Experience thus far with new Virginmedia hub...

ken c posted:

............  share their views about quality of service and reliable speed and support? (or any other good broadband provider)                   i am a little pissed off with Virginmedia right now...

I've got dear old BT,  love 'em or not, your choice.    ..............   I recently changed to BT Infinity-1 which is FTTC (fibre to the local cabinet & copper to my property)  The service is up to 52mb/s download & 10mb/s upload & I get 50mb/s & 8.5mb/s & better most all the time.   The router/hub is a small nice looking  single box with no spiky things sticking out & dual band 2.4GHz & 5GHz (which I've split to get two separate bands)    (Using inSSIDer to see signal strength) I get both bands all over the main house & although 5GHz drops off before 2.4GHz it's good for where I normally it & 2.4GHZ is good in the garage/workshop.  ............. whats not to like.  

I know we are in danger of going off topic here but I am with Mike on this one. Personally I've found BT to be pretty reliable to date. If you do an internet search for comparisons between the main ISP issued modem/routers you'll find that the BT HH5 comes out pretty well. Obviously if you change it for a more specialist device then improvements can be found. There are some pretty good deals (packages) to be had (BT Included) if you are looking to change to a different provider depending on what you are looking for. Personally I'm staying with BT for the moment

I have just had an old Virgin Media cable modem and D-link router replaced by their Superhub 2ac, and I'm now on their "up to 200 Mb/s" service.  This seems to give me 100 Mb/s download, just like the old cable modem did, but the upload is 10 Mb/s instead of 5. So far so good, although as I'm not streaming from the internet I can't comment on SQ. BT don't offer Infinity where I live, even though there have been several new Infinity cabinets within half a mile in several directions, so it's Virgin or nothing really.

The IP range is different to the D-link so I had to sort that out by restarting everything on the network. I had one scary moment when I restarted the SuperUniti in my home office and although it now showed up in the Naim app on my iPhone (and I thought "Welcome back friend!") , the SU display blanked immediately after the restart and no sound came out of the speakers.  It took me a few increasingly frantic tens of seconds to remember that I had muted it as I left the room a few hours earlier. I pressed the mute button on the remote and it sprang back into life.  Whew....

best

David

David Hendon posted:

................. BT don't offer Infinity where I live, even though there have been several new Infinity cabinets within half a mile in several directions, so it's Virgin or nothing really. 

BT did not make any big announcement about Infinity being available in my village,  we had more info about it in the village mag.  But being "tuned in" to such things, I noticed new cabinets or old ones with "Infinity Is Here" stickers & I applied to upgrade & it happened.  

Mike-B posted:

ken c posted:

............  share their views about quality of service and reliable speed and support? (or any other good broadband provider)                   i am a little pissed off with Virginmedia right now...

I've got dear old BT,  love 'em or not, your choice.    ..............   I recently changed to BT Infinity-1 which is FTTC (fibre to the local cabinet & copper to my property)  The service is up to 52mb/s download & 10mb/s upload & I get 50mb/s & 8.5mb/s & better most all the time.   The router/hub is a small nice looking  single box with no spiky things sticking out & dual band 2.4GHz & 5GHz (which I've split to get two separate bands)    (Using inSSIDer to see signal strength) I get both bands all over the main house & although 5GHz drops off before 2.4GHz it's good for where I normally it & 2.4GHZ is good in the garage/workshop.  ............. whats not to like.  

 

Mike, glad BT Infinity is working well for you - on the whole I am not of aware of BT suffering backhaul network congestion like some other service providers do ... and the HH5 is quite an advanced device using some quite interesting chipsets.. certainly somewhat apart from your run-of-the mill consumer router of a few years ago.

Fingers crossed according to Suffolk CC we get a low capacity Superfast Infinity/FTTC  box for our village 2017/18

Simon

Roll on 2017/18 eh Simon.    When I was first connected I got (in error) Infinity-2 (76/20mb/s) & it gave me 75/18 or better,  so BT do not appear to have congestion issues.  When I was switched back to 52/10mb/s it was surprisingly very similar in apparent speed (screen build & change time)  & it works well with the various TV services over wireless,  so we are happy campers (fingers crossed)   

Mike-B posted:

David Hendon posted:

................. BT don't offer Infinity where I live, even though there have been several new Infinity cabinets within half a mile in several directions, so it's Virgin or nothing really. 

BT did not make any big announcement about Infinity being available in my village,  we had more info about it in the village mag.  But being "tuned in" to such things, I noticed new cabinets or old ones with "Infinity Is Here" stickers & I applied to upgrade & it happened.  

