Virgin Media Community

[Daniel3000]

Hi everyone,

I've just returned to London and looking to sign up with Virgin. It seems the only proper high speed provider where I live, and not keen to go the subcontracted BT FTTC/VSDL route.

Low latency is quite important to me as I'm sure it is with many others too.

I wanted to ask what kind of latency other users are getting with the M350 or M500 services? Is there a max acceptable latency before VM will step in to fix poor latency issues? 

I've read in other posts that people have reported pings of 9-25 ms.... So I'm curious what should be usual... 25ms seems a bit high...

Thank you in advance.

Daniel

[Andrew-G]

Latency on a VM connection is around a baseline of 18-23ms, on top of which there's often a noisy fringe of latency peaks; If you want low and consistent latency, Openreach may be a better bet.   Here's my VM connection on a relatively good day:

Why not order both, aim for the same install date, and if both arrive in a similar timescale compare the performance and cancel the least attractive under your 14 day cooling off rights?

[Daniel3000]

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it.

That's very good advice. I'll have to check if Openreach are in my area, but I'll take a look now. It's the first time I've heard of them.

18-23ms isn't horrible I guess but not ideal.

Thank you again.

[Daniel3000]

It looks like OpenReach states that the best broadband at my address is BT's FTTC... 😞 

It seems I'm not living in a great IT savvy/demanding neighborhood... 38-70 Mbps seems so 2015...

[Adduxi]

My latency on the BQM has always been around 25 but it's never bothered me in all the years I've had VM.

However, due to having a redundancy BT VDSL circuit, (for work purposes) I route my gaming over it.    Openreach are working in my area, and should be available within the next 6 months.  Their 900Mb FTTP looks very good on paper ....

[Daniel3000]

That sounds very interesting, thank you.

In my situation I need super low latency for PCoIP for work. I work on a remote machine via my local PC. I work on frame accurate timing on the remote machine, so mid to high latencies can effect my work. 25ms isn't bad, but I start to notice small errors in the timing of video frames and response times to my keyboard and USB input.

Sadly don't have a FTTP openreach or other (hyperoptic) option in my area in the foreseeable future.

Thanks again

[Roger_Gooner]

My Ookla speed tests return pings of 10-11 ms.

[Daniel3000]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. That sounds not bad at all!

[Roger_Gooner]

Just to add I have the hub 3.0 and I'm on M500. Note that the broadband speed, though, relates to bandwidth not latency. You'll get decent latency so long as your hub has a good connection to the hub site and all is working well, but you won't get best latency from cable broadband.

Edited to say that the 10-11 ms was from my Windows 10 64-bit Firefox browser but I've just retested using the Ookla app and I repeatedly got 9 ms pings even when using different servers in London.

[Daniel3000]

Hi,

Thanks for the info. It helps to know. Yes, I'm familiar with the difference between speed and latency.

It's interesting to see that users are observing different latency across Hub 3 and 4. 

I didn't realise that VM are still selling cable broadband. How do I find out which is in fact in my building?

If it's the M500 product is it a fibre only product? Their website doesn't seem to mention which technology is used in which products.

And then you can't voice chat with anyone there either...