I need technical advice please!

[Robscure]

I've been suffering this since I signed up with Virgin Media 20Mb Cable Broadband...

Download speeds seem great, 15mbps-19mbps.... But upload is 0.20mbps-0.60mbps at best.

Ping/Jitter are terrible in games... frequent disconnects...

I've disabled my router's firewall as well as Window's firewall in order to troubleshoot the problem, but it persisted even without firewalls...

Note, every time I changed any settings, I rebooted my computer...

Ruled out

- Firewall
- QoS Packet Scheduler (I've enabled and disabled it)
- Ethernet Controller Advanced Settings
- Coaxial cable location
- Power cables locations
- Modem location
- Modem (an engineer replaced it with a brand new SuperHub today, same issues)
- Antivirus
- Time of day / throttling (same whether 3am or pm)
- Drivers / Firmware
- Ethernet Port (tried both in the back of my pc, performance issues are the same on my wife's laptop via wireless anyways)
- Laptop (I've had the same problems whether the laptop is turned on or off)
- Coaxial condition (I've unplugged and replugged it and changed it about and tried different things, the Engineer said it was fine inside and outside as well)

I've been told by VM representatives the following:

- There's no utilisation problems in my area
- My line quality is fine
- My signal-to-noise (SnR) ratios are fine
- My line's power levels are fine, nothing is wrong with my line at all

I was told by a rep: "We need to arrange for another engineer to call out to take a look at your connection as the amount of T3 timeouts shown is very high."

An engineer came a week later, which was today, and he informed me that he had not been given any prior information about my connection, so he was asking me what was wrong because they never told him anything... So I explained the problem and he said it was too technical for him he didn't know anything about Latency/Jitter or even what they were, and he also didn't know what "T3 timeouts" were.... So I'm back to square one.

What the hell is wrong with my connection? Virgin won't help me, maybe HeXus can...

[Robscure]

Bump, anyone have any ideas?

[Jay]

T3 time outs mean that your modem can not connect to your ISP you have either a line fault or a modem fault. If they sent out an "engineer" and he didn't know what a T3 time out was that is bad!

[Biscuit]

This is why i will never use virgin again, i spoke to one 'network engineer' (or so she claimed) who didn't know or understand ping...

Soooooo frustrating.

[Fraz]

Take a look at the error log on your cable modem. You should be able to view it on http://192.168.100.1, I believe. If there is anything recently date-stamped and marked as Critical or Error, then you should make a copy of the messages. Look out for failed/timed out ranging requests in particular (at least, that's always been the cause of problems for me when I get crazy packet loss. Line equalisation problems, IIRC, which can often be cause by temperature changes, I think. It's been a while since I've looked into this stuff... so don't take my word on it!)

[Biscuit]

EDIT - Double post

[Lee H]

Post on the virgin forums over at community.virginmedia.com as the support on here is quite good and fixed my issues quickly.

You might need to login to your modem to get some details if asked, but they are a lot better on there than the standard support call centre based overseas. If you get through to the call centre in bellshill, they are a lot better than the script readers they use

[CrazyMonkey]

If virgin are still running their support newsgroups i'd advise going on there, it's where the real technicians and proper support hang out. Though as Lee said, maybe they have switched from newsgroups to forums..

Either way, every time i've had a problem the newsgroup support has been more than fantastic - they know what they are on about, speak in plain understandable English and ultimately get the problem sorted. Good luck.

[Sputnik]

This is why i will never use virgin again

+1

They never did solve my problems so I ditched them in the end. The sad thing is, It used to be half decent when I joined Telewest in the first place but, that was because there were few people here using it and their staff actually were good at that time.

[Robscure]

Take a look at the error log on your cable modem. You should be able to view it on http://192.168.100.1, I believe. If there is anything recently date-stamped and marked as Critical or Error, then you should make a copy of the messages. Look out for failed/timed out ranging requests in particular (at least, that's always been the cause of problems for me when I get crazy packet loss. Line equalisation problems, IIRC, which can often be cause by temperature changes, I think. It's been a while since I've looked into this stuff... so don't take my word on it!)

Yes, I've done this and I've posted it on their forums, but they haven't resolved my problems...

Wed Jan 05 20:38:08 2011 Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=a0:21:b7:01:e4:28;CMTS-MAC=00:23:5e:6f:b8:9f;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Wed Jan 05 14:29:03 2011 Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Requested Info not supported.;CM-MAC=a0:21:b7:01:e4:28;CMTS-MAC=00:23:5e:6f:b8:9f;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Wed Jan 05 14:27:46 2011 Critical (3) Resetting the cable modem due to docsDevResetNow
Time Not Established Critical (3) Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=a0:21:b7:01:e4:28;CMTS-MAC=00:17:10:02:0e:6d;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=a0:21:b7:01:e4:28;CMTS-MAC=00:09:b6:6b:cc:01;CM-QOS=1.0;CM-VER=3.0;
Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Requested Info not supported.;CM-MAC=a0:21:b7:01:e4:28;CMTS-MAC=00:09:b6:6b:cc:01;CM-QOS=1.0;CM-VER=3.0;
Time Not Established Critical (3) DHCP FAILED - Requested Info not supported.;CM-MAC=a0:21:b7:01:e4:28;CMTS-MAC=00:23:5e:6f:b8:9f;CM-QOS=1.0;CM-VER=3.0;
Time Not Established Critical (3) SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC framing;CM-MAC=a0:21:b7:01:e4:28;CMTS-MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00;CM-QOS=1.0;CM-VER=3.0;

My log is always full of errors like this.

Post on the virgin forums over at community.virginmedia.com as the support on here is quite good and fixed my issues quickly.

You might need to login to your modem to get some details if asked, but they are a lot better on there than the standard support call centre based overseas. If you get through to the call centre in bellshill, they are a lot better than the script readers they use

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/.../257829#M50821

I've been there for over a month, posting and asking for help. They haven't been helpful, they sent two unknowledgeable engineers out, they claimed several different problems were at fault, and in the end still haven't resolved it after all of this time.

The only good thing I can say about Virgin is that they offered to reimburse me £19 this month, where I'm paying £30... but it's better than nothing...

If virgin are still running their support newsgroups i'd advise going on there, it's where the real technicians and proper support hang out. Though as Lee said, maybe they have switched from newsgroups to forums..

Either way, every time i've had a problem the newsgroup support has been more than fantastic - they know what they are on about, speak in plain understandable English and ultimately get the problem sorted. Good luck.

I'll look into the newsgroup... I don't like the lack of help that I've gotten on the forums, they haven't been able to pin-point my problem and fix it, but we'll see...

[scorpionfoot]

if the techs going out are duff and you have had more than three the next tech should really be a snior/principle technician use that phrasing on the call when asking for a tech the 4th time - trust me.