Forums response to my recent UK VM Tech Advice

[dekd]

Hi All,

Long time lurker, first serious post.
As per the title, I would be keen for those on the forums with a little more know how than me, help with their thoughts as to some recent advice offered by VM tech support ( Specialist ), which I had to wait for over week for the luxury of. To be fair it was at my request due to frustrations with off shore support, but still a week is poor!

Long story short, can't host MW2 on XBL, lot's of threads on varying forums, no real answer...

Tech called and instantly described my problems before I could - can't host, always picked as host (get heckled) then kicked out, cycle repeats until you throw control on floor in child like tantrum and call it day.

Tech told me I have QPSK upstream and most users with QPSK upstream suffer with this. He then said I need to be on QAM16 upstream?
Oh and something about me being on DOCSIS 1.0 and needs to be on 1.1 or higher?
Official way of ensuring I was migrated over is to up to 50MB. To which I had moan about and said no thanks. He then said the alternate is to download LOTS every night and I would then be flagged as a heavy user and migrated. He did tell me tobe mindful of traffic shaping times.

I have been downloading 8GB nightly for nearly 2 weeks and I have had enough and still on QPSK according to the Modem status page.

Would anyone mind sharing their thoughts on the advice given, which to me seems a bit strange??

BTW I have 10MB conection, which is great excluding this issue.
Is there not anyway for them to put me on this QAM16 thing legitimately?
It does seem to be correct as my friend, 1/2 mile down the road has same connection/package, same modem 256, yet he plays fine and does have this QAM16 upstream. It would appear that there is some truth in the QAM16 upstream is required and that it can be achived on 10MB service...
Frustrating as 2MB cheapo or free ADSL lads play fine

Thanks in advance.

Thoughts would be welcomed....

[III]

Your gaming experience will be better on QAM16, that said if you migrate to D3 network there is no guarantee that you won't tune to a over used upstream.
The D3 upstreams are in a worse state than the older network right now. Broadbandings will back me on this

As for downloading a large amount to be migrated over, errm no. That may have been the case a while ago, but not any more.
Who is this "Specialist", his first name would be handy if you know it.

AFAIK escalations are dealt with by 2nd line and you don't have to wait a week.

[dekd]

Thanks for the reply!
I have the guys name in my work diary and I will certainly post it up tomorrow.(james or jamie rings a bell though???) He was great on the phone, just a bit miffed that I have been DL'ing like a loony for no real reason......
Is it just quite random as to what network you are placed on or is there anything sensible that I can do or VM can do to help achieve this QAM stuff?
I genuinely does make a huge difference as seen at a friends.

It's a bit of a mare as on the whole I have a great connection (fast DL's and browsing etc) and I have been pretty much fault free. However, part of intended use for the service is gaming and it falls down for me here. Hence I think the support is not so good in view of the fact that general connection is working fine.
Thanks again for the FB.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by III

Your gaming experience will be better on QAM16, that said if you migrate to D3 network there is no guarantee that you won't tune to a over used upstream.
The D3 upstreams are in a worse state than the older network right now. Broadbandings will back me on this

As for downloading a large amount to be migrated over, errm no. That may have been the case a while ago, but not any more.
Who is this "Specialist", his first name would be handy if you know it.

AFAIK escalations are dealt with by 2nd line and you don't have to wait a week.

Broadbandings posted back in 2008 about his concerns with the way the DOCSIS 3 network was being built, VM kindly obliged and proved his concerns were warranted.

16QAM will improve experience if there are loading issues on QPSK, though if you end up on a 16QAM channel that's equally loaded you'll be in a position that's no better as mentioned above.

There is no way to be migrated over, load balancing is largely automatic now with all tiers being spread across all available equipment. Said load balancing is part of the reason that the DOCSIS 3 network is hosed.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

.....

There is no way to be migrated over, load balancing is largely automatic now with all tiers being spread across all available equipment. Said load balancing is part of the reason that the DOCSIS 3 network is hosed.

BBings, when you say "DOCSIS 3 network", do you include the 20 Mbps users on that network? And what was there about the load balancing that "hosed" the network?

[Ignitionnet]

I mean the DOCSIS 3 network, who / what is on it isn't really too bothersome I was referring to how the network was built.

