Is A&A a lower latency and more reliable alternative to Virgin Media?

[Adsibob]

It’s all very well having download speeds of 220Mbps and uploads speeds of almost 20Mbps, but when everything else about the connection is awful, I’m starting to doubt my loyalty to Virgin Media. In the last three properties we’ve lived in, we have always had Virgin. They have always offered the fastest packages for our postcode and in my naivety I thought that was all that mattered. The last couple of years, I’ve noticed their customer service has got worse and worse, prices have gone up, and I’ve recently learned about the importance of latency. Virgin is pretty poor for latency, so particularly when browsing the internet, the responsiveness of the browser is bad, and i forget very quickly that I have such high speeds.

 

The other gripe I have is that the router is generally not very unreliable. It needs rebooting every few days and when it is rebooted it often fails to connect to my devices and needs a further reboot to get it working again. Very frustrating. Today I discovered the Ethernet connections are not working. It’s only 6 months old. Pathetic. I will try a factory reset later. 
 

I now need to start thinking about a new internet connection for our actual house and the default “I’ll get Virgin” is now very much in doubt.

 

 According to the postcode lookup on Andrews and Arnold site, we are 1670m from the nearest fibre cabinet and therefore the fastest speeds they anticipate we will get with a FTTC connection through them, is 55-80 MBps, with uploads of about 14Mbps, for £55 a month. That is considerably more than I pay for Virgin, but A&A claim to have much better reliability, lower latency and a very good router.

 

 Not really sure why Virgin is the only company that can offer such high speeds (G-network, hyperoptic and Three’s 5G aren’t available on my street), but if that really is the case, I’m wondering whether it makes sense to try A& A on the basis that increased reliability, lower latency and a better router together merit significantly lower speeds. Has anybody left Virgin to for an “alternative” provider such as A&A? I know a while back A&A got some fairly good write ups on this forum; is that still the case?
 

(My main internet use is video calls during the day and streaming Netflix on two devices in the evening. We have also considered that in the future we might want a 4K TV and to upgrade to Netflix 4k, but even that only needs 25Mbps and we would never have two devices watching 4k at the same time.)

[epsilonGreedy]

I would like to know how bad this latency is you are experiencing is? There will be a number for it.

 

Enter "google speed test" into your browser, run the test that Google returns in your search results. Latency is shown at the end of the test. It should be under 25 but it has to be above 150 before web browsing starts to feel slow.

 

I suspect you have another problem. Are you running some privacy VPN?

[Adsibob]

13 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

I would like to know how bad this latency is you are experiencing is? There will be a number for it.

 

Enter "google speed test" into your browser, run the test that Google returns in your search results. Latency is shown at the end of the test. It should be under 25 but it has to be above 150 before web browsing starts to feel slow.

 

I suspect you have another problem. Are you running some privacy VPN?

Just tried that. Funnily enough, it isn’t able to complete the test in the advertised 30seconds. It runs download speed test, then upload speed test (giving numbers similar to those quoted above) then it just stays on the same test screen (ie the upload speed test) without progressing. It’s been like that for 4 minutes now, but it’s not frozen because the little circle on the speed dial is quivering between 19.9 and 20.

 

No VPN. Could it be some sort of malware in the browser?

[Adsibob]

Just tried on my phone (connected to wifi), and got this (which is weirdly slow for me):

 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Adsibob

[epsilonGreedy]

1 minute ago, Adsibob said:

No VPN. Could it be some sort of malware in the browser?

 

 

Is that 19.9 to 20 megabits per sec?

 

I usually get 33 but today because the of the recent wet weather it is 22 and 5 up. Latency to London from mid Lincs is 11ms.

 

If the test times out, then open up a window command prompt (terminal) and type "ping bbc.co.uk" the 4 returned times are the latency.

[epsilonGreedy]

7 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

No VPN. Could it be some sort of malware in the browser?

 

 

Have you left a VPN open to the office?

[Adsibob]

37 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Is that 19.9 to 20 megabits per sec?

Yes, that was on the upload test.

