Virgin Media National Broadband

Broadband Performance FAQs

What factors can affect my broadband?

We're always working to deliver the best broadband we can, but there are a few factors that can affect your broadband service. When we talk about broadband speed, we use two terms to describe the different types there are: Access Line Speed and Actual Throughput Speed. Here's what they mean:

Access Line Speed

This is the maximum speed that your connection can reach, which varies now and then. Have a look at the next question for more details.

Actual Throughput Speed

This is the actual speed you're actually getting at any one time, and this can also vary, depending on a few factors. Check out question 3 for more info.

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What factors can affect my Access Line Speed?

One factor is how far your home is from the local telephone exchange. The further away you are, the slower your connection will be.

Other factors tend to be ones your can fix yourself, like poor wiring for telephone extension sockets and missing or poor 'micro-filters'. Micro filters are the white filters that come with your modem or router. They need to be used on every phone socket in your house.

What factors can affect my Actual Throughput Speed?

There are four main things that affect your Actual Throughput Speed:

  1. High demand - the number of people using Virgin Media National broadband, and the level of demand at peak times, can cause your Actual Throughput Speeds to vary from the Access Line Speed. This means that, at busy times, you might find that your connection's a little slower because so many people are online.
  2. Virgin Media's Traffic Management Policy - when someone's spending a lot of time downloading or uploading particularly large files, it can slow down the connection for other users. To make sure the service doesn't get slowed down by a few people using more than their fair share, we sometimes moderate the amount of 'bandwidth' on things like e-mail and large downloads. This means we can free up bandwidth for web surfing, video streaming and VoIP applications
  3. Virgin Media's Acceptable Use Policy - this is used to make sure that a very small number of customers aren't their internet service to the detriment of everyone else. It's unlikely that you'll be affected by this if you are using your service for normal services such as surfing the Web, E-mail, video streaming, VoIP etc.
  4. Factors outside of Virgin Media's control - sometimes your broadband service can be affected by electrical interference from an external factor, like an electrical sub station nearby.
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When can I expect my Actual Throughput Speed to vary?

Speeds can vary at any time, but we've found that our peak times are between 4pm and midnight Monday to Friday and 10am to midnight at the weekends, when a large number of customers are using their broadband connection.

How can I see what my Access Line Speed and Actual Throughput Speed are?

All you need to do is look at the connection speed of your router or modem, which you'll find in the set-up guide that came with them.

To check what your Actual Throughput Speed is at any specific time, you can use one of the many independent tools that are on the internet, like www.hageltech.com/dumeter or www.tucows.com.

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