Superhub : 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)

[cookster]

VM just started sending letters about price increases. Expect a "Free Upgrade" propaganda message to follow

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Oh I don't know, perhaps because the whole reason 30Mb ever existed to begin with was in order to compete with BT Infinity option 1?

As I understand it the 30Mb was to 'compete' with ADSL2+, not FTTC.

Infinity 1 and 2 were paralleled by 60Mb and 100Mb when 30Mb was released.

VM will always compete by offering a higher headline speed.

Next year the higher tiers will be closer to Infinity 3 and 4 than 1 and 2. The lowest available tier may well beat Infinity 2 also on download performance.

[Jayster]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

As I understand it the 30Mb was to 'compete' with ADSL2+, not FTTC.

Infinity 1 and 2 were paralleled by 60Mb and 100Mb when 30Mb was released.

VM will always compete by offering a higher headline speed.

Next year the higher tiers will be closer to Infinity 3 and 4 than 1 and 2. The lowest available tier may well beat Infinity 2 also on download performance.

If true those numbers sound pretty ambitious, will the network be able to cope?

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

As I understand it the 30Mb was to 'compete' with ADSL2+, not FTTC

30Mb was expected to be "comparable or faster" than FTTC 36Mbps, they make no mention of ADSL2+ in their blurb. I don't see why they'd need to intro 30Mb to compete with ADSL2+ which being advertised at <=17Mbps, VM's 20Mbps already had a higher headline speed and in reality higher average speeds too (as long as you didn't use it at full speed for more than 15 minutes...).

VM themselves compare it to Infinity in their announcement (recall at the time 76Mbps FTTC had not yet been deployed):

http://www.virginmedia.com/informati...vmsrc=HP_30meg

The new service offers unlimited downloads and with speeds cranked up to 30Mb, is expected to give customers faster average speeds than BT Infinity

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4...-to-30meg.html

The product change is clearly aimed at attracting BT customers who are in a fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) enabled area as the 30meg speeds are similar to what many on FTTC would receive, and Virgin are undercutting BT on price.

[jimbo2]

In a notification that pricing was going up on 1 January 2015, I contacted CS and was offered a discount for 6 months. We excepted that.

However, also in this letter it states

"We've delivered even faster broadband speeds to you
We're committed to providing an unbeatable unbeatable broadband service. We're invested £13.5bn to keep bringing you the UK's fastest widely available network, and that's why we've been able to incresse our customers' speeds again..."

Looking at it this seems to relate to what they have done rather than what they are going to do.

However, I asked the lady I spoke to and was told that it will be changing again but nothing has been advised yet as to when and what the speeds will be next.

The page to look at is
www.virginmedia.com/speedupgrade

for more info. According to this there will be a change between April and June 2015 but no info is yet available.

Having seen the survey at the beginning maybe it will become 100, 152 and 200. Will be interesting to see what happens.

[philwhite100]

I am happy enough with my 150meg and personally see no point in having 200meg as download speeds are more than good enough.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by philwhite100

I am happy enough with my 150meg and personally see no point in having 200meg as download speeds are more than good enough.

Of course 150 meg is good enough. But big willy time is always here - on both sides. Plus if there is an upstream speed rise, that'll be highly attractive to many.

[Matth]

Logically, assuming the rule of 50% per stream (max 100Mb for the 4 stream modem), the 8 stream superhub is good for 200Mb on that basis.

Of course, with just 8 streams, 2 people running 200Mb speed tests at once would saturate them.
I'd guess there may be more than 8 streams, allocated according to load, or by simple round robin.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Matth

Logically, assuming the rule of 50% per stream

There is no such rule

the 8 stream superhub is good for 200Mb on that basis.

Given that the Superhub is not a SACM, looking at one specific aspect of the modem as an indicator of all the capabilities of every other part of the device is unrepresentative.

[philwhite100]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Of course 150 meg is good enough. But big willy time is always here - on both sides. Plus if there is an upstream speed rise, that'll be highly attractive to many.

I understand what you are saying but if the chance came for me to upgrade I won't bother.

[horseman]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

There is no such rule

That was intriguing me as well but I think he was trying to refer to net 50mbps (thus excluding DOCSIS overheads) per d/s 256QAM channel perhaps?.

[Matth]

It's a reasonable assumption, with 50mbps per channel...
They offer 20 but not 30 over a single channel modem.
100 but not 120 over the 4 channel modem.
On that basis, the acceptable load based limit for the 8 channel superhub would be 200, as there seems to be a strong pattern for a maximum 50% usage of a channel by a single device.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by Matth

100 but not 120 over the 4 channel modem

incorrect, you could have both on the vmng300, it is 152mbits which you needed a shub for because they didn't write a config file for the vmng300

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Plus if there is an upstream speed rise, that'll be highly attractive to many.

absolutely and that is why I went for 152mbits to start off with and I'll get 200mbits as soon as I can. I can't think of many services I use that will let me download at ~30MB/sec but uploading at ~2MB/sec will be welcomed with open arms.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Matth

It's a reasonable assumption, with 50mbps per channel...
They offer 20 but not 30 over a single channel modem.
100 but not 120 over the 4 channel modem.
On that basis, the acceptable load based limit for the 8 channel superhub would be 200, as there seems to be a strong pattern for a maximum 50% usage of a channel by a single device.

That's not accurate, I'm afraid. You've reasoned yourself into a cul-de-sac.

At the current symbol rate and packing density (256QAM), each downstream channel has 55 meg/sec to share across all DOCSIS 3 users (i.e. all tiers). There is no 50% rule.

Incidentally a 4 channel modem is not constrained to 100 meg - but it's VM's policy not to let people on 120 or 152 have that old modem.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Matth

They offer 20 but not 30 over a single channel modem.

But others do

100 but not 120 over the 4 channel modem.

They do offer 120 over the 4 channel modem.
They also offer 100 over a 3 channel system.

On that basis, the acceptable load based limit for the 8 channel superhub would be 200, as there seems to be a strong pattern for a maximum 50% usage of a channel by a single device.

There is no such pattern.

And in case you missed it, all those previous devices were SACMs. The Superhub is not a SACM.