Virgin Media line speeds

[Salazaar]

Has anyone had any direct experience with Virgin Media's actual line speeds vs their advertised ones? I'm considering going for their 10Mb package but I'd like some idea of what the actual speeds I'll get are.

Currently I'm on O2/Be and getting 10Mb from a 20Mb package, Orange, Talk Talk and BT also offer LLU services in the are so I'd presume I'd get similar from them (though Orange only quote 5.5Mb when I do their line check) but my flat will be further from the exchange than I am currently.

[CrazyMonkey]

Well i consider myself to be in the 'lucky' Virgin Media area seeing as all i see is people posting how pants the speed is that their getting.

Im on the 50Mb line, i get 50Mb through both speedtest.net and when im downloading from rapidshare. I am able to achieve this speed regardless of time of day. Costs an arm and a leg though

[abaxas]

Has anyone had any direct experience with Virgin Media's actual line speeds vs their advertised ones? I'm considering going for their 10Mb package but I'd like some idea of what the actual speeds I'll get are.

Currently I'm on O2/Be and getting 10Mb from a 20Mb package, Orange, Talk Talk and BT also offer LLU services in the are so I'd presume I'd get similar from them (though Orange only quote 5.5Mb when I do their line check) but my flat will be further from the exchange than I am currently.

I'll assume you mean cable not virgin's adsl 'broadband'.

On cable the speed you pay for is the speed you get. However, as with all lines, the speed you can tranfer over that line depends on lots of factors. Also cable has no 'contention' other than it's daisy chained. Hence the further you are away from their 'base', the slower it will be, not becasue the line is slower, but becasue more are sharing your bit.

I have a friend on virgin, it's amazing at non peak time. Crock of donkey's droppings at peak time. Also they have traffic management.

[Terbinator]

We pay for the 20Mb and get 24Mb constantly, only times its slower is when ive downloaded x amoutn within certain hours and it gets cut to 600KB/s.

[JPreston]

Used to have VM cable and it was awesome, never went down and full advertised speed however this would only be for about 20 minutes a day before 'traffic management' kicked in. Out of peak hours I had no complaints. I would definitely have it again if my area was cabled

[wombar]

We've got the 10mb option and we get a solid 10Mb most of the time (depending on the server at the other end). The traffic management can be a bit of pain if you're downloading games from Steam, but generally speaking I'd go with cable over ADSL if you have the choice.

[burble]

I'm also one of the lucky ones:




I'm not a fan of speed test sites, but the speedtest.net result I posted seems quite accurate today. Normally when I'm downloading from Astraweb I hit around 6MB/s.

[Salazaar]

I'll assume you mean cable.

Correct, I should have said.

I'm not a particularly heavy downloader, except the occasional game off Steam, hence I'm only looking at 10Mb. Sounds like it'll be a better bet than ADSL with all things considered.

Plus I meet their engineers every few months through work so I can have a good moan if it all goes wrong!

[alsenior]

with 10Mb you will get about 2mb the 10Mb network is so congested. the 20Mb network is where it is at. or even 50Mb theyh have there own gigaethernet channels to the street cabs

[Salazaar]

Trying to keep costs to an absoluite minimum, hence looking at cable to get away from paying line rental which I won't use as an actual phone line. Presumably I could upgrade to a bigger pipe without too much trouble if 10Mb was too crappy though...

[Terbinator]

with 10Mb you will get about 2mb the 10Mb network is so congested. the 20Mb network is where it is at. or even 50Mb theyh have there own gigaethernet channels to the street cabs

I know 3 people on 10Mb and it works fine.

[burble]

Ignore

[Disturbedguy]

I am on the 20Mb connection, although what speed I get depends on the time of the day which sucks, if I download early morning/ very late evening I can get pretty decent speed's, never really, really close to the 20Mb but enough.

If I go on speedtest, again it depends on the time of day/ evening as I know virgin cap those on connections lower than 50Mb at certain times so speeds drop drastically. I have however, heard from a Virgin tech guy themselves (was having problems with line, they were adamant it was the router, proved them wrong, engineer came out, tested signal on line, it was goosed), we obviously complained at loss of service, got £10 knocked off and told a 100Mb line is expected next year.

[Salazaar]

This is encouraging.

[Disturbedguy]

Just done both speed and ping tests on my connection.





^Upload is a bit dire though.


Edit: - Just tested my line again, speed has dropped to 4Mb and the test wont finish.

[wombar]

with 10Mb you will get about 2mb the 10Mb network is so congested. the 20Mb network is where it is at. or even 50Mb theyh have there own gigaethernet channels to the street cabs

Here's speed test from my 10Mb line. Upload speed is pretty rubbish (though that's the normal rate), but I don't need to do that too often.



I'm guessing it's going to depend which area you're in and who else is on at the same time. I've never noticed any slow downs (other than traffic management after a large download).