[Adsibob]

41 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

If the test times out, then open up a window command prompt (terminal) and type "ping bbc.co.uk" the 4 returned times are the latency.

It must be slightly different on a Mac as that command returns more than just 4 results (so far it’s returned 188, I guess it will stop at some power of 2. All the times are between 11 and 23 seconds, though the 23 was pretty rare. On another site I got latency of 40, but not sure whether that was loaded or unloaded (or what the difference is).

Edited June 20, 2021 by Adsibob

[Adsibob]

I think that test actually runs 1920 pings, as is not stopped yet and I see the window is called “ping bbc.co.uk - 80x24”. Results seem to be getting slower. Just saw lots of high teens a couple of 23s and a 24. These are all milliseconds though so maybe I am just being ocd.

[PeterW]

Looking at A&A they are just a reseller of TT/BT FTTC wholesale services so you’ll get the same from any of the usual suspects unless you go dedicated fibre connection. 

[epsilonGreedy]

8 hours ago, Adsibob said:

All the times are between 11 and 23 seconds, though the 23 was pretty rare.

 

 

I hope you meant 11 and 23 milli seconds?

 

8 hours ago, Adsibob said:

On another site I got latency of 40, but not sure whether that was loaded or unloaded (or what the difference is).

 

 

Ping times are mainly an indication of geographical distance between your PC and a web site. If you can find a US site the ping time will be 80 plus. Australia is 200ms or 300ms away.

 

I found the A&A claim about inherently superior latency to be a bit of marketing snake oil. They might have superior communication boxes in their network which shave a milli second here or there and they might have paid for privileged server rack space at one of the UK's principal data hubs where international data traffic is exchanged. However you won't notice a few milli seconds of latency unless you are running a high frequency trading bot.

 

Given your phenomenal headline data rates then you must be experiencing a gross inefficiency somewhere else to cause web browsing to feel unacceptably sluggish.

 

The following table illustrates typical global latency between the data centers in the Microsoft cloud, note that UK South and UK West are 5ms apart, hops between European centers are 20 to 35ms. https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/RegionToRegionLatency 

[epsilonGreedy]

8 hours ago, Adsibob said:

I think that test actually runs 1920 pings, as is not stopped yet and 

 

 

That will be a MAC peculiarity, 4 is the default on Windows. Many sites reject Ping tests because they don't like acting like a free performance test punch bag for the world, given the default Mac behavior I now understand why ?

 

In your position I would run the Google speed test on a mobile phone first ensuring that mobile data is disabled and the phone is connected to your house WiFi.

[jack]

I moved from BT to Zen internet a couple of years ago and have been very happy. I ended up with them over A&A based on price. Both are well known for their high quality service.

 

We lost the internet a while ago (found out from the guy who came out to repair it that one of our neighbors had cut through a cable with a hedge trimmer!).  The communication with Zen internet, from reporting the fault through to its resolution, was excellent. I know from previous issues that BT would have been useless in this situation. I'm sure the fault would have been fixed as quickly, but the communication would have been terrible, and I'd have found that frustrating.

 

I think I pay £30 a month for unlimited FTTC, plus the cost of the landline. We're some way from the cabinet, so we only get about 30-32 meg download speed. They offer a faster option but we're too far from the cabinet for it to be effective. Still, we regularly have three screens streaming media at once without any issues.

[SteamyTea]

13 hours ago, Adsibob said:

guess it will stop at some power of 2

On a Linux machine I just control c it to stop.

Windows is a bit more polished and stops after 4 pings.

Try ping -c 4 google.com (or whoever)

[Adsibob]

I did a factory reset of my router (Rather than just an "unplug it at the mains for 10 sec") and this has fixed the ethernet cables not working.

I've also discovered that on my wife's user account on our mac, she has a lot of malware. I tried to remove it but struggled. So I wonder if that is in some way affecting browsing speed. It would make sense if the browser issue was only on her user account, but it's on both.

Once I fix the malware, I think the next step will be to buy a better router, rather than to switch to A&A or Zen. Interested to understand why Virgin can offer speeds that are so much faster than Zen or A&A. 

