[Update] ALL 20>30Mb upgrade discussion

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by virginruinedntl

engineer fixed my broadband now, QAM164 had changed to QAM256 he said, he's fixed loads of cabinets with this problem. He said its due to the rollout of 100mb.

Getting around the full 20/2mb speed now

Usenet is still capped at 10mb 24/7 though even though this violates virgin's terms of conditions, i should get 20mb until i download too much when it should go to 5mb.

How many connections are you using on usenet? No trouble here maxing out 30mb on Astraweb or Supernews using 10 connections and would probably max out on less.

Use port 443 SSL to avoid the p2p/newsgroup file sharing traffic management policy, this will mean your newsgroup speeds won't be reduced until you hit the cap that is present for all downloads.

[darkm]

Just had the engineer out, he has said that he knows there is a problem with some UBR and the 30 meg service going back out from the superhub. He was told last month that the issue would take 3 months to resolve but did say there wasnt a big push from virgin to resolve it as it was an up to service. Hence im getting 1.7meg upload.
He also said that if I was on the 50 meg service I wouldnt see this problem and would receive the full 5 meg upload, though I doubt this.

He wouldnt go into too much detail as to what specifically what the problem was..

So even with future firmware updates which will help the hub it will not resolve my issue, as it is some sort of configuration problem with certain 30 meg hubs on different UBR's.

So where does that leave me?

[virginruinedntl]

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

How many connections are you using on usenet? No trouble here maxing out 30mb on Astraweb or Supernews using 10 connections and would probably max out on less.

Use port 443 SSL to avoid the p2p/newsgroup file sharing traffic management policy, this will mean your newsgroup speeds won't be reduced until you hit the cap that is present for all downloads.

i use news.virginmedia.com, can't afford a pay one. Virgin's doesn't support SSL

xnews only uses 4 connections, when i try with binreader with 4 connections i get the same speed but with 10 connections i get 14-19mb instead of 10. I used to get full 20mb around 9 months ago then virgin must have dropped the max speed per connection. Binreader can't read newsgroups, it can only open .nzb files which is a shame.

[Skie]

Originally Posted by darkm

Just had the engineer out, he has said that he knows there is a problem with some UBR and the 30 meg service going back out from the superhub. He was told last month that the issue would take 3 months to resolve but did say there wasnt a big push from virgin to resolve it as it was an up to service. Hence im getting 1.7meg upload.
He also said that if I was on the 50 meg service I wouldnt see this problem and would receive the full 5 meg upload, though I doubt this.

That sounds like a pack of lies.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Skie

That sounds like a pack of lies.

It is. 50mb uses the same platform, hardware, lines, and capacity as 30mb.

[zekeisaszekedoes]

VM don't always play by the book. This isn't always a bad thing. For example, when I upgraded from 10Mb to 20Mb, the member of staff had the superhub sent out (free, thank god) even though the Ambit 250 was fine. I think the idea behind that was to entice the household to upgrade the speed again soon, which would have worked if the superhub hadn't been so disappointing.

Then when I really wanted to upgrade to 30Mb (and soon to 50Mb or 100Mb no doubt) I was sent a VMNG300, which is again counter to regular policy. Combined with a 16-port ethernet switch I bought myself, everything on my home connection now has excellent access to both LAN and WAN.

It all depends on how much you're willing to commit yourself to politely contacting the right people and firmly insisting that you'd be a lot less disgruntled if you or other household members didn't have to keep rebooting the CPE to keep the connection steady. In my case I was, to keep myself and everyone else happy.

[carbon60]

I wish I could upgrade to 30Mbit and get the VMNG300!

I currently have 20Mbit with a rock solid SA 2100 cable modem but I'd like to have a higher peak time STM allowance which 30Mbit has but I don't want to risk that stability. I don't remember ever having to reboot the cable modem because of a fault with itself.

[virginruinedntl]

have they not fixed the 30mb problems with the superhub yet or something? DOSCIS 4.5gbps has been tested recently i read, they use about 128 channels down and 24 channels up or something not really leaving room for cable tv. But still its incredibly impressive. Thought fibre would be the only way we could ever get gigabit in the uk maybe cable is a viable alternative afterall.

[qasdfdsaq]

4.5gbps DOCSIS is not viable in the UK with the current network design and contention ratios. Whether it will ever be remains to be seen but I highly doubt it. 1 Gbps over a 4.5G channel might just be passable but still would require hugely expensive overbuilds and pushing 10-100g fibre so deep into the network that you might as well build a new pure fibre network.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by virginruinedntl

Thought fibre would be the only way we could ever get gigabit in the uk maybe cable is a viable alternative afterall.

Virgin have already tested 1.5Gbit using the existing network

[_wtf_]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Virgin have already tested 1.5Gbit using the existing network

1.5Gb tested with a handful of people is not the same as a 1Gb/1.5Gb used by thousands of customers as the SuperHub as proven VM are not really that interested in viable/reliable testing.

