Virgin Media Upgrade to 120Mb from 50Mb

[Mu5icMan]

Just received a flyer in the post saying that I'm a valued 50Mb customer and they will upgrade me to 100Mb and then when available to 120Mb for free.

I know about the 50Mb to 100Mb but didn't realise I would get an extra 20Mb.

That's one hell of an upgrade.

[TommyV]

Very nice!

[Lucifa]

Sickening! And there's me sitting on 3mb

[thatbloke]

It's a shame they aren't available in my area and the fastest net my phone can handle is 5mbps down, 0.9mbps up, oh and that my area is also not on the BT Infinity rollout anytime soon either...

[Chevalier]

Originally Posted by thatbloke

It's a shame they aren't available in my area and the fastest net my phone can handle is 5mbps down, 0.9mbps up, oh and that my area is also not on the BT Infinity rollout anytime soon either...

I'd move....

[__OpenGL__]

Its became a willy waving contest as BT started offering 110mbit in a trial area. Unfortunately for VM I think that the buss network they use wont be able to support many people actually using their alloted bandwidth... Whereas BT probably wont have such big issues scaling their FTTC...

[thatbloke]

Originally Posted by Chevalier

I'd move....

I'd love to, but I HATE having more than a 30min commute to work (and I cannot drive).

[ccxo]

Originally Posted by thatbloke

It's a shame they aren't available in my area and the fastest net my phone can handle is 5mbps down, 0.9mbps up, oh and that my area is also not on the BT Infinity rollout anytime soon either...

BT's commercial rollout continues till 2014, so alot of areas have not been announced, also CC ith bduk funding tenders will go out this year, BT will win the majority so will see their FTTC/FTTP service go further up to about 90% by 2015 if they win the majority of BDUK funding.

[webvictim]

Originally Posted by __OpenGL__

Its became a willy waving contest as BT started offering 110mbit in a trial area. Unfortunately for VM I think that the buss network they use wont be able to support many people actually using their alloted bandwidth... Whereas BT probably wont have such big issues scaling their FTTC...

Apparently Virgin's backbone network is actually pretty good, although whether that's because they cap the **** out of anyone and everyone who dares to actually use their connection is uncertain.

The willy waving stuff really does annoy me, neither of them can even actually offer "proper" 20mbit (i.e. unthrottled) so as far as I'm concerned they shouldn't be bothering with headline speeds.

[Jamz]

Originally Posted by webvictim

Apparently Virgin's backbone network is actually pretty good, although whether that's because they cap the **** out of anyone and everyone who dares to actually use their connection is uncertain.

The willy waving stuff really does annoy me, neither of them can even actually offer "proper" 20mbit (i.e. unthrottled) so as far as I'm concerned they shouldn't be bothering with headline speeds.

I have a 50Mb completely un throttled connection from virginmedia.

[BlAcKiCe]

A town 30 mins drive away from me is getting BT Infinite but BT have said that is all they are allocating to the area

Here is me struggling to even get 5meg on a good day

[Tsung]

Don't forget Sam Knows ( SamKnows - Broadband Availability Checker )

Thanks to that site, I was informed of the recent upgrade in my area from 8mb ADSL to 21CN.. Now BT was selling 21CN to new customers whilst not informing their current customers (me) this new speed was available. A few phone calls later (and threaten to leave at one point) and I got a date for when they were going to upgrade current customers, that was 1st Dec 2011, it happened and I'm now on 16mb broadband.

Check with Samknows, you might find other providers out there (thou' I wouldn't trust Talk Talk) offering you a better service to your area. Or (like me) you might find BT has recently upgraded your local exchange without telling you..

[TommyV]

Originally Posted by Chevalier

I'd move....

Same, when moving anywhere internet capability/desk space is as important to me as whether or no there is a fridge :P

[__OpenGL__]

Originally Posted by webvictim

Apparently Virgin's backbone network is actually pretty good, although whether that's because they cap the **** out of anyone and everyone who dares to actually use their connection is uncertain.

The willy waving stuff really does annoy me, neither of them can even actually offer "proper" 20mbit (i.e. unthrottled) so as far as I'm concerned they shouldn't be bothering with headline speeds.

