anyone here use virgin broadband?

[Zornyan]

hey guys just after some user reviews as such, currently in our property in Chelmer village we're on a 4mb connection via our sky package, or between 2 and 8 as such, average 4mb down, 1mb up, ping around 70-100ms on tests.

now checked with bt hoping we would get fibre soon, apparently we DO have it, but as us and 3 neighbours are too far from the cabinet, the copper line from cabinet to our house won't support above 18mb at best, with a 12-14mb predicted average, and 2mb up. unfortunately this won't ever change, as fttp isn't being rolled out anymore it seems, and fttc is obviously not going to work with our copper line length.

I've had a check from virgin, and they say they can provide cable, upto 200mbs.

I'm a bit confused about a few things tho, virgin obviously uses fttc and them installs their own cable from cabinet to home, is this cable just a better coaxial cable that will provide better speeds over the distance?

a quick bit of googling shows many horror stories with virgin having bad jitter/ping/packet loss, all of which is terrible for streaming movies or gaming, which are what I mostly use it for, are these common or have any of you had a good service from virgin?

finally I've seen some information on virgin throttling customers with heavy use. during evenings and weekends, which are the most common times I use it, apparently I've used 400gb in the last month or so at home, mostly downloading games on steam, from what I've seen its upload speed caps, anyone had problems with this?

basically I either go with virgin, 200mbs down, 12 up, or by 14mb down, 2 up.

[Actual_Ben_Taylor]

I had it when I was in Chelmsford about 4 years ago, was excellent.

They have all their own cables so don't rely on anything from BT

[frisbee]

I had it when I lived in Bristol 12 years ago, 20Mb then. 3 now....

I would have it again in an instance if I had the chance.

[CBomb]

Got it here now and had to ask for slower speeds to get the monthly cost down. It's ace!

[Murt]

Ok so virgin media uses Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) then normally its Coax to your house. I haven't ever heard of Virgin media running fibre to peoples houses unless you are running a lease line or a business package.

Jitter / High Pings and a few other problems that virgin media has is normally down to how many users there is in the cabinet / exchange, the higher the users the worse it is. If its a low populated area with a fresh exchange / cabinet then you should get good speeds and good response times. Virgin suffers like every other ISP in the UK with problems here and there.

Use Sam Knows for services.

I've been with Virgin Media for 7 years now and apart from the odd problem its been pretty rock solid, i use to have 152Mb/s but i downgraded as it was like £65 a month. Now i'm on 72Mb/s

[Hugh Janus]

I always used to have Virgin, and would have it in a heartbeat again except i can't anymore, i now have BT Infinity 2 running up to around 74MBps and its absolutely shit, the speed fluctuates on a minute by minute basis, when first installed dropped out 20-30 times a day, they fixed it for a while but now its starting to do the same thing.

BT sucks donkey balls

[Zornyan]

Ok so virgin media uses Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) then normally its Coax to your house. I haven't ever heard of Virgin media running fibre to peoples houses unless you are running a lease line or a business package.

Jitter / High Pings and a few other problems that virgin media has is normally down to how many users there is in the cabinet / exchange, the higher the users the worse it is. If its a low populated area with a fresh exchange / cabinet then you should get good speeds and good response times. Virgin suffers like every other ISP in the UK with problems here and there.

Use Sam Knows for services.

I've been with Virgin Media for 7 years now and apart from the odd problem its been pretty rock solid, i use to have 152Mb/s but i downgraded as it was like £65 a month. Now i'm on 72Mb/s

when I looked apparently our cul de sac was planned for FTTP due to cabinet distance, but then bt shut down the FTTP project due to costs, and plusnet have stopped doing it too afaik.

jitter etc was what I was concerned with, as you say all isps suffer from it due to congestion, was a bit worried from googles saying Virgin was bad, but I'm guessing that's the usual Internet style of complaints everyone has.

looks like I'll give virgin a go, 4mb is killing me, wanted to download DOOM today, but a 21 hour download is insane...

[sideways14a]

I always used to have Virgin, and would have it in a heartbeat again except i can't anymore, i now have BT Infinity 2 running up to around 74MBps and its absolutely shit, the speed fluctuates on a minute by minute basis, when first installed dropped out 20-30 times a day, they fixed it for a while but now its starting to do the same thing.

BT sucks donkey balls

I got rid of my infinity last month for just this reason, its been garbage in the last year.
I even pushed for line checks ect and an engineer was out at the poll outside and found nowt wrong.. ok then so BTs service is just shit then.
Swapped over to vodaphone fttc and its more than twice as fast and seems a bit more stable at the moment.

[GrahamB]

Had Virgin since moving last year and it's been excellent

Currently on the 50Mb package but it's more than fast enough for what I do with it

[Hugh Janus]

I got rid of my infinity last month for just this reason, its been garbage in the last year.
I even pushed for line checks ect and an engineer was out at the poll outside and found nowt wrong.. ok then so BTs service is just shit then.
Swapped over to vodaphone fttc and its more than twice as fast and seems a bit more stable at the moment.

so typical of the performance i get, i may have been on "slower 60MBps..real world was 59.8MBps or something like that" speeds with VM but at least it was an absolute constant:

BT, all in the space of 2 mins:

[Mark]

Had VM for 8 years now and now on their 70mb service. Streams tv to an android box ok. Wouldnt touch BT with a bargepole.

[Murt]

so typical of the performance i get, i may have been on "slower 60MBps..real world was 59.8MBps or something like that" speeds with VM but at least it was an absolute constant:

BT, all in the space of 2 mins:

Don't take this the wrong way but you are wired when doing a speed test?

[sideways14a]

so typical of the performance i get, i may have been on "slower 60MBps..real world was 59.8MBps or something like that" speeds with VM but at least it was an absolute constant:

BT, all in the space of 2 mins:

I have similar ****wittery with mine, blatantly obvious throttling and capping. I also seemed to have a lot of BT chat in my router logs from there control servers for doing something?? whatever that something was it tended to break my connection.

[Hugh Janus]

Don't take this the wrong way but you are wired when doing a speed test?

yeah from my Mac

[Murt]

yeah from my Mac

It's the problem with BT, if the connection is up and working they don't give a toss, unless of course its a business line then they are the tiniest bit better.

[Evilchap]

unless of course its a business line then they are the tiniest bit better.

Not that we've noticed, they also dont car about a whole industrial estate having the connection dropping multiple times a day, as far as we can tell. They certainly cant seem to prevent it.

[sideways14a]

I have some horror stories about BT and there new install for our uni...
Help ma bob talk about ****ing stupid and shit management... ohh deary me.

[Zornyan]

OK so virgin sounding better, but sounding awful.

is it to do with some kind of throttling then? cause obviously sky/plus net etc all 'rent' bts lines

[Murt]

OK so virgin sounding better, but sounding awful.

is it to do with some kind of throttling then? cause obviously sky/plus net etc all 'rent' bts lines

They "throttle" (traffic shape) at peak hours like most isp's, but with people getting problems on the lines it's more than likely down to too many users and over populated exchanges causing congestion

[Hugh Janus]

when i worked for NTL (Then VM) their contention ratio was something like 20:1 BT was back then 50:1 I'm not sure what BT's (or VM for that matter) is now