[Adsibob]

5 hours ago, jack said:

I moved from BT to Zen internet a couple of years ago and have been very happy. I ended up with them over A&A based on price. Both are well known for their high quality service.

 

We lost the internet a while ago (found out from the guy who came out to repair it that one of our neighbors had cut through a cable with a hedge trimmer!).  The communication with Zen internet, from reporting the fault through to its resolution, was excellent. I know from previous issues that BT would have been useless in this situation. I'm sure the fault would have been fixed as quickly, but the communication would have been terrible, and I'd have found that frustrating.

 

I think I pay £30 a month for unlimited FTTC, plus the cost of the landline. We're some way from the cabinet, so we only get about 30-32 meg download speed. They offer a faster option but we're too far from the cabinet for it to be effective. Still, we regularly have three screens streaming media at once without any issues.

Just had a look at Zen. Quite impressive that they offer to fix the price for life. In my area they offer up to 73Mbps (with a minimum of 45Mbps guaranteed) for £35 a month, which is the same as I'm paying Virgin for the superfast 200Mb package. How is the Zen router?

[jack]

25 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

Just had a look at Zen. Quite impressive that they offer to fix the price for life. In my area they offer up to 73Mbps (with a minimum of 45Mbps guaranteed) for £35 a month, which is the same as I'm paying Virgin for the superfast 200Mb package. How is the Zen router?

 

Not sure what they supply now, but at the time I signed up they offered a Fritzbox! of some sort. Pretty well regarded, and I had no issues with it for the short time I used it.

 

However, I took the opportunity to upgrade all my hardware while changing broadband supplier, so I now don't use the supplied router.

 

Not sure if I have some sort of signup code I can share for a discount - let me check.

[wozza]

I cant really compare to others, I have had Virgin since it was dial up (CableInet)

 

This was a test I just ran on mine:

 

[Adsibob]

3 minutes ago, wozza said:

I cant really compare to others, I have had Virgin since it was dial up (CableInet)

 

This was a test I just ran on mine:

 

Bloody hell. I thought mine was fast and yours is twice as fast!

[SteamyTea]

I just had a quick look up of the recommended download speed for 4K TV.

25 mbs.

 

How many 4K TVs are people watching at once.

[epsilonGreedy]

2 hours ago, Adsibob said:

Interested to understand why Virgin can offer speeds that are so much faster than Zen or A&A. 

 

 

They run their own alternative data cable network to your front door. The rest of us are on OpenReach and the limiting factor is the length of copper from doorstep to the nearest roadside cabinet.

[Adsibob]

2 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

They run their own alternative data cable network to your front door. The rest of us are on OpenReach and the limiting factor is the length of copper from doorstep to the nearest roadside cabinet.

thanks @epsilonGreedy that makes sense.

 

In other news, my browsing issue is definitely a malware issue. My mate came over with his laptop, nothing special, fairly old. We tried browsing from it, so much faster.

 

Any idea how to get rid of malware that bypasses Google when internet searching even though Google is selected as the default search engine. I have tried re-inputting the setting, but it just uses this awful search engine that is so inferior to google. 

[Temp]

Just for info we have FTTC from Plusnet and get around 9mS latency. My kids still complain.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Temp

[Temp]

16 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

In other news, my browsing issue is definitely a malware issue. My mate came over with his laptop, nothing special, fairly old. We tried browsing from it, so much faster.

 

Any idea how to get rid of malware that bypasses Google when internet searching even though Google is selected as the default search engine. I have tried re-inputting the setting, but it just uses this awful search engine that is so inferior to google. 

 

We mostly using Google Chrome as our web browser and have set Google.co.uk as the home page and default search engine.

 

For "protection" I've got Norton 360 and Windows Defender. You probably aren't meant to have both but I've not had any issues.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

I was always under the impression that the big selling point of an Apple products is that they are immune from viruses and malware. What all the disciples always said.

 

Learn something everyday.

Still, I am sure there is some free software that will sort it, there is for the other major OSs.