Would it be worth it moving from virgin?

How Soon Is Now

Bascially Ive been with them years me and my family and sick there crap especially since virgin took over.

Problem is I get 250 mbs from them and I know no one else can match that currently in Ireland but I'd happy with something lower if I taught it be better value and not shared line.

What are the options for someone switching realistically?

davo2001

How much are you paying a month? Can you get VDSL in your area?

How Soon Is Now

davo2001 wrote: »

How much are you paying a month? Can you get VDSL in your area?

55 a month broadband and phone.

I'm not sure what I can get other then what Virgin offers in Citywest Dublin.

Kristopherus

How Soon Is Now wrote: »

55 a month broadband and phone.

I'm not sure what I can get other then what Virgin offers in Citywest Dublin.

VM BB currently is a country mile adead of all the other providers. So unless you can get Eir or Siro's 1gb download speed at short notice, tread carefully, and do plenty of research, as whats available from all the others is up to 100mbps.

How Soon Is Now

Kristopherus wrote: »

VM BB currently is a country mile adead of all the other providers. So unless you can get Eir or Siro's 1gb download speed at short notice, tread carefully, and do plenty of research, as whats available from all the others is up to 100mbps.

Stuck with what I've got for now so!

Kristopherus

How Soon Is Now wrote: »

Stuck with what I've got for now so!

If it was in my area, I'd bite their arm off:D:D:D.

How Soon Is Now

Kristopherus wrote: »

If it was in my area, I'd bite their arm off:D:D:D.

There speeds when you actually get them are great other stuff well......

bk

How Soon Is Now wrote: »

Bascially Ive been with them years me and my family and sick there crap especially since virgin took over.

Virgin didn't take over, it is exactly the same company that has been in Ireland for more then 10 years. UPC was owned by Liberty Global for the past 10+ years. About 2 years ago Liberty Global bought Virgin Media UK and it has simply renamed UPC Ireland to Virgin Media. It is all the same people behind the scenes.

Oh and BTW Richard Branson has zero to do with the company, they just use his name and face in the ads.

How Soon Is Now wrote: »

Problem is I get 250 mbs from them and I know no one else can match that currently in Ireland but I'd happy with something lower if I taught it be better value and not shared line.

All broadband is fundamentally shared. It is called contention and is perfectly normal and natural part of the internet and is no problem at all as long as it is managed correctly. Unless you are paying more the €10,000 per month for a business line, your line is going to be shared and even then the rest of the internet is still "Shared".

Virgin's broadband is by far the fastest in Ireland, multiple times any other providers, as proven by pretty much every speedtest survey.

The vast majority of people truly get 240Mb/s out of their virgin line, while Eir's "upto" 100Mb/s broadband can be as low as 7Mb/s, depending on distance from the exchange.

So you best bet is to actually fix the problems you are having with Virgins broadband. What problems are you actually having?

Have you done speedtests while directly connected by ethernet to the virgin modem?

Are the issues you are having caused by the wifi? As is often the case, because those are easily fixed.

How Soon Is Now

bk wrote: »

Virgin didn't take over, it is exactly the same company that has been in Ireland for more then 10 years. UPC was owned by Liberty Global for the past 10+ years. About 2 years ago Liberty Global bought Virgin Media UK and it has simply renamed UPC Ireland to Virgin Media. It is all the same people behind the scenes.

Oh and BTW Richard Branson has zero to do with the company, they just use his name and face in the ads.



All broadband is fundamentally shared. It is called contention and is perfectly normal and natural part of the internet and is no problem at all as long as it is managed correctly. Unless you are paying more the €10,000 per month for a business line, your line is going to be shared and even then the rest of the internet is still "Shared".

Virgin's broadband is by far the fastest in Ireland, multiple times any other providers, as proven by pretty much every speedtest survey.

The vast majority of people truly get 240Mb/s out of their virgin line, while Eir's "upto" 100Mb/s broadband can be as low as 7Mb/s, depending on distance from the exchange.

So you best bet is to actually fix the problems you are having with Virgins broadband. What problems are you actually having?

Have you done speedtests while directly connected by ethernet to the virgin modem?

Are the issues you are having caused by the wifi? As is often the case, because those are easily fixed.

