Virgin Media Community

[Dominatez]

Guys,

I will make it simple for anyone asking what Over Utilisation is.

Imagine a Golf Ball And A Hosepipe.

Virgin Media is the hosepipe and your connection is the Golf Ball when too many people are connected at once. The hosepipe used to be like the inside of a fairly decent sized pipe where your Golf Ball could move about easily and at speed.

The more people who connect to the Pipe end up having lots of Golf Balls all trying to get down the pipe at the same time, but due to Over utilisation, the Pipe starts to shrink in size, and you struggle to get the Golf Ball down the hosepipe which was once a larger pipe.

Only way round this, is if Virgin Media invest in new Fiber tech, or upgrade the system with larger cables, better switches etc, and until that happens, they will be plagued with Over Utilisation (OVER USE).

[legacy1]

Its a bit more complicated then that but VM do QoS/BWM downstream well depending on whats used.

Its mostly the upstream that VM neglect and only put in more upstream channels in the area to hope its enough but it never is with more people using the upload.

One upstream channel is about 30Mb~ QAM 64 (not sure that with overheads) so 120Mb for four the Pipe does not change (as long as you don't drop QAM) but the way Docsis handles 20 users all wanting upload at 20Mb is a problem the scheduler is not that smart and queues everyone to the point where there is a delay before the modem holding data can be sent and your the one thats not even uploading.

[nodrogd]

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@Dominatez wrote:

Only way round this, is if Virgin Media invest in new Fiber tech, or upgrade the system with larger cables, better switches etc, and until that happens, they will be plagued with Over Utilisation (OVER USE).

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https://www.libertyglobal.com/virgin-media-o2-announces-2028-full-fibre-upgrade-plan/ 

[Oyster]

Over utilisation can also be when VM dont employ enough technical staff to get things done within a reasonable time, creating downtime

[Roger_Gooner]

Contention can be a complicated subject and an analogy with a hosepipe and golf balls is of little value as there are several factors to be considered. For example, the upgrade from DOCSIS 3.0 to DOCSIS 3.1 is significant because this alone, without changing the cabling, not changing any amplifier and not extending the spectrum provides a significant increase in both downstream and upstream speeds on the HFC network due to a new type of algorithms to do forward error correction and being able to squeeze more bits into the existing spectrum.

Edited to add that contention more often than not occurs on the coaxial side of the optical nodes, but the upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 should help.