CMTS changed to another town

[unisoft]

Hi VM,

Last week you sent texts for area work. My other half's house in Dover also had area work done by VM.

For the record, both houses routed to the CMTS in DOVER, despite one being in Dover and one outside but within 3.5 miles.

My partner's house has stayed on Dover CMTS and IP address not changed after the work completed.

My house is now on a CMTS in FOLKESTONE, and this area work has lowered my SNR from 40 to 37/38 on each download channel (within spec I know, but the higher SNR of 40 that was there before is always better to have than a lower one!). I am a Gigabit customer. My IP address was also changed after being on the same one for years (yes I am aware its Dynamic and can change, but I'd expect the other place to have changed as well).

I don't allow location services in Windows/Phones, but they usually attempt to resolve a general location for things like weather apps by IP address lookup. These are now showing Folkestone instead of Dover.

Is this a routing issue of the area work done or is it correct that my CMTS has changed from Cisco in Dover to Arris in Folkestone? It seems unusual that's all given that Dover has its own CMTS for the area.

I have MAC address of both CMTS if this helps by a PM instead of attempting to paste here as well as my hostname DNS address on VM's network.

[nodrogd]

It's not unusual for you to end up on a CMTS at a different location. I'm in Hemel Hempstead, less than a mile from the franchise headend. I started off on a CMTS in Hemel when I was on the 2Mb service. When I moved to 60Mb & had my first superhub I was moved to a CMTS in Luton, 7 miles up the motorway & part of the adjacent South Beds franchise. Then when I had an upgrade to 200Mb it was back to Hemel again.

[Tudor]

Why does it really matter? You pay for VM to provide you with a broadband service, there is no mention in your contract of where you will be connected. Probably Dover is overloaded and Folkestone has a lighter load. Resegmentation happens all the time when a CMTS becomes overloaded.

[unisoft]

I am asking a VM rep for clarification in case it's an error THAT IS ALL. There is no need for a reply about my contract or anything else you choose to spout off with that comes across as bad attitude and was not called for.

This area doesn't have over utilisation issues historically and that is why I am asking VM. As I said web sites now think I am based in Folkestone which isn't true. Usually re-segmentation still goes to the same apparatus headend and just another CMTS within, but perhaps the building has limited space for additional CMTS and that is the reason to route via another town.

[cje85]

What is the four letter location shown in your hostname at https://www.displaymyhostname.com/ (eg. mine is Know18 for Knowsley) that will confirm what CMTS you are on.

You should see something like cpc1234-manc12-2-0-cust13.cable.virginm.net/ the bit in bold is what you need.

Changing CMTS location can happen but is rare. More common is the IP you now have was previously used by a customer in Folkestone, but it should update eventually (this can take 4-6 weeks). In the meantime devices will show the wrong location if the location feature is disabled, as without it the only way they can determine your location is based on the IP address.

[jpeg1]

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@unisoft wrote:

I am asking a VM rep for clarification in case it's an error THAT IS ALL. There is no need for a reply about my contract or anything else you choose to spout off with that comes across as bad attitude and was not called for

I doubt anyone else saw that factual reply as being a bad attitude. Certainly I didn't.  But you will not get any answer about your CMTS from staff on here. It's not in their job description or training.. 

[unisoft]

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@cje85 wrote:

What is the four letter location shown in your hostname at https://www.displaymyhostname.com/ (eg. mine is Know18 for Knowsley) that will confirm what CMTS you are on.

You should see something like cpc1234-manc12-2-0-cust13.cable.virginm.net/ the bit in bold is what you need.

Changing CMTS location can happen but is rare. More common is the IP you now have was previously used by a customer in Folkestone, but it should update eventually (this can take 4-6 weeks). In the meantime devices will show the wrong location if the location feature is disabled, as without it the only way they can determine your location is based on the IP address.

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Leaving out the customer number stuff its "-folk3-2-0-" instead of "doveXXXXX", which hasn't been changed in 10 years.

[unisoft]

So with no help from Virgin Media, I am assuming the CMTS changed to another town because of space limitations encountered when changing the CMTS from Delta/Motorola to CISCO in the Dover head-end hub site last time, and they wanted to go to ARRIS kit (as in Folkestone head-end site) but space again was an issue at the Dover site and perhaps cooling or power requirements.

I say this, because other half's place has now been switched to a CMTS identifying as "folk3" (Folkestone) and the IP address changed. It's a shame they cant change the IP address range to be Dover though as web sites still think its Folkestone based on it (without having to enable exact location ability by other methods).

Just updating this thread as a conclusion, but bad on Virgin not being able to answer a simple customer query.

[Matthew_ML]

Hey unisoft, thank you for reaching back out.

I can see my colleague did give you some advice.

We are always updating and investing into our Network.

However I'm afraid that we wouldn't be able to advise why the CMTS has been changed to another town, we don't have access to this information sorry.