Spec me an ISP bitches!

[spoodie]

Except if you are onvirgin cable you have to use thier "Super Hub" router for the faster stuff, and you cant change the dns servers on that.

Maybe I've done something, but I discovered my SuperHub doesn't act as a DNS at all, but I always use outside resolvers as well.

Currently running the long test on that DNS benchmark tool to get a good list I can apply to all my devices. Thanks deject!

[mrbobbins]

As Virgin is the only non-landline fibre option available I think I will go for it, it's only a little more expensive than my current broadband taking into account the line rental.

Still a shame to move away from Be though as I have no complaints about the service, the speed, reliability and customer service have been great, I just want it AS FAST AS POSSIBLE so fibre it is*




*Cue a return in 2 months complaining I had faster ADSL

[Jimmington]

I forgot I wrote on here moaning about virgin. Well I am looking to off them as BF3 and BC2 are now pretty much unplayable due to unstable ping and high jitter. It is only when you look through the forums that you can see it is a fairly prevalent problem. Looks like a swap to Infinity when it goes live or back to Bethere adsl for me. Quite unimpressed with it all in all. So there.

[Chickenz]

Anyone on here use BT Infinity? Due to get it up here my the end of March and speeds look to be in the region of 50+ meg.

Are they still bastards for capping on fiber??

[FatherJack]

I forgot I wrote on here moaning about virgin. Well I am looking to off them as BF3 and BC2 are now pretty much unplayable due to unstable ping and high jitter. It is only when you look through the forums that you can see it is a fairly prevalent problem. Looks like a swap to Infinity when it goes live or back to Bethere adsl for me. Quite unimpressed with it all in all. So there.

That's been the opposite of my experience with Virgin. As a gamer first, my primary priority has always been latency, with throughput a secondary consideration - on speedtest.net and in games your latency equates to your ping.

For quite a while I ran a concurrent pair of broadband connections, via my dual-WAN router until the latency I got from Virgin was acceptably close to that which I got from my old supplier. My old supplier was Tele2 and the connection I got was a rather exclusive one as part of a test we were doing at work to determine recommended broadband suppliers examining all options, and I got the rather odd line-of-sight radio internet along with another guy at work who also lived close to the city centre as when the engineer was up on the rooves of both our houses exclaimed "I don't think LoS will be a problem - I can see the transmitter myself!"

The company was soon taken over and the radio option was no longer offered to new customers, so me and my mate ended up as the only users of an ~11Mbit service in a city of 300,000 souls. Nice contention ratio, there.

In time though, and not a little because the contract after a year transferred to me personally (work paid at first) and I opted for the cheapest, limited to 512kb option, I began to explore other avenues. Tele2 had also provided my phone line (it felt soooo good to ditch BT) so the only reasonable option was Virgin. I ditched Sky at the same time, which also felt kind of good - I do miss the speedway and the non-availability of Sky Atlantic and Sky Sports F1 (on it's own) through Virgin makes me feel sad, but also angry towards Sky. Like BT, I don't want to go crawling back to them.

As I say, I ran them both side-by-side for a while - using Virgin for downloads and Tele2 for games, but while Virgin was initially unreliable they made great strides in fixing the issues, ofc I use OpenDNS so the most-common problem is a non-issue, but when I started to see the latency drop on Virgin, I switched to them exclusively.

Now, I've just noticed that for all these years I've been paying for top-level broadband, but only getting ~17Mb/s or so due to limitations of both my Virgin modem and dual-WAN router. An engineer will be visiting me soon to install the up-to-60Mb kit, but I'm a little worried I won't be able to use the DNS servers of my choice anymore. Has anyone any experience of the Virgin "super-router" and whether it is separate from the modem or configurable/discardable in any way?

[Jimmington]

I have the super hub thing - there is an option to run it in two modes either all in or as modem only mode to chuck your own wireless bits and bobs down the line. Seems to be fairly configurable from what I have seen for firewalls nat etc but got to be said I am not seeing any DNS config in there.

What numbers do you get off of pingtest.net?

I was getting Grade B with jitter of 60odd which went to Grade F and ping and jitter of just under 200. My smarmy cousin on his bethere had 8 ping and 0 jitter. Doesn't make him play BC2 any better though....!

[FatherJack]

What numbers do you get off of pingtest.net?

I get a B* grade with a sub-20ms ping and a sub-10ms jitter. My ping on the old ISP was always sub 10ms granted, but they're not an option anymore. The only issues I've had with online games have been increased level-loading times owing to my switch from (incredibly unreliable) RAID 0-ed Raptors to a single-disk solution.

[Jimmington]

Turns out there is a known fault in the area and a call raised but apparently not to be fixed until 6th of March - now the question is, do i bother phoning these Virgin clowns to moan or just chill until it is fixed. Personally I think it is bit of a liberty that the dream of superfast internet is actually a load of bollocks, probably because of overselling it, but then again I am massively lazy when it comes to moaning about these things...

[Dog Pants]

I feel your pain. They wont listen if nobody complains. But then chances are they won't listen if people do.

[HereComesPete]

Turns out there is a known fault in the area and a call raised but apparently not to be fixed until 6th of March - now the question is, do i bother phoning these Virgin clowns to moan or just chill until it is fixed. Personally I think it is bit of a liberty that the dream of superfast internet is actually a load of bollocks, probably because of overselling it, but then again I am massively lazy when it comes to moaning about these things...

Moan, lots. use words like unhappy, complaint and ombudsman after the first few attempts. Should get free internets for a bit or at least some money off.

[TezzRexx]

Moan, lots. use words like unhappy, complaint and ombudsman after the first few attempts. Should get free internets for a bit or at least some money off.

Wouldn't accept anything less than money off for the downtime.