VM in Brighton...

[69kimbo]

Hey,

Just a quick one,

I was Told by an Engineer that Brighton servers were over crowded, and he thought they were stupid for allowing as many connections here as they have.

He also said something that leads me to ask a question I wonder if anyone knows the answer to...

(Not publicly ofc (as they wouldn't want people to know this) They are getting two new servers in Brighton (doubling the number we had here before apparently) because they were so overcrowded. He said this would have been done by mid January, and should dramatically increase speeds across the whole of Brighton and especially in my area...

Does anyone know the update on this, and the specific date it is meant to be done by? Also does anyone know if the poor weather will have effected its ETA?

Cheers

[frogstamper]

I live by Withdean stadium in Brighton and have been on 20mb for a couple of years now, and have had no issues about the speed I'm getting its consistently around the 18mb to 20mb mark.

[saabmania2]

yeah i agree with frogstamper i also live in the brighton area and have no issues with speed when the 20mb service first got relesed ihad a few issue's but this was fairly common around the whole country but after a couple of months it settled downthat was around 2 years ago now and never had a problem since

[stukey]

69kimbo - I absolutely agree. I have been getting consistently poor broadband performance since the end of November last year. I am seeing constant packet loss and awful response times. I am in the BN2 Hanover area of Brighton. My immediate neighbours have exactly the same issues and other locals have been posting about the issue to the Virgin Media forums and newsgroups:

Poor ping and upload rate late afternoon/evening (Brighton area)

BN2 UBR Fault

On Monday 30th November there was an outage in the BN2 area (no TV or Internet for about 7 hours). Ever since that day broadband performance has been appalling. I am on the 20MB package and I'm lucky if I get 2MB at the best of times. By around 2pm everyday performance becomes so awful that its impossible to download small files, websites take forever to load and my VPN connection to my company's network (I work from home) disconnects constantly. For example, my antivirus app can't even download the pattern file updates - it just times out. And you can't download software updates or watch any kind of streaming media.

I spent many hours on the telephone to Virgin Media's offshore technical support department and they still insisted there was no problem in my area, instead telling me it was because I was using a router or because I had a Mac - even when I connected directly to the cable modem using a Windows laptop! Absolutely ridiculous. I was just about to give up all hope of getting any kind of support from Virgin Media when I decided to mention the problems on Twitter. Finally I started getting some assistance from some very helpful folks in Virgin's Twitter Customer Support team. After sending out an engineer to check my cable model levels, I was told that there is a apparently an issue with Virgin Media's network/infrastructure/equipment in Brighton and it needs to be upgraded in order to fix the issue.

Here's what they said at the time: "We've managed to identify what's causing the problem and our network team has implemented plans for your network to be upgraded. This will then be scheduled in for the upgrade to take place. With the Christmas period quickly approaching, I'm afraid the upgrade is unlikely to be done before the end of the year. They've told me it's likely to be early January/February 2010."

I spoke to the Twitter team earlier this week and according to them there's still no definite date for the upgrade and the performance issues are worse than ever here in Hanover. They have recommended upgrading me to the 50MB service as an short-term work-around, although I'm really not sure if this will make any difference (I have already been upgraded from 10MB to 20MB and that didn't help).

I've never really had any problems with NTL/Vigin Media in the past but this experience has been a nightmare. I am seriously considering moving to a different ISP because I can't work without a reliable and well performing internet connection. It is extremely frustrating that this has been going for almost 2 months now and has still not been resolved.

[Sephiroth]

I've always maintained a second internet service (in this case O2 ADSL2+ over BT to LLU) for the rare occasions that the VM service fails.

I flick a switch to wireless and a few seconds later, internet is back.

[stukey]

I've always maintained a second internet service (in this case O2 ADSL2+ over BT to LLU) for the rare occasions that the VM service fails.

I flick a switch to wireless and a few seconds later, internet is back.

That would be great, but like most people, I cannot afford to pay for two different broadband suppliers. And I have no problem with occasional outages - that's par for the course. But months of appalling performance and no clear fix in site is just not acceptable IMO.

