Forum Discussion

Tenebreaux's avatar
Tenebreaux
On our wavelength
22 days ago

During testing I noticed that my upload speed was only about 10% what it should be

Built a new server and fired it up for the first time today. During testing I noticed that my upload speed was only about 10% what it should be. Checked on a couple of other devices and found the same thing. Checked all the obvious and found no problems. So, I get on the chat to Virgin. Eventually some bod joins the chat. I had to explain three times that I was using ethernet cable as he kept telling me stuff to do to improve my wifi. Then he asked me what kind of ethernet cable I was using. When I told him cat 6e he told me that cat 6e was only capable of carrying 250 mbps. I told him this was wrong and as part of the standard it's rated at 10 gig. He then told me there were lots of different manufacturers on the market with different speeds. I tried to explain what "standard" meant and couldn't get through to him. Couldn't take it anymore and ended the chat.

I'm not expecting 1st level support to be CCNA qualified but this is basic stuff.

    • Tenebreaux's avatar
      Tenebreaux
      On our wavelength
      22 days ago

      Problem resolved itself. Which leads me to believe it was a Virgin network problem. Good job I didn't go out a buy a load of cat 8 then.

      • Rwilliams100's avatar
        Rwilliams100
        On our wavelength
        22 days ago

        Why would you buy CAT 8? You running a data centre? Higher is not better, especially for CAT 8 cables.

  • asim18's avatar
    asim18
    Rising star
    22 days ago

    Based on my personal experience, I'd have to say no. Most telephone support staff have absolutely no technical knowledge whatsoever. But a handfull of them are technically knowledgeable.

    It's weird but I seem to get more qualified people when I select options for faults with telephone line.

    I recently upgraded my broadband package but the profile wasn't pushed to my Hub yet. So I called the broadband faults line and told the nice person that my Hub's configuration is still showing the old rate limit.... She needlessly forces me to do silly restarts and speedtests and seems to have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, then to get rid of me she tells me someone will magically fix it for me at midnight. LOL yeah right.

    So I call back 2 minutes later but this time I follow options for Telephone faults. I tell the guy the exact same thing and the gentleman immediately pushed the button to send the new profile to my Hub within 3-4 seconds flat. The entire call took about 55 seconds from report to full resolution!

    So I would have to agree with you. Some certainly posess a degree of technical expertise, but most are probably experts at fobbing you off.

  • Tudor's avatar
    Tudor
    Very Insightful Person
    22 days ago

    All the call handlers do is follow a script and very few have any technical knowledge at all. Once something does not fit the script the handlers seem to ad lib and often, from what I’ve seen on the board, give totally rubbish information to users. As you rightly say Cat6a is totally ok for 10G up to 30m and people are just wasting money using Cat8 cable in a home. There are some very knowledgeable users on the board who try to help users. Glad you got your connection sorted.