News - Virgin trials 1.5Gb broadband at Silicon Roundabout

[Tunnah]

i always wonder how the routing is for virgin. i've got sky connected at 13.4mbit and the routing is just incredible

i do a lot of server and video work on several continents and i get great pings and full speeds from pretty much everywhere, but a few collegues are on virgin and have trouble downloading - we're considering switching our distribution method to torrents as we can lose a day's work trying to get everyone on the same page

Just a bit of derailing going on there, a company tries to break the usual bandwidth barriers in a very small area and gets slammed for not providing it to the rest of the country.

it's not that they're not providing it for the rest of the country, it's that they're more concerned with having bragging rights rather than expanding customer base, or at the very least supplying a competent service to the current customers

it seems like they're on some sort of very long range plan where they wanna get all the attention and focus on expanding and improving later when they get more of a power rep - the random statistic group says that over 90% of people don't bother checking how good broadband is, they just read the billboards and look for the biggest number

[Dareos]

the random statistic group says that over 90% of people don't bother checking how good broadband is, they just read the billboards and look for the biggest number

entirely true, I deal with all sorts of issues, from setting up wireless to configuring email clients to slow speeds to basically everything in the home to do with the BBI. I get maybe 2-3 slow speed calls a day, generally solved with either a tech visit or advising the customer that because their pc takes 15 mins to boot up and 45 mins to load the control panel, doesnt mean that their broadband connection isnt working correctly.

However, regardless of the query the customer has when they call, I will run tests on their line, its just a copy and paste of their mac address and I'll check it during the call. Its utterly amazing how many people think that rebooting their modem once or twice a day is normal, or a web page taking 30 or 40 seconds is average. Sometimes just some small adjustments (wireless channels etc) can fix this but other times its a more deeply rooted issue.

The other side of the coin is traffic management and shaping. Its done and it needs to be done, torrenting cripples the network, utilisation goes through the roof and your average user gets affected by this. Trying to explain to someone on a 10 meg connection that the cap has been triggered and that they are now at 2.5 meg for the next 5 hours and no, that doesnt mean that your web pages will take 30 mins to load, its still plenty of bandwidth, the reason they are slow is because you still have the torrents running!!!!

anyways, in defence of my erstwhile employers, the network is being upgraded on a daily basis, things are gettting faster, and hopefully simpler and no, expansion is not happening much tbh, but that may change


I dont speak for Virgin, i just work for them

[ScottSilver]

I'm currently using the Superhub on their 100Mbit and it is fantastic! 1.5Gbit is insane!

[spoon_]

Can SuperHub offer bridge mode at all? If not, I'm not remotely interested in having crappy rebranded Netgear device on the edge of my network...

[Tunnah]

entirely true, I deal with all sorts of issues, from setting up wireless to configuring email clients to slow speeds to basically everything in the home to do with the BBI. I get maybe 2-3 slow speed calls a day, generally solved with either a tech visit or advising the customer that because their pc takes 15 mins to boot up and 45 mins to load the control panel, doesnt mean that their broadband connection isnt working correctly.

However, regardless of the query the customer has when they call, I will run tests on their line, its just a copy and paste of their mac address and I'll check it during the call. Its utterly amazing how many people think that rebooting their modem once or twice a day is normal, or a web page taking 30 or 40 seconds is average. Sometimes just some small adjustments (wireless channels etc) can fix this but other times its a more deeply rooted issue.

