Broadband Speeds

willhub

13 miles from York here and about 16 from Leeds, I get around 4mbit and a download rate of 400kb/sec max, the exchange is just under 2 miles away.

At night it slows to an insane crawl, because those Barstewards known as TalkTalk throttle the connection, I know this because when it happens I can still max out my line on Usenet downloading.

dabber

Coriander wrote:

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.

This is a useful little tool for seeing what other wireless networks are operating in your locality and what channels they are using. It gives you the chance to change to a channel that is not being heavily used.

http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

PaulC555

I have lost the will to live with Broadband here.....

Live in the Stirling area of Central Scotland, just outside Alloa and we have a fantastic speed of 512kbps!!.....fantastic.....tried to load a Youtube video the other night, was 3.5 minutes long and took nearly 45mins to buffer it.........I give up......Anyone with a speed of 1mb or above should be damn grateful.....lol..

Peddle Up!

PaulC555 wrote:

I have lost the will to live with Broadband here.....

Live in the Stirling area of Central Scotland, just outside Alloa and we have a fantastic speed of 512kbps!!.....fantastic.....tried to load a Youtube video the other night, was 3.5 minutes long and took nearly 45mins to buffer it.........I give up......Anyone with a speed of 1mb or above should be damn grateful.....lol..

Sounds familiar?

Daz555

redvee wrote:

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:

The bandwidth throttling only hits P2P traffic for the hours it is in operation. Everything else remains at full speed.

tiredofwhiners

Daz555 wrote:

The bandwidth throttling only hits P2P traffic for the hours it is in operation. Everything else remains at full speed.

Presumably though if you add together all the 'throttled' connections, that can still add up, and nothing is ever full speed as the networks is still shared with others. Admittedly, sharing web browsing traffic isn't normally a lot but I guess that this will also include iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD, Netflix, yadda yadda yadda.....

Do Virgin still use an ethernet i.e. shared collision based architecture but with a fibre front end ?

dynamicbrick

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Daz555 wrote:

The bandwidth throttling only hits P2P traffic for the hours it is in operation. Everything else remains at full speed.

Presumably though if you add together all the 'throttled' connections, that can still add up, and nothing is ever full speed as the networks is still shared with others. Admittedly, sharing web browsing traffic isn't normally a lot but I guess that this will also include iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD, Netflix, yadda yadda yadda.....

Do Virgin still use an ethernet i.e. shared collision based architecture but with a fibre front end ?

Depends which bit;
old ntl bit - Coax2Home - Fibre2Cab - Ethernet Metropolitan Ring - xWDM core.
old Telewest bit - conductive wiring - wet string 2 cab - Frame Relay with sticky tape and Copydex metro - apple core.