Are 10 meg customers being conned ?

[Subliminal Aura]

Hi,

I've been a cable customer (Telewest now Virgin Media) from around the year 2000 to present and have had the pleasure to have experienced a variety of levels of packages. From the beautiful low latent 0.5 meg service right up to the dreadful 100 meg services we have today.

I've been downgrading my services over the past year and here's the thing I'm most shocked about - the 10 meg performance !

Obviously speedtest will show 10 meg results and ping plots on an idle connection are 'satisfactory' - Satisfactory, but not clean enough by any means. So the first thing I noticed was the BBC live news stream saying that it didn't have enough bandwidth and my trading platform intermittently failing.

Surely this can't be - 10 meg is plenty of bandwidth for these applications but what if Virgin Media is deliberately shaping 10 meg customers just to coax them into upgrading ?

As I've mentioned ping plots and speedtests are satisfactory and are in line with what you would expect from their 30 meg and higher packages but here is the caveat....

' Simultaneous connections and Virgin QoS '

When streaming spotify or youtube the rest of my network grinds to a halt with ping spikes at 0.5s 1s 1.5s 2s (these spikes are too round to be random). I've never experienced anything like this before and can provide detailed charts of every service I've had since 2000

There's either something very fishy about this 10 meg service or I've developed a fault during the downgrade - if that is even possible.

I'll be in touch with CS to see if I have a fault but in the interim would any of you 10 meg customers like to share your experiences ?

Thanks for reading

[Russ]

Just ran this speed test - http://www.speedtest.net/result/1641555194.png

No problems here.

There is no conspiracy, VM are not conning anyone.

[Nopanic]

As above, there is nothing detrimental being done to make other packages looks better .. not only would this be unethical, it would be illegal and I promise you someone within VM would speak up about it ..

[Subliminal Aura]

Originally Posted by Russ

Just ran this speed test - http://www.speedtest.net/result/1641555194.png

No problems here.

There is no conspiracy, VM are not conning anyone.

Hi,

Thanks for the speedtest result, it's almost identical to the one I have but this is not the issue as we all know that a speedtest is a measure of max throughput and is not an indicator of quality of service.

I sure hope it's not a conspiracy and that I just have some form of 'fault' - I was hoping to gauge other users' experiences

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Nopanic

it would be illegal and I promise you someone within VM would speak up about it ..

This. VM have a rich history of being unable to keep secrets under-wraps and there is no doubt a whistleblower would tip the media off about it if they were deliberately affecting peoples' services just to get them to upgrade.

---------- Post added at 22:59 ---------- Previous post was at 22:58 ----------

Originally Posted by Subliminal Aura

Hi,

Thanks for the speedtest result, it's almost identical to the one I have but this is not the issue as we all know that a speedtest is a measure of max throughput and is not an indicator of quality of service.

OK let me try it this way - I have never had an issue with the quality of my 10meg line. Occasional dips in speed but nothing unexpected.

[Nopanic]

Originally Posted by Russ

This. VM have a rich history of being unable to keep secrets under-wraps and there is no doubt a whistleblower would tip the media off about it if they were deliberately affecting peoples' services just to get them to upgrade.

I like to think of it as employees with conscience's

[Subliminal Aura]

Originally Posted by Russ

OK let me try it this way - I have never had an issue with the quality of my 10meg line. Occasional dips in speed but nothing unexpected.

OK, thanks for that - I guess there must be an issue with my service.

What's the best way to contact CS without having to speak to someone in India who will no doubt ask me to disconnect, reboot and reboot again. Are the usenet support groups still available ?

Cheers

[Nopanic]

I'd tell you, but you appear to not be able to see my posts ..

[Subliminal Aura]

Originally Posted by Nopanic

I'd tell you, but you appear to not be able to see my posts ..

I'm not sure I understand ! What do you mean ?

[tomtank62]

Originally Posted by Subliminal Aura

Hi,

I've been a cable customer (Telewest now Virgin Media) from around the year 2000 to present and have had the pleasure to have experienced a variety of levels of packages. From the beautiful low latent 0.5 meg service right up to the dreadful 100 meg services we have today.

I've been downgrading my services over the past year and here's the thing I'm most shocked about - the 10 meg performance !

Obviously speedtest will show 10 meg results and ping plots on an idle connection are 'satisfactory' - Satisfactory, but not clean enough by any means. So the first thing I noticed was the BBC live news stream saying that it didn't have enough bandwidth and my trading platform intermittently failing.

Surely this can't be - 10 meg is plenty of bandwidth for these applications but what if Virgin Media is deliberately shaping 10 meg customers just to coax them into upgrading ?

As I've mentioned ping plots and speedtests are satisfactory and are in line with what you would expect from their 30 meg and higher packages but here is the caveat....

' Simultaneous connections and Virgin QoS '

When streaming spotify or youtube the rest of my network grinds to a halt with ping spikes at 0.5s 1s 1.5s 2s (these spikes are too round to be random). I've never experienced anything like this before and can provide detailed charts of every service I've had since 2000

There's either something very fishy about this 10 meg service or I've developed a fault during the downgrade - if that is even possible.

I'll be in touch with CS to see if I have a fault but in the interim would any of you 10 meg customers like to share your experiences ?

Thanks for reading

I've never had any problem with my 10 meg service

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by Subliminal Aura

Hi,

I've been a cable customer (Telewest now Virgin Media) from around the year 2000 to present and have had the pleasure to have experienced a variety of levels of packages. From the beautiful low latent 0.5 meg service right up to the dreadful 100 meg services we have today.

I've been downgrading my services over the past year and here's the thing I'm most shocked about - the 10 meg performance !

Obviously speedtest will show 10 meg results and ping plots on an idle connection are 'satisfactory' - Satisfactory, but not clean enough by any means. So the first thing I noticed was the BBC live news stream saying that it didn't have enough bandwidth and my trading platform intermittently failing.

Surely this can't be - 10 meg is plenty of bandwidth for these applications but what if Virgin Media is deliberately shaping 10 meg customers just to coax them into upgrading ?

As I've mentioned ping plots and speedtests are satisfactory and are in line with what you would expect from their 30 meg and higher packages but here is the caveat....

' Simultaneous connections and Virgin QoS '

When streaming spotify or youtube the rest of my network grinds to a halt with ping spikes at 0.5s 1s 1.5s 2s (these spikes are too round to be random). I've never experienced anything like this before and can provide detailed charts of every service I've had since 2000

There's either something very fishy about this 10 meg service or I've developed a fault during the downgrade - if that is even possible.

I'll be in touch with CS to see if I have a fault but in the interim would any of you 10 meg customers like to share your experiences ?

Thanks for reading

the bbc iplayer said i didnt have neough bandwidth an i am on 50mb, i foudn out it was two problems firstly bbc was quite overloaded that day so it was them not having enough bandwidth as when i used ther eown speed test it said i had 48mb so clearly i had enough bandwidht, the secodn problem was i forgot i had reinstall windows recently and had not optismtic my computer for the connection ie over 2mb which is what xp is optismised for. i change the register settings and hay presto problem solved

[Chrysalis]

sounds like something somewhere was overloaded.

either the VM service to you was congested or the bbc service was, or the intermediate peering link was.

[chrisjones]

My 10mb service has always been rock solid, thats the main reason Ive never bothered upgrading. ADSL around me is pants, around 2mb at best, I always get 1.1mbps on downloads (server depending) which is more than enough for me, even on larger files.
That said, if VM offered me 100mb at no extra cost I wouldn't say no haha..

[swanseadave]

I've never had any problem with my 10 meg service

Neither have I.It always delivers what`s expected of it.