Virgin Media Community

[greg123]

For a few weeks I've noticed problems with the internet. I've tried resetting the hub and shutting it down for a while numerous times, checked the cables are tight, etc. I tried calling VM a few times, having been on hold for nearly an hour then cut off, then on hold for so long my battery went dead. Hoping posting here helps 🙂

Browsing normal sites is sometimes noticeably sluggish.

I notice it mostly playing online games, where my ping is regularly close to 200ms and is unplayable due to warping/rubber banding etc. Odd thing is I monitor my ping and sometimes it goes from around 60ms up to eg 180ms then back down, then back up, over the course of 10 seconds. Sometimes playing early hours (1am etc) the issue is not present, or less noticeable, so wonder if my area is saturated?

I have 100MB broadband and only 2 people in the house, neither use high down or up amounts.

This is with hard wired connections, not WIFI.

I've ran numerous speed tests at different times of the day over the last few weeks and it always shows as 70MBs down, so some tests won't pickup the issue at hand. As such after researching through these forums I signed up to Think Broadband network monitor and for the last few weeks I see the same problematic pattern:

Today, 9/2/21

Today between 10am and 11am no-one was even using the internet in the house - so am confused (slightly worried) about that graph for those times. For hours after that to around 5pm it was used for a few emails, slack chat a few times an hour, and basic website viewing, nothing more.

The graphs show a similar pattern for the last few weeks, here's one from 2/2/21

Any suggestions or help to debug, or perhaps needs VM to investigate?

Cheers

[Z92 · Accepted solution]

Sounds like typical over-utilisation, nothing much you can do. VM probably already have a fault ticket for it and will fix when they get around to it. 

Note however that they only guarantee download speeds and not ping or latency, so you can only terminate you contract if your download speeds suffer below 50% of what is advertised for a continuous period of time. 

[greg123]

No help or reply here, no help or reply on the phone numerous times for hours a time. When I do get through, all you say is "we've ran a test nothing is wrong", then a long silence as if I should say "ah sorry my mistake I'm such a babbling idiot, these internet issues I face seem to just be in my head." I'll just pretend videos don't take ages to load, web pages simply do not struggle and online gaming is not actually unplayable and currently wasting the money I spent on a PC and games!

All you seem to want to do is get me off the call as quickly as possible and fob me off time and again as if no problem exists.

Clearly being a customer for 10 years and currently paying £35 a month just for broadband means nothing to you, and I'm just another poor schmuck reporting problems with no help or resolve.

You don't seem to care about us long term ones who are constantly putting money in to the pot to subsidise new customer's bills in the first place.

High latency, packet loss - real internet problems that have been causing me loss of service for months. I've had problems a lot last year, now this year. Continuing to pay for a service I don't actually receive as advertised or charged for but I have no option to claim for a refund or my monthly bills reduced from a lack of service because of the red tape and loop hole that you actually provide me with specifically the "speeds" you are contracted to do so. If only high latency always affected speed, so you had to actually support and care for your customers. Or your tests were setup to actually test a network and catch problems beyond "speed is fine, nothing to see here, take the cash, moving on..".

The ironic thing is reading through these forums is the average non staff user cares 10X more for people's problems than the actual company who I pay for the service.

It's all pretty stressful, and to be honest quite upsetting given the lack of care and high price, and how critical the internet is to us all now. In fact at the risk of sounding dramatic, it's quite scary the power you have in the world to take people's money and provide a sub par broken service.

I'd go to BT but they're the same, and I probably can't get out of my contract because not only do you charge a high amount for basic internet, and provide me a poor service for that, you fiendishly lock me in so you can keep your dark talons tightly gripped around my wallet each month.

[jbrennand]

Looks like a classic overutilisation issue. I will flag for VM to comment here

See Andruser's recent comments on those in this thread, message 4

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Networking-and-WiFi/Jitter-and-latency/m-p/4609932#M378967

[Corey_C · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your post and reaching out to the Community Forums, greg123,

Sorry to hear that you have been having connections issues with your broadband. I've run some remote diagnostics on your connections and it does indicate that you are currently being affected by a local area fault ref#F008794075 and we are working to get this sorted as quickly as possible. The current ETA fix time is 18 FEB 2021 15:20. Apologies again for the inconvenience.

Cheers,

Corey C

[greg123]

Thanks Corey. Well at least there's a known fault and something is in progress.

I wonder why when I managed to get through on the phone the other week they never told me. Perhaps the fault wasn't identified then.

Thanks again

[Corey_C]

You welcome, greg123, the engineering team will be working on getting this sorted as quickly as possible. 

Cheers,

Corey C

[jbrennand]

But is it an overutilisation "fault" or a technical one like SNR ?

[Corey_C]

Hi jbrennand,

It's SNR "Fran 451 Low SNR/Errors on  brad-cmts-25.network-Cable3/0/7 "

Cheers,

Corey C

[greg123]

Really hope the issue gets fixed tomorrow, been like this for months and now affecting my speed

Paying for 100MBs, browsing is slow at peak times 😞