Virgin Media BB

[eddie101]

Right am currently with BT Broadband and haver had nothing but trouble the last few months. Initially everything was fine, getting a decent 6.5 meg connection....until recently

Speed of the connection has been getting slower and slower and is now 2.1 meg, phone technical dept, they say 'anything above 2 meg is decent in your area' then got accused of setting the router up wrong. Having being an i.t engineer for 18 months and knowing a fair bit about networks i doubt that was possible. Router is placed on the main phone point with a 1m RJ11 to the phone socket, then a 20m RJ45 cable to my pc. Then the 'technical guy' said there was nothing more he can do.

Now, am passed the end of the bt contract can now cancel, thinking of going with VM but have seen mixed responses. I was wondering if people could give me any information with any known issues with VM or anything that they think is great.

Thanks in advance

 

[EffBee]

To be fair I have been using Telewest/VM since about 2001. I had an install then and one more recently a year ago.

I am west midlands based.

I can't fault the installations team in either case. I had both done on a Saturday.

The service has only failed about twice that I can remember - less than a day in each case. Email sometimes drops for a bit. I have also been caught out by them changing IP addresses on their servers. It wouldn't matter if I had my PC directly cabled to the cable modem as intended, but the cable modem goes into a linux smoothwall firewall/router where things are hardcoded.

Initially back in 2001 the tech support and admin stuff was very good but it has been on a slow inexorable downhill spiral ever since. My last install last year after a house move was a nightmare to organize through the admin staff at their call centre. I was purple, apoplectic, speechless and ranting - though not all at the same time or I would be dead now.

I also don't like VM's policy of charging £5 extra per month if you pay by cash via a paypoint rather than let the incompetent b****rs have access to your account with a direct debit.

Admin issues aside I wouldn't talk anyone out of using telewest/VM in my area.

 

[box]

Eddie,
I am in a similar position to you. I have just ordered my Virgin BB/TV/Phone to be installed on the day after my BT contract ends. If you're interested, I have posted here regarding this. Although being an IT engineer yourself, some of my queries may not interest you.

With the BT, I'm finding the homehub is the main source of synch speed woes. They've put some really nasty firmware on it, and I think this has had a negative effect on its stability. My line is rated at 4MB, but I know it is capable of synching at about 5,984. The homehub will only reach these speeds on a fresh firmware reset. From then on it will steadily decrease (over a few months) until it is jumping around between 3 and 4mbps. A fresh firmware reset then starts the whole thing again. Stupid homehub

I have to say though, having just installed the latest hub firmware (6.2.6.C) it syched straight away at 5,984. And to my disbelief it has now resynched of its own free will at 6,144 . Looks like the creases are slowly being ironed.

Of course this all assumes you have a Home Hub

 

[eddie101]

To be fair I have been using Telewest/VM since about 2001. I had an install then and one more recently a year ago.

I am west midlands based.

I can't fault the installations team in either case. I had both done on a Saturday.

The service has only failed about twice that I can remember - less than a day in each case. Email sometimes drops for a bit. I have also been caught out by them changing IP addresses on their servers. It wouldn't matter if I had my PC directly cabled to the cable modem as intended, but the cable modem goes into a linux smoothwall firewall/router where things are hardcoded.

Initially back in 2001 the tech support and admin stuff was very good but it has been on a slow inexorable downhill spiral ever since. My last install last year after a house move was a nightmare to organize through the admin staff at their call centre. I was purple, apoplectic, speechless and ranting - though not all at the same time or I would be dead now.

I also don't like VM's policy of charging £5 extra per month if you pay by cash via a paypoint rather than let the incompetent b****rs have access to your account with a direct debit.

Admin issues aside I wouldn't talk anyone out of using telewest/VM in my area.

I am based in the west mids to, will have to have a careful think lol

 

[eddie101]

Eddie,
I am in a similar position to you. I have just ordered my Virgin BB/TV/Phone to be installed on the day after my BT contract ends. If you're interested, I have posted here regarding this. Although being an IT engineer yourself, some of my queries may not interest you.

With the BT, I'm finding the homehub is the main source of synch speed woes. They've put some really nasty firmware on it, and I think this has had a negative effect on its stability. My line is rated at 4MB, but I know it is capable of synching at about 5,984. The homehub will only reach these speeds on a fresh firmware reset. From then on it will steadily decrease (over a few months) until it is jumping around between 3 and 4mbps. A fresh firmware reset then starts the whole thing again. Stupid homehub

I have to say though, having just installed the latest hub firmware (6.2.6.C) it syched straight away at 5,984. And to my disbelief it has now resynched of its own free will at 6,144 . Looks like the creases are slowly being ironed.

Of course this all assumes you have a Home Hub

Hey thanks for the reply, i did try the home hub for about 2 days, we had words, then had a falling out and went back to my trusty netgear dg834gt. Home hub is now gathering dust

 

[eddie101]

Another question aswell:

Having previously had NTL Cable in the house im living in, there are various cable inlets inside the house...Also one in my room where my computer shall live. Will Virgin be able to utilise these or will they have to install their own?

 

[Phemo]

Another question aswell:

Having previously had NTL Cable in the house im living in, there are various cable inlets inside the house...Also one in my room where my computer shall live. Will Virgin be able to utilise these or will they have to install their own?

