Business Broadband

[cookdn]

I am currently considering a move to the VM internet service and have been lurking on here and the VM Community forums. Reliable connectivity is much more important to me than headline speed as our home connection is used for both work and an on-line Masters degree course; however the 3.5 Mb/s service we are getting from our ADSL 21CN is becoming a bit limiting for BBC iPlayer etc. I would stay with the ADSL connection as it is reliable, unfortunately our relative short underground cabling to the exchange is not good (early 1980's so probably aluminium, at least in part) and there is no ETA for FTTC.

I am attracted to the VB Business offerings in the hope of

• being segmented from the domestic network and be relatively unaffected by reported capacity issues
• being able to report faults to a UK call centre
• getting relatively quick fix response to reported faults (24 to 48 hours?)
• being able to use the VM provided equipment in 'modem mode' (or equivalent) so that the public IP is assigned to my firewall WAN interface (supports static, PPPoE, DHCP & PPTP assigned addresses)

The question is are my expectations realistic? I am prepared to pay a reasonable premium for this type of service, does anybody know what the choices and costs are for VM business broadband?

Best regards
David

[Stephen]

Hi and Welcome.

Have you checked the full info available here?

http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk...dband_1211.pdf

Costs aren't mentioned on there but its best to call the sales team as they can advise you best as the prices vary depending on what you want and the contract length.

Sales 0800 052 0845

[ccarmock]

I have had Virgin Media Business broadband for the past 3 to 4 years now. I have the 10 MB/s service with fixed IP address and am due tomorrow to upgrade to the 50 Mb/s service with 5 static IP addresses.

To answer some of your points, you are not segmented from the consumer network - the very same infrastructure that supplies the consumer service supplies the business service. I have been subject to slow performance at times when the network is congested, however on the whole I am very pleased and get close to the 10 Mb/s I expect.

Fault calls are handled by a UK team 24 hours a day. They are excellent - will not close a fault call until you are happy for them to do so and respond very quickly. My experience is that they usually have fixed the problem well within the 24 hours mentioned.

I believe fix times are now within 24 hours.


The older 10 & 20 MB/s services are provided (or were provided0 using a standard cable modem, however the newer 30 & 50 Mb/s services are provided by a Superhub, running business firmware. I understand this does not currently offer modem mode.

I also needed my router downstream of that to have a publicly routable fixed IP address, so decided to take the 5 static IP option which will allow me to do that.

[cookdn]

Stephen, ccarmock, thanks for your quick replies.

Originally Posted by Stephen

Have you checked the full info available here?

http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk...dband_1211.pdf

Costs aren't mentioned on there but its best to call the sales team as they can advise you best as the prices vary depending on what you want and the contract length.

Sales 0800 052 0845

Thanks for that. The info in the PDF seems to be much the same as the website, as you suggest calling the business sales team is probably the best thing.

Originally Posted by ccarmock

[....] you are not segmented from the consumer network - the very same infrastructure that supplies the consumer service supplies the business service. I have been subject to slow performance at times when the network is congested, however on the whole I am very pleased and get close to the 10 Mb/s I expect.

Fault calls are handled by a UK team 24 hours a day. They are excellent - will not close a fault call until you are happy for them to do so and respond very quickly. My experience is that they usually have fixed the problem well within the 24 hours mentioned.

I believe fix times are now within 24 hours.

On balance fault reporting and fix times are more important than potential congestion. A dead connection over the weekend when I am studying means that I would have to spend the weekend at the office. Ok, if I get a fault on a Friday that requires an engineer visit it is unlikely that it would be fixed before Monday, but at least it would be limited and I wouldn't be spending every evening the following week at the office too. :-)

Originally Posted by ccarmock

The older 10 & 20 MB/s services are provided (or were provided0 using a standard cable modem, however the newer 30 & 50 Mb/s services are provided by a Superhub, running business firmware. I understand this does not currently offer modem mode.

I also needed my router downstream of that to have a publicly routable fixed IP address, so decided to take the 5 static IP option which will allow me to do that.

This seems to be corroborated by this thread:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...o-draytek.html

However this bumps the cost up by £10/month (ex vat I assume) for the necessary /29 IP address block.

Originally Posted by ccarmock

The fixed IPs are extra cost - £5 for a single fixed address, £10 for 6 and £15 for 14 IP addresses. Costs are per month.

While a block of static IP addresses would be nice, they are not necessary. I wonder if 'modem mode' would ever be implemented in the Business Hub firmware or whether Virgin assume/hope that businesses needing this functionality are prepared to pay the additional monthly cost?

Best regards
David

[Kymmy]

No Nat mode as offered by the superhub should be the same as modem mode which is in effect a simple bridge.. You just though need to take the single IP.

CCarmock what are you paying for the 50Mb+5ip?? Also were there any upgrade costs? and what's the contract length?

[cookdn]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

No Nat mode as offered by the superhub should be the same as modem mode which is in effect a simple bridge.. You just though need to take the single IP.?

Interesting, thanks for the info.