I seem to of finally sorted a lot of the connection issues I've had with them it's more the fact I don't like being held to ransom by one company. It be nice to know I have a realistic choice that's both on a certain level and price and of course service.

Kensington

Many of Virgin's issues are due to them rolling out IPv6 via Dual Stack "Lite" - a public IPv6 address but a shared/carrier NAT IPv4. This breaks or interferes with, amongst other things, corporate VPNs, VoIP and removes the ability to port forward.

This is also not helped by their modems being some of the cheapest and nastiest supplied by a main ISP here - dreadful WiFi and buggy firmware.

Along with them having less than optimal routes to Netflix and Google (Youtube) making these services often unusable at peak times (Netflix was diabolical for close on 4 months earlier this year and now Youtube is suffering the same problems the past few weeks).

Which is a pity because it detracts from what could be a market leader in speed, price - and quality of service.

bk

How Soon Is Now wrote: »

I seem to of finally sorted a lot of the connection issues I've had with them it's more the fact I don't like being held to ransom by one company. It be nice to know I have a realistic choice that's both on a certain level and price and of course service.

Shrug, that is what happens when one company (Liberty Global/UPC/Virgin) spends almost half a billion euro rebuilding almost their entire network from scratch to deliver a superb, high quality network and service almost as good as any country in Europe. While their competitors Eir spend years massively under-investing in their network and services and instead used the company as their own personal bank to line their pockets rather then investing in infrastructure.

Eir have only started to change things over the last three years due to massive competitive pressure from Virgin. They only invested in their "fibre" network due to this competition and while it certainly is "good enough" for most people, it certainly doesn't come close to Virgins network and then Eir actually charge more for it!

Virgin certainly aren't the bad guys here. They are the only reason why we actually have pretty decent broadband here in Ireland and at a pretty reasonable price. Things would be way worse off without them!

Kensington wrote: »

Many of Virgin's issues are due to them rolling out IPv6 via Dual Stack "Lite" - a public IPv6 address but a shared/carrier NAT IPv4. This breaks or interferes with, amongst other things, corporate VPNs, VoIP and removes the ability to port forward.

Agreed, but easily fixed by simply PM's the Virgin reps on the talk to forum to have your account switched over to IPv4

Kensington wrote: »

This is also not helped by their modems being some of the cheapest and nastiest supplied by a main ISP here - dreadful WiFi and buggy firmware.

Their wifi performance was always their Achilles heal, though they have largely fixed that now by supplying a pretty decent, modern (for ISP supplied routers) dual band dual radio 802.11ac router. While not perfect, good enough for the majority of people IMO.

Kensington wrote: »

Along with them having less than optimal routes to Netflix and Google (Youtube) making these services often unusable at peak times (Netflix was diabolical for close on 4 months earlier this year and now Youtube is suffering the same problems the past few weeks).

Similar issues hit every ISP from time to time, though I do agree that it took them too long to fix the Netflix issue. Haven't noticed any issues with youtube and I watch an awful lot of youtube.

I left Virgin Media for Eir back in February at the height of the Netflix issues. It appeared to me that they were deliberately misrouting, and I see reports of them doing the same to YouTube now too. I do see them as the bad guys now. Their frontend speeds are excellent but their backhaul can be atrocious.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no point in paying for 360Mb if VM then decide where they will let you use it. While I have a lower maximum speed with Eir, it's much more consistent (never drops below 96Mb/s even at peak times) and it's "good enough" for what I need. I also get proper dual stack IPv4/IPv6 and not the DS-Lite rubbish that VM are pushing. I never once regretted the decision to move.

Obviously you need to ensure that you can get an acceptable speed in your area, it could be as low as 7Mb/s, but if you can get 70-100 then I see that as perfectly acceptable for most users.

9726_9726

Karsini wrote: »

I left Virgin Media for Eir back in February at the height of the Netflix issues. It appeared to me that they were deliberately misrouting, and I see reports of them doing the same to YouTube now too. I do see them as the bad guys now. Their frontend speeds are excellent but their backhaul can be atrocious.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no point in paying for 360Mb if VM then decide where they will let you use it. While I have a lower maximum speed with Eir, it's much more consistent (never drops below 96Mb/s even at peak times) and it's "good enough" for what I need. I also get proper dual stack IPv4/IPv6 and not the DS-Lite rubbish that VM are pushing. I never once regretted the decision to move.

