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Hello

I'm using Gradwell's VOIP service which I'm happy with. My TalkTalk
broadband connection is the weak link. Often I get good results but
other times there's excessive delay or choppy speech. My options are:

1. Pay £30 a month for a broadband connection provided by Gradwell
that offers "Direct connection to the Gradwell VoIP network"
2. Pay £20 a month for a connection from Virgin. It has the advantage
of much higher badwidth.

I'm wondering if you have any experience with Virgin. Can you get
consistently good call quality over their network using VOIP?

Thanks and regards
Kevin Smith

In article <821e63ca-9ea6-48ab-a3c7->,
KevinSmith <> wrote:
>Hello
>
>I'm using Gradwell's VOIP service which I'm happy with. My TalkTalk
>broadband connection is the weak link. Often I get good results but
>other times there's excessive delay or choppy speech. My options are:
>
>1. Pay =A330 a month for a broadband connection provided by Gradwell
>that offers "Direct connection to the Gradwell VoIP network"
>2. Pay =A320 a month for a connection from Virgin. It has the advantage
>of much higher badwidth.
>
>I'm wondering if you have any experience with Virgin. Can you get
>consistently good call quality over their network using VOIP?

There are broadband providers who use the BT Wholesale network other
than TalkTalk to consider - however if it boils down to cost, then
you're stuffed.

The one I use almost all the time is a business-grade service from
Entanet - but their entry level with a peak-time cap of 15GB a month is
£19.95+VAT. The next up is a 45GB package, but then you're up to the 30
quid level again (£25.75+VAT)

Just remember that bandwidth isn't everything - a VoIP call is only
going to use 80Kb/sec each way max. What you really need is to be on
an ADSL plan which has elevated service over the BTW network - so your
upstream will be 832Kb/sec on an ADSL2+, or you'll have "elevated service"
or some similar working on your contract if you're on a 2+ (of FTTC) line.

Gordon

"KevinSmith" <> wrote in
message
news:821e63ca-9ea6-48ab-a3c7-...
Hello

I'm using Gradwell's VOIP service which I'm happy with. My
TalkTalk
broadband connection is the weak link. Often I get good results
but
other times there's excessive delay or choppy speech. My options
are:

1. Pay £30 a month for a broadband connection provided by
Gradwell
that offers "Direct connection to the Gradwell VoIP network"
2. Pay £20 a month for a connection from Virgin. It has the
advantage
of much higher badwidth.

I'm wondering if you have any experience with Virgin. Can you get
consistently good call quality over their network using VOIP?

Thanks and regards
Kevin Smith



You don't say whether you are talking VM ADSL or cable. If ADSL
there may be others that are better - Be and AAISP are often
recommended on here, but if you have cable available then VM is a
notably better option. I have used VM (as NTL) successfully with
VoIP on both Sipgate and voip.co.uk and it works well.

Note that with VM you can have broadband only - you don't have to
have a phone and TV bundle. They also have the advantage that
they still support dial-up so in the unlikely event of your B/B
connection failing you can still collect your mails. (For the
record 0845 45 50 52 0.)


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

"KevinSmith" <> wrote in message
news:821e63ca-9ea6-48ab-a3c7-...
Hello

I'm using Gradwell's VOIP service which I'm happy with. My TalkTalk
broadband connection is the weak link. Often I get good results but
other times there's excessive delay or choppy speech. My options are:

1. Pay £30 a month for a broadband connection provided by Gradwell
that offers "Direct connection to the Gradwell VoIP network"
2. Pay £20 a month for a connection from Virgin. It has the advantage
of much higher badwidth.

I'm wondering if you have any experience with Virgin. Can you get
consistently good call quality over their network using VOIP?

Thanks and regards
Kevin Smith


= = =


Hi,


Following reasonably extensive testing and other(s) reports, it is pretty
rock solid (dependable / reliable / consistent). You will however find
periodic "outages" of the connection completely (typically not very frequent
or particularly long duration).

To my knowledge, best belief and understanding their (equally) is no (real)
reason why xDSL services should not (in most [significantly] all [cases /
scenarios / situations / environments / configurations / cases]) be able to
work equally (comparably) satisfactorily / perform (or perhaps [thereat]
outperform in uptime [{/} "consistency"]).


