Virgin Cable Broadband?

[muscleflex]

Hi all - who on here is on Virgin broadband? Especially the 100mb package?
I'm interested to know about their Traffic Management.

I'm a fairly heavy user and I want to know if this will affect me... I've just cancelled SKY Fibre with the plan of taking out another new contract with them but I was surprised to find out that I can't get Fibre with Sky at the same house when I had their Fibre just up to last Sunday! Stupid people! So now I have to register my interest for Fibre.

So I'm thinking of Virgin but not sure about their Traffic Management Policy. I upload lots of Youtube / Vimeo videos and I watch a lot of Netflix and Youtube as well and I do a lot of browsing.

Sometimes I torrent as well (but I never seed) but I have not done that since getting Netflix last year actually.

[miskin]

I have Virgin 150Mb BB never had a problem . Downloaded 956Gig last month according to my usage . Thats netflix , torrents ,youtube and what ever my children are upto ( gaming).. ..Speed is around the 80meg wireless and around 120-130 wired. But they depends on your equipment

I'm constanly pestered by Sky but they just cannot match the internet speed in my area.
I get TV , BB and Home phone for £89.52 amonth including a Tivo Box and a V+ Box

Anthony

[muscleflex]

Thanks for this. How long have you had it? I might have to cancel stupid sky and just go for virgin.

[miniman]

We have 150Mb and it works really well. That said we have the occasional glitch, but nothing that they have not been able to fix in a reasonable time period.

We have four people sharing the bandwidth in our house, ranging from my son and daughter that steams movies, and my wife and I that use it for general Internet and social networking.

We get the full 150 Internet, the top XXL TV, including Sky movies and Sports, and XL Telephone for just under £100. The thing I learnt was to never accept the first price they gave and ask if that was the best they can do.

I will say that the HD signal is not as sharp as some other satellite systems, but good enough for most.

Peter

[Bigboystoys]

yep have vm 150 asd well, no probs whatsoever, always downloading, streaming, and ps4 online, all fine

[woodsta888]

Virgin are renowned for throttling and traffic shapng at peak times and are heavy with it. Especially in over subscribed areas. Upto 75% depending on which package you are on. If you are to leave torrents running to DL then it's fine but if you wanted something that evening and you start within peak times then it will be slower, especially once you go over a certain amount. Many ISP's still have a fair use policy when they will throttle. Dedicated ISP's that don't traffic shape and are truely unlimited are generally more expensive.

[muscleflex]

I just want broadband. Trying to save money so not getting tv or phones. We have netflix and nowtv and between those and freeview, they hopefully should be enough. I only watch movies and my wife only watches those real life drama crap ;)
When Walking Dead and Game of Thrones come back, I can just download them.

I just spoke online to Virgin and they have a 28 day satisfaction guarantee or refund so that's even better. £33.50 for the 100mb package.
I will have to call sky today and cancel my order from last night.

I still can't believe Sky is telling me Fibre is not available for my house when we had it for over a year up to last week when we cancelled it.

[Planehazza]

160mb VM here and it's great. I am not looking forward to dropping down to (up to) 17mbit vdsl when I move into the girlfriends later this year :/

[tomatwalden]

[QUOTE=woodsta888;1184466]Virgin are renowned for throttling and traffic shapng at peak times and are heavy with it. Especially in over subscribed areas. Upto 75% depending on which package you are on. If you are to leave torrents running to DL then it's fine but if you wanted something that evening and you start within peak times then it will be slower, especially once you go over a certain amount. Many ISP's still have a fair use policy when they will throttle. Dedicated ISP's that don't traffic shape and are truely unlimited are generally more expensive.[/QUOTE]

First up : I work for Virgin Media :)

That said, I think Virgin have the same issues most providers have with *heavy* usage. That being the nature of home BB traffic has changed. Years back, homes were mostly download traffic. Things changed though (upstream traffic ramped up - eg. Youtube uploads, email attachments etc) and the nature of home broadband usage and the industry tried its best to cope.

Now, netflix, amazon prime, etc. has changed the game again in favour of heavy downstream usage, and again, industry players have to play catchup.

In short, I don't believe Virgin are particular aggressive in terms of traffic management - certainly I'm not aware of it! But, the evolving nature of home broadband usage does cause all providers with ever-changing customer needs. This is not always easy to get right 100% for everyone and can be seen reflected in the changes in the DOCSIS standard .. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS[/url]

[woodsta888]

That DOCSIS is only relevant i think to CATV of which Virgin is the only supplier and where teh cable is fully to the house. All other suppliers or broadband is resold on the back of BT's network which is most other than business cases run from FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) where from 'cabinet to property' is still copper wire so not covered by that DOCSIS.

I cant find the website now but I have seen one for traffic shaping in a chart and virgin shapes traffic teh heaviets. such as soon as you go over 3GB of DL in the peak period of 3pm-11pm (when most users are home) it is throttled by upto 75%. As a gamer and non heavy downloader Virgin was fine though my ping/latency would increase. But moving house where CATV wasn't in the pavement outside my house I was held to ransom for completing the contract and virgin made it difficult. I had to monitor and produce evidence that even the ADSL was poor at that address (by know how and manipulation) to release me from a contract. My contract was for my old address and a cable service. But Virgin made it very difficult to be released from. One of which should be moving house. There is much eveidence and virgin traffic shaping is well documented across the internet in high demand areas. There is no point having 150mb service if a solid 150Mb speed is only available whilst you are asleep or at work. You are throttled when you want to use it and the caps are small also when shaping starts.

[miniman]

I work in the telecoms industry, and I recommend Virgin to customers that want/need high bandwidth. In all cases though the top line product is recommended 150 Mb in the case of Virgin, as the smaller bandwidth services do not keep a constant throughput at the busiest times.

I do not work for or have any link to Virgin, but have in the past used most of the other services, and for both domestic and commercial would chose Virgin ( NTL) over other providers, at least until fibre to the home FTTH becomes available.

For the time being Co-axial cabling is the fastest option for cabling to the home, and will probably stay that way for many years to to the cost and complexity of FTTH.

Peter

[Gate88]

I'll put it in simple terms.

Ive got virgin BB.

Ive got a teenage daughter that has a MacBook, iPad, iPhone and a PC and we never have any problems other than the TIVO box packing up every year (but they replace it for free so it's all good!)

[bigpops]

I've been on Virgin (or previous cable companies they bought) broadband since 2002, and have had 512K, 1Mb, 2Mb, 4Mb, 10Mb, 20Mb, 30Mb 60Mb, and now 100Mb.

In all that time, I've had to have the guy come out to fix my internet just once. Last month I was "offline" (other than mobile tethering) for 4 days and it was a total nightmare. The guy put me on a higher tap, and all is well again.

Traffic shaping isn't a big deal on the bigger speeds. While you do get throttled if you go over a certain limit (a few GB) before 9PM, the throttled speed is still 25Mb down on 100Mb and is perfectly usable for streaming multiple simultaneous Netflix/Youtube etc streams.

[ChrisB]

Also have no issues, I am on their 50MB speed now,been with Virgin since it was Cable and Wireless pre NTL.

I always always get 50MB near as dammit anytime and never had an issue.

Have phone XL and Tivo XL also and pay £41 a month on their(put me thru to cancellations) package ;)

[Kev Chandler]

Hi,

I am on the Virgin BB 100 MB service, pretty heavy user throughout the day with work and then my daughter downloading/streaming whatever teenagers do these days as well:peaceful: no problems at all and recommend it. Was going to try something else but could not find anything that would even come close on what I/we need.
Cheers

Kev