Virgin 4Mb to upgrade to 10Mb February - Summer

[spidiweb7]

^^ yesterday i downloaded 10 gigs and your right during stm time you cant multitask so what i say is stop all you downloads between 4pm and 9pm and then carry them on only games like cod4 at the minute will enourmous amounts of bandwidth while playing but should make you hit the 800mb limit stm is at at the moment (still on 4mb connection)

[neely]

According to Virgin's "evenfaster" web page, I'll have to have a cable modem to get the upgraded 10mb speed (I currently get broadband through the set-top box). Today I made the mistake of dialling 150 to try and set this up. According to the call centre chap, who put me on hold for 5 minutes to find this out, I can have an engineer out on the 10th of June to install the modem, but I won't have any broadband at all until that time. I declined this generous offer, as it sounds like utter cobblers to me. Has anyone else heard of this? Thanks in advance for any replies.

[chrisjones]

Originally Posted by neely

According to Virgin's "evenfaster" web page, I'll have to have a cable modem to get the upgraded 10mb speed (I currently get broadband through the set-top box). Today I made the mistake of dialling 150 to try and set this up. According to the call centre chap, who put me on hold for 5 minutes to find this out, I can have an engineer out on the 10th of June to install the modem, but I won't have any broadband at all until that time. I declined this generous offer, as it sounds like utter cobblers to me. Has anyone else heard of this? Thanks in advance for any replies.

That does sound rather stupid to me. Is he trying to suggest you would be changing packages resulting in a need disconnect you? I really cant understand why you would need to be disconnected for 10 days for a modem install.

Could be that he didnt quite understand the information he was given regarding procedure?

[Nicosia]

My area has been upgraded ( cambridge ) what is the website to upgrade BB speed, i am crrently on 2mbit and want to try out the 10. also is there anyway to see how much of the 10 i will recieve or do i just have to upgrade and hope for the best?

[Stop It]

Just to confirm Biggleswade as updated, I rebooted my Modem this afternoon, and ran a test, I got these results.

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:39:06 GMT

Test 1: 1024K took 867 ms = 1181.1 KB/sec, approx 9732 Kbps, 9.5 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 847 ms = 1209 KB/sec, approx 9962 Kbps, 9.73 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 862 ms = 1187.9 KB/sec, approx 9788 Kbps, 9.56 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 1712 ms = 1196.3 KB/sec, approx 9858 Kbps, 9.63 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 9835 Kbps, 9.61 Mbps


A couple of days late (I have just downloaded a MMORPG at the behest of some friends), I could have done with the extra speed a bit sooner, but hey, its all good.

[berty_buk]

This may seem a silly question to some but i'm not sure. Just got the 10mb upgrade today (Glasgow), but when I use my laptop through a 54 mbps wireless router I get these results

Tue, 3 Jun 2008 20:39:03 UTC

Test 1: 1024K took 1516 ms = 675.5 KB/sec, approx 5566 Kbps, 5.44 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 1656 ms = 618.4 KB/sec, approx 5096 Kbps, 4.98 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 1625 ms = 630.2 KB/sec, approx 5193 Kbps, 5.07 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 3281 ms = 624.2 KB/sec, approx 5143 Kbps, 5.02 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 5250 Kbps, 5.13 Mbps

Does 54mbps only mean that I can download at a 10th of that speed eg 5.4Mbps as when I use the wired PC down stairs I get 10 Mbps or there abouts.

Thanks for any help in advance

[iain123]

speed has increased but im only getting an increase from 512kbs to about 700kbs

[howard.bates]

Originally Posted by berty_buk

Does 54mbps only mean that I can download at a 10th of that speed eg 5.4Mbps as when I use the wired PC down stairs I get 10 Mbps or there abouts.

In a word, no.

Comms speeds are normally quoted in bits per second e.g your router is rated at 54Mbit/sec, your link to VM is rated at 10Mbit/sec. Divide by ~8-10 to get the speed in bytes per second (8 bits per byte plus ~1-2 start / stop bits).

Your speed tester is testing THROUGHPUT (end-end transfer from disc to CPU to network at the host, across the Internet and from router to CPU to disc at your end).

Traffic arrives at your house at a maximum speed of 10Mbit/sec. In practice you may find it difficult to achieve that sort of throughput because
a) the speed of your radio link depends on signal strength, with a weak signal the radio may have a lot of error checking and correction to do. I've seen 54 Mbit links run at 5 Mbit/sec in difficult conditions.
b) the throughput speed depends on the performance of the target machine; the CPU has to process all the incoming traffic and write it to disc. You may find that an old and slow laptop can't keep up.
c) there are various processing latencies e.g it takes time to find and open the file you are writing to, it takes time to write things to hard disk. It's not known as Windoze for nothing ..

