XL users - what's your average peak time speeds?

christopherw · 23-08-2007, 22:54

Just curious as to what other XL users' peak time speeds are like.

Let's all work from the same few files for some semblance of consistency... From Blueyonder's own gamefiles server too, so there should be minimal extra latency brought into the mix.

http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blu...42_mp_demo.exe : 130mb
http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blu...ritain_map.exe : 44mb
http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blu...raqmap-fix.zip : 38mb

There's also a nice download utility which my old ISP, Be* provides (it's more of a speedtest-style tester, it downloads a BIG jpeg image and then you hit a link under it once it's finished and it shows you your average download speed):

http://download.bethere.co.uk/downloadMeter.html

Now I'm in Brum (B16 area) and I know that there's going to be loads of people all contending for the same thin pipes, but if STM is working properly in my area it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. I'm seeing anything from 70-380kb/sec, I had a spike of 600kb/sec for a second (literally) but it's running at a third of that, I can see a lovely mountain-style graph in DU Meter (it looks like one of those mountain diagrams that the Tour De France program uses to show how high the course is

) - hardly a fast connection given I'm on the 20mb profile now.

Directly loading the huge image reference in the Be* meter shows about 300-400kb/sec (max) transfer, a lot more steady than the gamefiles site but still slower, which I suppose you could put down to QoS or dodge routing.

I'm going to give this another try at 3am and see what it's like, but at the moment, my old 11Mb ADSL2+ connection is still beating my XL connection for speed... What are other people getting on any of those files? If people can help out with a real-world comparison, that'd be most interesting (and, I think, useful for others, too). It shouldn't take too long, there's a couple of really large files and some files which should only take a few seconds (hopefully!) to download, so please give it a whirl.

Cheers!

janipewter · 23-08-2007, 23:15

I usually get between 1 and 3 megabits per second at peak time, that's before being shaped (I can't download fast enough to hit the limit to be shaped).

I got an average of 190 kilobytes per second downloading the Battlefield 1942 demo you posted above.

SnoopZ · 23-08-2007, 23:38

I can download all those files at pretty much 20mbit without problems.

ajkett · 23-08-2007, 23:50

I get about a 5mbit service (no i havent been abusing the 3gb limit during peak hours). Used your bethere test above and got a 5800kbs rating roughly.

When i first got the 20mbit service 2 weeks ago, i was loving it.. 1.2mb/s - 1.9mb/s... almost the full 20mbit service (in hertfordshire btw)...then my free VM TV was installed and my 20mbit became a 1mbit... phoned VM, engineer visited 5 days later, now im running at around 5mbit. I'm not sure i have the patience to phone them again... i work in IT and the things im being asked to do make me want to tear my eyes out with a rusty nail.... im not sure its worth it.

Quite dissapointed overall, but i keep rebooting my modem, changing pc, changing duplex and running tweaks all the same just in case the fault happens to be on my end... none have worked as yet.

i'll be keeping an eye on the forum... a few of you lot on here that have the 20mbit service really are having a terrible time of it (sub 2mbit).... so i'll keep schtum for now..see if any other solutions pop up that i can try.

xpod · 24-08-2007, 00:28

Quote:

Just curious as to what other XL users' peak time speeds are like.

Just peak times???
Our speeds are ****e all the time just now

Pyr0 · 24-08-2007, 00:48

just tried the 1942 demo file and was getting between 600K-1MB/sec
the JPG image page says the connection was tested at 6670.3kbps

christopherw · 24-08-2007, 01:28

Thanks for the replies, guys - very useful to get some real world comparisons!

If you could put where you are in the UK (region and postcode'd be nice I guess) then I'd be VERY interested to collate a list of speeds vs. region, see who has fast speed versus who has crap speed. Interestingly when I got my XL installed (which was 10mb in June) I could hit 1.14Mb/sec almost solidly at around 11am, obviously that's not peak

but it's interesting to see just how much worse the speeds have gotten since the uplift.