[absthechatter]

I am just outside Brighton in Shoreham (BN43) on 20mb service. Everything has been excellent for years up until around last November. Since then, I have, along with my neighbours, getting slow down and outages at least once a week for several hours and sometimes up to three or four days a week. The slow downs mean that it takes several minutes for a webpage to load, much slower than a 56k connection was!! It's obviously unuseable.

Have had engineer out and have been told there is nothing wrong with my set up, it's just overcrowding. It's not the busy times when it always happens though eg this week, was not able to use Monday between 9am and 11am, then again between 2pm to 2.30pm, then between 9.30 and 11.30pm. It's similar to that most days now.

I don't want to go elsewhere, but as it's probably the most expensive broadband out there, it would be nice to have a stable connection at least most of the time. I just want it to go back to how it was pre November!

Abs

[HSp8]

Originally Posted by stukey

69kimbo - I absolutely agree. I have been getting consistently poor broadband performance since the end of November last year. I am seeing constant packet loss and awful response times. I am in the BN2 Hanover area of Brighton. My immediate neighbours have exactly the same issues and other locals have been posting about the issue to the Virgin Media forums and newsgroups:

get back to your muesli, yer hippy

been on 50 meg for a year in BN1 area, and although the speeds sometimes drop to 5 meg for no apparent reason, I'm pretty happy with the service and get full speeds most of the time on the newsgroups - haven't had any outages

[69kimbo]

Stukey, as it happens I am also in BN2 area. Since the engineer told me it would especially help in my area, i'm guessing when they get it done it will help you too. He said it was a problem with overcrowding, which I'm assuming is due to the fact the University is just around the corner, with 10,000+ students living in housing around the area, most of which VM customers.

Anyway, this wasn't a debate for the quality of Brighton VM service or if it was going to happen... it was a question asking if anyone knew the ETA of the new servers... They ARE happening. I have been told by an engineer they are happening, so this isn't just me assuming or saying there should be...

[stukey]

get back to your muesli, yer hippy

I prefer Granola.

... it was a question asking if anyone knew the ETA of the new servers...

All I've heard is the January / February 2010 timeframe. In addition, on the newsgroups, in the 'BN2 Brighton appalling connection; low speed, high latency' thread regarding fault F001146439 a VM support person posted the following last night:

Hi Matthew,

Apologies for the ongoing issues. I have some good news- your ticket was
updated yesterday stating that relief work is going ahead tonight. They
will take the UBR down for a few hours in the early hours and over the
next few days you should see a significant improvement in your connection
unless everyone in the area starts maxing out their connections again

--
Kind Regards
Paul McFly
VirginMedia Technical Support | http://status2.virginmedia.com
"Please Bottom Post when Replying to Posts."

[Sephiroth]

Hi Matthew,

Apologies for the ongoing issues. I have some good news- your ticket was
updated yesterday stating that relief work is going ahead tonight. They
will take the UBR down for a few hours in the early hours and over the
next few days you should see a significant improvement in your connection
unless everyone in the area starts maxing out their connections again

--
Kind Regards
Paul McFly
VirginMedia Technical Support | http://status2.virginmedia.com
"Please Bottom Post when Replying to Posts."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

... which they will!

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Hi Matthew,

Apologies for the ongoing issues. I have some good news- your ticket was
updated yesterday stating that relief work is going ahead tonight. They
will take the UBR down for a few hours in the early hours and over the
next few days you should see a significant improvement in your connection
unless everyone in the area starts maxing out their connections again

--
Kind Regards
Paul McFly
VirginMedia Technical Support | http://status2.virginmedia.com
"Please Bottom Post when Replying to Posts."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

... which they will!

Bleh not likely, most peeps don't max their connections it was a light hearted joke I'm sure

Quick resegmentation and things should be muchly better.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

Bleh not likely, most peeps don't max their connections it was a light hearted joke I'm sure

Quick resegmentation and things should be muchly better.

You're kidding? Student land? Motorway effect? Me a Jesse?

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

You're kidding? Student land? Motorway effect? Me a Jesse?

No / OK / Maybe / Definitely.

They might have enough upstream to satisfy their seeding requirements now.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

No / OK / Maybe / Definitely.

They might have enough upstream to satisfy their seeding requirements now.

And downloading, streaming? Anyway, we'll soon find out; that is soon + a week!