Best wishes,




News Reader

Thanks Woody, Gordon, and "News Reader" for taking the time to reply
to my query, and for your valuable suggestions. Please excuse me if my
reply is a bit rambling, it's just that there are so many options!

I'm interested in Virgin (Cable) Broadband as I don't want the hassle
of migrating my TalkTalk connection to another provider. (I think it's
going to be quite fussy as it will mean I first have to migrate my
POTS/Old Fashioned phone service to BT before migrating the broadband
to a specialist ISP.) This way I can test out Virgin's performance and
then take time to first migrate my work voip line and then in time my
home phone number which is still on POTS.

I asked the question about Virgin as the upstairs flat is already
using Virgin broadband. I've trespassed onto their unsecured WiFi to
do a VOIP test at http://www.voipreview.org/voipspeedtester.aspx. Most
things checked out OK except "consistency of service" which was
showing a red indicator with 20% reading. Also 9.2ms jitter. It is
possible that these problems were introduced by the final wireless leg
of the journey.

I looked at the Entanet site - it seems to be wholesale only. The AASP
site seems very encouraging with an assurance of service-something
that I can't imagine Virgin providing. It also seems like they'll be
reselling BT's 21CN service which is coming to my exchange in December
2010. This too for a good price. I notice that there is an option to
pay a £10 premium per month for having my traffic prioritised. I guess
one vanilla service and then only later do you upgrade to the priority
service if necessary. I also like the fact that you only pay £50 in
the event that you need a new/additional line laid to your property to
provide the service. Means I won't need to migrate my current ISP to
try out service concurrently with my existing ISP.

And finally,a bit of a digression, I've discovered that when I use
Skype Out my number is showing up on the other party's caller ID
handset. This has given me the idea that I may want to use Skype for
outgoing calls instead of my SIP provider. I've just noticed that
Skype seems more stable.

Well so far AASP seems to be the best option as it's got that
assurance of performance and a high bandwidth option if you go for
21CN.

Thanks very much
Kevin

Oops, I just realise I got the terminology wrong. The name of the new
high bandwidth 40Mbps service from BT is FTTC or VDSL and not 21CN.


On 21 Oct, 12:26, KevinSmith <pleasedonotusethisaddr...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Well so far AASP seems to be the best option as it's got that
> assurance of performance and a high bandwidth option if you go for
> 21CN.
>
> Thanks very much
> Kevin

In article <19a2a310-c2f7-4e04-96bb-
..com>, KevinSmith <> scribeth thus
>Thanks Woody, Gordon, and "News Reader" for taking the time to reply
>to my query, and for your valuable suggestions. Please excuse me if my
>reply is a bit rambling, it's just that there are so many options!


Bit late in this thread but we've used Virgin and Comcast (Cambridge
Cable) before that, and I must say its one thing they do very well
indeed. Very few times since 2000 or thereabouts has it been down and
the feed we have is 10 meg and every speed test I've done says its 10
meg on the nose We can IIRC, get up to 50 perhaps more but for all
intents 10 is fine..

Can't comment on their customer services as I've never had reason to use
them!..

We do have a few ADSL services out in the sticks where VM don't supply
and they are very poor in comparison, so If you have them then use
them!..

Only thing which has proved a bit of a pain now and again is they can
and do change your IP address, but its not that often seems when they
re-segment the network..
--
Tony Sayer

Hi Tony

Yes, that's a good point about Virgin cable. When they offer a service
speed it's not the dreaded "up to 24Mbs" it really is going to be the
speed of the line.

What about delay and jitter on the line?

thanks Kevin

KevinSmith <> wrote:
> I asked the question about Virgin as the upstairs flat is already
> using Virgin broadband. I've trespassed onto their unsecured WiFi to
> do a VOIP test at http://www.voipreview.org/voipspeedtester.aspx. Most
> things checked out OK except "consistency of service" which was
> showing a red indicator with 20% reading. Also 9.2ms jitter. It is
> possible that these problems were introduced by the final wireless leg
> of the journey.

