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Another upload speed tale of woe - I've given up hope it will fix itself!

Simborne
Tuning in

Let's start with the praise first.

I've been a Virgin Media customer (broadband m500 and phone) in Area 20 for 3+ years having moved from BT's FTTC service. I have a Ubiquiti Unifi home setup with the superhub 3 in modem mode. During the majority of this time the service has been excellent, regularly beating the advertised average speeds of 516Mbps down and 36Mbps up from speed tests. The latency reported was also surprisingly good at around 8 -13ms on a wired connection. So, all good.

However, during the last 3-4 months I've noticed a significant drop in performance during peak hours (9am to 10pm). Specifically in the upload performance which has degraded in both outright speed, down to below 6-10Mbps, and often in lost packets. While the download speed remained fairly close to expected levels.

I note from many posts on this forum I am not alone. I've followed all the suggestions given to other customers in the posts (modem reset, checking cables, etc...) including setting up a BQM to see if this was something I could diagnose and resolve. I also recognised that we are in unprecedented times and maybe this was just "network congestion" and the contention on upload bandwidth across the network was a problem being looked at. I just needed to be patient.

But things have got worse and yesterday I reset my router again due to very bad performance, I recall lots of T3 RCS Partial Service errors in the log. 

If I look at the Cable Modem stats below, especially the upstream modulation down to 16qam, they don't look good to my untrained eye. But maybe someone on this forum can tell me more and hopefully this can lead to a process to resolve this long running problem.

Cheers Simon

Downstream bonded channels

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) SNR (dB) Modulation Channel ID

13307500001.440256 qam25
22667500000.538256 qam17
32747500000.540256 qam18
42827500000.540256 qam19
52907500000.738256 qam20
6298750000138256 qam21
73067500001.240256 qam22
83147500001.440256 qam23
93227500001.540256 qam24
103707500001.540256 qam26
113787500001.538256 qam27
123867500001.240256 qam28
133947500001.240256 qam29
144027500001.540256 qam30
154107500001.538256 qam31
164187500001.440256 qam32
174267500001.540256 qam33
184347500001.540256 qam34
19442750000140256 qam35
204507500000.440256 qam36
214587500000.738256 qam37
224667500000.538256 qam38
234747500000.740256 qam39
244827500000.940256 qam40



Downstream bonded channels

Channel Locked Status RxMER (dB) Pre RS Errors Post RS Errors

1Locked40.32219130
2Locked38.93190623
3Locked40.31094411
4Locked40.96924149
5Locked38.91181185
6Locked38.91192192
7Locked40.31142309
8Locked40.31114150
9Locked40.31069141
10Locked40.31492142
11Locked38.91007134
12Locked40.3956130
13Locked40.31024140
14Locked40.31077141
15Locked38.91021107
16Locked40.3998106
17Locked40.31038128
18Locked40.31448381
19Locked40.315464770
20Locked40.316601334
21Locked38.91065111
22Locked38.9970134
23Locked40.392969
24Locked40.390260

 

Upstream bonded channels

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID

16030000042.5512016 qam1
24620000045512016 qam3
33939994644.8512032 qam4
45370000044.3512016 qam2



Upstream bonded channels

Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

1ATDMA0020
2ATDMA0000
3ATDMA0000
4ATDMA0000

 

Link to BQM

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/80b21106de60fac49c142e60d75fdc8aaa... 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Looks like a noisy circuit (PostRS errors) and a slight overutilisation in the evenings. The rest of the power levels look okay.  You will need an engineer to sort this out.  Either ring in or wait here for a Mod to pick this up in the next few days.

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20 REPLIES 20

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Looks like a noisy circuit (PostRS errors) and a slight overutilisation in the evenings. The rest of the power levels look okay.  You will need an engineer to sort this out.  Either ring in or wait here for a Mod to pick this up in the next few days.

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media. Learn more

Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks

Thanks for the info. Is it likely a Mod will pick it up? 

Hi Simborne,

 

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome, sorry to see you are facing issues with a low upload speed, I have managed to locate your account with the details we have for you and there is a congestion issues in your area, the details from this are below.

 

You might find that these services are intermittent at the moment: Virgin Fibre, Interactive TV, Catch Up TV, TV On Demand TiVo® or V6 home menu. We are working to get this resolved ASAP.

 

This was raised under F008645345 and the estimated fix date/ time is 18 JUN 2021 10:00, we do appreciate this has been going on for a while, once this has been resolved if you do still have the same issue please let us know.

 

Kind regards

 

Paul.

 

 

 

Thanks Paul for the update and I look forward to seeing an improvement after the 18th.

Let’s see how it goes.

Cheers

cje85
Trouble shooter

Don't get your hopes up, VM's fix dates are notorious for being pushed back for months. 

Hi Simborne,

 

Please let us know how things go, stay safe.

 

Regards

 

Paul.

Paul,

Well the 18th has come and gone and sadly, as predicted by some, my unsatisfactory upload speed has not gone. Can you give me an update on case F008645345 and let me know if indeed it was resolved or the new estimated fix date/time.

Simon

Molly_G
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hey @Simborne,

 

Thanks for dropping back. I am sorry that the fault is still ongoing and impacting your services.

 

The estimated fix time for this is: 30th June at 10am.

 

Again, apologies for the disruption that this is having on your services in the meantime.

 

Kind regards,

Molly_G
Forum Team



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@Simborne Can you give me an update on case F008645345 and let me know if indeed it was resolved or the new estimated fix date/time.

Would you like me to guess the subsequent date, when 30 June passes without any improvement?

You should be aware that the date isn't in fact an estimated fix date, it is a fault review date, and chances are no work to increase capacity has been done.  Each over-utilisation fault goes into the big pile of capacity issues that Networks have, where it jockeys with all the rest for priority.  VM do spend tens of millions enhancing capacity each year, but that still won't fix all congestion faults.  Your problem needs to tick the boxes to become high enough priority to fix, including against new issues that may arise later but have greater priority.  Many faults don't ever achieve that top priority, and the review date just keeps being booted back in the hope that a temporary (and I suspect poorly policed) sales ban in the affected area means sufficient customers churn out to bring traffic back into capacity.  At which point Sales start selling again, and the problem often recurs.  Take a look at this long running story of upload over-utilisation problems.

Your options are:

1) Sit it out, and hope that VM do carry out improvement works. There's little or nothing you can do to force VM to upgrade the network, nor to be transparent as to whether capacity improvement works are actually.  If the current level of service is tolerable for your needs, and your alternative ISP options are not good, this option may be practical if unwelcome, but that depends on your uses of the connection.

2) Get yourself a new ISP. If you're in a fixed term contract you'll probably have to use the VM complaints process (and possibly escalate for arbitration at CISAS ) to be released from contract without penalty. If you need to do this, the grounds of your complaint is the poor performance, and your request for release from contract without penalty is twofold: First the Consumer Rights Act 2015 that requires any consumer service to be provided with "reasonable skill and care", and second, the Ofcom Fairness Commitments, that states Customers’ services work as promised, reliably over time. If things go wrong providers give a prompt response to fix problems and take appropriate action to help their customers, which may include providing compensation where relevant. If providers can’t fix problems with core services they have promised to deliver within a reasonable period, customers can walk away from their contract with no penalty."