120M : Honesty from VM

[hedgie]

Although it shows the service going down it still doesn't show the day / night issue though. That average speed is skewed by the good daytime performance as in the busy periods its nowhere near 30Mb, more like 3Mb.....

Right now I'm running nicely at over 100Mb on wifi. but give it four hours and it will be cripplingly slow again.

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by hedgie

Although it shows the service going down it still doesn't show the day / night issue though. That average speed is skewed by the good daytime performance as in the busy periods its nowhere near 30Mb, more like 3Mb.....

Right now I'm running nicely at over 100Mb on wifi. but give it four hours and it will be cripplingly slow again.

I agree, the key is the peak/non-peak deterioration. My 200M speed will go down to ~20 in the evenings e.g.

from:



to:



---------- Post added at 15:38 ---------- Previous post was at 15:25 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

More down to the basic nature of the networks each is using than any devolved, fine grained solution.

That and VM's planning criteria. BT upgrade cabinet backhaul well in advance of congestion, VM simply don't.

http://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local...area=E14000652

You can see the cycle of congestion, speed uplifts, and resolution of congestion really well there.

My point exactly: BT's network design is more devolved plus they had the luxury of coming to the Fibre party later than BT.

From what I see, it isn't backhaul [network] that is the VM problem, it is the loading of the network segments into the headend .. or this what you are saying here?

[Kushan]

Hedgie, how's your speed? Just did a speed test on a Saturday afternoon/evening:



I also seem to have 16 Downstream channels.

[Martin_D]

Speed not the best for a 200Mbps line, Fix time around april F004203245

I have 10 Downstream channels.

[Chrysalis]

I really am disappointed, every time there is some kind of development at VM I hope they learn from their old mistakes, which is allowing people to upgrade without proper capacity to handle the higher peak time demand, but it seems they make the same mistake time and time again. On this most recent upgrade it seems to have got worse tho with people in previously good areas even reporting performance issues.

It does seem to be a situation where they care more about marketing speeds than actual peak time consistency (the time when most people will use the connection).

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

I really am disappointed, every time there is some kind of development at VM I hope they learn from their old mistakes, which is allowing people to upgrade without proper capacity to handle the higher peak time demand, but it seems they make the same mistake time and time again. On this most recent upgrade it seems to have got worse tho with people in previously good areas even reporting performance issues.

It does seem to be a situation where they care more about marketing speeds than actual peak time consistency (the time when most people will use the connection).

I think the problem is a tricky one. They want to be able to advertise those headline speeds as early as possible, not 2 years after initial deployment started. However, they don't really want to spend a lot of money advertising 200Mbit only for 85% of new customers to be told they can't get that. Sort of defeats the point of the advertising (and like the ASA would have words as well). So of course, they relent and let new customers sign up to those speeds, but then they have that issue where existing customers are "getting screwed" over because why shouldn't they be entitled to the same things new customers get?

I'm not saying I agree with it, it's obviously a bean-counter decision and the quality of the network isn't the primary concern, I am just saying that's what always seems to happen, even when they try their best to curtail it (This speed upgrade wasn't supposed to be going out to existing customers before the area was ready but eventually it did).

[hedgie]

Originally Posted by Kushan

Hedgie, how's your speed? Just did a speed test on a Saturday afternoon/evening:



I also seem to have 16 Downstream channels.

Its much better recently thanks, they had the local cabinet spread all over the footpath a few weeks ago replacing the guts of it and a tech has been out to replace all my passive splitters with powered ones to balance the power levels a bit. More effin cables though.

BQM is still looking peaky.....



and



I'm getting 30Mb+ at peak times on an old PC with a four or five year old wifi dongle, usually that means wired is 100Mb + from the router.

Traceroute sorry about format..


# Host Sent Recvd Best Avg Worst
1 thinkbroadband-gw2.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net 15 15 0ms 2ms 9ms
2 te2-2-30.bdr-rt3.thdo.ncuk.net 15 15 0ms 0ms 1ms
3 te2-1-9.star10g.bdr-rt1.thn.ncuk.net 15 15 0ms 0ms 0ms
4 linx-gw1.router.ntli.net 15 15 0ms 1ms 1ms
10 bagu-core-2a-ae10-0.network.virginmedia.net 15 15 7ms 7ms 8ms
11 LPuteaux-657-1-282-34.w80-15.abo.wanadoo.fr 15 15 8ms 8ms 9ms
12 cpc89916-warr7-2-0-cust109.1-1.cable.virginm.net 15 15 15ms 18ms 22ms

[Kushan]

I think all bets are off with Wifi, but it sounds like it's mostly better. Another speed test from me:



Graphs are still suspect:



and that red line was from when Virgin decided to push a firmware update (At peak times!).

[hedgie]

Am pretty happy with performance now. 105Mb with a four year old lappy on wifi that works and shows there is plenty of bandwidth for the streaming and Xbox's that goes on in our house.

Kids must be happy with Broadband, there have been no complaints about buffering, slow or laggy gaming for a week now. That's the best service quality metric you can get. Are the users happy

[Kushan]

I am also pleased it has been fixed, especially as they said May originally. I'd rather they set reasonable expectations and fix it early than promise Feb and it be late.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by JoelTheSuperior

Oh definitely. BT could have the most brilliantly targeted marketing ever.
.

Yeah, it could go something like.

" when Virgin Media are having network issues, they can still provide speeds as fast or faster than our top line service, so switch to us."

It's a winner.