less than half what you pay for or even lower then questions needs to asked and when you're given some blase response that its to be accepted as that from 'Tech Support' it sums up how they work.


Luckily my area recently went to 24 Downstreams which fixed the issue until obviously they pack more customers onto the cmts or offer a free upgrade. only time will tell.

Having the 2 lines makes it viable for everything really and its under £120 a month total so it's working out atm.

One line for Streaming to twitch/Games/latency required applications.

One line for downloading large files and general YT/Prime/Streaming

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Bit of an update, had a reply from the VM forum staff with regards to an issue with SNR and FECS.

I guess this is upstream SNR. Wonder if it’s related to a bit of an issue earlier on which required a reboot.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/18.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Connection is totally down now. Nothing on the service status, so I’ll have to call in tomorrow morning if it’s still down.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Got a bit more info via the VM Twitter team.

Connection was down most of the night.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/21.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Does anyone know if this number is from Virgin?

01895 461320‬

Had three missed calls from it today. Quick Google suggests it’s tech support but it doesn’t seem to accept incoming calls. Just wanted to check it was genuine.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

That's because a lot of teams in call centers can only ring out. They dont want you to ring them directly because they need you to go through 1st line/customer services who can open and ticket and take your info and then pass it along. It is all about efficiency and time management.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

True, didn’t think of that. If it is technical support, they must be being pro-active as I’ve not requested it. Which is no bad thing.

Re: Upstream congestion
 

So, back to congestion again. Will have to see what is said on the thread I have running on the VM forum. Depending on that, I’ll have to seriously look at other providers. Not paying nearly £50 per month for a connection like this.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2018/01/2.png

Re: Upstream congestion
 

that looks like peak time congestion (weekend + evening) between 5 and 10

Re: Upstream congestion
 

Weird thing is, I can still get around 300Mb on a speed test when it’s like that. I tried around 6 ish yesterday, where one of the first peaks is and got that, but the upload was around 6Mb. Then, it’s not always like that every evening which is probably why VM aren’t that interested in doing something about it. Seems as though a few people are hammering the upload at random intervals.