Virgin Media - Painfully slow!

[360bhp]

My Virgin Media 20mb broadband has been extremely slow recently. I even bought a new router to replace my old one which ran hot, but still get slow speeds most of the time.

The ping seems to be low (Not sure if that makes a difference) but speed is currently:



Settings are:


I don't know much about networking at all, but am I doing anything obviously wrong with the settings above?

Packet info:

[Dareos]

yep, yer posting router settings and not your modem config pages

192.168.100.1
root/root user/pass if its an ambit, dont need user or pass if not

take down power levels of upstream and downstream, snr of downstream and any t3 timeouts within the log

alternatively pm me your modem mac address and I will check it out for you

[Mutley]

And another one!

Have a look on the Virgin forums (http://community.virginmedia.com/), you'll see a lot of complaints.
In fact, here is mine.
You might find some interesting similarities...

I'm in the Reading area. Over the last 6 weeks or so, my 20mb service often goes to crap in the evening, typically between 6pm and 11pm. It seems to be a common problem, and the most frequent response is that it is 'high upstream utilisation'. Basically, I think they have too many customers. But I also wonder if it is related in any way to the 100mb roll out.

For me, worse than the terrible download speeds at those times are the awful latencies - up to 25% packet loss, pings through the roof....makes online gaming impossible.

I'm very close to upping-sticks and giving Be a ring.

[timread]

Ah, it's not just me then. I'm in Cambridge. My DL/UL speeds were absolutely dying a few weeks ago, dropping as low as you're seeing. Especially in the evenings. Terrible levels of packet loss upstream too - same experience as Mutley.

I would have called them to complain but I'm moving house in a few weeks. If it's Virgin-wide though, I might have to reconsider staying with them after the move.

Try doing 'pathping www.bbc.co.uk' when you're having connection problems, and see what your packet loss stats are like (and where they are occuring) over the course of the test (275 secs by default on Win7).

Is your WHR-G300N connected via a VM Superhub by any chance? Although VM don't seem to be acknowleding it in public, they are having big reliability problems with earlier revisions of the Superhub. A VM engineer even ended up leaving his own 'golden sample' router at a friends house (in Cambridge, also experiencing poor VM internet service) as the Superhub she had was experiencing regular dropouts. I think it helped a little.

[360bhp]

Glad I'm not the only one. It is indeed especially during the evenings. Today it seems to be fine.

Cable Modem Status
Item...........................................Status.................Comments
Acquire a Downstream Channel .......322750000 Hz.......Locked
Connectivity State........................OK......................Operational
Boot State..................................OK.......................Operational

Downstream
Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 89
Downstream Frequency : 322750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 2.6 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 35.1 dB

Upstream
Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 3
Upstream Frequency : 45800000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QPSK
Upstream Symbol Rate : 5120 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 40.7 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 4

Cable Modem Operation Configuration
Network Access : Allowed
Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 20480000
Maximum Upstream Data Rate : 2080000
Maximum Upstream Channel Burst : 8160
Maximum Number of CPEs : 1
Modem Capability : Concatenation Enabled, Fragametation Enabled, PHS Enabled

[360bhp]

Is your WHR-G300N connected via a VM Superhub by any chance?

Nope, connected to one of their little blue ones like this http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...85GoJtJcSA-nSk


As I'm typing this, the connection is becoming unuseable! Other tabs arent loading

[Mutley]

I was going to say, if you're on the 20mb service, you'll be using one of the older NTL 250 cable modems.

One solution to the Superhub problem is, apparently, to set it to 'cable modem only' mode, and connect it to an existing router (which is what I'd do, as I have a good router + wifi anyway).

http://www.pingtest.net/result/48513960.png

That was at 11.05pm just now. Everything looking very nice, as I would expect from this time on.

[Dareos]

modem status looks fine, might be low channel snr or fec errors on the line, might also be a utilisation issue, need to call in to have that checked if theres nothing on the status page.

and on 20 meg you can use just about any modem that VM have used, with the exception of the motorola 4100 and 4200 models

ambit/ntl 100/120/200/250/256/300
scientific atlanta/cisco dpx100/110 and 2100
Motorola 5100/5101
netgear 280 and 480

theres a couple others, not seen often tho



Alll superhubs that have been rebooted in the past month are now on version r30 of the firmware, which is a lot more stable than previous versions, solves a lot of issues and of course gives modem mode. Never found a superhub yet that causes problems when connected via enet in that mode.

[360bhp]

Thanks for that.


Here we go again! Another night of Virgin Medias fantastic service

200kbps tonight!

[DrATty]

My Virgin 10Mb/s connection has been running at 2Mb/s for some time now, but it is the ping times that are causing trouble. I get 250ms pinging the BBC. Online gaming is impossible. I've used Virgin since the days of NTL and it's never been this bad. At least I can cancel which might not be easy for those with new contracts.