Not even weekday evenings now

More poor performance - the last point in the week was the middle bit - now it looks like the whole thing is thoroughly overloaded and rather mediocre looking.

Still not thinking TOO much about jumping back with Virgin. Virgin are scum after all.

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Office Hours Go Slow

That seems to be the problem - its just coming up to 9.00am and the connection is completely drained.

So as it stands a 24 mb service is delivering about 6.5 on weekday evenings and 1.5 the rest of the time. The connection at least is not dropping out frequently and upload times remain high.

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Worse then better

I did watch an iplayer prog without any problems - then tried one around midnight and was annoyed to see it cut out two times in a row. I saw that Wifi had disconnected on my eeepc so stuck a cable in almost immediately reconnecting and then that cut out too.

I unplugged/replugged the BeBox (the sum of Virgins technical help) and hey presto it started working again. I found myself downloading a few test files and then went to speedtest above and things have got back to normal - surely that can't just be the weekend hit? Or was something else going on? Funny that unplugging got things back on track again and there had been so some series of disconnects that weren't just local wifi problems.

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Slow on Sunday

Urgh...

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More woe?

Its only just 8 in the morning? Who's doing what at this time to make things so slow?

The Be site did flag up that they had problems with their helpline - perhaps there are network issues generally.

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Virgin is appealing

Well I briefly thought that when I saw this speed...is Friday night really such a heavy time?

Maybe I should just be satisfied with less - Virgin are pretty incompetent and their attitude is very poor - Phorm is the defining point of all that's bad about them. They have no respect for their customer's property. And I seem to remember Sundays being a bit rubbish so cable is no cure all.

When I think about it this speed far exceeds anything I got with Plusnet - at least as far as I can remember - it seems so long ago now.

Oh yeah - Virgin are supposed to be paying me a cheque for the money they owe...like where is it?

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worst fear

The reply came
Ticket reference number: 1176620

Dear Erik As we checked your line length is 3.6 km and the speed that you are getting is normal for this line length. Regards, Pavel

If there is anything else you would like to discuss, please don't hesitate to call us at any time on ......

I am not quite sure how they got the 3.6km though. My google maps gives me something like 1.7km - you have to multiply it up to take account of bends in the line etc but not by 200% normally.

It's still better than what I was receiving - however Virgin cable will be rolling out 10mb.

There are a few options and no rush - that's the great thing about a three month contract.


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Ticket raised

I took my stats according to Be's instructions and raised a ticket late-ish last night.

I got an SMS telling me I had a reply from them this morning. I checked my email on the train to Darlington (National Express are offering free wifi at the moment which is really neat).

It was a "your query is being handled" email".

I am a bit gloomy about the prospect of higher speeds TBH.
The more I learn about attenuation rates the less likely I will get better than the seven odd I have now. Another SMS has arrived - perhaps its a fuller response.

I'm off to check.

Sunday Awakening

Clearly a bit more sprightly - this is using my wifi near the BeBox on the asus (blossom).

Be's not buzzing

Well -- what is going on?

I think I will be unscrewing the faceplate tonight to check things directly from the test socket.

Whatever it is the variations in speed cannot be attributed to the local end of the connection.

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Mornings reading

Not long now before I put in a ticket to Be. Wifi seemed to drop out briefly when I moved the Asus slightly. Normally able to move around ok.

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Sleepy in the morning

There seems to be a dramatic drop in speed in the mornings...is this due to heavier traffic?

Virgin looked like they had badly messed up their latest bill. It still thinks I am with them (for telephone services at the least).

First customer service call was the typical cliched pure rubbish from beginning to end. Some man in India who kept telling me I still had a virgin phone line. He offered to waive the 42p the bill said I owed him. He didn't grasp the concept that Virgin owed me for services that were charged for on a partial month basis. He said a supervisor would call me in an hour which he didn't. I genuinely considered the possibility that I had got through to the janitor by mistake and he was just trying to busk it rather than appear rude. Awful.

I tried again and spoke to a stern Scottish woman who acknowledged I had left Virgin AND that they owed me some money. Not enough money by my calculation but at least the call made some kind of sense. Would I really accept those kinds of standard for more consistent speeds? Maybe.

I will look at the speed issue in earnest next week sometime.

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