Broadband speed?

[col]

After getting a router and having my son use his xbox 360 on line as well as my pc,i hadnt really noticed,but it turns out my broadband box was only 2gig whatever that means,now we ve had it from year dot and didnt realise it was just a basic one,anyway my son says it caused him to be signed out and not to be able to hear half his mates on game,so MLML phoned virgin and explained what was happening,they said for a fiver extra a month we can get the box upgraded to 10 gig which they duly did over the phone line,the difference is unbelievable,hardly any wait time on pages loading at all now.And my son is happy too,anyone else realise this or am i showing my pc illiteracy?

 

[Noodley]

I was with you up until you mentioned the word 'router' then you might as well have written in Greek

 

[col]

I was with you up until you mentioned the word 'router' then you might as well have written in Greek

Its the thing that you plug into your pc and it lets you connect by wifi anywhere in the house with out cables,with things like laptops or xbox360,ect anything that has a wifi ability.

 

[Noodley]

Err, okay

 

[wlc1]

I'm on 20 gig and downloading films, music, page opening is flipping fast. You blink and miss the page loading.

 

[FBOAB]

Round here Virgin are doing a 50 gig trial at moment. Jeez, it's quick! Problem is it's just too quick for my laptop so I'll be going back to 10 as soon as the free trial ends

 

[marinyork]

Problem is 50 meg will only be STMed to death (although people are claiming it won't be - for how long ). 2 Meg works fine for 360.

 

[FBOAB]

Problem is 50 meg will only be STMed to death (although people are claiming it won't be - for how long ). 2 Meg works fine for 360.

And, as far as the quiestionares are saying, it's going to be frighteningly expensive. Mind you, the new modem they sent looks rather swish..No doubt it'll have to go back after the trial.Boo

 

[marinyork]

And, as far as the quiestionares are saying, it's going to be frighteningly expensive. Mind you, the new modem they sent looks rather swish..No doubt it'll have to go back after the trial.Boo

Hmmm I'd heard it would only be what the premium prices for broadband have been classicly either £35 or £50 like when telewest/ntl first had premium versions for much lower speeds. Virgin actually make money out of the broadband as it hardly uses any bandwidth on their system - 2 carriers, rising to 6. I'm absolutely sick and tired of the company babbling on about broadband, really irks me.

 

[Dave5N]

Problem is 50 meg will only be STMed to death (although people are claiming it won't be - for how long ). 2 Meg works fine for 360.

Do you also post in English for us locals?

 

[marinyork]

Do you also post in English for us locals?

If you were on virgin media, chances are you'd know what STM is. If you aren't it probably doesn't mean a lot to you unless you're ISP runs a similar scheme. If however you haven't ever heard of it here's the official version

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

The point is with these schemes that you don't have to be some maniacal downloader, you might be fancy downloading the odd xbox demo slightly larger than the threshold, then your speed is crippled for the next few hours. There are also many stories of the scheme playing up where people are apparently traffic managed by accident and having poor connection for weeks on end. I believe VM is a decent ISP but I believe they tell porkies about their product.

 

[fossyant]

In one line..... If you download too much, they will crank your line speed down !

50 meg, 10 meg....only have BT lines here and struggle to get above 5 meg on my 'up to 8meg line'

 

[marinyork]

When's BT upgrading it's equipment in the exchange to ADSL2+ in your exchange fossyant?

 

[col]

Is there a way of checking what your actually getting ?

 

[marinyork]

Make sure you check the router col to see if can accomodate the extra 8 meg.
I went from a 2 meg to a 10 meg connection and had to change the router as the biggest connection it could handle was 5.4 meg.

So while I was paying for a 10 meg connection the best I could get via wi-fi was 5.4

Yes, this is a very good point. Not just the router but the modem itself. Some customers who have been with virgin media have older modems that can't handle 10 meg, this is unlikely but not impossible. If you know what modem you're using I can look it up.

Col, just do a speedtest. They aren't the be all and end all but the only other fairer way is to download a demo or some file off a virgin media server.