M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Putting in my postcode I notice online up the top it says M1000 is available in my area.

But when I phone Virgin they either have no idea what I'm referring to or say "It's Southampton only right now" (I'm in Oakley, Basingstoke. Part of project lightning FTTP RfOG network ultimately ending up at a Reading CTMS).

Is the website just being inaccurate or is the "expanding soon" potentially going to include us and the websites just a bit ahead of the game?
Or does the website say that for everyone and it's just wrong! I swear when I ordered 350 it only said 350!

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2019/12/7.png

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Just tried it with postcode RG23 7JA(Oakley, west of Basingstoke), and sure enough M1000 appears. No other info is there.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I agree that it's available in RG23 7JA (which is an RFoG area), but I can't guarantee it is available across the whole of Oakley. "It's Southampton only right now" is clearly nonsense, because it's in half of Manchester, as well as Reading.

PM me your full postcode if you want me to specifically check.

Must admit I haven't heard it called "M1000" before. Try asking for "Gig1" instead
https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/bro...abit-broadband

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I'm just down the street from RG237JA. If you could check RG23 7BL that would be cool!

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I just used the "RG23 7JA" postcode as an example of one starting "RG23 7". You can put in any valid postcode in the box to "what services are available in your area".

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Yep, it's available on your street too.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Depends on which house number. 1 Lightsfield can't get VM at all, No. 21 can get M1000. No. 2 labels it "Gig1".

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Yeah not all houses were fibred up when they came round last year. Caused uproar at the local parish. Half the street goes to the cabinet opposite my house (my home office view has me witnessing the installs quite often) but the other half another one round the corner.
My number labels it as M1000 but next door Gig1. I'll try phoning up again tomorrow and use the Gig1 term.

It never gives the option for anything above 500 on the webpage, which makes me wonder if there was an issue somewhere.

Thanks for checking everyone :)

---------- Post added at 19:43 ---------- Previous post was at 19:33 ----------

Just called up. Calling it Gig1 did the trick!
Upgraded on the spot and new hub is on the way.
£55 a month on a 12 month contract (paying £45 currently for 350 so it's a no brainer)! - I was shocked as was expecting £62.50 on a 18 month contract.

Thanks all for your help!!

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Whats the upload speed on this M1000/Gig1 ?

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

52Mbit/s. Which is the main downside IMHO. Especially as DOCISS3.1 is capable of much more symmetry than 3.0.

The only other downside is that although Virgin over provision (like they do on all their services) to 1,104Mbps they've only got bog standard 1GbE x 4 on the Hub 4. No SFP or 2.5GBASE-T.
So anyone that uses modem mode (including yours truly) will never be able to get more than ~928Mbps on a TCP connection due to unavoidable Ethernet overheads. If Jumbo frames were enabled you could make that ~987Mbps.

95% of customers I imagine don't use modem mode so will be able to get the full 1,104Mbps if you take multiple devices using it at once into consideration.
But I think it's also fair to say that many people who truly desire/have need to to max out their Gigabit connection are much more likely to be "power users" and desire modem mode as we see over in the VM Forum.
It would have cost Virgin very little to add a SFP port in the grand scheme of things and allow people to get nearly 150Mbps more, especially given those same users (who I completely agree are very much in the minority out of the whole customer base) often have SFP capable third party routers. Plus it's basic future proofing.

But in the grand scheme of things it's not a massive deal and I'm still very happy with the upgrade (I'm possibly going to end up doing double-NAT and using dual WAN ports so I can segregate off the servers from the home network users so if both max out at once I'll get ~1,104), but I can understand why some get wound up about it. VM foresaw the issue in advance hence why they bundle SamKnows One into the VM hub so people can do speed tests without ever going other the ethernet circuits!

