Virginmedia to double broadband speeds


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No doubt Virgin will still have there aggressive traffic shaping at peak times still  

Have you been in a tank for the past year and a half? Virgin don't do peak time download traffic management any more. Upload, p2p and usenet -- yes. 

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I'd be weeping too if I had to use BT's cables. My inlaws, 2 streets away, barely manage 1.5mbps...

 

Virgin Media's speeds aren't much better in some areas, the VM forums are littered with people saying they're not getting anywhere near the speeds they should. VM's next emphasis should be on quality not quantity. I'm lucky enough to live in a smaller town with my local VM exchange actually at the top of my street so my speeds are pretty much at the top of what they should be.

Edited by PsYcHoKiLLa
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  • 2 weeks later...

Starting from 1st October 2015 Virginmedia have announced they're giving their subscribers a free speed upgrade.

Customers on 50Mbps get an increase to 100Mbps, 100Mbps to 200Mbps and customers on 152Mbps to 300Mbps. No news on the upload speeds but they're likely to be in the region of 6Mbps, 12Mbps and 16Mbps.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7119-virgin-media-to-start-next-round-of-speed-upgrades-in-october.html

 

Upload speeds for the 200Mbps and 300Mbps product have been confirmed to be 12Mbps and 20Mbps.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7148-more-information-on-new-virgin-media-ultrafast-products.html

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That upload speed of 20 meg for 300 down is just paltry. It's not even 7% of the downstream capacity. With all the various [legal] uses for uploading, ISPs really need to pull their finger out.

Upload speeds are always alot less in the UK, currently the 3 tiers are 50 Mbps/3Mbps, 100Mbps/6Mbps, 152Mbps/12Mbps, personally i don't care too much about upload speeds.

Edited by SnoopZ
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Upload speeds are always alot less in the UK, currently the 3 tiers are 50 Mbps/3Mbps, 100Mbps/6Mbps, 152Mbps/12Mbps, personally i don't care too much about upload speeds.

I get that upload speeds never really kept pace with downstream capacity in the UK and if you don't care about upload speeds then good for you. However, with "Internet of Things" of things very much on people's lips at the moment, upstream capacity is becoming quite relevant. Build capacity and applications that make use of it will follow. Many are already here and many more will come.

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I am just glad i am not stuck on 5Mbps download, for some people that would be really fast though.

Probably, it's all relative. I would rather sacrifice some of the download speed to bump up the upload but it's not like they'll let me do it, is there?

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Probably, it's all relative. I would rather sacrifice some of the download speed to bump up the upload but it's not like they'll let me do it, is there?

Are you in the UK and on Virgin?

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Personally i am not too bothered about being upgraded from 100 to 200, it gets to the point that it is all just willy waving in my opinion.

Doesn't bother me, but I welcome it. If it gets to the point where people don't care, companies will be less inclined to bump things up and that's not a situation I would welcome. What does bother me is when content encoding quality doesn't take advantage of the bandwidth when streaming and/or downloading.

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Have you been in a tank for the past year and a half? Virgin don't do peak time download traffic management any more. Upload, p2p and usenet -- yes. 

They only manage Usenet if you use the common ports (119, 563). If you use SSL and a higher number port they leave you alone.

I'd rather they leave my Download on 50meg and then put my upload on 20meg.

Also, though you may have a 50/100/150meg connection, that doesn't mean Virgin will serve you web pages/videos/streaming at that speed.

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Haha,

Personally i am not too bothered about being upgraded from 100 to 200, it gets to the point that it is all just willy waving in my opinion.

It becomes far more relevant if you have multiple people in the same home, all using streaming services and online gaming etc.

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It becomes far more relevant if you have multiple people in the same home, all using streaming services and online gaming etc.

For me, it means I can download backups from my servers each night without having to pick and choose what data to take. For web browsing, youtube and netflix you'll never notice a difference, but when it comes to any kind of file transfers it's great.

 

If only they'd sort out the upgrade speed.

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I'll be glad for the speed increase.

However, I'm expecting more from the roll out then just speed.
Recently the Super Hub v2 modems got a small firmware update that required them to login with the WPS key if the router's webmin default password hadn't been changed.
That wasn't the only change though. Although the pages aren't active yet, giving CGI 500 errors, there are placeholders for IPv6, Parental Control via keyword blocking, and DLNA .

IPv6 - This is a no brainer, it had to come sooner or later. It'll be interesting to see how it's setup, and if they go with the standard delegated rdns or not.
Parental Control via keyword blocking - This is an interesting one. Something I've missed from using DD-WRT on my old router, that is if it works the same way. Domain name blocking via keywords, hopefully it'll also have options to report back blocked hits and such too.
DLNA - Probably the one that'll spark the most interest. The SuperHub has, at the moment, an unused USB connection. It'd be nice to be able to plug in a USB harddisk/Stick and stream content to the Smart TV, and console, tablets etc around the house.

Lastly, with the roll out of the firmware and speed increases Virgin are also providing Guest wifi much like the FON network (like BT currently uses), to provide access on the go.
I haven't seen any information in the router config pages to say where it's configured, so we might not even get a page to turn it on or off with it simply being handled via TR69/ACS.
It'll be interesting to see what speeds they set the free wifi network to. They did say it's independant of the speed of the customer's connection.

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Recently the Super Hub v2 modems got a small firmware update that required them to login with the WPS key if the router's webmin default password hadn't been changed

Good move. Too many people don't change the default credentials. I remember reading a while ago about a security vulnerability that allows for SH2 to be hijacked during a brief window when it's rebooted.

DLNA - Probably the one that'll spark the most interest. The SuperHub has, at the moment, an unused USB connection. It'd be nice to be able to plug in a USB harddisk/Stick and stream content to the Smart TV, and console, tablets etc around the house.

Hopefully they will support USB hubs too and not just one drive at a time.

I haven't seen any information in the router config pages to say where it's configured, so we might not even get a page to turn it on or off with it simply being handled via TR69/ACS.
It'll be interesting to see what speeds they set the free wifi network to. They did say it's independant of the speed of the customer's connection.

For the time being, there is this...and speeds will probably be similar to those on Tube WiFi.

 QDz5UX6.png 

 

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No updates to the SH2ac yet, also i am due some new mystery trial hardware soon, likely to be a SH3.

Interesting. VM are not currently approaching the limits of SH2 and neither is its saturation amongst subscribers very high. I have a feeling that with this speed bump that will change quite a bit. When VM bumped me up from 50 to 100 a few years ago, I got SH2 as a result. As such, those who are currently on the "up to 50Mb" service will probably get new hardware in due course.

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  • 3 weeks later...

As well as the speed increase only going to 70,150,200 the upload speeds are not increasing, staying at 3,6 and 12, what a giant let down judging by all the reports of speed doubling.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/09/virgin-media-boosts-top-uk-vivid-cable-broadband-speeds-to-200mbps.html

 

Edited by SnoopZ
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As well as the speed increase only going to 70,150,200 the upload speeds are not increasing, staying at 3,6 and 12, what a giant let down judging by all the reports of speed doubling.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/09/virgin-media-boosts-top-uk-vivid-cable-broadband-speeds-to-200mbps.html

 

Well that's a letdown indeed, couldn't really care about 200mbps or even 300mbps. Just put some effort in to the upload speeds!

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