View Single Post
Old 28-01-2012, 17:10   #1237
Nicosia
Inactive
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 357
Nicosia is an unknown quantity at this point
Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kushan View Post
The way things used to work, was your modem would make "1" connection and that was it, it's what they call DOCSIS, sometimes DOCSIS1 or DOCSIS2. These days, multiple connections are made at once (the "channel bonding" that you might have seen people talking about, it's what makes DOCSIS3 great), which is how such fast speeds are possible - each connection is good for about 50mbit, so when you tie 4 or 8 together, you've got plenty of headroom for bandwidth.

The problem is that when you have multiple channels, it's a bit more prone to disconnects if things like power levels and such are a bit off. With just one channel, you've got a bit more headroom for errors, but as you add more, the issues can become more apparent.
Periodically dropping a channel can mean lost packets, which can mean sites become unresponsive even though running a speed test might show full speed. In gaming, it's a right nightmare as that one dropped packet can mean the difference between shooting first and standing still. So because it's a "premium" product, Virgin is careful to ensure that those who take it aren't given a bad experience thinking "My old connection was fine, this so-called upgrade wasn't worth the effort!", which can cause bad press and results in less people taking the more expensive packages.
Most customers are on the lowest tier packages, but Virgin makes a lot more money from the higher tiers so it's worth them ensuring they work better.
so they would be the kind of reasons why he would of had 100mbit problems... but if the engineer has to come over for the 30-60 upgrade then it should be ok for 120 as well to do it online with hopefully no problems?

I am happy for one to come over but it would be nice to be able to save some one having to come twice and just come once.

Or maybe just upgrading now to 100 and then not having to worry about an extra 20mbits upgrade could be worth doing instead
Nicosia is offline   Reply With Quote