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Virgin Media Business

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DaveC:
Hi all,

We've just ordered a Virgin Media Business line (500/50) for our office, to try and improve upon our current ADSL (nothing else is available from Openreach).

It seems quite hard to find technical discussion of the service, so I'm hoping there are some users on this forum.

We were initially going to get some static IPs, but after reading about how this is delivered via a GRE tunnel on top of the basic service, decided to avoid that as another potential point of failure, so just went for the basic dynamic-IP option.  We'll be using an L2TP service to AAISP (we currently use them for bonded ADSL) for static IPv4 and IPv6, so don't really want to be running L2TP-over-GRE, reducing the MTU even further.

The most frustrating thing about Virgin seems to be the inability to plug our own hardware into their cable.  Yes, we appear to be able to put their Hitron CGNv4 device into some kind of bridge/modem mode, but given the issues its Intel Puma chipset reportedly has, we would have replaced it immediately if that was possible.

So I'm wondering if there are any Virgin Business users here, and if so, what their experience of the service and the Hitron router (either in router or modem mode) is.  Is it possible to get a reliable service? 

I'm also curious about how they will handle the installation - our office is a converted shop on a busy high street in central London.  The existing services (Openreach lines, gas, electricity), come through from under the pavement into a basement room at the front of the building.  We've asked Virgin to do the same, but have no idea if that will be possible.

Thanks.

Chrysalis:
I hope you get some answers, also it would be cool if you could document your experience of setting up AAISP's L2TP over VM, as if I go down that road again to get high download speeds, it probably would be going the same way on the setup.

j0hn:
Just remember that AA's L2TP is limited to 100Mb/s.

d2d4j:
Hi

We do not have VM but some clients do, and are used in Modem mode to a Draytek with multiple static IP

The service fluctuates and does keep losing connection, sometimes with high latency but is faster then ADSL2+ which like yourself, is the only service they can have.

Installation wise, VM agreed on the day the position of the service but was not brought underground.

The help desk is not always the best and any issues appear to take an awful long time to resolve, with 1 issue still outstanding from date of installation over 16 Months ago... (that I am aware off) but they are very quick to take your money...

Many thanks

John

VM BUSINESS

My Broadband Ping

BT FTTP BUSINESS

My Broadband Ping

DaveC:
Thanks d2d4j

My understanding is that if static IPs are involved, the Virgin device can't act in a true "modem mode" - it needs to claim the connection's main (dynamic) IP in order to set up a GRE tunnel, so will be routing those IPs between the tunnel and the Drayteks.

This is what I'm curious about - most VMB users appear to have both static IPs, and a less-than-stellar service.  I've read people putting this down to one or both of the underpowered/buggy chipset in the Hitron CGNv4s, and Virgin's GRE endpoints.

So I'm curious about the Hitron's "raw" performance without the GRE tunnel.  We're not expecting to get the full speed (we currently use a Firebrick FB2700, which only claims to route up to about 350Mbits/s), and as J0hn said, AAISP's L2TP will also limit us to 100/50 - we're more interested in the stability.

I'll be happy to document our experiences here - installation is due on the 5th November.

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