Grrrrinding to a halt
 

Getting close to the end of my tether with Virgin's broadband service tonight. I'm in the BR4 area of Bromley, South London, and - until relatively recently - had no problems to speak of with my 10mg connection. A few weeks before Christmas it began slowing down during periods of peak use and, increasingly, stopping completely.

I've zero technical knowledge in this area so, after a reboot failed to sort things, called the faults helpline and was told there was maintenance/upgrade work in progress which would be completed by mid-to-late December, at which point my service would return to normal.

Needless to say, that deadline came and went with no improvement. I called them again, and they told me the deadline had been extended to January 11th this year. Again, I accepted that and (after arranging a suitable credit for the effective loss of service) assumed all would be OK.

Well, well. It's now approaching 1am on January 13th, and the service has simply got worse. And that's despite a 45-minute call to faults last night, during which I was ultimately passed to a helpful lad who, albeit at my suggestion, switched me on to 20mg at no extra charge for three months to see if that would do the trick.

Now, I'm aware Virgin have "played fair" in arranging credits and a free speed upgrade, but I don't really want their generosity. I'm quite happy to pay for their service . . . as long as it works. It worked before, but something has happened and no one seems to know exactly what. Or if they do, they're not telling.

Faults guy tonight said the culprit was a "utilisation issue" which I interpreted as too many customers all using the service at once. All well and good, but I'm afraid that's not my problem. And, furthermore, I was informed in my earlier phone calls that the "upgrade" blamed for upsetting my service at that point was intended to alleviate precisely this issue. Of course, I'm now getting it in the neck from family who also use the broadband for work, homework, games and Facebook etc. Excellent! Anyone out there got any clues regarding my next move, please? Or even any idea why this service has suddenly become so flaky? Thanks in advance fellas - any help appreciated.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

Welcome to the new world of VM desperately promoting headline speeds they really can't support - especially when every product is "unlimited".
Well I'm guessing that as you have 10Mbps you are on the old platform but on the new DOCSIS3 setup a single 100Mbps "unlimited" user can use half of the downstream and 60% of the upstream all on their lonesome
Depends what alternatives to VM are available to you. Alternately you could just wait and hope it gets sorted.
It's the nature of cable - most areas most of the time it's just tickety boo but because the local bandwidth is very low just a few heavy users in your area can cripple it.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

i assume they told you how to check your power levels and everything?

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

Thanks for the input, chaps. No GM, I wasn't advised how to check levels or anything similar. However, I spoke today to someone at Virgin who seemed familiar with the situation in my specific area. He confirmed there was a utilisation issue, with upwards of 450 customers trying to use the broadband signal at any one time in peak periods. He said this amounted to almost 100 per cent demand, in fact sometimes "more" than 100 per cent, which the existing system simply can't handle.

The problem apparently centres around the box which links the green cabinet in my street (outside my house actually) to the box which outputs the signal. He seemed fairly confident the issue would be fixed with an upgrade - possibly next month - but was unable to confirm a date. On that basis, I've decided to give it a while longer. Does any of that sound feasible? Is the solution as simple as he said? Am I being naive sticking with a duff service for a few more weeks? Am I asking too many noob questions? ;) Again, all help gratefully received.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

they might be planning to do some upgrade work in your area next month but i doubt it. I have read a lot of threads over the last week or so when they have been fobbing people off with that and when you don't see an improvement by the end of the month you ring them up and they say "oh, it has been delayed till April now, be patient".

Go to http://192.168.100.1 and copy and paste the stuff from the downstream tab and upstream.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

OK, here goes. Anything unusual here?

Cable Modem Downstream
Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 105
Downstream Frequency : 290750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 5.3 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 38.3 dB

Cable Modem Upstream
Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 4
Upstream Frequency : 45800000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QPSK
Upstream Symbol Rate : 5120 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 53.2 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 4

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

upstream is high.. call 150 from your VM homephone and book a tech to come out and sort out your levels. get new equipment/SuperHub out of VM while your there complaining. surprised up wasn't picked up on by the agents.. that if its the culprit.. still its high.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

ish, it is within tolerance but it could defo do with being lowered. Something is up because you are on qpsk.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

As Mon General has pointed out, you are on QPSK upstream modulation. Let me explain.

On an upstream with a satisfactory noise level (measured at the VM end), you would modulate at 16QAM, which is 4 bits per codeword.

With a pooir noise level, the other end drops your modulation to the more noise tolerant QPSK, which is 2 bits per codeword.

The noise could be caused anywhere on the upstream, and in old infrastructure areas possib;y at the optical node in your street locality.

Everyone on your upstream channel will have a similar problem to you, because instead of a raw capacity of 20 meg being available (at 16QAM), it's only 10 meg which means the upstream will saturate sooner.

So yes - when they upgrade your area for 100 meg, this sort of thing should get sorted out.

HTH.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

Thanks very much guys. Knew you'd point me in the right direction! :) I'll get on to Virgin asap and see what they say.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

yeah contact VM as that QPSK is a fault condition.

Re: Grrrrinding to a halt
 

Well, another long phone call today - and still no joy. After hopping about between UK-based and offshore call centres, I finally spoke with an agent who fully accepted my issues and took on board the suggestions made on this thread. He then calmly informed me that no technician would be sent out - because maintenance work was currently in progress! As far as I could make out, the very fact they're working on the system meant that any attempt to book a tecchie would automatically be cancelled out by the computers . . . because of this ongoing work.

How marvellous is that? To make things worse, the fella seemed to think the work would not be completed before late next month at the earliest. And when I asked the nature of said work (to establish whether he meant the local upgrade which should resolve the local utilisation issues) he claimed he "didn't know". I'm beginning to suspect this won't end well. :(