It has to be said as well; in the past when I was in Southampton I would always worry about speed increases due to the contention and the aging nature of the old NTL copper we had. Where we are in Oakley it's FTTP/RFoG and speaking to the neighbours/on nextdoor no one seems to have any significant issue (I guess because utilisation is relatively low overall). After 15 years with VM this technology in place now feels so much more stable than HFC. At first I was doubtful as it seemed crazy to build 90% of a GPON FTTP network just to use it to relay RF over Fibre but after using it for a couple of years as well as using leased line fibre I have no issue with it and see it as a good interim step.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Hmmm, not a great change then.

I have 350/35, but max out my upload more than my download, so 1000/52 doesnt look like a vast improvement to me
(not that I can get it anyway, but assuming I could, I dont think I'd bother, I'd want to see a much bigger UL improvement).

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Well it'll be interesting to see what speeds you will actually achieve. :erm:

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Doesn't the Hub4 only have 4x 1 Gigabit LAN ports so that will be your bottleneck rather than your router?

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Correct Snoopz.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

That'll save me a few squids, then.


---------- Post added at 19:19 ---------- Previous post was at 19:01 ----------

Connectbox V2
The Connectbox v2 is a cable modem/router combination based on the Arris Touchstone TG3492 used by LibertyGlobal and subsidiaries like Unitymedia.

Technical Specifications
(Euro-)Docsis 3.0: 32x8 bonded channels
(Euro-)Docsis 3.1: 2x2 OFDM
CPU: Intel Puma 7 (CE2752)
WLAN 2,4GHz: up to 802.11n 3x3
WLAN 5GHz: up to 802.11ac Wave 2 4x4
LAN speed: 10/100/1000
LAN ports: 4
NAND: 512MB
RAM: 1024MB DDR3L

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Basically the Hub4 is already not fit for purpose as it can't reach full speed.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Let's face it, these sorts of speeds are not aimed at single user households. How many PCs etc can cope with 10Gbps?

The Asus AC68U has link aggregation, so the over 1Gbps speed can be passed along by the shub in router mode.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Be interesting to see how the ASA view advertising a 1gig service whilst providing hardware that can't actually deliver that wired though.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

It can provide a 1gig service. The complications come with the over provisioning, which is more than 1gig. It can handle even that, if the users hardware and setup can handle it.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I've had 1.1Gbps all day not noticed any slowdowns.
You can't access the Samknows speed test in Modem mode as a FYI.

They've not had an issue with any of the Gigabit providers so far in the exact same position. I'm not aware of anyone shipping SFP or 2.5GigE on their routers. I know Gigaclear ships a combined ONT/Modem unit but many have seperate ONTs and Modems so are in an even worse position than Virgin (If we can call losing 40-60Mbits out of over 1000 "worse").
If everything in the stack is syncing at 1 Gigabit speed I can't see them getting too concerned about overhead that everyone experiences.
Besides; it's not like the hardware isn't capable. The second you put a second ethernet cable or a wifi device on there you'll get the full 1.1-1.2.

Installed at 10am:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broad...04-01-2020.png

The increased latency around 4 is from me doing a bunch of load testing elsewhere. All in all very happy with it. Getting full speed, web browsing noticeably faster and I'll be able to work 3 times as quick as I did before (when working from home in Bioinformatics I'm downloading 100GB+ whole human genome sequences multiple times a day, so even though there's only me and the Husband in the house this will make a huge impact!

If anyone's interested in the line stats:


Interestingly, the following message comes up in the network log upon every bootup:
But I've seen people post the same on the VM forums as well and not had a single T3/4 all day so not too concerned.


---------- Post added at 01:26 ---------- Previous post was at 01:20 ----------

My areas always had full speed as well. I put it down to being a completely new deployment so FTTP/RFoG combined with not oversubscribed yet.