Yes we have the "Infinity is here" stickers but when i search on our actual address I get "it is not available at your address. We are investigating what can be done to serve your area but have no date for this to be done and it may never be possible" or words to that effect. I think the issue is that the ducts are full and they don't fancy digging up half a mile of urban streets to change that.

best

David

At the present time I have Sky Broadband at 38 Mbps, which I verified this morning. I could get Virgin up to 200 mbps or BT Infinity 2 at 72 mbps. Have not looked at an option of mixing and matching suppliers, so am not sure how happy the supplier would be, or how much it would cost me to have Sky packages and, say, Virgin Internet.

andarkian posted:

At the present time I have Sky Broadband at 38 Mbps, which I verified this morning. I could get Virgin up to 200 mbps or BT Infinity 2 at 72 mbps. Have not looked at an option of mixing and matching suppliers, so am not sure how happy the supplier would be, or how much it would cost me to have Sky packages and, say, Virgin Internet.

You can have Sky satellite TV and Virgin Media broadband. I know, because I do. But it's not the cheap way to do things.  But each will happily you with whatever you can be persuaded to take.

best

David

andarkian posted:

At the present time I have Sky Broadband at 38 Mbps, which I verified this morning. I could get Virgin up to 200 mbps or BT Infinity 2 at 72 mbps. Have not looked at an option of mixing and matching suppliers, so am not sure how happy the supplier would be, or how much it would cost me to have Sky packages and, say, Virgin Internet.

Here in the States, bundling of services (home telephone, TV and internet) is (a) a scam and (b) the only way to go as a customer.  The notion of 'cutting the cable' and going internet-only for TV sounds "romantic," but when you try to do it you realize you can get a lot of cable TV channels for very little more money per month once you're paying for the internet component.  

Speaking as a non-tech type (and therefore happy to be corrected - cue SiS) I understand that it is possible to have differing concurrent suppliers for broadband however you would have to be careful regarding how you set up your network to ensure that there were no IP clashes and also to determine where LAN DHCP and the like was manged. Personally I think there may not be too much of an advantage in this approach due to this additional complexity and cost. For me I look at what I am likely to need in terms of demand now and for the next say 6-12 months ie how many devices will be pulling data from the Internet/WWW - eg Streaming services Netflix/Qobuz etc and also a bit of browsing and then looking at which ISP can provide that reliably ie with no throttling/caps etc. As SiS infers an ISP that appears to have good backhaul may be better than one with a large Max quoted download speed. 

David Hendon posted:

andarkian posted:

At the present time I have Sky Broadband at 38 Mbps, which I verified this morning. I could get Virgin up to 200 mbps or BT Infinity 2 at 72 mbps. Have not looked at an option of mixing and matching suppliers, so am not sure how happy the supplier would be, or how much it would cost me to have Sky packages and, say, Virgin Internet.

You can have Sky satellite TV and Virgin Media broadband. I know, because I do. But it's not the cheap way to do things.  But each will happily you with whatever you can be persuaded to take.

best

David

I'm also like David but I use BT for Broadband/Landline and Sky for TV packages (personally I think the Sky HD codec gives better quality pictures than others - not sure why). When BT eventually produce a better 4 in one package ie TV, Internet, Landline and Mobile I may consider changing - depending on price.

Apologies for going off topic

DWO

I wondered  what the heck 'backhaul' was, so I used the Internet to find out. My current assumption is that it is the backbone provider who provides committed levels of service to sub networks , which, I assume, is why BT provide the wire to my premises but I can only currently get 38 Mbps, though I do believe some others have told me that the ISP can also have its own backbone structures and  services. Phew, my head's hurting! 

Anyway, I can sit here typing on my iPad, my grandson can watch his movie, the Muso can churn out any type of music I throw at it  and my wife seems to be assembling photo books on a PC via Tesco's website at continuous great expense to myself. 

andarkian posted:

I wondered  what the heck 'backhaul' was, so I used the Internet to find out. My current assumption is that it is the backbone provider who provides committed levels of service to sub networks , which, I assume, is why BT provide the wire to my premises but I can only currently get 38 Mbps, though I do believe some others have told me that the ISP can also have its own backbone structures and  services. Phew, my head's hurting! 

Anyway, I can sit here typing on my iPad, my grandson can watch his movie, the Muso can churn out any type of music I throw at it  and my wife seems to be assembling photo books on a PC via Tesco's website at continuous great expense to myself. 

My wife's preferred bandwith use is on the Net-A-Porter site.  If only she'd stop at photo books . . . 

