Virgin Media Broadband - what do you get, and how easy to connect?

C.

On 13 Oct, 16:47, Simon Brooke <si...@jasmine.org.uk> wrote:
> I've just got myself a flat in Hamilton which has a Virgin Media cable
> connection. I'm thinking of getting it turned on for broadband, but the
> only computer I have there is a laptop which runs Linux only, and if it
> isn't easy to use the Virgin Media connection with Linux I shan't bother.
>
> What sort of a connection device do you get from Virgin Media, and is it
> Windows-only? Are there any particular gotchas?
>

All the Virign/NTL cable modems I've seen have ethernet connections on
the back (some of the earlier boxes came with USB too, and only USB
cables - didn't even work reliably with Microsft systems).

NTL are great for basic connectivity, but their bundled services are
appallingly bad. When I initially registered my cable modem (which
they supplied?) I read out the MAC address over the phone - it didn't
work - later discovered that the helpdesk monkey had typed in o's when
I said 'Oh'. I've now abandoned using the mail/news and web hosting
facilities because they are so poor. Why don't I switch provider? Well
because I can get the services elsewhere and I've set up numerous ADSL
connections via work - NTL (now Virign) are still the best for
bandwidth and availability.

C.

C.

On 13 Oct, 16:47, Simon Brooke <si...@jasmine.org.uk> wrote:
> isn't easy to use the Virgin Media connection with Linux I shan't bother.


Although its not specifically about Linux, there's lots of techy stuff
about NTL broadband here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/

C.

7

Simon Brooke wrote:

> I've just got myself a flat in Hamilton which has a Virgin Media cable
> connection. I'm thinking of getting it turned on for broadband, but the
> only computer I have there is a laptop which runs Linux only, and if it
> isn't easy to use the Virgin Media connection with Linux I shan't bother.
>
> What sort of a connection device do you get from Virgin Media, and is it
> Windows-only? Are there any particular gotchas?


You can fit a router to their connection and there is no way for
anyone to know what traffic is running.

The gotchas are the lies about speed and the 1 pound a minute support lines
despite you having paid for your broadband.
Because of unlawful bandwidth throttling, between 3pm to 12 midnight, there
is no speed. Some 90% of your payment (about 400 million per annum)
is going towards servicing interest payments and the remaining
can't pay for much in the way of service like your full 10Mbit service.
You get 25k bandwidth on a 10Mbit line at 6pm.
OFFCON the bar stewards have allowed this to happen.

Paul Cager

Simon Brooke wrote:
> I've just got myself a flat in Hamilton which has a Virgin Media cable
> connection. I'm thinking of getting it turned on for broadband, but the
> only computer I have there is a laptop which runs Linux only, and if it
> isn't easy to use the Virgin Media connection with Linux I shan't bother.
>
> What sort of a connection device do you get from Virgin Media, and is it
> Windows-only? Are there any particular gotchas?
>

I've been with Virgin Media / NTL for about 18 months, and it seems to
be a robust and reliable service. At least where I live.

One good thing is that they don't block any incoming ports (except, I
believe some SMB ones), so you can run a webserver or mailserver on your
PC (probably not so relevant for a laptop!). Although the IP address is
theoretically dynamic, I don't believe mine has ever changed.

Garry Knight

Jabali Pragya wrote:

> Virgin will probably ask you whether you want usb or ethernet type modem.

When I upgraded a few months ago to the 3-for-£30 package, NTL (as they were
then) said they'd need to upgrade the modem. When I asked them to make sure
it had an ethernet socket, not a USB one, they told me that none of the new
modems have USB sockets. Of course, the OPs milage may vary at least as
much as his bandwidth, should he go the VM route.

--
Garry Knight
garryknight@gmx.net

Unruh

Paul Cager <news8573@paulcager.org> writes:

>Simon Brooke wrote:
>> I've just got myself a flat in Hamilton which has a Virgin Media cable
>> connection. I'm thinking of getting it turned on for broadband, but the
>> only computer I have there is a laptop which runs Linux only, and if it
>> isn't easy to use the Virgin Media connection with Linux I shan't bother.
>>
>> What sort of a connection device do you get from Virgin Media, and is it
>> Windows-only? Are there any particular gotchas?
>>

>I've been with Virgin Media / NTL for about 18 months, and it seems to
>be a robust and reliable service. At least where I live.

>One good thing is that they don't block any incoming ports (except, I
>believe some SMB ones), so you can run a webserver or mailserver on your
>PC (probably not so relevant for a laptop!). Although the IP address is
>theoretically dynamic, I don't believe mine has ever changed.

My experience may be out of date, but I used Virgin about 4 years ago when
I was in Oxford for 5 mo. They were the only month by month to answer my
email query, so I went with them. It was a disaster. It took 3 weeks to get
hooked up. They kept saying it was BT fault, but refused to tell me what
the problem was. That finally got straightened out. Then I "enjoyed" their
service. The connection latency
to N Amer. was about 5 sec. Calls to support were never answered ( my
record was waiting for 1hr and 15 min to get through.) I got absolutely
nowhere with them re my complaints so I finally told my credit card company
to stop payment on the first two months of service. The credit card company
wrote to them to get their side of the story, and they never even bothered
answering the credit card company. When I left I called
to tell them I was cancelling. Month after month my credit card got dinged
so I told the card not to pay, and told the credit card company about the
attemps and the emails I had sent to try to get the service stopped.
Finally after 6 months, Virgin wrote to me telling me that if I did not
send them a new credit card number, they would cancel my service. I of
course wrote back and thanked them for finally having gotten the message.