In terms of getting full speed.....not much you can do if you want modem mode no way you'll get more than ~940-980Mbps (although the speed tests do often blip over 1Gbps when I tested it with a single cable).
What I've done is dual-NAT the thing with 2 ethernet cables from my Unifi router to the Virgin. I only ever do manual port forwarding anyway so it's not a huge issue.
Then you can either RR-Lb on the router side or segregate the network. Doing RR-Lb works well for me. You'll still hit the limit on 1 single connection but most use cases these days initiate multiple connections anyway.

Web browsing was immediately noticeably faster for me. Latency ever so slightly reduced as well.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Great to see the gigabit packages are rolling out to other areas now. As others have mentioned, it's a shame the Hub isn't sporting some 2.5G ports but at this stage I'm more interested in the upload speed uplifts that'll hopefully come down the line.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Everyone has that. I can't remember the exact reason for it but 31 locked channels is the norm for VM Gig1 according to their forums

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

*doh* you're right only router mode!

It's these kinda little things that VM always seem to get almost right but then fall short at the final hurdle :(

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Doesn't matter, the Hub4 only has 1Ge ports.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Has anyone done a speed test in the gig service be interesting to see, I will be getting it when comes out in my area.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

But the input(WAN) to the router is still 1Gbps.
Link

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I think Seph knows that.:)

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Are you sure about that? They made a comment about it having a 2.5Gbps connection. Rather meaningless as the maximum single connection from the shub4 is going to be 1Gbps.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

You obviously don't know Seph.:)

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I'm curious as to what your plan is, then, Seph.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Like this?
https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2020/01/2.png

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I still don't really follow what difference the AX11000 would have made with the 2.5G port, given the Hub4 only has gigabit ports? That's what I'm wondering what your plan was in either case.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Even if the hub4 only has gigabit ports you only need a decent router with 2 wan ports to be able to max out the thing throughout the home. It's not the prettiest solution in the world but it does the job.

Besides, we're talking about 150mbit on top of a gigabit connection here - perspective ;)

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I was contemplating some kind of double NAT once 1gbit roles out to my area but wonder if the problems that come from using it outweigh the extra speed (if I can successfully load balance that is). Does provisioning more bandwidth for 1gbit help with achieving 1gbit or allow them to advertise it as being "faster than"?

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Virgin over provisions all of their tiers as there's strict advertising rules relating to a certain % of customers actually getting that speed. That mostly came from *DSL lines as people were being sold 24Mbit connections that could realistically only get 5mbit (or worse), but the rules apply to Virgin as well.

I'm aware of this, but Seph specifically mentioned getting a router with a 2.5G port and I'm still curious as to what he planned to do with that. Was it something like Hub -> 2x 1G -> Router -> 2.5G -> 2.5G/5G/10G on a PC? Something like that?

I'm just trying to understand why a 2.5G router is in any way relevant.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I'm not buying into this, unless VM can promise something approaching a symmetrical connection in the fairly near future. Within 12 months or so, most of Coventry, including my patch, will be served by Vodaphone's Gigabit product. (In reality 900Mb up and down) At £48 a month, this compares very well with the inferior VM M1000 @ £62.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

But it's still only a single 2.5G LAN port. It's of little use unless you have multiple 1Gb connections simultaneously using a 2.5Gb capable device eg a NAS.

My use of "they" was merely to avoid the presumption of "he" or "she".

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

That assumes that I know whether you are a she or he in the first place.


If there isn't a difference between a WAN and a LAN connection, why the difference in labelling, and why the difference in settings for each type? The firmware might treat them differently.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Of course here's an even easier way. Use his name.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I think you mean "their name"

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Only if addressing more than one person.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

"They" doesn’t - it has been used as a singular personal pronoun (as well as plural) for centuries, if the gender of the person is not identified in the sentence or phrase.

"There’s someone at the door!"
"Answer it, see what they want."

Or, if someone cut you off when you were driving, and you didn’t see their face, it’s unlikely you’d slam your hand on the wheel and exclaim, “Did you see that? He or she cut me off!”