DWO-Naim posted:

I know we are in danger of going off topic here but I am with Mike on this one. Personally I've found BT to be pretty reliable to date. If you do an internet search for comparisons between the main ISP issued modem/routers you'll find that the BT HH5 comes out pretty well. Obviously if you change it for a more specialist device then improvements can be found. There are some pretty good deals (packages) to be had (BT Included) if you are looking to change to a different provider depending on what you are looking for. Personally I'm staying with BT for the moment

dont worry -- all very interesting input to my next decision on where i go broadband ISP-wise. and thanks.

enjoy

ken

Backhaul is just jargon for the connection back from the local network in the street to the main core network. It can be an issue if for example a village is newly equipped with fast broadband and the aggregate bandwidth demand from all of the subscribers is higher than the broadband connection the network provider has to that village.  It shouldn't be an issue with fibre broadband because BT sort that out before offering Infinity. BT's network is used by everyone except Virgin who have their own network.  But having said that, it's more complicated in practice because companies like Talk Talk use BT's local network but have their own core network. I'm not sure about Sky, but I expect that will be a similar story to Talk Talk.

if the broadband is slow, as checked by a speed tester like Speednet running on an Ethernet connected PC checking to a server on the ISPs network, it is probably due to congestion in their local network. One would expect it to be worse when there are lots of householders on line.  If the broadband speed dies when the schools come out, that's the issue.  If the broadband is OK locally but is still slow to the server you want, this is usually either due to the server in question being stretched by demand or the ISPs connection back to the network the server is on being maxed out by demand.  Again this is oversimplifying things a lot because the quality of the connection anywhere in the route from server to you can affect things, for example if lots of packets have to be resent due to errors.

The technology that Virgin use is different to the others.  They have fibre to the cabinet and then coax to the house, with a separate copper pair for the telephone. The coax is good for about 5Gb/s, so they don't need to have fibre all the way to the home.  

Except where BT uses fibre to the home, it is always fibre to the cabinet and then the broadband piggybacks on the telephone pair using VDSL.  This comes in various flavours but is very distance dependent and all of this factors itself into the speed you get at home.

i hope someone is interested in all this....

best

David

Excellent David,  & in a language that everyone can understand.   

I would add that its important to run the speed test over ethernet - re: "if the broadband is slow, as checked by a speed tester like Speednet running on an Ethernet connected PC checking to a server on the ISPs network"       But if its slow over wireless, its a problem with the hub,  & a power cycle (Off & wait 30 secs & On) frequently refreshes wireless speed.

The speedtest i carried out over ethernet was 38 mbps as described by Sky. When I went to wifi my poor old iPhone 4 could only muster 20 mbps download while the MacBook achieved 32 mbps. Upload was about 7 mbps no matter what. Not sure what to do when I install my new Statement system. Oops, just woke up!

Mike-B posted:

Excellent David,  & in a language that everyone can understand.   

I would add that its important to run the speed test over ethernet - re: "if the broadband is slow, as checked by a speed tester like Speednet running on an Ethernet connected PC checking to a server on the ISPs network"       But if its slow over wireless, its a problem with the hub,  & a power cycle (Off & wait 30 secs & On) frequently refreshes wireless speed.

Yes I agree with this.

But quite odd, I just checked my "up to 200 Mb/s" again using wired Ethernet from my Thinkpad and it gave me 94 Mb/s, but using wifi (5 GHz 802.11n) close to the hub I got 173 Mb/s. My iPhone SE which is able to use 802.11ac gave me 143 Mb/s.  So there is something odd about my wired network. I will need to do some little experiments!

best

David

andarkian posted:

I wondered  what the heck 'backhaul' was, so I used the Internet to find out. My current assumption is that it is the backbone provider who provides committed levels of service to sub networks , which, I assume, is why BT provide the wire to my premises but I can only currently get 38 Mbps, though I do believe some others have told me that the ISP can also have its own backbone structures and  services. Phew, my head's hurting! 

Anyway, I can sit here typing on my iPad, my grandson can watch his movie, the Muso can churn out any type of music I throw at it  and my wife seems to be assembling photo books on a PC via Tesco's website at continuous great expense to myself. 

Hi Andarkin - the backhaul is a term brought in the from the early days of networks and is the ISP's private network that connects the edge of their network  like exchanges and even some types of  cabinets to more centralised ISP routers that eventually connect to the internet. Most ISPs use their own backhaul even if they lease capacity from exchanges or cabinets from another ISP such as BT - but of course this is where congestion can occur - i.e. too many users and not enough bandwidth on a particular ISPs backhaul network - kind of like an airline over selling the seats on an aeroplane.