Ie, Virgin was truely horrible. Now as I said that was 4 years ago. So
things might have changed.

Colin Brough

I'm a virginmedia subscriber, and read the internal newsgroups there
too.

Technically the service is trivially easy to connect Linux to, and for
most people seems stable and reliable. Virginmedia have recently
introduced a peak-period rate-limiting thing (STM on the Cisco UBRs)
if you download a lot in that period (4pm to midnight, I think), but
if you schedule your big downloads for off-peak, it doesn't really
bite too badly - its rate limiting, not capping.

Most complaints seem to be around the billing function - they are
currently trying to integrate the NTL and Telewest billing functions,
both of which had multiple different systems from their predecessor
companies, and that certainly doesn't help.....! I have not had any
problems, but I have always kept things simple - same payments each
month, no changes to the service, that kind of thing.

Cheers

Colin

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Colin Brough Colin.Brough@blueyonder.invalid
(Replace .invalid with .co.uk to reply)

Roger Merriman

Simon Brooke <simon@jasmine.org.uk> wrote:

> I've just got myself a flat in Hamilton which has a Virgin Media cable
> connection. I'm thinking of getting it turned on for broadband, but the
> only computer I have there is a laptop which runs Linux only, and if it
> isn't easy to use the Virgin Media connection with Linux I shan't bother.
>
> What sort of a connection device do you get from Virgin Media, and is it
> Windows-only? Are there any particular gotchas?

na cable modem can assess it via browser. connection via ethernet.

no problems at all, with regard to needed windows or other such
sillyness.

roger
--
www.rogermerriman.com

Johnny B Good

The message <1i60rm0.1mvm4c91m54mcwN%NEWS@wodger.demon.co.uk >
from NEWS@wodger.demon.co.uk (Roger Merriman) contains these words:

> Simon Brooke <simon@jasmine.org.uk> wrote:

> > I've just got myself a flat in Hamilton which has a Virgin Media cable
> > connection. I'm thinking of getting it turned on for broadband, but the
> > only computer I have there is a laptop which runs Linux only, and if it
> > isn't easy to use the Virgin Media connection with Linux I shan't bother.
> >
> > What sort of a connection device do you get from Virgin Media, and is it
> > Windows-only? Are there any particular gotchas?

> na cable modem can assess it via browser. connection via ethernet.

> no problems at all, with regard to needed windows or other such
> sillyness.

Agreed! I think all the cable modems supplied by NTL/TeleWest/VM have a
USB port as well as the industry standard ethernet port (RJ45 socket)
but this is best regarded as a 'courtesy item' (for those making do with
USB 'cos there isn't an ethernet port in their PC - best regarded, in
motoring terms, as the 'skinny spare wheel solution' to let you limp to
a service station for a proper replacement :-).

If a cable modem (which, incidently, remains the property of the ISP
and is their responsibility in terms of service maintainance repair
costs) is an option, you couldn't have an easier to set up and operate
internet connection if you tried (provided you ignore the USB option and
use only the ethernet port -the two are exclusive to each other anyway,
you merely have a choice of either/or).

An ethernet connection is OS (and hardware) agnostic, giving you
maximum freedom of choice with regard to the kit you want to connect to
your BB connection. If you can only get BB via ADSL, then using a
modem/router will give the same benefit.

It's worth keeping in mind that ethernet now has a vintage pedigree and
had to be almost zero cpu cycles overhead from the off in order to be
able to shift network data at 10Mbps (faster data transfer rates than
the local hard disk drives could maintain at the time!) using CPUs with
less than a tenth of a percent the processing power of today's CPUs

USB, otoh, is 'Johnny come lately interface' and a profligate consumer
of CPU cycles (simply because the CPUs, by then, had "CPU cycles to
spare"). USB2 (and to be fair, Firewire 400) is only possible by the
existence of GHz clocked CPUs.

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

Paul Martin

In article <31303030373730364715055F03@plugzetnet.co.uk>,
Johnny B Good wrote:

> Agreed! I think all the cable modems supplied by NTL/TeleWest/VM have a
> USB port as well as the industry standard ethernet port (RJ45 socket)
> but this is best regarded as a 'courtesy item' (for those making do with
> USB 'cos there isn't an ethernet port in their PC - best regarded, in
> motoring terms, as the 'skinny spare wheel solution' to let you limp to
> a service station for a proper replacement :-).

Some USB ports on broadband routers are actually embedded USB ethernet
adaptors, for which Linux has drivers. (I don't know about Virgin
cablemodems.)

The latency through a USB connection is considerably greater than
through a real ethernet connection, of course.

--
Paul Martin <pm@zetnet.net>