Even Shakespeare used "their’ as a singular pronoun.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Ah, so simply future proofing then! I can get behind that.

Though I'd sooner hold onto my money until routers with all 2.5G ports (not just the WAN) become more common. Ideally 5G or 10G.

My PC has a 10G port on it, but there isn't even a reasonably priced consumer switch that I would buy to take advantage of it.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

MikroTik do some 10g switches that are reasonably priced for the tech, I use a couple of them as the backbone of my network.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Could you to link to an example?

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Those seem to be SFP+, which is fine but I'm talking 10G Ethernet. The transceivers cost about £50 a pop, which blows the price a bit.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I have also came back to VM after leaving them 8 years ago and having max speed on a BT FTTC 80/20 connection. G.Fast was rolled out and because I was just outside of the range of it I was not allowed to order it.

I went for the jump and ordered the Gig1 service and it was installed in late November (Bracknell area fed from Reading hub)

The speeds and service are so much better than back in the days on their 60 meg service and huge congestion issues. I am running from the hub 4 at the moment. Interesting to see what you all do with regards to modem mode.

Good to see Sephiroth still here. He helped me so much back in the day. Masses of knowledge.

All my speed test are max on 940 down and 52 up. The only way to get the full speed on a test is using samknows.com/realspeed/ which runs directly from the router.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

best thing for SH3. Just purchased an ASUS RT-AX88U and stuck the new Merlin firmware on it. What a difference. the ax1100 is the one with the 2.5G port on it yes? should see a nice turn of speed

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Just watch out Seph as the AX1100 isn't supported by merlin (None of the ROG's are). Unless you have an actual need for that 2.5G port (And you won't for several years with Virgin) I would consider the AX88U over it as the functionality from asuswrt-merlin is far better.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

That's fair. I have the AX88U myself so I am happy to answer anything about it. As far as I know, it shares the same Broadcom chipset as the AX1100, it's just not got the 2.5G port or the 802.11a bands. Everything else (including performance) is the same.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Same the AX88U is fantastic and the latest update from merlin is so satiable

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I thought 1000Mbps download should be 100Mbps upload as a 10.1 ratio? What the point of 1000/52 for £62 a month.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

The network hasn't been upgraded to handle faster upstream speeds. Upstream is still DOCSIS 3.0, not 3.1

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

What kind work is required to get the US to DOCSIS 3.1 in your guys opinion.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I don't know a huge amount about it, but from what I understand it's a considerable amount of work and not happening any time soon (at least in HFC areas).

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Somene may correct me but something like three times the current upstream fibre capacity would need adding with associated upgrades the the fibre nodes in the street.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Virgin are going to start struggling to compete with BT soon then. Virgin expect to roll out 1Gbps by 2021, and my city is on BT's list for full FTTP by end of 2021 too. If Virgin don't sort out the crap upload speeds, I'll finally have the option to leave Virgin as BT are rolling out 1000/115.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I don't think Virgin have anything to worry about, not everyone lives in a city, so if VM are their best option then they will stay.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Many of the new BT FTTP installations are in towns and boroughs, not just cities.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...band-plan.html

---------- Post added at 10:52 ---------- Previous post was at 10:51 ----------

Not to mention Vodaphone rolling out 900Mb up and downstream.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Virgin has always lagged behind in upload speeds, headline download speeds appeal more to most and arguably the need for 100mbit upload speeds is much reduced.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

We have FTTP available to us was looking at the 1Gbps but the wholesale price is just stupid
1000Mbps (12 Months) £75 +vat per month And you still have the isp cost to add to that

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

That price won't last, the likes of Sky and Talk Talk will undercut it.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Correct. It will be made available by BT Wholesale from the end of this month. No word yet from BT Retail.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Yeah the wholesale pricing for 1gbit and 500mbit due next month is significantly lower: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...s-uk-isps.html

It's still not going to be cheap, but it'll be worth it.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