Load balancing, spreading modems across all the platforms to try and even up the load. It's a great idea until one notes that those modems that previously were on 3 or 4 upstreams on the DOCSIS 1.0 network are now sitting on 1, and are 50Mbit and a higher concentration of 20Mbit users.

From the view of a single cable modem the networks look like this, I emphasise this is the view of a single cable modem and the channels it can acquire, not what it looks like on the card at the headend, that is irrelevant:

DOCSIS 1 network, bog standard build - 1 downstream @ 38Mbit, 4 upstreams @ ~4.5 or ~9Mbit or a combination of the two.
DOCSIS 3 network - 4 downstreams @ 50Mbit each, 1 upstream @ 9Mbit.

Just to add to the delight each DOCSIS 1 area of 1 downstream and 4 upstreams may actually be joined with another area that it was previously resegmented from before being pushed onto the single upstream on the DOCSIS 3 network, so you may actually be in a position where there were previously some modems split across eight upstreams being funnelled onto one

Do we see a problem here using the standard capacity planning? *Nods* We do. Oh yes.

I posted about it as I mentioned in 2008 both here and to technical support in the newsgroups expressing my concern about this architecture. Seems I was a year ahead of the curve. They threw the DOCSIS 3 network in as quickly and cheaply as possible, it's in the past weeks started to really bite them in the arse.

EDIT: One would have hoped this would provide extra momentum to JFDI with regards to the upstream upgrades needed for the uplifts to upstream bandwidth, evidently not as those upgrades that are being done consist of reducing the modems per upstream port, which is fine but can take quite a while, rather than increasing the bandwidth on the ports which would be potentially much faster and will be required as part of the upstream upgrade anyway. There seems no interest in doing anything bar business as usual in that regard, resegmentation, or more accurately in some cases re-resegmentation given they undid previous segmentation in some cases, where capacity is a problem rather than long overdue DOCSIS upgrade.

So for us mere mortals who don't understand 90% of what you are saying are these problems fixable Broad bandings? Are they being fixed?

[Ignitionnet]

Fixable yes, being fixed yes, slowly.

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

Fixable yes, being fixed yes, slowly.

Well that's semi good news, I suppose. Thanks for explaining it in words I understand.

BTW I do remember you saying they were doing it on the cheap and would run in to problems and I took it with a pinch of salt. Looks like you have much more understanding of the network than I gave you credit for.

[nvc]

Originally Posted by ahardie

Well that's semi good news, I suppose. Thanks for explaining it in words I understand.

BTW I do remember you saying they were doing it on the cheap and would run in to problems and I took it with a pinch of salt. Looks like you have much more understanding of the network than I gave you credit for.

if you replace "network" with "virgin" (which would include network), i'd put money on the fact you may have hit the nail on the head :P

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by ahardie

Well that's semi good news, I suppose. Thanks for explaining it in words I understand.

BTW I do remember you saying they were doing it on the cheap and would run in to problems and I took it with a pinch of salt. Looks like you have much more understanding of the network than I gave you credit for.

Thanks, I very much appreciate that, but give me a while I'm sure I'll prove your initial suspicions right eventually.

[dekd]

Just a quick update, as the guy who I initially waited for a scheduled call a few weeks called me back, which I had forgot all about...

Anyway, the guy was called James.

After I had a right go about the downloading advice, he quite clearly accepted that my problem is this QPSK upstream and he initiated this. I queried the fact that a friend down the road is ok and tried to understand his reposnse, which is odd but went along the lines that one of my neighbours could be on QAM16 and that they had not control over it.
I have actually checked by way of taking my modem to my friends and surprise, surprise, it works great. I got QAM16 upstream and QAM256 down, which at the moment is QAM64 for me?

Anyway long and short, he said there is nothing that they can do for me and went on to baffle me about ASM or AMS??? Anyway, i'm told it was due 2011 but in view of recent issues it'now now due end of 1st 1/4 2010. Seemingly this will fix me up??

Ah well, at least I know I'm stuck for now and most annoying is that if i live 2 mins down the road, my fault can be resolved.

Tempted to arm myself with some RG6 or CT and remove myself from my the tap unit i'm on and extend down to the next one