Simon

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

andarkian posted:

I wondered  what the heck 'backhaul' was, so I used the Internet to find out. My current assumption is that it is the backbone provider who provides committed levels of service to sub networks , which, I assume, is why BT provide the wire to my premises but I can only currently get 38 Mbps, though I do believe some others have told me that the ISP can also have its own backbone structures and  services. Phew, my head's hurting! 

Anyway, I can sit here typing on my iPad, my grandson can watch his movie, the Muso can churn out any type of music I throw at it  and my wife seems to be assembling photo books on a PC via Tesco's website at continuous great expense to myself. 

Hi Andarkin - the backhaul is a term brought in the from the early days of networks and is the ISP's private network that connects the edge of their network  like exchanges and even some types of  cabinets to more centralised ISP routers that eventually connect to the internet. Most ISPs use their own backhaul even if they lease capacity from exchanges or cabinets from another ISP such as BT - but of course this is where congestion can occur - i.e. too many users and not enough bandwidth on a particular ISPs backhaul network - kind of like an airline over selling the seats on an aeroplane.

Simon

 

 

Thanks Simon. This thread goes on much further we will all be able to get jobs as network specialists. Actually, I was considering Mike-B's comment about rebooting the router if the wifi was potentially slow when I realised that I had rebooted my router today when the Sky box hung up and rather than find the Sky plug I just switched the lot off, so any of my quoted figures were optimal for my setup.

DWO-Naim posted:

Speaking as a non-tech type (and therefore happy to be corrected - cue SiS) I understand that it is possible to have differing concurrent suppliers for broadband however you would have to be careful regarding how you set up your network to ensure that there were no IP clashes and also to determine where LAN DHCP and the like was manged. Personally I think there may not be too much of an advantage in this approach due to this additional complexity and cost. For me I look at what I am likely to need in terms of demand now and for the next say 6-12 months ie how many devices will be pulling data from the Internet/WWW - eg Streaming services Netflix/Qobuz etc and also a bit of browsing and then looking at which ISP can provide that reliably ie with no throttling/caps etc. As SiS infers an ISP that appears to have good backhaul may be better than one with a large Max quoted download speed. 

Hi DWO-Naim - I am not aware in the UK of any domestic consumer access provider being able to be concurrently shared across different ISPs

On commercial internet accesses it can be done - but is quite involved - and requires a special configuration of routing protocols called iBGP on commercial routers and also the end user requires what is known as a private AS number that is uniquely  registered to them. There are no IPv4 AS numbers left in Europe when I last looked - so if its new you will almost certainly need to register an IPv6 AS number ... this allows  both your ISPs and the internet to effectively route to your two separate concurrent ISP addresses as a single destination .... so quite involved.

Simon

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hi DWO-Naim - I am not aware in the UK of any domestic consumer access provider being able to be concurrently shared across different ISPs

On commercial internet accesses it can be done - but is quite involved - and requires a special configuration of routing protocols called iBGP on commercial routers and also the end user requires what is known as a private AS number that is uniquely  registered to them. There are no IPv4 AS numbers left in Europe when I last looked - so if its new you will almost certainly need to register an IPv6 AS number ... this allows  both your ISPs and the internet to effectively route to your two separate concurrent ISP addresses as a single destination .... so quite involved.

Simon

 

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the response - I must confess you are getting to the limit of my understanding of ISP networking. Where I was coming from was some form of aggregation in the home. I thought there were some switches that could do this type of thing but I may well be wrong - not unusual... I have heard of mobile phones with two sims but am aware that only one of them is in use at any one time but I do believe that they can switch over automatically when one signal is stronger than the other - pseudo aggregation? Perhaps better to leave to a different post.

DWO

No worries - and I should have stated BGP and not iBGP....

well, a virginmedia engineer turned up to look at my superhub2 (a netgear product). he conjectured that the 'attenuator' on the fibre cable was set too high and could 'overload' any attached router? (although i habd t push him on this).

his conclusion after looking at the sub -- and changing the attenuation setting -- was that my Drayteck 2920N router is malfunctioning!!!

I have been using this router without problems for a few years -- it cant be a more coincidence to me that it now fails with a new hub, which doesnt seem to have been installed correctly.

But before i puruse this with Virginmedia, i would like to understand this attenuation business a bit more -- anyome care to explain. I dont to buy another router, only to have it fried by the hub after installation!!! Sigh...

any thoughts/contributions?

enjoy

ken