Virgin Media Sucks

[ashleyb4]

Im with BT its awsome they just send us free equipment all the time we have FREE Bt vision tv and we have had about 4 FREE routers there was nothign wrong with the old ones they just kept sending us new ones. I dont have any problems with it. Service never goes down i run wired which is awsome wireless is really good if you have a good wireless adapter.

A

[bodgit]

this site gives you reviews about almost anything inc broadband may be worth a look
www.reviewcentre.com

[frogger]

I was with Telwest and now with Virgin. I am on the top 20MB connection and it's fantastic (soon to be 50mb!). I use torrent, emule, get loads of movies and my connection has only been down once for 4hr in 2 years. Never felt that I was throttled down either. I download a lot of beta packages and regularly get 2MB or more download speed. I stream a lot of video, radio and music content as well.

Just ran a speed test and got 14276kbps down and 738kbps up.

So in my experience Virgin rocks

Even better, my company pays the monthly bill

[jimmy]

Maybe you are using something other than cable? adsl? we use NTL cable, taken over by virgin. Torrents have always afaik been 'limited' with ntl, but much much much more so with VM. on a 25 quid a month contract (purely for broadband, no other services) we were able to download around 150 mb before the connection dropped from around ~700kbps a second to exactly 115kbps.
Obviously when my website is ~1.5gig it's impossible to back it up from home with restrictions like that.
VM clearly were overselling accounts without the infrastructure there to cope with the insane speeds. I don't need 50mb for 10 minutes, I'd rather have a reliable 4mb connection all the time!

Things ARE better now - how much better I'm not sure. I didn't sign up for any sort of fair usage policy, and when Virgin tried to sell us FASTER broadband for the same price when they took over NTL, we declined and told them we wanted to keep our slower and just as expensive contract - but they imposed the download limits anyway secretly a few months later, and that's why they suck the big one.

[frogger]

I am defo on cable. Maybe there are fewer restrictions on the bigger packages. I dropped BT ADSL because I kept getting threatening emails saying if I don't stop downloading this and that they will end my connection so I thought I'd end it for them. I joined Telewest cable, at the time the fastest connection I could get in my area and have been with them for about 4 years including with the move to Virgin. Seriously, I have many times considered finding a cheaper supplier because the top package was quite expensive in the beginning but they kept increasing my bandwidth and reducing the price so it's been truly awesome.

I think it also has to do with contention ratio's in your area. I live amongst a lot of retired people here and I recon I am one of the few people in my area on the cable system. I can pick up loads of Sky broadband wireless routers around me so my guess is people are either with BT or Sky around here.

[Southwell]

Originally Posted by jimmy

Maybe you are using something other than cable? adsl? we use NTL cable, taken over by virgin. Torrents have always afaik been 'limited' with ntl, but much much much more so with VM. on a 25 quid a month contract (purely for broadband, no other services) we were able to download around 150 mb before the connection dropped from around ~700kbps a second to exactly 115kbps.
Obviously when my website is ~1.5gig it's impossible to back it up from home with restrictions like that.
VM clearly were overselling accounts without the infrastructure there to cope with the insane speeds. I don't need 50mb for 10 minutes, I'd rather have a reliable 4mb connection all the time!

Things ARE better now - how much better I'm not sure. I didn't sign up for any sort of fair usage policy, and when Virgin tried to sell us FASTER broadband for the same price when they took over NTL, we declined and told them we wanted to keep our slower and just as expensive contract - but they imposed the download limits anyway secretly a few months later, and that's why they suck the big one.

The service WILL get better, the 50mb package is using a completely different system (docsis3) so the 20mb users will leave the dosis2 system and make bandwidth better for lower tier users. Well thats the theory anyway.

[b4rs]

going back to previous posts, i have the same problem, when running torrents or downloading from itunes etc, my connection just slows and then completely shuts off, i have to go reset the wireless router for it to work again. virgin have been contacted many times but say it could be my router, im using a belkin 54g router wich worked when new but recently has started performing to be honest....shite. i cant put my finger on what is the problem??? any help? is it the router or have virgin started cutting internet when people are downloading?

[Southwell]

Try plugging directly into the modem and try it, if you still get a problem contact Virgin through the newgroups, they are much more helpful.

[Southwell]

Also try a ping to 192.168.1.1 (if thats your gateway)

So in command: ping 192.168.1.1 -t

That will do a non stop ping, if you get any high MS pings then it could be your wireless channel.

[Fiddybux]

My service drops by 75% exactly after I have downloaded 1200MB. I'm on the 10Mb service. This is crap! What can you do with 1200MB!!! Not much. The table from the Virgin website shows what happens at what times. I really hope it gets better soon as suggested when the 50Mb service comes online.

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

Updated traffic management policy

We’re making some changes to our traffic management policy. We think the overall impact will be that fewer people will be affected by the traffic management policy – but it’ll still make sure that use is fair for all our customers. Here’s the detail:
* Note: The upstream speed for some customers will be 200Kb. We are currently in the process of aligning this at 256Kb for all customers, and expect this to complete shortly.