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Virgin internet slowness - OSX related?

Y

yogi477

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 8, 2002
196
0
England
Hi guys,

I have been using my "8MB" connection over ADSL with Virgin now for a few months and the speeds are seemingly up and down. However, today I downloaded the 10.5.3 update in 6 mins at 192MB. The strange thing is, the internet just isn't that fast, pages don't load up that quickly and sometimes they stop loading and have to be refreshed.

The set up is BT Voyager ADSL modem into Airport Express to my C2D iMac. I don't get how it can be fast for updates but the internet be slow is there some setting I am screwing up here?

Thanks
 
I have similar problems, same ISP.

In-fact the reply page for this thread just took about 5 seconds to load.

Sometimes it's horrendously slow, other times it's great. Nobody else in the house seems to have any problems, they're all on windows.
 
I experience slow downs and I've on the same ISP.

Peak times with Virgin are rubbish - they don't offer that much extra bandwidth during peak times, so everyone on cable Virgin gets slow downs.

But if you're on ADSL Virgin, then you don't have to worry about peak times, so I'm interested to see what the problem is and if that affects me too.
 
KarlEdmunds said:
I have similar problems, same ISP.

In-fact the reply page for this thread just took about 5 seconds to load.

Sometimes it's horrendously slow, other times it's great. Nobody else in the house seems to have any problems, they're all on windows.
Click to expand...

I know I don't understand it. This reply page got stuck and I had to refresh it to get it to reload. The strange thing is the internet was like this immediately before and after downloading 192MB in 6 mins so how can this be? It makes no sense. Any ideas?
 
I'm sure it has something to do with Safari - I might try using Firefox for a while and see if the problem persists.
 
Well i dont yet have a Mac ( getting one within the next few months), but yesterday virgin media went down completly; the T.v and the internet. So i rang them up and there service network also went down.

A few hours later it came back online but the internet was still slow. so i don't think its a Mac related problem; more likely to be virgin media.

Tust thought i'd let you know that it happpened to a Pc aswell :)

NStocks
 
I'm with the same ISP and have the same problem. Some days its really slow and some days its really fast.
 
I have the Virgin Media 20mb package and experienced the same problem.

The problem for me, which occured on my laptop running Ubuntu as well, was that the automatic DNS servers worked, but were not the best DNS to use. So I looked on Virgin Media's website and obtained their DNS servers.

Primary DNS: 194.168.4.100
Secondary DNS: 194.168.8.100

It's worth checking out ;)
 
I used to have regular problems with web browsing that were caused by their awful transparent proxy servers. However I believe they stopped using these last year and I've not had further issues since then. I'm using the same DNS servers as the previous poster (picked up via DHCP).

I may have run into Virgin's bandwidth throttling/traffic shaping recently, but most ISPs are doing this now behind the scenes (even if they say "unlimited usage" or "no download limits") so it's horses for courses.

Edit: I'm using Virgin's cable broadband, not ADSL.
 
Just got this letter from Virgin:

Dear Mr Mikey
Have you noticed your broadband slowing down recently? Not all the time, perhaps, but at certain times of the day?

Well, here's what might be happening. Some of our users (a tiny proportion, admittedly) are downloading huge amounts over short periods which can affect the broadband experience for all our customers.

We're curbing the speed for a few people at the busiest times

To manage the excessive demand and ensure all customers get the most out if their connection, we automatically reduce the speed of the heaviest users at peak evening times between 4pm and 9pm. In extreme cases we'll not also reduce the speed between 10am and 3pm (something that'll have an impact on just 1% of our customers. If you're unsure about our policy, please take a look at out Traffic management page at www.virginmedia.com/traffic

Then it goes onto say you might want to upgrade your broadband or someone might be stealing your broadband and thats why its slow.
 
Just got the same letter Mikey.

But that applies to downloading, and they'll cut it by a 1 meg or so. That still gives about 120kb/s available on my 2MB connection (god, when are they going to upgrade my area to 8MB?!), and browsing speed is painfully slow, almost dialup speeds.
 
