General : Oversubscribed areas?

[japitts]

Originally Posted by Kushan

If I wanted to be pedantic, I'd state that none of those figures make sense on their own. I dare say that even in the worst areas, "90%" utilisation rarely occurs because utilisation alone is almost meaningless without something else to correlate it. I.e. if a connection sits at 20% utilisation between midnight and 5pm during the week but skyrockets to 100% between 5pm and 10pm, then it's not going to have 90% utilisation overall but (in my opinion) needs capacity relief anyway.

I may be missing something here, but by that logic - 100% utilisation for 5 hours is nigh on 21% of the time, excluding weekends when it may be even worse. That breaches the 90/10 threshold quite substantially. I get your point entirely and agree with it - but my maths suggest your example would also breach.

Originally Posted by Kushan

Part of Virgin's issue (in my opinion) is the second figure is far too high even at 10%. I would happily tolerate 99% utilisation once in a blue moon, during a critical event or something but it shouldn't go above 90% more than 5% of the time.

Seems entirely reasonable.

[Chrysalis]

5% on its own seems a small number, but that will always be at peak so e.g. lets say peak is 4pm to 10pm, 25% of the day, that 5% becomes 20% of the time effectively of when most people will use it, or 10% of the time is then 40% of the time when most use it.

Not everyone is like myself using the net for varying parts of the day.

[mike86]

I started this thread:

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

reading this thread suggests to me is the same old bad capacity management.

Showed it to my buddy who is showing massive loyalty to VM but he has faith VM will fix his utilisation issue that has lasted 2 years

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...5/td-p/2494921

note the guy was seeing severe issues even when still in the threshold (proof that the threshold is set too leniant) and is the usual several months of delays, what have liberty global fixed?

Virgin are an absolute disgrace. They claim to have added "additional channels" and everything was fine for a while, but this period coincided with university students going home for the summer. Now they're arriving back in the city and speeds are as bad as ever. I simply don't believe Virgin have done anything in the year since I started that thread.

Recently somebody replied to the thread and pointed out that this is history repeating itself. A few years ago there were the exact same problems in the same area.

It seems that Virgin oversell the network until it's run into the ground and barely useable, then eventually undertake the minimum amount of work required to provide a short-term fix, then let the cycle start over again. There's clearly no work being done to future-proof this part of the network so it's able to cope with increasing demands.

This area is right next to a large university campus, and is therefore extremely popular with students as they can walk to lectures in just a few minutes. It should be pretty obvious to Virgin by now that we need vast increases in capacity, not the piecemeal fixes they've provided in the past.

[Edit]
A question for you knowledgeable people: Virgin fobbed me off several times saying they were waiting for planning permission, but do they even need that to add downstream channels? I understand if they were going to re-segment the network and build new cabinets that they'd need to wait, but adding channels sounds to me like something they can do with existing infrastructure?

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by mike86

Virgin fobbed me off several times saying they were waiting for planning permission, but do they even need that to add downstream channels? I understand if they were going to re-segment the network and build new cabinets that they'd need to wait, but adding channels sounds to me like something they can do with existing infrastructure?

Unless they needed to extend the hubsite that holds the routers the modems connect to, because they needed more space, they do not need planning permission to add downstream channels.

They also do not need planning permission to build new cabinets.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Unless they needed to extend the hubsite that holds the routers the modems connect to, because they needed more space, they do not need planning permission to add downstream channels.

They also do not need planning permission to build new cabinets.

But if they have to dig avcross a street, particularly a main street, isn't there then a process that delays things?

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

But if they have to dig avcross a street, particularly a main street, isn't there then a process that delays things?

There's a process for any street works, but it's not planning permission. The process is that instead of having to give 3 or 5 days notice you have to give 10.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by mike86

I started this thread:



Virgin are an absolute disgrace. They claim to have added "additional channels" and everything was fine for a while, but this period coincided with university students going home for the summer. Now they're arriving back in the city and speeds are as bad as ever. I simply don't believe Virgin have done anything in the year since I started that thread.

I had a good few years of this myself on VM, back when I was living in a student-ey area. The running theme seems to be VM are incapable of managing capacity properly in areas where utilization varies drastically through the year.

A question for you knowledgeable people: Virgin fobbed me off several times saying they were waiting for planning permission, but do they even need that to add downstream channels?

Why not check your council's planning applications list to see if VM have put any entries in. And the council where the CMTS is sited too, if that's different.

[Kushan]

The problem is that first line agents don't actually get told why utilisation tickets get delayed. In the ticket, it'll just have a fix date of some time in the future. If you're lucky, you might even see a tech note mentioning why it'll be this date but 9 times out of 10 the ticket is completely empty. There's nothing to indicate if it's a BS date or if something is actually being done and no way of chasing it further for an update. You've got a ticket with a date on it and that's it.

So what agents are supposed to say is that the ticket is scheduled to be fixed on that date, but we can only speculate as to why it's taking so long - it can be things like planning permission but not necessarily. Unfortunately a lot of agents don't make it clear that they're speculating and just blame it on the councils, when the reality is that Virgin only clears so much capacity at a time and will push some areas to the bottom of the list.

I was caught out on more than one occasion where the fix date on the ticket was in the past - what on earth can you say, then?

Ultimately, as always with Virgin, they will try to minimise costs and maximise profits - if an area is oversubscribed but not many people are complaining or leaving, they will happily let that stay at the bottom of the list. The only way to force them to fix it is to demand money back each month and encourage anyone else to do the same. At some point it'll just be more economical for Virgin to fix the issue and they'll suddenly find the budget for it.

They were doing better over the last couple of years, but it seems since the LibGlob takeover, they're slipping again.

[JoelTheSuperior]

Things definitely seem to have gotten worse since the Liberty Global takeover.

With that said, I had some really terrible capacity issues with VM to the point where after 4 years (which is long by my standards) I was thinking of leaving. Then around the end of the summer they suddenly upped capacity in my area and things have been great since.

My only concern is if the speed upgrades will send it back to the point it was at.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by JoelTheSuperior

Things definitely seem to have gotten worse since the Liberty Global takeover.

Strangely people who took services from Telewest said exactly the same when they merged with ntl, which was kinda funny as the combined company spent a ton of money upgrading the Telewest networks, and people who had been on them both said exactly the same when the company was rebranded Virgin Media.

Virgin Media still use the same capacity guidelines they always have. Liberty Global aren't related to the issues.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Strangely people who took services from Telewest said exactly the same when they merged with ntl, which was kinda funny as the combined company spent a ton of money upgrading the Telewest networks, and people who had been on them both said exactly the same when the company was rebranded Virgin Media.

Alternatively, if they have been progressively getting worse every year for the last fifteen years, it would be completely accurate for them to have gotten worse since every merger/rebrand.

Just like speeds got faster when they merged with NTL. And when they rebranded. And when they were bought by LG. And pretty much every year in between.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Strangely people who took services from Telewest said exactly the same when they merged with ntl, which was kinda funny as the combined company spent a ton of money upgrading the Telewest networks, and people who had been on them both said exactly the same when the company was rebranded Virgin Media.

Virgin Media still use the same capacity guidelines they always have. Liberty Global aren't related to the issues.

The guidelines are the same, but is the amount being invested in relation to the demand on the network?

[Martin_D]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Strangely people who took services from Telewest said exactly the same when they merged with ntl, which was kinda funny as the combined company spent a ton of money upgrading the Telewest networks, and people who had been on them both said exactly the same when the company was rebranded Virgin Media.

Virgin Media still use the same capacity guidelines they always have. Liberty Global aren't related to the issues.

Just to say i'm on part of the old Telewest network and before the takeover in 2006 the service was just appalling in this area and now it's so much better

[Chrysalis]

My area was ex ntl, before VM (brand change) took over the service was really really bad I had at the time.
After a stint on adsl after I moved, I went back to cable after they enabled my area, and apparently my area should have had fresh empty utilisation as it was newly activated but was heavily congested from the day I had the installation (just weeks after area enabled), although not sure if was as bad as the previous address under ntl. They moved me to docsis3, which was supposedly new and under utilised but funny enough whilst it was a big improvement it was still congested. In my city I have checked VM performance at several addresses and all of them are congested, its only out of the city suburbs when into the blaby area I know one guy who is in a low utilisation area.
Remember when VM activated the 10:1 speeds and the upgrades for those speeds? well my area had the capacity upgrade about 6 months before they updated the modem configs, that was basically just about the only good 6 months service I have had from VM in probably 5+ years of service. Even before they updated the modem config's the last 4 weeks of that 6 months congestion was starting to show slowly.

Also a member of this forum (I think was qas but not sure) commented that when he visited Leicester and used a VM connection it was completely different to his own address he commented how slow and congested it was.

I still check on the people who have VM in my city, including my sister and they yep you guessed it, still have poor evening performance.

I think its clear certain VM policies are just broken, the need to wait for sustained 90% utilisation when it takes over a year to fix, and how small the capacity is compared to what people on the top package can do. This is ignoring the peering issues which seem to come up several times a year as well.

Plus sides?

Almost permanent discount due to confirmed high utilisation for years at a time.
Fixed access speed unlike dsl.
Generally more stable in terms of connection staying alive vs how bad my long adsl line was (without SRA).
Was fast at 4-8am.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Martin Dee 11

Just to say i'm on part of the old Telewest network and before the takeover in 2006 the service was just appalling in this area and now it's so much better

Uddingston along with a bunch of other, mostly ex-Eurobell areas, was largely rebuilt by ntl:Telewest. Telewest refrained from doing it basically because they were waiting for ntl: to come get them

ntl:Telewest ended up doing a ton of rebuild and node splits in ex-Telewest areas, those areas having had everything possible done to sweat the existing fibre and copper.

---------- Post added at 13:11 ---------- Previous post was at 13:09 ----------

Originally Posted by Kushan

The guidelines are the same, but is the amount being invested in relation to the demand on the network?

Yep.

---------- Post added at 13:33 ---------- Previous post was at 13:11 ----------

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

and how small the capacity is compared to what people on the top package can do.

I think we've spoken on this before. Not really. The issue is how many people are on the same capacity, not the proportion someone on the top tier can take.

If you think Virgin are bad selling 152Mb out of 400, 600 or 800Mb you'd have an anaphylactic reaction to operators selling 300Mb out of 608Mb in North America and 500Mb out of 800Mb in Sweden.

If you think Virgin are callous in this regard I can tell you that they were asked whether they thought they would be able to release 300Mb on 8 downstreams, 400Mb capacity.

They refused. They won. It's not happening.

The heaviest VM have gone in terms of the ratio of capacity to access line speed was when they were selling 100Mb on 152Mb capacity in a very few areas where an upgrade was delayed. Apart from that they've never breached about a 1:2 ratio which is quite normal for cable.

It's also not that far off normal on FTTP, where 1Gb downstream services are sold on 2.4Gb GPON splits and 500Mb upstream services on 1.2Gb.

There is way more to this than simply maximum speed.

Lastly it can't be made clear enough - VM couldn't give a toss about download speeds. They are worried about QoE / Quality of Experience metrics. These alongside feedback from the Samknows kit they have deployed is what they work on. They unapologetically make no attempt to ensure there's no visible contention.