Broadband Speeds

Peddle Up!

I'm supposed to be getting 60M from Virgin, but rarely see anything over 20M and a quick servey of a few friends with different ISPs shows a similar story. I looked at a few speed maps on the Broadband Speed Checker site and the speeds all seem to be much lower than advertised with only a few exceptions.
Are all the ISPs lying about speeds? It's like ordering a pint, paying for a pint and getting a half.

daviesee

Yes.

As I read with envy.

Currently at 6.5Mb which was 2Mb only a few months ago and no option of fibre optic.
Living near blissfully quiet country roads has its downsides.
On balance, I will settle for things as they are.

thegreatdivide

I get about 40Mb on my 60Mb Virgin service. I think I once saw 44Mb but I might have imagined that.

I work for a provider that will be rolling out a 300Mb fibre to the premises service in a wee while.

Note that I work for a ‘provider’ but use Virgin ;-)

tiredofwhiners

Peddle Up! wrote:

It's like ordering a pint, paying for a pint and getting a half.

Its nothing like that as anyone with a modicum of technical knowledge will tell you.

You only get 60M if several things happen.

1. Nobody else is using the Virgin system as you are on a shared system. You don't have a dedicated 60M pipe to everywhere else in the world.

2. If the other end e.g. the website, is doing so little that it will give you a 60M capacity worth of continuous data without anyone else accessing the servic, and its own system is actually capable of pushing data that quickly. Most are not.

3. If the links between you and the destination are all also 60M, are also not being used and are also capable of meeting your end requests.

A much better analogy is that you have bought a 6 lane connection to the internet motorway, but the motorway is not controlled by your ISP and there are only two lanes on the motorway which are already full of traffic. And at your destination, there is already a queue to get into the car park and a waiting list for a parking slot, so don;t expect to get a speedy response when you eventually arrive.

Buying a fast connection does not guarantee everyone else in the world accepts your requests as a priority.

daviesee

Always beware the following phrases:-

"Up to" and "From"

Treat them with the disdain that they deserve.

bianchimoon

6.5mb here, but in a very quiet village, does the job for most things, can still download films to sky box, after a minute or 3 delay. 20mb pah luxury!!

dabber

I've just got the basic Virgin 10Mb offering. I usually get around that... just now 9.5Mb but sometimes around 11Mb.
Our area hasn't had its doubling upgrade yet so 10Mb is still the claimed service.
I had some problems a while back and had to tweak some wireless settings and once they had kicked in I was getting around the 10Mb mark.

mattshrops

Feckin whingers- 0.984mb , no wonder the xbox is hard work.

On the bright side, I live in a fantastic place with not enough people to justify cable. All the phone lines are ancient.
I usually shout "slum dweller" at the screen as i get killed again by a 6 yr old

Edit when i first took out the package with sky there was an offer of free superfast broadband. I'll have that please. er no you can't get that. And you cant have the slow one free either, thats not on offer. B@RST@RDS

Daz555

Peddle Up! wrote:

I'm supposed to be getting 60M from Virgin, but rarely see anything over 20M and a quick servey of a few friends with different ISPs shows a similar story. I looked at a few speed maps on the Broadband Speed Checker site and the speeds all seem to be much lower than advertised with only a few exceptions.
Are all the ISPs lying about speeds? It's like ordering a pint, paying for a pint and getting a half.

Virgin are the best ISP for delivering their advertised speeds.

Of course it depends where you are pulling the data from. What do you get on speedtest.net?

redjeepǃ

0.88Mbps......

Kieran_Burns

Sorry.

(although I usually only get something in the 75Mb region)

NickintheLakes

Cumbria 2.5Mb.

alihisgreat

The wonders of University Accommodation:

67down/73up 5ms ping.

Do I win?

bowden769

Kieran_Burns wrote:

Sorry.

(although I usually only get something in the 75Mb region)

Ah man

That's just plain rude

redvee

My 60 Mb/s VM line gives this

bompington

daviesee wrote:

Yes.

As I read with envy.

Currently at 6.5Mb which was 2Mb only a few months ago and no option of fibre optic.
Living near blissfully quiet country roads has its downsides.
On balance, I will settle for things as they are.

Exactly this, but "3Mb which was 2Mb only a few months ago".
I would rather live where I do with a 9.6K modem than in the big smoke with a fibre cable.

Peddle Up!

daviesee wrote:

Living near blissfully quiet country roads has its downsides.
On balance, I will settle for things as they are.

You can have both.

I appreciate the comments on how network traffic affects speed, but so many ISP claims seem to be wildly out.

graeme_s-2

I live in a newly built house, in a Virgin cabled area, but I'm stuck with ADSL over copper that gives me 3Mb/s on a good day. Virgin didn't cable the new estate, and BT seem to be prioritising exchanges in non-cabled areas for fibre optic upgrades, so I'm back of the queue for that too. My mate lives up the road and has Virgin 100Mb. Bastard.

Wunnunda

Down here in mid-Sussex we've recently had the BT Infinity upgrade. Haven't bothered upgrading yet as I want to shop around when my contract comes up in a few months, but one useful side effect is that my ~4mb speed has more than doubled to ~9mb without me doing anything. TBH I don't need much else.

Peddle Up!

Well knock me down with a kipper. I've just re-run the test and it's reporting 62.9M download and 2.9 upload. :shock:

Maybe VM support lurk on bikeradar.

OffTheBackAdam

Pity us poor peasants, sat in a hut, 10 miles from a city, who can't even get wired Broadband!

Coriander

How on earth do all you VM people do it?

I live in zone 2 in London, have had VM fibre optic since 13 September, am paying for 60Mbps but last night was utterly typical in that I got 0.01Mbps at 23:09, 0.21Mbps at 21:48 and managed a maximum of 0.8Mbps at 21:52.

