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Speed troubles and questions
tvmad-alan
Posts: 1,996 Forum Member
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I am on the highest speed at 152Mbps and I have super hub 2 on cable.
I would like to know what speed should we get at that level ?
I know that when I was first switched on to that speed from 120Mbps and tested by wireless I got 138Mbps and with a cable I got 156Mbps that day and few days after I got greats speeds with up and down loads but over time and two months along the speed has dropped to a level which I now looking at for few days and phoned them and they said that they have made changes to get speed up and few seconds later I was asked to test and yes speed went up a bit and was told that it should keep going up BUT it did not.
now it even slower at times ...
I now get a range between 34Mbps and 68Mbps by wireless and 56Mbps to 98Mbps with network cable
I tested with different laptops with a new one I got this week and on I got few months ago with ones I got year ago but I still have same speeds.
Questions
1) Should speed drop so far and wide?
2) Is better to use duel band 5Mhz & 2.4Mhz with wireless?
3) What is the area that is covered with a super hub2 compared with older super hub as I did not have this trouble with the older one at the 120Mbps ?
4) Can laptops us dual bands now or do we have buy usb network sticks to get dual bands and would give better speeds ?
5) Should we reboot the Hubs every few months to help with speeds like the TV boxes?
6) what speed difference between wireless and cable ?
I would like to know what speed should we get at that level ?
I know that when I was first switched on to that speed from 120Mbps and tested by wireless I got 138Mbps and with a cable I got 156Mbps that day and few days after I got greats speeds with up and down loads but over time and two months along the speed has dropped to a level which I now looking at for few days and phoned them and they said that they have made changes to get speed up and few seconds later I was asked to test and yes speed went up a bit and was told that it should keep going up BUT it did not.
now it even slower at times ...
I now get a range between 34Mbps and 68Mbps by wireless and 56Mbps to 98Mbps with network cable
I tested with different laptops with a new one I got this week and on I got few months ago with ones I got year ago but I still have same speeds.
Questions
1) Should speed drop so far and wide?
2) Is better to use duel band 5Mhz & 2.4Mhz with wireless?
3) What is the area that is covered with a super hub2 compared with older super hub as I did not have this trouble with the older one at the 120Mbps ?
4) Can laptops us dual bands now or do we have buy usb network sticks to get dual bands and would give better speeds ?
5) Should we reboot the Hubs every few months to help with speeds like the TV boxes?
6) what speed difference between wireless and cable ?
0
Comments
We have two services at work and we get great speeds during the day but evenings and weekends is diabolical and at times has dropped to 0.08mb, they have admitted they have an overutilization issue in the area and have a planning ticket for it but that has been for months. The odd thing is my flat in the same street as the hotel and my office has no speed issues of an evening at all so I wonder if they slow down business lines to compensate for residential in my area, having put up with for a while we are looking to switch and we have told them we do not expect to be held to a contact as they are not fulfilling their part
On the residential side whilst I don't seem to have a problem , I have found that if there is a blip a reboot seems to do the trick
Use 5Ghz WiFi if your laptop supports it. If not, you can get a USB adapter for £10-£20 on Amazon.
However it sounds like a high utilisation problem caused by too much demand in your area. This is something which has got worse over the last year since they got rid of traffic management on downloads.
Virgin do fix these problems, but it can take a very long time (sometimes a year or more) as it can involve things like laying extra cable and adding more street cabinets. Meanwhile they'll continue to advertise and sign up new customers in your area, adding to the problem.
The good news is you can claim a reduction on your bill until they fix it, if your service is badly affected.
My speed is 152Mb/s but peaks out at 160.5Mb/s when most people are in bed or offline as you would expect, however as from around 4pm on a normal weekday and until what has now crept up to about 1am speeds drop off to around 20 -30Mb/s although using www.speedtest.net, a London based Virgin Media server this has been as low as 8.10Mb/s as shown here on more than one occasion.
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3922582951
Cutomer services have sent engineers, checked the line and the SH2 and have now decided that it's a utilisation problem, although not everyone at VM agrees, some say the problems at the hub, the good news is that the refund will continue until the matter is fixed, the only irritation is that I and my neighbour have to phone in and claim it once a month........and so should you.
I have the same problem here too. Mine drops to as low as 10Mb/s during the evening from around 5pm until after midnight. Testing early in the morning I get full speed with a very steady quality http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4029757400 during the busy times I get a very erratic quality (peaks and troughs in the green chart) http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3987648396.
I've been calling every month since I've had 152Mb/s and been given different reasons for the drop in speed, the last call resulted in a re-pull of the cable from the street cabinet to my house which made no difference to the speed drops during the evening. I've now been told it's an over utilisation issue and that it is planned to be sorted by March 2015, fingers crossed for that. I have been getting a £12.50 refund each month (I'm on the Big Kahuna bundle) and again have to call each month to get it. It seems to be adding insult to injury to now be increasing their pricing by £4.50 per month, will this result in a greater refund per month until the issue is resolved?
By the looks of it, a few more customers and we should be back to 56 Kbps at £30 pm - so stop complaining
Granted everything is wireless but still expected around the 100mb mark.
Was 152MB a step too far? Is traffic management needed again?
Looking into and testing my laptops etc... I found that most network chips in middle to low priced laptops are not able to handle the speeds above 100Mbps and can lead to low speed and speeds changing up and down quickly.
But there is a fix that I find can give you the speeds that you pay for and that is a network USB3.0 dongle.....
I found that a dongle that can use the USB3.0 which are on most laptops now and is faster then USB2.0 dongles by 10x faster, so I bought one and tested and found it so much better in giving me real speeds that got one for all my laptops and now I getting up to 168.4Mbps and able to use 5 & older 2.4Ghz wireless bands.
The dongles should keep me happy for a number of years as they can take speeds of 867Mbps on 5GHz and 300Mbps on 2.4Mbps, so if virgin goes faster I should be able to handle it and even be put to another laptop if I need to buy new one.
it use the latest wireless networks software 802.11ac but is backward compatible with 802.11 a/b/g/n ..
I have tested speeds now for over a month and I can say I only have few drops in speed and that's at peak internet times of about 10Mbps ...
I have BT Internet too and that was the same and now it too is better and getting 68.2Mbps were I was getting about 54Mbps and speeds going up and down lot but now using USB 3.0 dongles is a lot more stable and better speed.
Like all computers the speed is only as fast as the slowest part in it....