Here's the stats from our router:
(from the tool 'mtr')
Packets Pings
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. 10.128.120.1 0.2% 506 6.8 17.1 5.8 74.9 12.1
2. cmbg-cam-1b-ge94.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 506 10.7 16.6 5.7 124.7 12.8
3. cmbg-core-1b-ge-011-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 7.8 16.7 5.6 124.8 14.6
4. nrth-bb-1b-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 33.4 25.9 7.6 194.9 28.9
5. popl-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 9.7 25.5 9.3 183.5 20.8
6. popl-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.2% 505 13.1 23.5 9.5 200.6 19.8
7. popl-tmr-2-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 123.7 23.5 9.2 126.1 16.5
8. tele-ic-2-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 55.3 21.9 10.9 74.5 11.2
9. ae0-806.rt2.the.uk.goscomb.net 0.0% 505 41.8 21.6 9.6 165.9 15.7
10. ae0-3006.rt2.the.uk.goscomb.net 0.0% 505 15.2 23.4 11.5 125.3 14.3
11. goscomb.thbdr1.gradwell.net 0.2% 505 28.9 65.1 11.9 834.0 126.1
12. 79.135.121.21 0.2% 505 34.0 29.7 12.1 377.9 29.8
13. webmail-staging.gradwell.com 0.0% 505 14.7 23.6 11.5 92.2 13.8


We were having an unusually torrid day yesterday (average ping about 1s) so
it's possible the problem hasn't been 100% fixed. Problems of this severity
are a once-every-6-months nature. Those stats look roughly OK but the worst
case looks laggier than normal.

Theo

"Theo Markettos" <theom+> wrote in message news:VSr*...
> KevinSmith <> wrote:
>> I asked the question about Virgin as the upstairs flat is already
>> using Virgin broadband. I've trespassed onto their unsecured WiFi to
>> do a VOIP test at http://www.voipreview.org/voipspeedtester.aspx. Most
>> things checked out OK except "consistency of service" which was
>> showing a red indicator with 20% reading. Also 9.2ms jitter. It is
>> possible that these problems were introduced by the final wireless leg
>> of the journey.
>
> Here's the stats from our router:
> (from the tool 'mtr')
> Packets Pings
> Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
> 1. 10.128.120.1 0.2% 506 6.8 17.1 5.8 74.9 12.1
> 2. cmbg-cam-1b-ge94.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 506 10.7 16.6 5.7 124.7 12.8
> 3. cmbg-core-1b-ge-011-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 7.8 16.7 5.6 124.8 14.6
> 4. nrth-bb-1b-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 33.4 25.9 7.6 194.9 28.9
> 5. popl-bb-1a-as3-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 9.7 25.5 9.3 183.5 20.8
> 6. popl-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.2% 505 13.1 23.5 9.5 200.6 19.8
> 7. popl-tmr-2-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 123.7 23.5 9.2 126.1 16.5
> 8. tele-ic-2-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net 0.0% 505 55.3 21.9 10.9 74.5 11.2
> 9. ae0-806.rt2.the.uk.goscomb.net 0.0% 505 41.8 21.6 9.6 165.9 15.7
> 10. ae0-3006.rt2.the.uk.goscomb.net 0.0% 505 15.2 23.4 11.5 125.3 14.3
> 11. goscomb.thbdr1.gradwell.net 0.2% 505 28.9 65.1 11.9 834.0 126.1
> 12. 79.135.121.21 0.2% 505 34.0 29.7 12.1 377.9 29.8
> 13. webmail-staging.gradwell.com 0.0% 505 14.7 23.6 11.5 92.2 13.8
>
>
> We were having an unusually torrid day yesterday (average ping about 1s) so
> it's possible the problem hasn't been 100% fixed. Problems of this severity
> are a once-every-6-months nature. Those stats look roughly OK but the worst
> case looks laggier than normal.
>
> Theo

My lad got connected to the 50Mb service on Tuesday. He is in the Kensinton district of Liverpool
Initially has snails pace speeds, but they improved after 12 hours. I put f8lure ping monotoring on his
connection, the 1st 24 hour graph is intresting, but not very encouraging
http://bbbbbbmm.netfirms.com/f8lure.jpg

--
Graham.

%Profound_observation%