Does this mean that a standard dynamic IP would work or would I need the £5/month single static IP? From a technical perspective it shouldn't make any difference if the hub is bridging the connection Ã* la 'modem mode'.

Best regards
David

[Kymmy]

Nope, you need the static IP, dynamic IP's will keep the superhub in NAT mode

[ccarmock]

Thats a good point Kymmy about a single static address in no NAT mode.

The contract I have is 24 months. There is a one off upgrade cost of £49 which covers the Superhub & visit for installation. I believe it's £99 if no existing cable service exists.

For the 50 Mb/s service plus business phone lime the fee is £53.99 The 5 static IP addresses cost an extra £10 per month. If you take a single static address that's £5 per month.

The £53.99 includes business phone line and the unlimited calls packages which provides unmetered calls up to 60 mins 24/7 for all UK landlines, and 0845/ 0870 and international calls to many countries. Calls to UK mobiles are now unmetered for up to 10 mins.

[Kymmy]

What's the cost without call package? Any ideas?

[Stephen]

It's £49 install if the site is pre-wired and £249 for a totally new install.

I will find out the prices and post tomorrow if I get time.

[Kymmy]

ThanX Stephen... If you can a full list of prices for the different combinations and if it varies on contract term would be great

[ccarmock]

The upgrade went ahead as planned today.

If you have either dyanamic IP or single static IP the superhub will be in NAT mode. In the case of a single static that IP address is assigned to the superhub and eqipment behind it is assigned private IP addressing, defaulting to 192.168.0.xx

In routed subnet mode NAT is disabled. The Superbhub is assigned the first usable IP in the subnet and all others are available for devices behind it. This does mean that your own device can be assigned a public routable address.

The Superhub appears to be the same standard Netgear device issued to residential customers, but with different firmware:-


Standard Specification Compliant EU DOCSIS 3.0
Hardware Version 2.00
Software Version V5.5.2R04-BU
MAC Address -------------
Serial Number ------------
CM Certificate Installed

Under basic settings are options for the L2TP tunnel:-

Cable Network Settings
Domain Name
Device Name
WAN Connection Type L2TP(DHCP)
PPP User Name *******
PPP Password ********

L2TP Server (Host name or IP)


onthe 50 Mb/s service in an area that has not yet had the upstream upgrade I seem to have odd bandwidth parameters:-

Primary Downstream Service Flow
Downstream(0)
SFID 21328
Max Traffic Rate 54600000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 10000 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps

Primary Upstream Service Flow
Upstream(0)
SFID 21327
Max Traffic Rate 3490000 bps
Max Traffic Burst 8160 bytes
Mix Traffic Rate 0 bps
Max Concatenated Burst 8160 bytes
Scheduling Type Best Effort


The upgrade took around 30 mins due to the fact that the Superhub needs to have it's addresses statically configured and the L2TP details entered, all of which require multiple restarts of the device.

My main concern is that after they left I discovered that they have the Superhub using the old PSU from the EPC2100 modem which is rated 10V 1.2A I undersood the Superhub to need 12V 1.5A

[Kymmy]

Doubtful the PSU will make much difference as it'll probably have a 5v and 3.3v regulators inside and will probably happily accept a voltage from 8v-18v DC

[ccarmock]

Good point Kymmy. I mentioned the PSU as I had read that people were struggling to get a good connection if the PSU was wrong. VM seem keen to not issue the PSUs for the Superhubs and just use the old modem one. I actually had a Netgear branded one that was 12V 1.5A so am using that instead.

So far the service seems OK, however I haven't got a speed over 40 Mb/s to speedtest.net. Mind you the New Malden network is still a mess I believe though some work is startign to improve that. Upstream seems to max out around 2 Mb/s despite the config file loading a profile of 3.49 Mb/s upstream.

I am hopeful both of these will be resolved when the area upgrades are complete.

The most disappointing aspect is the increased latency and increased jitter, though raw throughput is good. Downloads fly compared with before.



The first hop on a trace is no longer shown as the local CMTS due to the L2TP tunnel:-

C:\>tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms gw
2 44 ms 35 ms 32 ms brad-bam-1.network.virginmedia.net [194.145.148.188]
3 65 ms 204 ms 204 ms brad-core-1b-ge48.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.42]
4 23 ms 57 ms 40 ms brad-core-2b-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.163.237]
5 48 ms 61 ms 19 ms leed-bb-1b-ae6-0.network.virginmedia.net [81.97.80.121]
6 28 ms 20 ms 19 ms leed-bb-1a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.187.185]
7 26 ms 60 ms 22 ms nrth-bb-1b-as2-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.101]
8 37 ms 24 ms 56 ms nrth-tmr-2-ae6-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.34]
9 42 ms 35 ms 59 ms tele-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.184.2]
10 39 ms 36 ms 25 ms pos6-1.rt0.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.239.237]
11 63 ms 32 ms 30 ms 212.58.238.129
12 48 ms 25 ms 27 ms virtual-vip-231.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131]


Trace complete.