Virgin Media poor (and worsening) download speed

[watercooled]

OK so this is an unusual one, and one I've been having a really hard time explaining to VM's tech support - about the only one to show some understanding was a guy in second-level tech support who agreed there was a problem somewhere after I demonstrated via a LogMeIn session, but basically said the onus is on me to prove it's VM at fault before they'll be able to elevate it to the networks team.

Basically, single TCP stream speed is terrible - we're on 200Mb and a single e.g. HTTP/FTP download won't go past about 8-10Mb most of the time, getting worse at peak times (I'm not confusing b and B BTW). However, with Speedtest using 20+ parallel streams to test, it of course doesn't show up this issue. However Thinkbroadband's speed tester which does separate x1 and x6 stream tests, does show it (link), but conveniently VM won't accept it as a recognised test.

Further to this, I've asked a few friends to do similar tests and those on VM but in other cities are unaffacted, and people on BT/Sky/etc are also unaffacted, even those nearby. However a nearby friend on VM has the same issue just to show it's not specific to me (I don't think it's a last-mile congestion issue either).

Anyway, I wonder if anyone has any ideas, or if a few people would mind doing similar tests (e.g. try downloading Linux isos or that TBB speed test) to see if any patterns emerge? The first two hops of my traceroutes are the Knowsley CMTS, then Preston core. Annoyingly the next couple of hops now drop ICMP but they used to be Manchester and Leeds for most routes IIRC.

Thanks!!

[Splash]

In case it's any help to you...

[watercooled]

Thanks very much it's a big help. Would you mind me linking it if they ask for proof that it's not just TBB or its route to VM in general?

[Splash]

Not at all - let me know if you need more tests running. I'm on 200Mb (as you can probably tell) and can provide you with routing data by PM if it's any help.

EDIT - sent you a tracert by PM

[watercooled]

Thanks for that,

Annoyingly, I'm still (after a week and counting) waiting for a reply on the forums, despite the fact more recent posts have been answered. I'd appreciate any sort of reply at the moment, even if it's just 'we've contacted someone to get to the bottom of it'. Getting completely ignored is not cool.

I mean I understand that if it's a core router issue then they'd have to financially justify any sort of maintenance/upgrade, but as I'm not the only one with the issue and it seems to be getting worse, I just hope they're planning to do something about it. I just wish what seems to be the ubiquitous speed tester was more competent at its job rather than giving an absolute best-case throughput.

[Splash]

Totally understand. Have you tried dropping Dareos a line? I've found him most helpful in the past (and I still owe him a few beers, now that I come to think of it...)

[watercooled]

Yeah I've sent him a PM to see if he knows anything. I've been trying to ask VM even if there are any faults logged in the area but like I say, all I seem to get boils down to 'Speedtest.net is what we use, go away'.

The second-line tech support guy did mention a diagnostic speed test they do which showed no issues, but I suspect it's only checking the last hop (which I thought anyway), and he said he has no access to core network diagnostics. IMO it seems a bit daft that tech support can't access the very data they'd need in order to log faults efficiently, if it's true...

[watercooled]

Still not having much joy on this sadly, I'm getting something one reply per week on the forums and they can't seem to find anything wrong. I've tried everything I can think of on my side, right up to and including having a PC with a fresh install of Windows 10 connected directly to the SuperHub, taking all of my own network equipment out of the equation. No improvement. I'm just stuck with terrible download speeds and because it's not affecting speedtest.net it doesn't seem to be getting much attention.

I've all but ran out of options for what to do about it; we're still in contract for a while yet, phone support won't help and forum support are painfully slow at getting back to me. It's really not convincing me stay with them in future, which is unfortunate as they have one of the theoretically most capable access networks in the country.

I even tried their online chat support a while ago but it seems to be constantly 'busy'. I just wish someone would elevate it to the networks team to investigate.

I don't suppose anyone else has a similar issue with standard HTTP/FTP downloads?

[GoNz0]

I had this problem so I posted on the forums, got a reply in about 5 days but had phoned them as I got fed up of waiting. They did a test and confirmed the pipe was busy and raised a ticket (giving me the number)
Less than a week later I dropped offline for 2 hours, came back with a new IP and the full 200mb again.
I phoned during the outage to be told they were swapping over 50% of the customers to a new server and we would be online soon. It must have been logged by a few people as it is unheard of (according to the guy who came out a week later to swap the already new SH2 I had a month earlier when I got upgraded from 160 to 200mb as I now have thousands of pre RS errors & hundreds of post RS since the upgrade, The forums have started to ignore me now so I think I am going to call it quits and phone to cancel as I am not getting what I pay for so the contract void.