BT are trialling 1Gbps with some of their customers now according to ISP review. By time Virgin's 1Gbps is here and/or BT's FTTP is here, they will be selling 1Gbps. That was my point. It was about the future, in 2021, not right now.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Virgin are already selling 1Gb, BT will be within months, so it's all about 2020 not the future.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Meanwhile the FTTP build for my area isn't even listed anywhere on BT's RADAR :cry:

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I'm talking about the future in my area, and others that are similar, where neither Virgin or BT have 1Gbps for sale but will by the end of 2021. :rolleyes:

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I've noticed when people have been posting Hub 4.0 stats in forums, they're showing 31 bonded SC-QAM channels. Is this just an anomaly of the software not showing the OFDM channels or are they still actually using DOCSIS 3.0 channels for their gigabit service for now?

Or are the modems perhaps bonding both but only showing stats for the SC-QAM channels?

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I have a BT contractor outside my house, as I speak, putting in the fibre infrastructure. It is just a pull-through job.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Yes, BT Contractors have been very busy in our area. They are putting lots of fibre nodes(?) up on the telephone poles. I guess it shouldn't be too long before it is available to users in the area.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I guess that will be the next step in our patch. The pole outside our house feeds existing copper to 8 properties, so I suppose the next job will be to replace the copper with fibre into each house.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

@Sephiroth

Sorry to repeat myself if you saw it. I believe you have the gigabit service from VM? Does anything show up on your connection stats to indicate OFDM? I'm really curious about this as the stats I've seen posted over at VM's forums only seem to show the standard SC-QAM channels.

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I understand a modem can lock to both SC-QAM and OFDM carriers simultaneously so it's not surprising we still see the standard channels, but I expected to at least see an OFDM block locked too.

I mean in theory they could do gigabit with 32 bonded QAMs but I would have thought it was pushing it if more than a few people signed up to it in one area.

I'm half thinking it's just a GUI bug not showing it rather than it actually not being there.

It's a totally different channel plan though so I don't think the 256QAM SC-QAM channels tell us anything - that's the max constellation size for 3.0 as far as I know?

From what I remember reading, the new LDPC error correction allows (in theory) 4096QAM to be utilised where 256QAM would have been used with Reed Solomon, with similar noise levels and giving similar BER, etc. But 3.1 also allows channels to operate at different modulation rates where necessary.

For what it's worth, I found this as an example of what you'd expect to see on a 3.1 modem locked to OFDM blocks (still using 3.0 upstream though) https://pickmymodem.com/signal-level...1-cable-modem/

Edit: This post and the next one mention it - perhaps it is a firmware thing? But apparently some information is exposed in the network logs rather than being explicitly show on the stats pages. Weird!

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I've just realised my last post doesn't read back too well, I just kept adding bits as I was thinking of them!

I'll follow your post, see if you get any responses. :)

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I called up to upgrade to the Gig1 service but was told that I have to sign up for a bundle package. I'm currently getting the broadband and phone service.

Does anyone know if it's possible to get Gig1 without signing up for a TV bundle?

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

As far as I know it is available as a standalone package unlike the 500Mb service - I'd be challenging this unless you were given a good deal. Standard price should be £62 per month

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...broadband.html

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

According to the VM main site, M1000 is available in Coventry and some surrounding areas like Rugby and Atherstone. When I type in my postcode, only M200 or less shows up as a available. Why is this?

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

Because it's not available to your postcode specifically?

Re: M1000 is available. How to order?
 

I took the plunge and waited 45 minutes to get through to a human, as expected in the current situation. My new router arrives on Saturday. The M1000 services begins then. I was able to get the package tailor-made, i.e. I'm dropping Sky and BT Sport and Sky Movies permanently, but I am keeping my two V6 boxes and the unlimited SIM.

I am not surprised that the operative said that this was her first chance to move someone onto a M1000 package. How would anyone in Coventry know it is available?