ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

New Customers only ?

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

It would appear so…

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

As I mentioned on another thread, I am an O2 customer who signed up with Virgin last month, and had my service installed and start about a week ago.

I am paying £38/m for Gig1 plus some weekend call package (which I don't want and am not using).

Given that I was previously paying BT £62.66 for an out of contract fttp service (albeit with 100mb up) I am pretty happy.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

I always find the "average speeds of 1130Mbps down" amusing :) Who, at home, has 2.5Gbps ethernet backhaul or 1Gbps+ capable WiFi devices

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

It's more than my ZX81 can cope with that's for sure...

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Me.

Asus RT-AX86U

Pixel 7 Pro and Xiaomi 12 both max out 1gbit wirelessly.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

As yes, the "average" Virgin Media punter :)

Asus RT-AX86U £250 to £300
Pixel 7 Pro £750 to £850
Xiaomi 12 £500+

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

That would be because VM don't advertise it as average to 1 device its average to the hub, and the average joe just uses the hub well as a hub, so if kids are maxing a 1 gig port out downloading a mass game on steam so on it leaves a good 150-200meg free for another port / wifi to use at the same time so really they aren't wrong nothing stopping average joe achieving those speeds, but yes i also agree a fair few of us here aren't average joe an can indeed max it on 1 device lol

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

I'd argue that for most of the people upgrading/taking the 1G service, its a useless number given the wireless devices most people have. The main reason I point this out is that they could then ring up VM and complain they are "not getting the speeds they are paying for" :D

From the VM sales page:

It's a bit naughty ...

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

The biggest benefit of 1 gigabit for me, is I dont need to shape my downstream traffic, I can do multiple things at once without a care in the world.

When I was on VDSL, if I downloaded a game, it felt like I was been ddosed, twitch would keep buffering and be stuck in 480p or below, netflix similar etc. Secondly grabbing games even though I might be hitting my wifi cap (on consoles), 300mbit of wifi bandwidth is still way faster than what I was getting on VDSL, and steam comes down at close to the full gigabit over ethernet on my PC.

Finally gig1 gives you a degree of protection from docsis downstream congestion as the 3.1 DS channel is exclusive to gig1 customers. I am noticing considerable upstream congestion, but I can do the full gigabit around the clock even mid evening.

With that said I wouldnt have ordered at the normal £62, it was high enough to scare me off. Luckily I got the O2 volt deal (£41 total monthly cost including O2). I will say the O2 gig1 deal is better as you getting a mobile sim for only one extra pound, but this is still a good offer for the standalone gigabit.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

I do, so do a good few of my friends. No point in paying for it and leaving it crippled, and I wanted the flexability to use Gig2 or whatever comes next.

For some odd reason fast.com now thinks I get 1.7-1.8Gbps down, which is funny as its not that fast in real world use.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

"Originally Posted by ianch99 View Post
I always find the "average speeds of 1130Mbps down" amusing Who, at home, has 2.5Gbps ethernet backhaul or 1Gbps+ capable WiFi devices"

I DO!"

My PC has a 2.5Gb/s NIC and WIFI 6E, my phone is also WIFI 6E and I have a USB C to 2.5Gb/s NIC I can plug into it.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

But what do you do on your internal network that requires that speed?

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

The other point is can the whole route support those speeds? The bottleneck may not be on the final hop to the hub.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Mine is admittedly a bit of an edge case. My SO is a neuroscientist, so sometimes I download large brain scans for some local processing. That's why we pay for gig download speeds (the uni will happily pump out at whatever speed I can take in). It's also why I am thinking of getting some 10GbE stuff (basically server to processor) as part of my (Ubiquiti) home network.

In the rest of our lives we seldom use more than a fraction of the gig download pipe - no real gaming, only occasional proverbial "Linux ISOs"

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

I do as well, it feeds my Unraid server and the Plex addon that is loaded with lots of Linux Iso's :angel:. My family just loves Linux Iso's

Next move is to add 10Gb between the 2 x hard wired gaming PC's

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Thanks for the explanation.

Part of one of my jobs (pre-retirement) was trying to convince the Teaching Hospitals in our city to fund 1 or 10Gb links from the hospitals to the Unis for transfer of such data (they were taxi’ing portable Hard Drives previously), so I get where you/your SO are coming from…

(the first connection was relatively easy, putting in resiliency not so much - we managed to get Capital Expediture from a Research Grant, the challenge was getting someone to pay the ongoing line rentals).