I'm thinking of stopping payment on the grounds that they have breached the contract. Am so fed up. I was on a ISP via BT line until September but got uber fed up with that as the usual speed on a typical evening was about 0.27Mbps. Have actually managed to get even less speed, duh.

dynamicbrick

Coriander wrote:

How on earth do all you VM people do it?

I live in zone 2 in London, have had VM fibre optic since 13 September, am paying for 60Mbps but last night was utterly typical in that I got 0.01Mbps at 23:09, 0.21Mbps at 21:48 and managed a maximum of 0.8Mbps at 21:52.

I'm thinking of stopping payment on the grounds that they have breached the contract. Am so fed up. I was on a ISP via BT line until September but got uber fed up with that as the usual speed on a typical evening was about 0.27Mbps. Have actually managed to get even less speed, duh.

I used to work for Virgin - albeit on the Business side.

If you're getting 0.01mbps you've got something seriously wrong like a failed modem.

Anyway, I've always had my quoted speeds - 20mbps day in day out. Can't really see the need to upgrade to anything higher for domestic use as at 20mbps you're generally far faster than the other end of whatever connection you're downloading from.

Indeed, the write speed of hard disks is somewhere between 1.5mbps and 12mbps depending on type and age, so even my SSD equipped laptop can only absorb data at that speed.

dabber

dynamicbrick wrote:

Coriander wrote:

How on earth do all you VM people do it?

I live in zone 2 in London, have had VM fibre optic since 13 September, am paying for 60Mbps but last night was utterly typical in that I got 0.01Mbps at 23:09, 0.21Mbps at 21:48 and managed a maximum of 0.8Mbps at 21:52.

I'm thinking of stopping payment on the grounds that they have breached the contract. Am so fed up. I was on a ISP via BT line until September but got uber fed up with that as the usual speed on a typical evening was about 0.27Mbps. Have actually managed to get even less speed, duh.

If you're getting 0.01mbps you've got something seriously wrong like a failed modem.

Agreed. You shouldn't be putting up with that performance. I've had my Virgin Media Hub or Super Hub replaced 3 times by VM. You should give them a call and get it sorted. Also, if you are connecting wirelessly you should try connectinng via an ethernet cable and see what performance you get like that. It's also worth having a look at what channel you are using with any wireless connection you have.

airbag

bowden769 wrote:

Kieran_Burns wrote:

Sorry.

(although I usually only get something in the 75Mb region)

Ah man

That's just plain rude

Smug? Me?

Although the trade-off is a 50Gb/month download limit, which video calling the OH eats up remarkably quickly. Tbh I can't say I ever felt my previous 5-8Mbps download speeds were an issue, except for maybe downloading games.

alihisgreat

airbag wrote:

Smug? Me?

Although the trade-off is a 50Gb/month download limit, which video calling the OH eats up remarkably quickly. Tbh I can't say I ever felt my previous 5-8Mbps download speeds were an issue, except for maybe downloading games.

pah

no data limits in sunny oxford

Coriander

Dabber wrote:

dynamicbrick wrote:

Coriander wrote:

How on earth do all you VM people do it?

I live in zone 2 in London, have had VM fibre optic since 13 September, am paying for 60Mbps but last night was utterly typical in that I got 0.01Mbps at 23:09, 0.21Mbps at 21:48 and managed a maximum of 0.8Mbps at 21:52.

I'm thinking of stopping payment on the grounds that they have breached the contract. Am so fed up. I was on a ISP via BT line until September but got uber fed up with that as the usual speed on a typical evening was about 0.27Mbps. Have actually managed to get even less speed, duh.

If you're getting 0.01mbps you've got something seriously wrong like a failed modem.

Agreed. You shouldn't be putting up with that performance. I've had my Virgin Media Hub or Super Hub replaced 3 times by VM. You should give them a call and get it sorted. Also, if you are connecting wirelessly you should try connectinng via an ethernet cable and see what performance you get like that. It's also worth having a look at what channel you are using with any wireless connection you have.

OK, thanks for the guidance on what to do and say to VM. So with an ethernet connection it's 60Mbps. After the helpdesk had changed the channel for me it was 25mpbs as I stood next to the hub. Now I'm back upstairs it's really jumpy again - occasionally I'll get an immediate page change but the majority of times it chugs along as it loads the page.

Surely it's not unreasonable to expect a wireless connection that loads pages as simple as BikeRadar or Twitter immediately when I'm upstairs with all doors between me and the hub open? It's too slow to play BBC iplayer.

I really don't know what else to do.

Kieran_Burns

Set the superhub to router mode and get your own wireless router.

It's the common solution to the same problem.

Coriander

Kieran_Burns wrote:

Set the superhub to router mode and get your own wireless router.

It's the common solution to the same problem.

Thanks Keiran, will do. But will talk to them and see if they will provide that - their service has been appalling so far, they can damn well pay to deal with it.

Kieran_Burns

Coriander wrote:

Kieran_Burns wrote:

Set the superhub to router mode and get your own wireless router.

It's the common solution to the same problem.

Thanks Keiran, will do. But will talk to them and see if they will provide that - their service has been appalling so far, they can damn well pay to deal with it.

http://help.virginmedia.com/system/self ... TYPE=Cable

Modem mode - not router mode. I'm too techy for my own good sometimes (it ain't actually a modem as it's all digital)

redvee

airbag wrote:

Although the trade-off is a 50Gb/month download limit, which video calling the OH eats up remarkably quickly. Tbh I can't say I ever felt my previous 5-8Mbps download speeds were an issue, except for maybe downloading games.

VM have a traffic management policy which limits the amount you can download between 9am and 9pm but once 9pm comes along I abuse it. It has been known for me to do more than 10gb some nights, and as much as 50Gb :shock: