Rather slow

[Calliope]

Hi guys; my first time posting here.

I joined VM after they absorbed everyone, so I'm not ex-NTL or any of that stuff if that helps any.

I'm on the 20mbit package and have never had a problem with it til last Thursday/Friday when it started being insanely slow. I'm having trouble now downloading at anything more than 20kb/sec.

The strange part to me is that some sites (Fileshack is one, Valve's Steam service also works fine sometimes) are fine and I'll regularly download at several mbps from them, but others (Microsoft is one of them) I'm lucky if I scrape 30kbps.

I tried out the http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/ link that I came across in one of the other posts and got well over 2mb/sec downloading from it.

Browsing is also insanely slow, taking a minute or more to load some webpages.

I'm on a home network, so I've tried connecting directly to the cable modem (with another machine, even) and encountered the exact same problem.

I'm in the Middlesbrough area, postcode TS4.

Speedtest:


Modem stats:

Cable Modem : DOCSIS 1.0/1.1/2.0 Compliant

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 41
Downstream Frequency : 402750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps32Increment4
Downstream Receive Power Level : 2.9 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 39.2 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 3
Upstream Frequency : 34000000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 47.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

Any help is much appreciated.

If your downloading at full whack from gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk then it could be a Virgin Media routing connection, speedtest.net isnt a good tool to use, if you arent getting full whack speed from gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk, then you need to either post on the Virgin Media newsgroups, if not then nothing you can really do, remmeber other sites will only give you the speed its servers can handle so remmeber if there server is 10Mb and its busy your gonna expericnce slow speeds also try open dns

http://www.opendns.com/ this should help with the slow browsing

[Calliope]

Originally Posted by darthlinux

it could be a Virgin Media routing connection,

That was what I was thinking. Not too sure what I can do about it, though, if that's the case.

then you need to either post on the Virgin Media newsgroups, if not then nothing you can really do,

Where do I find those?

remmeber other sites will only give you the speed its servers can handle so remmeber if there server is 10Mb and its busy your gonna expericnce slow speeds

I should probably clarify that sites that used to be fast as of Friday have been appalingly slow, and they all changed at once. I've tried repeatedly throughout the day and night to see if it was congestion and there's no change at all based on the time I try to download.

Here's a set of tracert's to www.bbc.co.uk, for those so interested:

C:\>tracert www.bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.251.195]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 8 ms 5 ms 5 ms 10.26.128.1
3 18 ms 10 ms 7 ms midd-t2cam1-b-ge87.network.virginmedia.net [213.
106.239.253]
4 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms midd-t3core-1b-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net [19
5.182.176.117]
5 15 ms 18 ms 15 ms man-bb-b-so-310-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.1
05.75.49]
6 15 ms 16 ms 16 ms man-bb-a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.1
87.177]
7 24 ms 31 ms 22 ms gfd-bb-b-so-200-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.25
2.192.94]
8 24 ms 23 ms 24 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
185.78]
9 24 ms 34 ms 25 ms 212.58.239.249
10 26 ms 26 ms 24 ms 212.58.238.133
11 19 ms 18 ms 18 ms 212.58.239.58
12 23 ms 24 ms 23 ms www-vip.telhc.bbc.co.uk [212.58.251.195]

Trace complete.

C:\>tracert www.bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.251.195]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 7 ms 18 ms 7 ms 10.26.128.1
3 7 ms 6 ms 9 ms midd-t2cam1-b-ge87.network.virginmedia.net [213.
106.239.253]
4 10 ms 7 ms 5 ms midd-t3core-1b-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net [19
5.182.176.117]
5 21 ms 19 ms 15 ms man-bb-b-so-310-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.1
05.75.49]
6 17 ms 25 ms 15 ms man-bb-a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.1
87.177]
7 22 ms 22 ms 26 ms gfd-bb-b-so-200-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.25
2.192.94]
8 40 ms 24 ms 43 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
185.78]
9 215 ms 214 ms 210 ms 212.58.239.249
10 23 ms 23 ms 44 ms 212.58.238.133
11 18 ms 19 ms 17 ms 212.58.239.58
12 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms www-vip.telhc.bbc.co.uk [212.58.251.195]

Trace complete.

C:\>tracert www.bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.251.195]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 6 ms 5 ms 7 ms 10.26.128.1
3 7 ms 6 ms 25 ms midd-t2cam1-b-ge87.network.virginmedia.net [213.
106.239.253]
4 8 ms 5 ms 12 ms midd-t3core-1b-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net [19
5.182.176.117]
5 15 ms 15 ms 16 ms man-bb-b-so-310-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.1
05.75.49]
6 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms man-bb-a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.1
87.177]
7 21 ms 21 ms 26 ms gfd-bb-b-so-200-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.25
2.192.94]
8 24 ms 24 ms 25 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
185.78]
9 24 ms 26 ms 28 ms 212.58.239.249
10 25 ms 34 ms 25 ms 212.58.238.133
11 44 ms 19 ms 19 ms 212.58.239.58
12 24 ms 24 ms 24 ms www-vip.telhc.bbc.co.uk [212.58.251.195]

Trace complete.

Been getting those rather odd pings since the problems started. Sometimes it drops packets entirely. It doesn't seem to be isolated to any one point on the route, either, despite what hop 9 on the second tracert would imply.

Try opendns

[Calliope]

Originally Posted by darthlinux

Try opendns

No noticable change, sadly.