The other side of the coin is traffic management and shaping. Its done and it needs to be done, torrenting cripples the network, utilisation goes through the roof and your average user gets affected by this. Trying to explain to someone on a 10 meg connection that the cap has been triggered and that they are now at 2.5 meg for the next 5 hours and no, that doesnt mean that your web pages will take 30 mins to load, its still plenty of bandwidth, the reason they are slow is because you still have the torrents running!!!!

anyways, in defence of my erstwhile employers, the network is being upgraded on a daily basis, things are gettting faster, and hopefully simpler and no, expansion is not happening much tbh, but that may change


I dont speak for Virgin, i just work for them

this might be the most perfect post i've ever seen

technology is so advanced nowadays that we no longer have revolutions, merely evolutions, and with that comes comparisons - how is it better, why is it worse etc. and it makes people apathetic towards educating themselves

they have the same expections promised to them when the original was first revealed - or at least similar gains from the previous evolution as from the first (my broadband doubled from 512kbit to 1mbit so why won't it double from 8mbit to 16mbit?!)

but because we're advancing so fast it's getting harder and harder to teach people the hows and whys. it used to be internet is slow because network problems, or too many people on, or other easy to explain issues like that. but now there's so many factors that it just sounds like excuses so the unsung heroes (yes, heroes) called engineers simply patch it up, do their multitude of checks and fixes and 90% of the time hey presto!

and because of this, because people don't learn how complicated it is or see what goes into it, they don't appreciate it and start wondering why it wasn't right in the first place.

and i couldn't agree more about torrents, it is the worst thing to ever be invented (and i'm including crack). home internet users were never really meant to serve content.
the internet was never really designed to handle it. home users were an end point, to receive data, with a little leeway for sending it. changing that to tens if not hundreds of seperate connections distributing is like using your reverse gear as much as first gear (k that analogy sucked but you get the idea)

they should change IT to a proper course in school, like english maths science etc. and have 3-5 classes a week, as it's just as important to understand (probably more, when was the last time anyone did long division?).

holy waffle batman! sorry, been up 2-3 days now working, think i'm losing my marbles haha

[crossy]

Just a bit of derailing going on there, a company tries to break the usual bandwidth barriers in a very small area and gets slammed for not providing it to the rest of the country.

Hmm, not sure I'd agree necessarily. I think what's getting people's backs up is the idea that VM are putting a lot of effort into chasing the PR values of these announcements (and coincidentally bitch-slapping BT), rather than improving the overall experience for the "unwashed masses" such as me.
Of course, there's also the antipathy raised when London gets yet another slice of tech goodness - sometimes it's like the rest of the country doesn't exist. (and don't get me started on the Olympics...)

I kinda agree on the shub tho, dont like it much at all. My advice on it tho, is to change the wireless channel to 7 or 11 after a factory reset, usually solves most issues. If the range doesnt increase, they will replace it.

Thanks for the advice, just checked and 11's busy, so I'll try 7 and see whether that makes life better - at the moment it's not made that much difference (at least according to iwScanner).

I'm actually pretty satisfied with my VM 30Mb service - in fact if it wasn't for the shub needing a weekly (or more) reboot and the poor signal strengths I'd have zero complaints. My shub needs rebooting because it (with no explanation) goes into a sulk and just drops all it's wireless connections - usually picking on one client first and then subsequently booting off the other ones. Very annoying!. I'd sold the idea of the upgrade because we'd be able to move from modem+router to one box. But now it appears that the shub's so poor that the router is needed in a lot of cases.

[Tunnah]

sky's routers reboot quite often too from my experience.
although lately it's got a lot better, and will go 10-20 days without dropping connection, although nowadays the IP range changes are much more broad and a massive pain in the arse when trying to keep iptables entries down

[andrewtorr]

shame i cant even get cable

[Chris M]

its great they brag about testing these speeds but its always ages before we see any sorts of upgrades... :/

[Apex]

sky's routers reboot quite often too from my experience.
although lately it's got a lot better, and will go 10-20 days without dropping connection, although nowadays the IP range changes are much more broad and a massive pain in the arse when trying to keep iptables entries down

The old DG834 based routers tend to get unstable because of

a)the caps are going bad
or
b)the psu is on it's way out

Replace the psu with a decent one (it can cost you the same for a decent psu as it does for the router in the first place) and the caps might cost you 50p - a few that i have re-worked have been far better after this.