The VM net work is creaking like an old warship with the recent 'upgrade' to 100Mb hence the constant dropped packets that start at 4pm and last until about midnight.

[virginruinedntl]

exactly, i read that 400mb is the max the superhub can handle, i don't know why virgin don't buy their hardware that will last for years, they give out non-doscis3 modems and still give out some non-h264 v+ boxes. Maybe the virgin staff get paid for short-term performance and don't have an incentive to look out for the long-term success of virgin, a bit like the banking crisis.

If i were virgin i'd give gigabit capable doscis3 modems and modem/wireless routers for those who want to pay extra for 1 of those and stop giving out the scientifica v+ boxes and instead sell the boxes and modems that don't meet those requirements to a foreign cable company. Doesn't make sense to have customers upgrading their modems and boxes every few years when we know cable is capable of gigabit so 400mb superhubs should never have been given out, they should be gigabit capable.

I'm still quite annoyed that virgin messed up the 100mb upgrades as my broadband went from 20mb to 2-7mb as the QAM codes had changed and the cabinet across the road needed changing. Why didn't virgin remotely update all the cabinets in the country instead of leaving customers with slow broadband without them being informed. Poor management by vm for the 100mb upgrade.

I wonder what virgin will do for customers when they release 200mb as most ethernet ports in the uk are only 10/100. Will they give out pci gigabit cards or pcmia gigabit cards for users who don't have gigabit ethernet. Alot of users would have no clue how to install a pci or pci-e card. I can see alot of customers furious with vm whenever they decide to upgrade to 200mb as a result of not having gigabit ethernet ports. Virgin would probably have to charge customers who have 10/100 alot of money for an engineer to install a card as most people have never opened up their desktop case.

Is 100mb a new tier now? 10/30/50/100mb, are those the tiers for new customers? Bt infinity averages at 37mb for customers and apparently they will be upgrading it to 80mb from 40mb soon which would be very tasty.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by virginruinedntl

exactly, i read that 400mb is the max the superhub can handle, i don't know why virgin don't buy their hardware that will last for years, they give out non-doscis3 modems and still give out some non-h264 v+ boxes.

Maybe because it's not cost effective?

I'm not aware of any consumer kit that can handle 1.5Gbit, and if there is it's probably exceeding expensive.

As for the non-H264 V+ boxes, it's irrelevent. Virgin don't use H264 on the network so whether V+ boxes do or don't support it isn't needed

---------- Post added at 10:37 ---------- Previous post was at 10:35 ----------

If i were virgin i'd give gigabit capable doscis3 modems and modem/wireless routers for those who want to pay extra for 1 of those and stop giving out the scientifica v+ boxes and instead sell the boxes and modems that don't meet those requirements to a foreign cable company. Doesn't make sense to have customers upgrading their modems and boxes every few years when we know cable is capable of gigabit so 400mb superhubs should never have been given out, they should be gigabit capable.

Based on that, if you ran Virgin they would probably go bust very quickly

[virginruinedntl]

lol, nah. I'm sure you could make a gigabit doscis3 modem with no wireless router built into it pretty cheap. And as for the scientifica boxes it wouldn't cost much to stopping giving them out, just give them a samsung box and flog the boxes to another cable company abroad. once there's only a few scientifica boxes in use upgrade those customers to samsung or tivo and switch to h264 for hd broadcasts. giving customers scientifica is just prolonging the inevitable.

Glad i can use dd-wrt on my own router, wouldn't want virgin's wireless. Wouldn't suprise me if the govt is able to remotely view what all wifi devices are doing using the superhub either. Thats a benefit to not having a router or wireless from virgin no spying of internal traffic wired or wireless. Not that i have anything to hide personally i just hate our surveilance state.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by virginruinedntl

lol, nah. I'm sure you could make a gigabit doscis3 modem with no wireless router built into it pretty cheap.

And you are basing that on what information?

---------- Post added at 10:52 ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 ----------

And as for the scientifica boxes it wouldn't cost much to stopping giving them out, just give them a samsung box and flog the boxes to another cable company abroad. once there's only a few scientifica boxes in use upgrade those customers to samsung or tivo and switch to h264 for hd boxes. giving customers scientifica is just prolonging the inevitable.

You wouldn't be able to sell the boxes to other CableCos as they would have been built specifically for Virgin Media and their network.

Anyway, if you don't want VM to have MPEG2 only boxes, why would you assume others would want to increase their stock of them?

As has been said many times before, Virgin do plan to migrate all customers across to TiVo eventually, but any company will maximise their assets including any in stock kit for as long as possible.

---------- Post added at 10:54 ---------- Previous post was at 10:52 ----------

But this is getting off topic for this thread