[Pingu Pi]

Hey Calliope, im from middlesbrough aswell and have been experiencing the exact same problem, last thursday or friday i noticed that everything seemed to be slow, my browsing and torrents seem hampered. Sites that usually pop up instantly on my 20mb connection take a while now. Speed test results are the same as yours when i used to get 19000 before thursday. sites that usually give max download speed of 2.3mbs a second are now down to 20kbs.

ive tried the blueyonder speed test posted on a few other threads n that gives me my max speed so that shows its not a problem on my end so im thinking it must be a problem on VM's end, perhaps the lines.

this is really annoying as i dont expect to get this when im paying the amount i do.

ive had no troubles up until now with VM.

[Calliope]

Hey Pingu.

That's "good" to know. Have you tried calling VM, yet? I emailed them on Friday but haven't had a response, going to call them later today. Another mate in Middlesbrough with the same VM package as me has no problems at all.

[Pingu Pi]

yeah i rang up, they said my modem was fine n thats all haha. they aren't much help when it comes to problems on thier end.

i think we've just got to sit tight n wait it out...

browsing seems a bit faster this afternoon but still dragging on the speed test and downloads from usual good sources.

[Calliope]

Just got off the phone with VM tech support and was told the same as you, my modem is okay and we discovered that the gamefiles site works fine, so "not our problem".

Wonderful.

[Kymmy]

If your network is fine to the VM servers then that discounts anything such as STM or over subscription.

If some sites enable you to download at full speed where others don;t then more liekly to be a bottleneck somewhere along the route (bottlenecks might not show up on tracerts as a tracert only shows the routing times and not the throughput.

[Boabyboy]

While I cannot confirm to you if there is a problem in the Middlesbrough area. I would start the following troubleshooting steps:

Disconnect router.
Plug CM to PC via RJ45 straight cable.
Reboot CM first then PC after a few mins.
Check IP address to ensure it is a valid IP, such as 62,77,80,82,92,195 ( ithink)
Do a netstat -b to check to ensure there are no open running background programs using the Internet.
Then ping default gateway 50 times to see if you are getting packet loss.

Start off with that and see how its goes? That what I would do if you were asking me, then I would start to use the other tools such as tracert, etc. I am not quite sure about the Ex-NTL Cable Modem freqs, power levels, etc. To me they look ok.

Thanks.

[Calliope]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

If your network is fine to the VM servers then that discounts anything such as STM or over subscription.

If some sites enable you to download at full speed where others don;t then more liekly to be a bottleneck somewhere along the route (bottlenecks might not show up on tracerts as a tracert only shows the routing times and not the throughput.

Hi Kymmy,

I'd tend to agree with you about the bottleneck on the route somewhere. And yeah, the tracert was just something VM'd requested, I posted it cause it showed some rather abnormal ping times scattered across the connection.

Originally Posted by BoabyBoy

While I cannot confirm to you if there is a problem in the Middlesbrough area. I would start the following troubleshooting steps:

Disconnect router.
Plug CM to PC via RJ45 straight cable.
Reboot CM first then PC after a few mins.
Check IP address to ensure it is a valid IP, such as 62,77,80,82,92,195 ( ithink)
Do a netstat -b to check to ensure there are no open running background programs using the Internet.
Then ping default gateway 50 times to see if you are getting packet loss.

Hi Boaby,

Just followed your advice, everything seems fine.
50 pings went successfully, no packet loss. Some slight discrepancies in the response times but nothing major (maybe 5ms variance).

EDIT: Oh yeah, I should point out that the ping times to my gateway were fine; 6ms was the average with 17 the maximum.

The VM tech agreed there might be a problem somewhere along the line but said they wouldn't look into it unless a bunch of people in my area complain about it. While I agree that it may genuinely not be VM's fault, I don't really like the idea that I pay what I do to be told they're not interested unless they're risking losing a lot of subscribers.

[AdamD]

I'm getting the same issue, as of a few days ago, although it might've been further back, I just wasn't using the internet much till Monday, which is when I noticed at primetime, I was getting 1mb speeds

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...er-4pmish.html

Originally Posted by Calliope

Hi Kymmy,

I'd tend to agree with you about the bottleneck on the route somewhere. And yeah, the tracert was just something VM'd requested, I posted it cause it showed some rather abnormal ping times scattered across the connection.




Hi Boaby,

Just followed your advice, everything seems fine.
50 pings went successfully, no packet loss. Some slight discrepancies in the response times but nothing major (maybe 5ms variance).

EDIT: Oh yeah, I should point out that the ping times to my gateway were fine; 6ms was the average with 17 the maximum.

The VM tech agreed there might be a problem somewhere along the line but said they wouldn't look into it unless a bunch of people in my area complain about it. While I agree that it may genuinely not be VM's fault, I don't really like the idea that I pay what I do to be told they're not interested unless they're risking losing a lot of subscribers.

They have to have so many complaints in order to trigger an Outage, till then you have to wait otherwise they would have so many minor faults under investigation that they would run out of resources.

( I am not saying your fault is minor, because as it is affecting you personally its a major fault )

[Calliope]

Originally Posted by whydoIneedatech

They have to have so many complaints in order to trigger an Outage, till then you have to wait otherwise they would have so many minor faults under investigation that they would run out of resources.

I understand the reasoning behind it, it's just the way she phrased it I suppose that annoyed me. It came across as less "I'm sorry, but we need more complaints before we can do anything" and more "Shut up and keep paying".

I got a response today to the email I'd sent in about it, so we'll see how that pans out I suppose.

Are the others who were suffering from this problem still experiencing it or is it just me now?