Obviously you need to ensure that you can get an acceptable speed in your area, it could be as low as 7Mb/s, but if you can get 70-100 then I see that as perfectly acceptable for most users.

I do see your point. 96Mbps with good peering would serve as much better residential broadband than 360Mbps with crappy peering. You're not going to use the extra 264Mbps anyway.

If I had a Virgin connection I'd tunnel to a data centre to IP transit and break out there....

bk

Karsini, well I have to say I've never had any problems with Netflix and currently have zero issues with youtube. I tend to have youtube on in the background most of the day and not as much as a stutter. Over the weekend I was at my friends place (also on Virgin) and we were watching 4k videos on youtube on his new 4k TV and again, perfect, not as much as a stutter.

I'm not saying that people haven't had issues, but I really don't believe that they are widespread or that their is any conspiracy there. I think they are just normal network issues that crop up from time to time with all ISP's

Meanwhile Eir is a company that for the last 20 years has done everything in it's power to hold back broadband in Ireland, stump out competition and generally rip off their Irish customers. This is a company who buddied up with the Irish music industry to try and implement a three strikes and your cut off rule and who happily blocked torrent sites. Meanwhile, UPC/Virgin has fought the music industry at every stage in court, to defend the rights of their customers.

I'm 100% certain why you now have a nice VDSL connection from Eir is due to intense competition from Virgin. If it wasn't for them, I'm sure we would all be still sitting on crappy ADSL2+ connections.

As a company Eir has certainly improved over the last three years, but you need to be careful in making your bed with the devil!

bk

9726_9726 wrote: »

If I had a Virgin connection I'd tunnel to a data centre to IP transit and break out there....

You could if you were having issues, but honestly, with a decent wifi router of your own, I find them absolutely perfect. Everything is fast and smooth and a joy to use.

Kensington

bk wrote: »

Karsini, well I have to say I've never had any problems with Netflix and currently have zero issues with youtube. I tend to have youtube on in the background most of the day and not as much as a stutter. Over the weekend I was at my friends place (also on Virgin) and we were watching 4k videos on youtube on his new 4k TV and again, perfect, not as much as a stutter.

I'm not saying that people haven't had issues, but I really don't believe that they are widespread or that their is any conspiracy there. I think they are just normal network issues that crop up from time to time with all ISP's

Meanwhile Eir is a company that for the last 20 years has done everything in it's power to hold back broadband in Ireland, stump out competition and generally rip off their Irish customers. This is a company who buddied up with the Irish music industry to try and implement a three strikes and your cut off rule and who happily blocked torrent sites. Meanwhile, UPC/Virgin has fought the music industry at every stage in court, to defend the rights of their customers.

I'm 100% certain why you now have a nice VDSL connection from Eir is due to intense competition from Virgin. If it wasn't for them, I'm sure we would all be still sitting on crappy ADSL2+ connections.

As a company Eir has certainly improved over the last three years, but you need to be careful in making your bed with the devil!

The Netflix issue was resolved and thus far remains working OK - albeit after four months and after very public exposure of the problem by the media.

However numerous reports on their Talk To forum of people having issues with Youtube currently.

Much of the traffic routes via the LGI European NOC in Amsterdam as LGI are one of the most restrictive peering providers at INEX (the reasons for this are mostly commercial protection - so much for defending customer rights to an open internet). These links tend to get congested at peak times as they are backhaul for much of LGI's European network.

They were one of the first ISP's in Ireland to implement Sandvine traffic shaping to completely choke peer to peer traffic.

Eir are far from angels but then neither are Virgin Media or its previous iterations...

bk

bk wrote: »

I'm 100% certain why you now have a nice VDSL connection from Eir is due to intense competition from Virgin. If it wasn't for them, I'm sure we would all be still sitting on crappy ADSL2+ connections.

I won't fight this because you're absolutely right. Eir and their previous iterations did strangle broadband in Ireland for so long. But at the same time, I wouldn't stay with an ISP simply because their advertised speed is higher. VM seemed to have contention issues in Fairview at the time too, because my 360Mb would drop down as low as 70 during peak hours. That combined with 240p Netflix was enough to make me switch provider.

