Superhub : My awful experience with Superhub and 60Mb - in pictures

[alistairgd]

OKay here's the update.

Cable guy came out, "not coming in to your house, read the history, you have high utilisation area and high power level issue, so I just need to check the tap in the u/g box"

So off we went, he hooked up to the tap with his cable/test superhub and linux netbook, waited for his new hub to update firmware, and checked the upstream power.

33.5 dBmV

I was like "eh? That's not right, I've been on 55+ for over 6 weeks"

So I went back to the house, checked my levels at my Superhub, Power Level 55.5 dBmV.

So then he took my cable off the tap, and plugged it into the same connection he had tested on, and my upstream in the house immediately went down to 33.5 dBmV.

Remember, that is a brand new tap in the footpath.

So the only conclusion is that the new tap was faulty, and I happened to be plugged into the faulty port, what are the chances?

If the power level stays the same over the next few days then fair enough, all I need to get sorted out is the high utilisation, which I was told today was up as high as 95% yesterday. Getting switched onto another UBR is not easy according to this guy, but that will be by next thing to resolve!

Any advice on that?

[alistairgd]

SCRATCH THAT
Connection dropped again 10- minutes ago, ie about 3 hours after this mornings tech visit.
Going off my head now.

Phoned 0800 support and tried to stay cool.

They say I am only locking onto 1 downstream at the moment, hence grren light instead of blue.
Upstream power level is still at 38

Edit>

2pm update.

Another new face came out and ran some diagnostics, all levels perfect. But only one downstream.

He noticed a coax connection behind my PC that I didn't even know was there, could have been loose, so he changed that, and the cable, and replaced the superhub.

On a speedtest (both on VM network and speedtest.net) got 40Meg down, I suppose acceptable for a saturday afternoon.

About the congestion, he advised me that in our area there is only one upstream freq, rather than two, so the whole area is sharing one upstream, hence the 95% congestion.

[nascent]

Reading your original post was like a complete reciting of my experience.
VM has been pretty much flawless prior to August. On Scientific Atlanta Docsis2, I was getting 20mb down, with a consistent connection.

Suddenly the whole connection dies, phone support don't have a clue, keep telling me to reboot the computer, after 2 engineer callouts both cancelled with automated cancellation messages as "faults have been found in the area", yet both of these faults were apparently fixed, and still no internet.

After a long couple of weeks, an engineer finally turns up (a day later than booked, with no explanation or apology) he storms into the house, rips out the Scientific Atlanta and chucks in a 'Super'hub, I've experience with these things before so was pleading to let me buy a motorola surfboard, or just keep my scientific atlanta, but no go.

He tells me it's cause they upgraded to DOCSIS3 (yet not one of the support techs knew of this) and the only device Virgin will authorise is a 'super'hub.

He installs the hub, runs off as fast as he possibly could (Scientific Atlanta under-arm), and now I get the crappiest connection I've had in 10 years.

This picture kind of summarises how bad this is now:



(That's wired by the way.)

I guess all I can do is switch to BT Infinity?

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by nascent

I guess all I can do is switch to BT Infinity?

If it is available then yes that's probably the way to go.

[alistairgd]

Originally Posted by nascent

Reading your original post was like a complete reciting of my experience.

My intermittant servcie with the connection dropping every few hours was down to a loose co-ax connection right next to the PC that none of the other techs had noticed.

The poor download speed has been put down to network congestion which is due to our area only having one upstream channel. I have ben promised a fix by September, which is now. Until then I am ony getting around half the advertised speed. So this issue is unresolved still.

For your ridiculious speed surely there is something they can do with that. Have network been out and checked the cabling and boxes in your area?

[philce]

Get a email off to the CEO's office.

Threaten to leave to BT and they will sort.

If they cant (network usage etc) they will let you leave if still in contract.

Don't mess about calling the help desks any more, they are a waste of time in cases like these, all they do is blame a "virus" or some other some other scripted answer.