And, for the record, here's my modem stats:

Quote:

Downstream Status
Operational
Channel ID
2
Downstream Frequency
331000000 Hz
Modulation
256QAM
Bit Rate
20480000 bits/sec
Power Level
1.4 dBmV
Signal to Noise Ratio
40.8 dB

Upstream Status
Operational
Channel ID
4
Upstream Frequency
37500000 Hz
Modulation
QPSK
Bit Rate
768000 bits/sec
Power Level
35.0 dBmV

Just looking for some correlations... I suppose frequency, channel and power level are the most important stats here.

ScottC2105 · 24-08-2007, 02:44

I get 1.7Mb/s - 2.2Mb/s 24/7. It depends where I am downloading from.

Fenlock · 24-08-2007, 10:30

No offence, but i think measuring the speed off of one of virgins own sites is a pointless operation. Virgin will always tell you to test it from this site, and you will naturally get a fast connection. If you get 20MB from this site, it doesn't mean you are going to get it from all sites!>! so what's the point?

A) it's an internal site, so it's always going to be faster anyway

B) it's probably not traffic shaped because it's internal traffic

All you are going to determine from this is that the service IS CAPABLE of running at such speeds, and we all knew that already.

The problems seem to be traffic shaping and routing in and out of the virgin media network. The connections only go to pot at peak times, more or less directly after 5pm when the traffic shaping kicks in.

Try the same test again from something like file planet, or gamespotuk, or Microsoft downloads and you will see a big difference.

Pushkar · 24-08-2007, 11:00

2.6mb/s,

All good in the Croydon Area, but recently it's been disconnecting after about 6-7pm every few minutes.

24-08-2007, 12:08

1.2mb

Impz2002 · 24-08-2007, 13:20

i downloaded all files at a transfer rate of 2.4megs per second.

Everything is good here in Harrogate !

Impz

LaineY · 24-08-2007, 14:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fenlock

No offence, but i think measuring the speed off of one of virgins own sites is a pointless operation. Virgin will always tell you to test it from this site, and you will naturally get a fast connection. If you get 20MB from this site, it doesn't mean you are going to get it from all sites!>! so what's the point?

A) it's an internal site, so it's always going to be faster anyway

B) it's probably not traffic shaped because it's internal traffic

All you are going to determine from this is that the service IS CAPABLE of running at such speeds, and we all knew that already.

The problems seem to be traffic shaping and routing in and out of the virgin media network. The connections only go to pot at peak times, more or less directly after 5pm when the traffic shaping kicks in.

Try the same test again from something like file planet, or gamespotuk, or Microsoft downloads and you will see a big difference.

Download Windows Media Player 11 From Microsoft then

same speed as gamefiles..

its not like you have a direct connection to the gamefiles FTP

christopherw · 24-08-2007, 14:57

That's why I included a link to the Be* file (which I know gives goodish results).

I know what you mean though, maybe it was an oversight (even though in real-world performance tests I've found that the gamefiles site often mirrors performance to other sites, and speed differences on the entire web are often echoed by the gamefiles site). gamefiles is actually hosted on both mirror3 and mirror4.virginmedia.com, on an entirely different ipblock than the Telewest broadband connections, so I'd hazard a guess and say that it's actually geographically somewhere quite different, maybe even hosted externally for redundancy.

Let's add this file to the list then: DirectX 9.0c redistributable (~50Mb) from the MS site:

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...007_redist.exe

Go speed testers!

SnoopZ · 24-08-2007, 16:46

I'm in Cambridge CB4 using an NTL 250 modem.

1.Newshosting newsgroup euro server i can max 20mbit 24/7.

2.Downloading from all the links i can do 20mbit 24/7.

3.From the Be* test image i can get around 15mbit at the moment of posting this but was 11mbit last night.

However i find html speedtests pretty useless like the one on Cable Forum since upgrading to 20mbit, so i always ignore the results and use newsgroups for a real test of my true speed.