Totally hit and miss on the service

[watercooled]

It doesn't seem to be a local congestion thing in this case - the guy who's been replying to me on the forums has checked and said traffic flow over the local network is fairly low and shouldn't be an issue. We've also had some work done recently with a similar story to yourself - offline for a while followed by a new IP and much higher (well over 10dB difference) DS power levels - SNR actually seems lower but doesn't seem to be causing too many issues yet.

Having said that, I don't think it's where the problems started as I've been aware of fairly slow HTTP downloads for a while now, I've just not given it much thought until recently when it's gotten really bad.

A friend who lives over the road (same cabinet, line card, etc) has the same problem, a relative on the same CMTS but different line card (assuming I'd interpreting hostnames correctly) also has it. From what I can guess (which is what I'm left doing), it seems like either some more major network segment is heavily congested, some screw QoS configuration is at work, or something is plain faulty. I've even demonstrated that time of day has an impact on the throughput I get.

Out of interest, what ISP did you go with, and are you happy with them so far? I'm looking into Uno, Plusnet and Sky at the moment. I'd rather not have the download caps common with smaller providers but Uno at least have unlimited off-peak downloads (I really don't want to be over-running a 100GB monthly cap with a couple of Steam downloads).

[GoNz0]

Still with VM as I hadn't had time to pursue the forum team so I nudged them last night to remond them it had been 3 weeks and the problem didn't magically go away!

[watercooled]

So today I came home from work to find my Superhub in a reboot loop and logging dozens of T4 time-outs with only one upstream channel locked when it does manage to stay online for a bit, which limits my upload to about 5Mb/s now.

Quick call to tech support, and after explaining the issues he goes away to speak to the networks team who confirm the large number of T4's and he books a visit for next week. I'm really hoping that the two issues are somehow related, and this is the thing that was being irritating finally failing completely so it will get fixed properly.

Weirdly though, everything seemed OK last Wednesday to the point I thought they'd fixed something - I could get 200Mb/s (or close enough) from all the sites I'd been testing, the ThinkBroadband test agreed and everything was good. But it only lasted a couple of days before it started going downhill again. So I'm not sure what caused that...

[watercooled]

And now we have this: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5142961038

But it's actually even worse than it appears, because single thread is still massively worse than Speedtest, so I'm getting well under 1 megabit/s for downloads. It could definitely be an area issue though as a few people in the same area seem to be affected too.

I had to reschedule the last appointment as I ended up working, but predictably, the appointment just cancelled itself. So I phone up again and after another gruelling half-hour on the phone they arranged another appointment, which I might not be able to attend and which I doubt will help anyway as it really doesn't seem to be an issue on the access network. But I'm at least hoping they will be able to escalate it to the networks team because everyone I've dealt with so far refuses to do so or says they're not allowed.

[uk_shahj]

Actually I've been noticing this too, my internet speeds become absolute crap during the evenings. Pings go as high at 85ms which affect my gaming. Although I guess it's expected that evening speed will decrease but they should do something to accommodate the extra traffic in the evening. But apart from the evening problems, Virgin Media's internet is great.

[watercooled]

A fair number of other people have been posting on the VM forums with more than a couple from the same area (on the same CMTS) with the same issue and same peak time speeds as myself. Despite VM's constant insistence 'nothing is wrong', it looks like something is quite badly wrong...

I don't understand why the think it's a good customer relations policy to refuse to listen to customers and give condescending 'explanations' about how 'not all servers are capable of our ultra-fast speeds'.

[Splash]

I had a few weeks of ever increasing timeouts reporting on the the router which went away temporarily after a reboot. Once it got to the point where I was rebooting 4 or 5 times a day I raised another fault and found out that they'd identified an issue (last Friday morning) and someone was on their way. Looked out of the window and saw the Virgin Media van at the cabinet - 30 minutes later and all is well - top speeds have dropped a little (5-6Mbps to 212Mbps) but I can certainly live with that as the latency is stable. No further timeouts reported since then, either.

I guess the moral of the story is that you need to be persistent - there are obviously policies in place which don't allow 1st line to escalate and insist on running the full script