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

The point of connections >1Gb is to maximised bandwidth for multiple devices in the premises. No single device will be hogging all that even if we had cables, switches and network cards capable of carrying >1Gb.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

I am not running a server so do not have devices all over the home linked, so I only need that speed to the PC for downloading faster.

I do not get your point and it is the same every time a new speed tier launches with some telling me do not need that speed.

I did not run out and buy a new Mobo, my last one was 2013 so this new one happens to have a 2.5Gb/s and 10Gb/s NIC so I now get full speed out of the HUB5 on 1Gb/s instead of losing about 200-300Mb/s.

Remember what Bill Gates said?

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

tbf, I didn’t say you don’t need that speed - I asked "what do you do on your internal network that requires that speed" in response to your comment

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Again, all devices can get full speed, if need be, they are effectively all Networked but the HUB5 ports are 1Gb/s apart from the main port.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Again, you’re stating what speed they can do, not what they do with that speed… ;)

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

<removed>

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

I guess you are missing my point, as others are. I agree with you, except for a (small?) minority of Gig1 users, most people will not be able to easily verify the headline speed they are paying for. Hence my amusement about the way they sell the product with "the Gig1 broadband service offering average download speeds of 1,130Mbps".

I totally get the multiplexed bandwidth usage across multiple, active, wired & wireless devices but that is a very nuanced message for a consumer broadband sell.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2023/01/2.gif

;)

I was asking about your internal network requirements for speed, not your download requirements…

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Most 1Gb subscribers can though, unless they are in 'Modem Only' mode, using the built-in Samknows real speed test.

https://samknows.com/realspeed/

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

I think the biggest benefit is posting speed test results on forums. Sod all else use. Once it got above 100mb no benefit for 99% of punters.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Users posting here, are often the other 1%.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Again, you are missing the point. Running Samknows from within the router is not what most people would interpret as their "download" speed. Anyway, I was only pointing out the tongue in cheek marketing message ..

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

True, I am not the average, but to be fair you didn't state the average punter :)

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

It was assumed :)

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

games consoles ??
steam??
multiples of both??
Windows updates??
nobody wants to waste their time waiting for downloads
on top of Netflix ,Amazon video,Disney +
if you are under 50 a very common in households

playing games while streaming music while watching iPlayer? (something I actually do)

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

8k HDR Pr0n also takes a lot of bandwidth esp. to stream a dozen movies at a time.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

For me I cant justify a 2.5 or 10gbit lan. For whatever reason 2.5gbit just wont drop in price, at one point gigabit was the premium but now is almost as cheap as 100mbit, but those hardware keep their premium attached.

I do have a NAS but the reality is the throughput of the storage is not much faster than gigabit anyway so spending to upgrade my lan would maybe get me 1.3gbit instead of 1gbit lan throughput and I do find gigabit to be easily fast enough for my needs.

In terms of the 1.1gbit internet connection, the extra 100mbit? dont care really. It even acts as a form of QoS ensuring I will never ever fully utilise my downstream.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

You can buy a good, branded USB 3.0 2.5Gb/s or same in M2 variant for £30-50 (Marvel & intel Chipsets).

And in reality, in a good area you get an extra 200-300Mb/s (Config File is +10%) and even if only and extra 100Mb/s on its own is still pretty fast for some people.

If you do not need or care so, be it but others do so I do not get why even bothering saying so (to anyone).

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Thats too expensive. ;) But thanks anyway.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

It's not really the hardware to do 2.5gbit or 10gbit. It is the switch/routers that are expensive and are putting me off from doing it.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

I wholeheartedly agree with this. I know that city fibre is live on the next town over from me and although BT have now released FTTP to my address I need to wait for the entire town to be done as city fibre only roll out whole towns in one go and not on a postcode by postcode basis.
Hopefully in the very near future I'll be able to get Giganet 900 symmetrical for less £ than either BT or virgin and I won't have to suffer their crippled upload speeds.

I use a rax200 and easily DL at 128MBs over WiFi with virgin gig1 but I also upload a lot to places like GitHub and the current UL speeds take up so much of my hobby time that it's almost painfull.

Re: ISP Virgin Media UK Discounts Gigabit Broadband to £39.99
 

Its planned, someone in the know has revealed.

However it wont be in all areas, Areas like mine with only 50MHZ return path will stay on 50mbit upload on gig1. 50mhz return path has no room for a 3.1 upstream channel and not even a 5th 3.0 channel.