It might be worth testing the download speed with the laptop near the router, that should give you an idea of whether the bottleneck is the radio link or the laptop.

HTH.

[popper]

Originally Posted by howard.bates

In a word, no.

Comms speeds are normally quoted in bits per second e.g your router is rated at 54Mbit/sec, your link to VM is rated at 10Mbit/sec. Divide by ~8-10 to get the speed in bytes per second (8 bits per byte plus ~1-2 start / stop bits).

Your speed tester is testing THROUGHPUT (end-end transfer from disc to CPU to network at the host, across the Internet and from router to CPU to disc at your end).

Traffic arrives at your house at a maximum speed of 10Mbit/sec. In practice you may find it difficult to achieve that sort of throughput because
a) the speed of your radio link depends on signal strength, with a weak signal the radio may have a lot of error checking and correction to do. I've seen 54 Mbit links run at 5 Mbit/sec in difficult conditions.
b) the throughput speed depends on the performance of the target machine; the CPU has to process all the incoming traffic and write it to disc. You may find that an old and slow laptop can't keep up.
c) there are various processing latencies e.g it takes time to find and open the file you are writing to, it takes time to write things to hard disk. It's not known as Windoze for nothing ..

It might be worth testing the download speed with the laptop near the router, that should give you an idea of whether the bottleneck is the radio link or the laptop.

HTH.

close but no cigar howard, it not the PC hardware thats the problem , iv had 386 and 486 machines pushing through 10Mbit (MegaBIT) with no problems (showing my age LOl and many people here wont even know what they look like),a 386 on a Zorro BridgeBoard card, and a 10 Mbit ISA was fun.

by far the overriding problem once you are sure your getting near the subscribed speeds your paying for with a direct RJ45 wired connection.

is the old 11g wireless routers CPU/SOC IS NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH to process the full incoming dataflow and process the wireless security options at the same time to give anywere near the max real 22Mbit/s throughput that generic 11g can do, get yourself a new set of 11n kit and have far more CPU power to process the incoming dataflow and security options and be happy.

what is it about the Baguley NW server building, why cant they upgrade that key location sooner, doesnt the NW VM paying userbase matter to VM executives or the bottom line!

[joglynne]

Popper, I suspect that if any server in the country is going to be a pain in the derrière following any form of intervention or upgrade it will be the Baguley Server. My guess would be that we will be one of the last, if not the very last, area to get the upgrade.

At least, without a workable connection, we won't have to worry about the phormation of any dossiers on our browsing.

[thebarron]

Been upgraded in Bedford now

Wed, 4 Jun 2008 12:05:51 UTC

Test 1: 1024K took 859 ms = 1192.1 KB/sec, approx 9823 Kbps, 9.59 Mbps
Test 2: 1024K took 844 ms = 1213.3 KB/sec, approx 9998 Kbps, 9.76 Mbps
Test 3: 1024K took 875 ms = 1170.3 KB/sec, approx 9643 Kbps, 9.42 Mbps
Test 4: 2048K took 1703 ms = 1202.6 KB/sec, approx 9909 Kbps, 9.68 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 9843 Kbps, 9.61 Mbps


so far so good

YAYYYYY this is ma 2nd post ladies and gentlemen

anyways ive been with Virgin Media for only 6 months and man do i love it. Word up to all the south east people on 4mb waiting for 10mb. I Just upgraded from 2mb to 4mb expecting to be upgraded to 10mb later in June as it says on the Upgrade page. But wow Im on 10mb already. Even though it says on the upgrade page that south east and basildon area still to be upgraded in June.

[smallethic]

Still waiting here in Norwich. Celebrate your good fortune, but do not forget those further down the line ... probably right at end is how it feels right now.

[simosimo]

I've just been getting a 1mb download which i've never had before. This only started about 9.30 onward, cut down my download from 2 hours to 15 minutes . I guess i've been upgraded? Strange time to do it. Somethings not right though (although i shouldn't be complaining)

I'm in Kent, South east england, Near Gillingham, Chatham, Maidstone etc etc

[DerekRothwell]

Anyone got a sweepstake running on the last area to be done?

My gut instinct says Baguley at very short odds to be done by the end of the summer - which summer though??