Some Boards users discovered LGI's peering policy during the Netflix debacle. The gist of it is that if your site exceeds a 3:1 ratio of data transferred to or from LGI, then you have to pay them for special carriage of that data. From the link above:

In the event a ratio for the aggregated amount of traffic exchanged exceeds the ratio (1:3 or 3:1), the sending party shall pay charges for the traffic above the defined ratio

We discovered via traceroutes to the video CDNs in Dublin that they were being routed across the continental US before being sent back to Dublin. So I didn't feel comfortable that VM were able to decide what services you could use, based on whether that service has paid LGI or not.

So they were my reasons for leaving. Not everyone would agree with me, nor would everyone have the same options that I did, but it's what worked for me.

bk

Kensington wrote: »

The Netflix issue was resolved and thus far remains working OK - albeit after four months and after very public exposure of the problem by the media.

They have actually done a massive deal with Netflix now, they will be carrying Netflix on their set top boxes in all their markets. So I would assume there won't be any further issues with Netflix as they are now very close partners.

Not that I ever experienced any Netflix issues and 100% not experiencing any issues on Youtube.

Karsini, I honestly don't think their is any major conspiracy here. What I think happens is that we forget that Virgin are part of the largest ISP's in Europe, that has 30 million+ broadband customers. All of which are managed centrally out of their NOC in Amsterdam.

As a result they are less focused on the mere 300,000 broadband customers in Ireland that make up just 1% of their broadband customer base. This results in them being less concerned with peering within Ireland and are probably slower to notice and respond to local issues that crop up for a relatively small number of customers (as in the issues that seem to effect only a small percentage of Irish customers).

Now of course, that isn't a good thing and I wouldn't defend that at all and I think Virgin should do a much better just on monitoring and responding to network issues in Ireland. However I just want to point it out as I genuinely don't believe it is some major conspiracy that you seem to think it is. I suspect it is more of just a case of overworked network admins in the noc in Amsterdam having to deal with similar issues across 30 million customers.

But I honestly don't believe that the issues are as widespread or serious as you make out.

Of course if Eir delivers a better experience for you that is great and nothing wrong with that at all, competition is working the way it is supposed to. However I'd be careful about praising highly a company who has had such a terrible track record. They have definitely done better over the last three years, but it is going to take an awful lot more to convince me they have truly changed their colours after the 20 years that they tried to do everything to destroy the Irish internet economy.

Kensington

bk wrote: »

They have actually done a massive deal with Netflix now, they will be carrying Netflix on their set top boxes in all their markets. So I would assume there won't be any further issues with Netflix as they are now very close partners.

Not that I ever experienced any Netflix issues and 100% not experiencing any issues on Youtube.

Karsini, I honestly don't think their is any major conspiracy here. What I think happens is that we forget that Virgin are part of the largest ISP's in Europe, that has 30 million+ broadband customers. All of which are managed centrally out of their NOC in Amsterdam.

As a result they are less focused on the mere 300,000 broadband customers in Ireland that make up just 1% of their broadband customer base. This results in them being less concerned with peering within Ireland and are probably slower to notice and respond to local issues that crop up for a relatively small number of customers (as in the issues that seem to effect only a small percentage of Irish customers).

Now of course, that isn't a good thing and I wouldn't defend that at all and I think Virgin should do a much better just on monitoring and responding to network issues in Ireland. However I just want to point it out as I genuinely don't believe it is some major conspiracy that you seem to think it is. I suspect it is more of just a case of overworked network admins in the noc in Amsterdam having to deal with similar issues across 30 million customers.

But I honestly don't believe that the issues are as widespread or serious as you make out.

Of course if Eir delivers a better experience for you that is great and nothing wrong with that at all, competition is working the way it is supposed to. However I'd be careful about praising highly a company who has had such a terrible track record. They have definitely done better over the last three years, but it is going to take an awful lot more to convince me they have truly changed their colours after the 20 years that they tried to do everything to destroy the Irish internet economy.

The Netflix issue was a European wide issue.

During this time, LGI local companies slipped to the lowest ranking on the Netflix speedtest scale in every single market that LGI operate in, bar the UK, whereby a deal had already been secured between Netflix and Virgin Media long before LGI bought out the company.

Numerous complaints across message boards in all the various countries reporting exact same issues as Virgin Media customers in Ireland were seeing.

Their peering elsewhere in Europe is just as restrictive as it is here which, when you look at their peering policy, begins to add up why...