We have a PC and Mac here and using the internet on both machines was abysmal for the last year or so that we were with Virgin (regular 16MB service). Switched to another ISP about 6-8 months ago, actually paying less and getting more, and the speeds were instantly and very noticeably improved. Frankly I can't believe I put up with Virgin for so long.

I've since read a lot of complaints about their speed.
 
It could just be slow or overloaded DNS servers on the ISP side. DNS servers translate URL names into IP Addresses. Your machine will automatically be assigned the default DNS servers from Virgin, but you can manually tell your Mac to use a different set.

There's a free service called OpenDNS that provide DNS servers with extra benefits such as blocking phishing sites. Could be worth a try to see if that's the problem.
 
Before Virgin took over Telewest, Blueyonder Internet was brilliant.

Virgin have really screwed it up for the customers.
 
Kilamite said:
Before Virgin took over Telewest, Blueyonder Internet was brilliant.

Virgin have really screwed it up for the customers.
Click to expand...

That is why you will see some Virgin customers happy and others full of complaints…

The "legacy" Blueyonder network is great and very fast…

I have the 20mb package and the speeds are as good as they claim. But I am on the old Blueyonder/Telwest network.
 
arkitect said:
That is why you will see some Virgin customers happy and others full of complaints…

The "legacy" Blueyonder network is great and very fast…

I have the 20mb package and the speeds are as good as they claim. But I am on the old Blueyonder/Telwest network.
Click to expand...

At my parents house, they were original Blueyonder customers, and seem happy. However, at my flat, a lot of the cable routers were re-done and since I live in the city centre, the bandwidth allocation during peak times to customers is dreadful.

Who bought over NTL again?
 
Yeah, same problem here with Virgin. And it's not a Mac OS X problem, my girlfriend using Windows gets the same issues.

It's ridiculous, though, I'm in a student flat where we share the connection between (at least) 4 people; the connection lives throttled... it gets to the point where it takes ages to open google.co.uk when someone else is streaming something. :mad:
 
OllyW said:
If you exceed the permitted download allowance at peak time, Virgin will throttle your bandwidth.
Click to expand...

I'm well aware of the throttling issue but as and others have said we are on ADSL not cable so I'm pretty sure this isn't possible on ADSL, especially as they don't own the network.

Also, as I said, this isn't a pure speed issue, its just browsing it seems. Updates are extremely fast, far past the speeds I get with downloads.

I think I'll give the DNS server thing a try, not sure where to stick the settings though as I'm connecting over Airport is it under the Network tab in System Prefs or on the base station itself?

Thanks for the responses so far.
 
yogi477 said:
Thanks, but I think that deals with connections via ethernet not Airport doesn't it? If I got to the same setting on the Airport tab I have 10.1.1.2 which is in grey and I can't remove.
Click to expand...

If you have a wireless router, you stick the DNS details in the router.
 
KarlEdmunds said:
Sometimes it's horrendously slow, other times it's great. Nobody else in the house seems to have any problems, they're all on windows.
Click to expand...
I doubt it's Mac related. I have two Macs and two PCs, and I've moved a couple of times over the last two years so I've gone through 24 mbit DSL, 100 mbit FibreLAN and now 24 mbit cable. There is absolutely no difference between Mac and PC, in fact the Macs appear to download and surf marginally faster. Except when it comes to BitTorrent where the Macs just suck, even though the proper firewall ports are open (and verified by the BT client as open).

REALLY looking forward to the 100 mbit Cable upgrade coming this fall, once you've had 100 mbit going back to 24 is like swimming in molasses...
 
Primary DNS: 194.168.4.100
Secondary DNS: 194.168.8.100

the dns servers, mentioned by one poster, absolutely fixed my problem! They are apparently the main DNS servers for virginmedia, my router must have had some old NTL ones or something.

if it is taking a long time for pages to START downloading (but quick when they have begun) then check out the DNS servers on your settings (on your router if you are using one).
 
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