Strange speeds this morning.
 

As far as I was aware you can't get faster speeds than the hub is provisioned for so i'm finding this weird to say the least. I'm on 100mb and the hub shows the correct 115000000 rate for the download but this morning my download speed has started going crazy. At first i thought it was just the DU Meter app on windows having a meltdown so i started checking manually.

Speetests (Ookla, Thinkbroadband and the BT one) are coming back anywhere between 170mb and 260mb ish on the PC, torrents are showing as ~30MB/s in the client and look to actually be downloading at that rather than just showing it, even my PS4 is showing ~200mb on it's own connection test.

The only thing i've changed recently on the hub was to open a port. Any ideas why the weird behaviour all of a sudden?

The only time i've ever noticed wrong readings on DU Meter or speedtests in the past is when using a VPN (don't have one running now) but that never affected actual downloads of torrents and definitely not the PS4 seeing as it can't run one.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

To get 30Mb/sec you would have to be on vivd300 at least.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Yeah, not really sure what's going on. It's all very strange.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/13.png

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Have you tried rebooting the shub?

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Just rebooted now and still the same.

If it was just one device showing higher speeds i'd put it down to something wrong with it but everything connected via both wifi and wired are showing it (apart from the Fire TV but it never shows anything above 80mb anyway).

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

did you check your config after the reboot?

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Yeah config still says what it should, 115000000.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

So you are getting higher than you should ?

Id just keep quiet and enjoy it :D

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Yeah, they dropped back to the normal 105-110 ish last night when i checked at 8pm but are back to ~265 this morning.

No complaints :D just find it weird.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

I know this is a stretch but it would be interesting to see if they are trialling some form of flexible bandwidth system where they guarantee a minimum speed and is what you pay for (e.g. 100mbits) but if more bandwidth is available during off peak periods they let you have it.

I doubt it is happening because other users would have reported it as well (and on other tiers) but it is an interesting concept.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Brave! I would have just left it in case the reboot made it slower :D

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

That thought crossed my mind lol.

Been testing with some large files this afternoon, for example a 4GB file took 2m 28s which roughly fits the speeds i'm seeing so i'd say it's definitely not just something messing with readings.

I'll check again later and see if it drops during peak hours.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Interesting if they are doing this, but as has been mentioned your speeds should be limited to the config file surely?

Can you post a screenshot of your config? Just wondering if there's anything on there about downstream burst etc

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

There's nothing on the config that indicates i should be getting anything other than the normal 100mb package speeds. They did do some work in the area very recently where the service was down and when it came back up we have 24 down channels and 3 up, but from other posts on here that just sounds more like the normal upgrades they've been doing for a while.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/16.png

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Hmm yeah that is strange, should never be able to exceed the traffic rate in the config file as far as i'm aware

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

You'd be surprised at how few users actually know what speeds they're really getting.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

As others have said, the config file sent to the router is to lock the hardware at that speed so without that changing, the router will not give you faster speeds.

So getting faster speeds is likely to do with some kind of compression of packets rather than something similar on a protocol level as you are seeing it across the board and not just HTTP.

Transparent proxies and stuff compressing stuff and your browser expanding can make HTTP much faster than your connection allows as an example which is easy to visualise.

Just an after-thought...does the router have a VM internal IP address too (for management or something?) and if so, would that be locked to the same speed as the config file gives for public WAN? Just wondered if in that setup, some confusion could cause the problem. Have you done a traceroute while it's at the faster speed?

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

I don't have any proxies or vpns running that would affect it, even if i did the PS4 can't use one yet it is also reading the higher speeds. It was the first thing i checked as an old VPN i used used to make upload speed look like it was doing double time when it really wasn't. I do some times use one on the Fire TV but it's irrelevant.

Not quite sure what you're talking about with the internal router IP. What am i supposed to look for in a tracert?

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

VM would be the ones doing the compression of traffic, which would would give a similar false reading as a speedtest on a VPN. Even with a file download, if they are compressing it, you could get a faster speed than what your modem is getting if you can uncompress it quick enough. I gave HTTP as an example as browsers do thing like gzip part of a page and google has its own new compression for browsers.

As for the tracert, just see if there is an unusual route or extra hop, although the absence of anything doesn't mean something isn't being done with the traffic either :P

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Ah i can understand that, as in aware it happens (with vpn anyway) even if not the how.

