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[Bowdon]

I've noticed that VM are covering a few cities now with their 1Gig service, on the docsis 3.1 network.

So far I've not seen anyone post any experiences with it. It could be a game changer for not only VM but also the fast broadband we all want.

I wonder if there are any stats on its uptake. Usually when a new service comes out at least someone on the forums try it and post their experience. But so far I've not seen anyone posting anything about it.

If anyone on here signs up, let us know what its like. It would be interesting to hear the feedback on it.

[chenks]

plenty of feedback on the virgin forum about 1gig service.

one should remember the hub they supply only has gigabit ports, so once you factor in the actual real-life achievable speed form a gigabit port you'll end up with around 940Mbps being supplied by the hub (even though the actual speed being supplied to the hub is usually about 1.2Gbps).

[niemand]

[chenks]

well it's only tiny because the areas covered were relatively tiny.
most of the complaints came from people who simply didn't understand the technology involved.

1Gbps package, IMO, is not about supply all 1Gbps to one device, it's about having enough to spread over mulitple devices without seeing any impact.

[Bowdon]

[niemand]

well it's only tiny because the areas covered were relatively tiny.

Uptake is the people taking the product versus those it's available to. Obviously in areas where it's not available the uptake is zero.

Uptake of 500 is also minimal. Uptake of 350 isn't very high either: single digits %.

[j0hn]

I'll have to keep my eyes on the virgin forum. I noticed last week someone mentioned my area was on a list to be upgraded to 1Gig. So I thought I'd see what the experience is like.

There is no list of areas being done. They have been announcing area by area when doing the upgrades.

Manchester has already been done.

[sof006]

I have a friend who works for Virgin as a field engineer and he says the roll out of 1gig is going smooth and they're on target (whatever that target is). My plan is when I eventually move place and the place I move into has Virgin (which it does) when my contract is up with Zen i'll move to Virgin and by that time I suspect my area will have 1gig.

[Jon21]

[Reformed]

Does DOCSIS 3.1 have better latency than DOCSIS 3?

It does not. VM are still using 3.0 upstream so no real difference.

[Jon21]

[Chrysalis]

On the VM forum I read a fair few reports from people who had no issues on the tier below it, but than after upgrade it was slower than the lower tier, and they were blaming technical issues with the new docsis 3.1 channel, VM only add a single channel which seems a bit tight of them and only on the downstream so seem to be provisioning it with the absolutely minimal possible infrastructure.  Those issues I dont think were congestion related though as the people appeared to be in areas that didnt have capacity faults.

The package seems hideously balanced, only 50mbit upload so 20:1 ratio.  I remember when ignition started a blog on the ratio many years ago and VM eventually got to 3:1 ratio I think with their 30/10 package?

[Reformed]

The one channel is fine. I believe the issues are largely with the wonderful software on the Hub 4. Only times there are technical issues with the 3.1 channel the network is a noisy shonkfest that can't be properly maintained due to UK law and poor disconnection policies.

[Chrysalis]

Considering it now that cityfibre have kerbed their rollout and cancelled my street.

But of course this guy gets told there is no congestion and then posts this tbb graph.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/02f86fc728c8dee4e6013d312cedf06a447596a1-07-04-2022

So the issue for me, I get the speed uplift, but do I want to risk my streaming experience, 100s of mbit nice at 4am, but not so much if I cannot watch netflix at 8pm.

However I do see that there is a cooling off period, so a trial period might be worth a shot.

Is it true that there is only 108mbps of upstream bandwidth shared across everyone on the UBR? A giga1 user would saturate maybe 20% of that just from downloading.  Thinking it would be like adsl would have to agressively shape the upstream to not affect the downstream due to the aggressive asymmetric nature.

[Reformed]

It's not true it's 108 Mbit between everyone on the CMTS, no.

A high tier user won't consume 20% of it downloading as cable has mechanisms to suppress and accumulate acknowledgements.

Localised congestion is still a thing and might be for a little while but should all be sorted in time through 3.1 upstream and Project Mustang.