They'll use the existing points if they're in acceptable locations for you. Entirely up to you whether you want points in different rooms really.

 

[tipsy]

Its BT they had messed me around no end when my connection kept going to 1.2mb from a sturdy 6.5mb. I got the usual response ah the router is at fault then its your pc to the point I'd say I've tried 7 different routers & 3 other pc's & they are not wireless!! I also stated that the worse router of them all was the Home(NAFF)HUb.

To cut a long story short its since the introduction of the traffic management back in march/april time. When I went to adsl24 after breaking my contract it was magic being on an unrestricted 6mb line & well worth it in *** end. If you want cable go for it & their speeds dont seem to bad but there does appear to be pitfalls with cable & certain areas but its better than BT & cheap as U get tv & phone.

 

[E1mo]

I would strongly recommend against Virgin Broadband if you live in a student area. Come 5pm and it slows to such a crawl you can't even load a website around here.

 

[Nazca]

I live in Lenton, Nottingham. Which is a heavily populated student town most of whom have Virgin Media. We have had 20Mbit for over a year now and it's been a dream. Never had less than max speeds with newsgroups (2.38MB/s is the best i can get and I get usually 2.34 - 2.37MB/s).

Agreed their phone service is pants but there's never really a time where you would contact them. I've never had any downtime or problems. Totally recommended.

 

[ViRuS2k]

Im with virgin broadband 8meg and its a bloody joke.

Between the hours of 12:00-10:00am i get about 750kb down i use to get 850kb down untill for some weird reason they cut my max speed by 100kb dunno why i use to get 850
thats not what bothers me though

im fine with the speeds but the thing that worrys me the most is gameing.

i cant game at all becuse of MASSIVE HIGH PINGS!
even if my bandwith outandin is fast the pings are what kills me

I phoned there tech support here are some of the answers to my questions where

Tech guy:

We dont support Gameing
We dont support Low Pings
We cant change your Path speeds from Interleaved to Fastpath

i got so dam mad i hung up on the tech operator,
how can they say things like that to there customers and get away with it.
its rediculess to say the least.

im moving isps as soon as humanly possible.

and also to people in this thread
These problems we are all having are nothing to do with virgin medias cable area, if your on cable your good to go
its the adsl customers that are getting very bad support and speeds.

 

[eidolon]

I'm having problems with VM too. I'm on the XL package yet I'm lucky to get 3-4Mb regardless of what time of day or night I try.

I've just spent the last 15 minutes on the phone to somewhere in India which was a complete waste of time. He told me to take my ethernet cable out and put it in the opposite way round!! After that he asked if I was happy with the changes (to which I replied no as nothing had changed) then he told me that I don't need to worry anymore. Well actually I do cos it's still just as slow as it was before. It was a fruitless conversation for which I had the priviledge of paying 25p per minute for.

 

[Ade74]

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/

I believe several of the Mods on the above site forums are Virgin Engineers. There are also lots of people in the internet section of the forums asking what broadband is like in particular areas.

 

[farooqm]

I'm having problems with VM too. I'm on the XL package yet I'm lucky to get 3-4Mb regardless of what time of day or night I try.

I've just spent the last 15 minutes on the phone to somewhere in India which was a complete waste of time. He told me to take my ethernet cable out and put it in the opposite way round!! After that he asked if I was happy with the changes (to which I replied no as nothing had changed) then he told me that I don't need to worry anymore. Well actually I do cos it's still just as slow as it was before. It was a fruitless conversation for which I had the priviledge of paying 25p per minute for.

You gotta wonder about the training they've had....
I'm having 'intermittent' issue recently. I'll go to a web page and a few mins later that web page will refuse to load... after a few more mins I can load it again.

Checked my machine upside down, inside out and definately no spyware etc running. Normally happens in the evenings never in the daytime...

Have resisted ringing VM as I know it will be useless and I'll be out of pocket.

 

[Robert]

The problem here is a few of you are on VM ADSL which is bound to be pants as it's ADSL

 

[ukdave]

Check this out to see what your average ADSL speed is in your area (if you're interested re: your current problem): http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php

I've recently moved to Brixton and am on Virgin's 20MB service. It was pretty poor to begin with but is now great. Installation was poorly done, phone died and had to wait over a week to get it repaired.

You HAVE to pay 25ppm for broadband customer service, however from my experience the days of hour long waits with NTL are over. problem is you end up talking to someone in India. I will say that they are easy to understand and are friendly. You just have to let them go through their little manual until the problem gets escalated. Anyway, i would recommend. Either that or look at O2's broadband if you're an O2 customer, or Be for 24MBPs ADSL2+ if available.

 

[farooqm]

The problem here is a few of you are on VM ADSL which is bound to be pants as it's ADSL

I'm on cable and not adsl.... but I know what you mean about adsl, especially VM ADSL (freind of mine is on this and has been trying to get out of the cotract due to ridiculously low speeds in the evenings.

 

[player]

Do Virgin Media provide a wireless router for new customers?

 

[ukdave]

No they only provide a cable modem which provides a single ethernet out (whcih outputs an external 8x.xxx.xxx.xxx type IP address). hence you'll probably need a CABLE router (not an ADSL one).