As for the tracert, I wouldn't know what to look for:

Edit - speeds haven't dropped during peak times tonight.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Depends what the OP was downloading, but I doubt it generally only things I see compress that much thesedays are virtual machine images where the disk is mostly sparse or large text documents/log files.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Interesting. I posted recently reporting that the Virgin Media speed test software, that you can install on your PC, was giving me upstream results well over my upstream provisioning. I'm provisioned for 22Mb, but get up to 30Mb regularly. (Just now tested at 27Mb.)

This might be relevant. During the test, it bursts to over 100Mb, drops below 22Mb, but then settles well over 22Mb. On all other multi-thread tests I get the expected 21Mb. I'm guessing there is a problem with the VM software, because my processor remains at 5%.


Is it possible that your processor is getting stressed by the typical flash-based test? It might be worth checking processor usage during the test. Do you get exaggerated bursts of speed? This could suggest a stressed processor.

But, then you say that you get the same results on a file download method. Now, that is puzzling.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

I believe they are going to change the law so that companies have to be more honest about the true BB speed when advertising them, so this could be in preparation for that??

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

I doubt it as it would give those with a good connection a higher speed for nothing.

It is not a ruling for them to be more honest but more realistic. BB speeds will be based on what 50% of customers get rather than the present 10%.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Still getting the same speeds, PS4 is downloading a game at 30MB/s ish right now.

@roughbeast as i said before, if it was just one device i'd be sceptical but it's all.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

My modem has had a brain fart this morning

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/34.png

No idea whats going on there

And again

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/35.png

Crazy jumps and back to normal :(

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/12/36.png

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Mine is now back to normal speeds, not sure when it happened but sometime in the past 2 or 3 days. Nothing changed on my end.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

I've been back on the silly speeds on and off over the past month. I haven't paid attention to the time of day but occasionally it's at a normal ~12MB/s but a lot of the time it's more like 30MB/s, such as this morning.

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/02/3.png

Config is still set for 115000000. I am on 24 down and 3 up channels nowadays but not sure that would make any difference.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Getting a bit crazy now

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/02/21.png

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

If they slipped a zero in there to make the upstream 60 up instead of 6 that would be a superb new tier to move up to. I think it was only yesterday that i was saying in another thread that 500/50 should be the next sensible tier on docsis 3.1 but 600/60 is a nice inbetween and then they can make the jump to 1gbit.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

I wonder who the lucky 18% are who get better than that :shocked:

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

I think they use the upload speed as part of the "faster than" thing.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

well spotted. That makes me think that speedtest.net is reporting an incorrect result to the user because as you can see below my significantly slower speed is faster than 98% of the population which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that nearly one in five people (1/5) have a connection greater than 600mbits. It is more likely that kabaal is getting around the 150mbits mark and it is being mis-reported some how. I know last year they were doing fttp trials in some remote village up north where they were getting gigabit speed but that has got to be less than 0.1% of the population.

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/02/23.png




possibly but that wouldn't account for the 82%, if anything I would expect it to be significantly less. I know plenty of people who are on Openreach 76/20 (or equivalent from another isp) so your 6mbits up pales in comparison and definitely wouldn't be faster than four out of five users. 6mbits up and 82% faster than everyone else actually sounds like a 100/6 connection.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Nah speedtest isn't reporting it wrong, i'm actually seeing those speeds in real time. I only did the speedtest tonight as i noticed uTorrent was reporting the file i was nabbing was coming in a 57MB/s which was a bit of a shock.

For example Linux test file just now, not quite hitting the speeds i was getting earlier but close and certainly not the 100mbps / 12MB/s ish i'm supposed to get :)
[https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/02/25.png

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Is your config still showing your "normal" rate?

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

It's not the first time Virgin was testing higher speeds, they did it with 350Mbit.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

To me it looks like you’ve triggered a bug in the modems firmware, whether this is caused by you opening a port is up for debate… It looks like your modem is not regulating your download, it’s allowing you to use all the available capacity.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

sweet, but it doesn't bode well for us all having a 500mbit connection if 500mbits is the only capacity left.

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Let's say I am correct (let's be honest we're all guessing), there could be many reasons why he isn't able to utilise ALL the available capacity.

• Other users downloading, congestion
• Superhub / Modem CPU unable to cope with download speeds
• Not enough upload available to send ACKs quick enough
• Virgin Media network config not designed for speeds over 350Mb.

Or a million other reasons :D!

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

I wonder if OP remembers which / if any, changes they made before they noticed this?

Re: Strange speeds this morning.
 

Not sure tbh, all i remember is following an online guide so none of it stuck in my mind but glancing through the various google results just now none of them seem to suggest changing anything unusual so i'd guess i didn't either.