Just Signed up, got questions

[Azazel]

Hi All,

Just signed up for the 20mb service, anyone know if the wireless router they send out has any ethernet ports, while wireless is useful its not reliable enough for gaming.

Many thanks.

They say the router they currently supply has 4 e-net ports:

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/wire...s.php#faq-sc-3

[stairpotato]

Originally Posted by Azazel

while wireless is useful its not reliable enough for gaming.

Since when?

I game wirelessly quite happily day in day out. No lag, no issues.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by stairpotato

Since when?

I game wirelessly quite happily day in day out. No lag, no issues.

Depends upon the layout and construction of the building it is in.

[stairpotato]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Depends upon the layout and construction of the building it is in.

Yes - but it doesn't mean that wireless is inherently less reliable...

[Azazel]

I have found from my experience that wireless in my particular property is suitable for browsing the web and mild downloading but when using it for gaming the stability of signal is not that good.

When i have got everything setup I am planning on investing in some DraftN kit and i will see how that gets on but at the moment i find wired offers significantly more speedy performance than wireless.

[Deko]

Wireless sucks for decent latency, stick to fat cables i say.

[Azazel]

yeah i recently when i changed ADSL to Be* i wired up my house with Cat5e under the floorboards so that makes things alot better but damm was it messy!!!

[Azazel]

Setup and activated with the quick start pack (arrived fine but no instructions in the box at all) figured it out in the end with the quickstart team and setup and running in under 1 hour, and OMG the speed!!

So far very impressed with the speed but not with the customer service, i had a problem with the mail servers and 2 calls to india being cut off when they didnt understand what problem i was having, i went through to second line support it was great they sorted me out in 10 mins so good and bad!

[tomjleeds]

Just to note, the router supplied is a slightly-modified Netgear WGR614. I was handed a v9 model at a new installation a few weeks ago, though no doubt previous versions will still be floating around in installer vans.

Originally Posted by tomjleeds

Just to note, the router supplied is a slightly-modified Netgear WGR614. I was handed a v9 model at a new installation a few weeks ago, though no doubt previous versions will still be floating around in installer vans.

They only carry what stock is required for that day and all will be V9s at the moment.

[Azazel]

Im getting what i would call a stuttering connection, sometimes i try to goto a webpage and its offline, the network connection is not down but it doesnt appear to have a route to the internet, i get it most when trying to use steam to connect to a game server and then for a little afterwards its intermittent, modem stats are as follows:


Cable Modem Downstream
Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 4
Downstream Frequency : 586750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM64
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 0.7 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 31.7 dB

Cable Modem Upstream
Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 4
Upstream Frequency : 46200000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 48.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

Cable Modem Upstream Burst




Req


Init Maint


Per Maint


Short Data


Long Data


(1)


(3)


(4)


(5)


(6)
Modulation Type QPSK QPSK QPSK 16QAM 16QAM
Differential Encoding Off Off Off Off Off
Preamble Length 64 128 128 200 216
Preamble Value Offset 244 6 6 504 504
FEC Error Correction (T) 0 5 5 5 9
FEC Codeword Information Bytes (k) 16 34 34 78 232
Scrambler Seed 338 338 338 338 338
Maximum Burst Size 0 0 0 19 139
Guard Time Size 8 48 48 17 77
Last Codeword Length Fixed Fixed Fixed Short Short
Scrambler on/off On On On On On

Dont know if anymore information is needed the modem type is a 256, just done a quick start self install.

[Ignitionnet]

Any idea what happens to the lights on the modem when your connection stutters, which ones are illuminated, which are flashing, etc?

Modem stats seem alright.

[Azazel]

sadly no idea at all as the modem is in the front room by the cable point and the PC is connected by cat5 cable in a rear room, cant be more than 5m away,

I will try and check it with assistance now.

---------- Post added at 20:08 ---------- Previous post was at 20:00 ----------

Okay, all lights lit up could not browse to web pages, MSN was down and unable to connect, and i could not connect to any game servers, this really only occurs when i try and use the Steam client to connect to a game server.