Re: [Hampshire] [sort-of-OT] Advice for (geeky) broadband pr…

I'm with Virgin Media (Upper Shirley), here's my stats: [1] 50.61 down, 1.63
up, 18ms ping.

<http://www.speedtest.net/result/1109498167.png>It's worth pointing out that
VM are already rolling out 100Mb (and are even testing 200Mb in some places)
and they're also increasing the upload rate (50Mb down will get 5Mb up
instead of current 1.6, 100Mb down will get 10Mb up). They're a pain in the
ass from the point of customer service ([2] -- they didn't even believe I
already had cable, despite demonstrating it! Took 2 weeks to get an engineer
out to "fit" it.) but the technician was fast and knowledgeable and I've not
had any issues. They don't have static IPs, BUT your IP doesn't change much
(hasn't changed for me except when I manually performed a DHCP release from
the router). The service itself is great, but from what I've heard if you
have problems then Flying Spaghetti Monster help you! :)

It's a fibre backbone to the street "cabinet", and then copper cable from
there to the home. Seems to work well - having a 100 metre copper cable is
nowhere near as bad as a 3-8km one!

[1] http://www.speedtest.net/result/1109498167.png
[2] http://www.benjiegillam.com/2010/10/dear-virgin-media/

Benjie.

On 13 January 2011 12:08, Peter Collins <hlug@???> wrote:

> I wonder if people realise what advertised Fibre really is a lot of the
> time. correct me if I'm wrong but as I understand it, a good percentage of
> the time the Fibre is only from the cabinet in the street:
>
> Virgin's service is fibre based to cabinets, as long as you are a cable
> customer, they use DOCSIS for both Broadband and TV services which is a
> copper cable from home to the cabinet and then a fibre "backbone".
>
> If you all not a cable customer then you will on Virgins LLU package.
>
> **The 40Mb BT infinity is based on a similar solution although not DOCSIS,
> however it is still a "copper" cable going from home to cabinet -
> fibre-to-the-cabinet (FFTC).
>
> However around 25% of BT's network will be able to get 100MB connection
> which is fibre-to-the-home (FTTH).
>
> I remember reading somewhere that BT will offer a minimum download speed
> 15Mb on the 40Mb package, whereas Virgin's customers got an average of
> around 47.5Mb when on the 50Mb package.
>
> Rgds
>
> Peter.
>
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