Virgin media

[samuraiweasel]

Lots of congestion during evenings, and in the middle of the day when I should be getting my 75mbit I get 15....
Speedtest.net results are in mbit right?
I use a VPN for gaming purposes (WoT servers are in Amsterdam and Germany) to get low ping.

[Dareos]

Virginmedia do not do a 75Mbit connection, Are you sure you are with Virgin?

[Apex]

I personally am not a fan of the shub, any iteration of it, and theres 3 now - shub, shub2, shub2ac.

When did they sneak that version in ?

[Dareos]

official release was around mid september, been on trial in a couple of areas for 2 - 3 months

[samuraiweasel]

Virginmedia do not do a 75Mbit connection, Are you sure you are with Virgin?

Oops, I think I'm on a 50Mbit...but still.

[Dareos]

London is unfortunately the highest utilisation in the country when it comes to VM BB, sheer volume of people on the network. South London in particular (area ref 3). If you want me to check it out then PM me the mac of your shub and I'll have a look when im back in work (Sat or Sunday)

[PowerPie5000]

I have broadband from both TalkTalk and Virgin in our house... Customer service from both companies is equally crap (I absolutely hate calling them when something goes wrong as I know it won't be a short call and I usually get passed around or put on hold too often ). Virgin have "traffic shaping" which pretty much caps the connection a bit too often for my liking. TalkTalk on the other hand don't have any kind of cap and it will run at the advertised speed all day long. The TalkTalk hub is so much better than the Virgin "Super Hub 2" when it comes to wifi coverage... It even supports 802.11ac .

[MrNinja]

I've had nothing but hassle with my Virgin Setup recently, would go from around 10MBps to 100kbps and then sit like that for days. Sent me one of the new SH2ACs and it was fine for about a day then back to being crap again, 6 weeks of engineer visits so far but having a new cable ran from the drop point in a week which will hopefully solve it

[Dareos]

a repull is sometime the only option, its the same wait time as a brand new install unfortunately. lets hope it fixes the isssue

[Dareos]

traffic shaping does not cap a connection, traffic shaping routes particular types of traffic in an alternative manner allowing high priority traffic such as video streamng or VOIP traffic through and delaying traffic with low priority such as peer to peer. This has caused issues in the past with the likes of Blizzard who use P2P connections for battlenet updates.

EVERY ISP USES TRAFFIC SHAPING, they have to, it is a necessary evil as certain types of traffic clog the network.

Traffic management caps a connection but Virginmedia do not cap any connection on 30MB or above.

Ergo : traffic shaping is not capping your connection, if you have a problem with the connection speak to the tech support dept.

[Bonebreaker777]

Virgin is upgrading the connection in my area from 60Mb/s to 100Mb/s.

Would be possible for me to get a newer SuperHub (2nd generation or AC) from Virgin?

[Dareos]

yup, generally with a postage charge, personally I would hold off. There are no shub 2's available atm and the Shub 2AC is...troubled.

I'm holding off until the firmware fixes come in.

[Bonebreaker777]

yup, generally with a postage charge, personally I would hold off. There are no shub 2's available atm and the Shub 2AC is...troubled.

I'm holding off until the firmware fixes come in.

Well,I am asking because the SH1 is starting to play up (WiFi drops, comes back, etc). So I figured I can give a try to the new SH3_ac and if doesn't work out, I can go for a stand alone router...

[Agent]

traffic shaping does not cap a connection

Well that depends on what you mean by cap. It caps the ability to send a specific type of data at a certain speed, for sure.

EVERY ISP USES TRAFFIC SHAPING, they have to, it is a necessary evil as certain types of traffic clog the network.

NO THEY DO NOT. Traffic shaping is dependant on your ISP. Some use it, some do it badly, others don't use it at all.
Sorry mate, but no matter how much VM would like you to throw that line at customers, it's simply not true.

It's also not "necessary" either. A network only becomes clogged, as you put it, when bandwidth gets oversold. I'm not actually against that, as it suits the vast majority of people. People get larger connections, most of the time which will be idle, but a faster speed in burst form when needed.

But let's be clear here: This "necessary evil" is only because of the way companies like VM have caused the megabit war, convincing people that they need the fastest headline speed and sidestepped other, important areas. Such as connection ratios and the interconnections that are being used. The service is oversold, and this is a patch to help people not notice as much.

Things tend to be a bit better these days then 5 years back, but it's still not uncommon to have areas oversubbed.

[Lanky123]

yup, generally with a postage charge, personally I would hold off. There are no shub 2's available atm and the Shub 2AC is...troubled.

I'm holding off until the firmware fixes come in.

I'm interested in the 'troubles' you say the 2ac has. I just had a VM connection set up a couple of weeks ago and got the 2ac...usually fine with full signal but then the wifi drops irritatingly often. I'd have no problem with buying a separate cable router and putting the 2ac in modem mode but it would be good to know if that would likely fix the issues before splashing out...

[Dareos]

Its nothing to do with VM Agent, I dont get my info from them. I know there are some forms of aggressive traffic shaping (hence the issue with Blizzard servers on VM connections a while back) and I was getting a bit mixed up with QoS and traffic shaping, however the comments from Powerpie are completely incorrect, he is talking about traffic management which VM no longer use on connections over 30Mb.
Over utilisation is my pet hate, I think that ISP's should be forced to refuse new custom if their network cannot handle it. Sadly that wont ever happen.

Lanky, set a dedicated channel on the 2.4GHz, might well help the dropout issue. The real issue right now with the 2AC is that there are some seemingly random lockups, basically the units brick, no way to restore them remotely or with a factory reset, replacing the unit is all we can do, they are working on a firmware fix.