I was talking more about the way the street cabling is done. With VM they run a single length of coax down the street. This is then T'ed off into each house which has cable TV/broadband. Where the coax has not already been T'ed off and a new installation is needed the engineer cuts the coax in the street which causes everyone upstream to loose their connection until the T is installed. Therefore I presume that the entire street is sharing the bandwidth of that single cable and no one can use overlapping frequencies. Therefore each user on a street will be sharing a finite amount of bandwidth available on the 'buss'. A bit like on a hubbed network everyone shares the bandwidth... Presumably in the past this bandwidth has been increased with newer technology using higher and higher frequencies. However I imagine that there will come a point where using higher frequencies becomes un economical. With that in mind VM can keep offering faster and faster connections however if people actually start to use their connection I foresee contention on a per street level.

Contrasting that with bts new fttc roll out each cabinet serves at most a few hundred premises. Every user has a dedicated connection to the cabinet and the back haul from the cabinet could be 10gigabit fibre; or multiple 10gig fibers presuming they've ran a bundle of fibers to every cab... With the local copper loops being quite short I think 200mbit+ should be possible.

I must confess that my knowledge in these areas is quite limited so if anyone can correct me or add to this then that would be interesting.

Alan

[WhiteKnight]

Are you sure thats right? Im sure ive seen VM (or formerly NTL / Cable & wireless) running separate coax for each house back to the greenbase.

[__OpenGL__]

Im not 100% sure; but every time I've seen down one of the holes on the borders of folks properties theres only been one coax in there going down the street and one teeing off to the property. Also way back when you used to be able to connect a serial cable to a header in your modem to change its mac address you used to have to get someone out of your area to sniff their local cable using another modified modem to find the mac address of a person. The fact you could sniff it like this suggests to me that its a 'hubbed' system.

[philbert_mcpleb]

the last place I lived had virgin, the guy just pulled through a new cable from the green box. Also where I work they often get vandalised. they normally have a big bundle of individual cables dropping down under the street.

[RocketKnight]

Say what you want about Virgin and their bandwidth management policies, but I just downloaded almost 6GB of data on Steam in 20 minutes whilst chatting on Mumble and streaming music, so I'm very happy with it.

[WhiteKnight]

Originally Posted by RocketKnight

Say what you want about Virgin and their bandwidth management policies, but I just downloaded almost 6GB of data on Steam in 20 minutes whilst chatting on Mumble and streaming music, so I'm very happy with it.

[beno]

When I had a decent Virgin engineer round he said that each household has a cable running to the cabinet. He said the cabinet is in levels with the peeps who have the longest distance at the top and shortest distance at the bottom. He said he'd moved mine to the top cause I'd done him a cup of tea and talked shop

I regularly download at 6MB/s on my 50MB connection...It's all good.....

[ccxo]

VM cable is fine where their is not congestion on their network, where there is congestion there is plenty of problems.

[thatbloke]

Samknows says "FTTC will be available in your area, but the precise date is unknown" about my area.

Looks like i'm staying in the dark ages for a few years longer...

[Rupert]

I have the 30mb virgin thing and they sent me a letter saying we will be upgraded to 50 or something. In reality though, some days I just get 1mb if that. Anyone know how I can fix this?

[ccxo]

Its Virgins routing, beacuse the local area is over staturated and Virgin do not upgrade their network fast enough.

[Quietus]

You fix it by opening a fault with Virgin and following their diagnostic process. I would expect they operate on a similar principle to other ISPs and will upgrade areas which are reporting problems more quickly than areas which aren't. Also get all of your neighbours to report if they're seeing the same problem too.

[Jez_Gafys]

Originally Posted by ccxo

Its Virgins routing, beacuse the local area is over staturated and Virgin do not upgrade their network fast enough.

hmm they are for every upgrading and relaying pipes. Like they moved onto docsis3 the whole doubling of their network is an 18month upgrade process of their fibre network costing £billions (that's probs why everyones bills are rising from 1st April to pay for it)

[jimbouk1977]

just go here to see how much fun the 100mb package is for most inc myself 0.36mb & 4mb up down at peak times & no ETA on a fix

New to 100meg speed problems in Northampton area - Help & Support Forum (edit that is my gripe)
here are the rest Broadband - Help & Support Forum

P.S it is one line of coax from cab to house not shared.

Just Glad we get infinity in June