[ubuntu-uk] Virgin broadband from 20 to 60 megas

[Rob Beard]

On 20/07/13 20:52, Muñiz Piniella, Andrés wrote:
> Hello all,
> The heaviest use of internet I do is for some video streaming at home.
> At the moment youtube on mobile and tablet and lovefilm on the wii
> (still no joy with ubuntu). Also video chat.
>
> They take less then a minute to load and only ocasionally do they break
> midway (normally removing hd mode makes things better).
>
> Do you think I would notice a significant improvement from going from 20
> megs to 60 megs?
>
> Bonus question: the upgrade will come with virgins wireless router that
> will be replacing my 7 year old router from netgear. Would that show a
> significant improvement as well? Most of my gadgets are wireless.
>
>
>
As far as I'm aware Virgin are upgrading 20Mbit customers to 60Mbit 
anyway, but if you've got the old separate modem and router then you 
might need one of their Super Hubs.  I'm not sure what the latest Super 
Hub is like, but the originals are fairly poor.  For a long while it 
wasn't possible to configure them as just a modem (although eventually 
Virgin did fix this) and the wifi on them is pretty bad (sure it 
connects at 150 or 300Mbit but the signal is not that great).

If you do get a Super Hub and find that it's got poor wireless I'd 
suggest looking and putting it in modem only mode and getting a separate 
cable router.  IIRC too, wireless tends to slow down to the maximum 
speed the slowest device supports.  So if you've got a say a phone that 
supports 150Mbit Wireless (N is it?) and a laptop that supports the 
older 54mbit Wireless G then everything will drop down to the slower speeds.

Rob