The current maximum speeds for the Virgin Media broadband services are:

Most customers who connect to the broadband service through a set top box can only connect at a maximum download speed of 1Mb/s. If you wish to change to a cable modem and take advantage of the higher speeds, please contact Customer Services (Contact numbers).

There are many speed tests, of varying accuracy, available on the Internet. However, a simple way to test your connection is to download four or more files simultaneously (one file downloaded will not usually use the full bandwidth you have available) from a UK mirror of such sites as: http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/demos/, http://www.tucows.com or http://fuller.zen.co.uk/test/ and then adding up the average transfer speed for each individual file. For example, if you are currently connected to the  XL  service, this equates to up to 20480Kb/s (kilobits per second) or 2560KB/s (kilobytes per second) for downloading, and the upload speed is "up to" 768Kb/s or 96KB/s. On top of this, you should deduct around 10% for overhead data transfer. Internet Explorer normally reports transfer rates in KB (kilobytes per second). Please remember also, that the Internet is only as fast as its slowest link. This means that, if you are on the Virgin Media  XL  service and you are trying to download a file from the USA, you are then reliant on the ISP's network in the region of the service you have connected with, and that their servers are able to supply you with the full  XL  speeds.

If Windows XP will not allow you to download more than two files at once, go to the Microsoft Knowledge base for instructions of how to overcome this limitation or you could use two separate browsers i.e. Internet Explorer & Firefox or you could download XP-Antispy that can change the limit to 10 by ticking a box.

The typical speeds (not under traffic management [See Q44 below]) you should look for are:

If, after completing the speed test example above, you are still not receiving your full download speed, then there are a few more checks you can complete. Please check your Network Interface Card (NIC or Ethernet card) or, if you have one, any home network equipment, making sure it has a fully rated 10/100baseT port avail ab el to the Internet. Some older network cards and routers only have a 10Mb/s port, and these are not fast enough to transfer the data that is being downloaded. This gives the appearance that you are not connecting at the correct speed. You may also see this issue if you connect the modem to your computer using the Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection. Please try connecting your modem to your computer using a Broadband Network Interface Card, using a CAT5 (RJ45) cable, and after confirming that your network card and any other equipment does have the 10/100baseT standards outlined above. This should greatly improve your download speed.

It might be helpful to try disabling your firewall and running the speed tests from Q3 again. This will see if your firewall settings are causing the speed issues.

In addition if you currently have a modem that is not capable of providing your full service speed you might need to change it, please see Q10 below for further details.

You may also be able to improve your speed by changing your MTU settings, take a look at http://www.speedguide.net/ for instructions.

Check for service problems at http://status2.virginmedia.com/ if nothing is reported, technical support will be able to investigate your issue further for you. If you contact technical support using the Help & Support Forum or by email, the following list of information will help Virgin Media to diagnose your issue promptly. Please close as many applications on your machine as possible before completing these tests, as this helps to give the most accurate results. Virgin Media would also ask that you disconnect any home networking equipment you have and only connect directly to the cable modem with a single computer before continuing these tests

Please post the details of:

Open your web browser and type http://192.168.100.1 (see Q38 if you encounter problems displaying this page) into the address bar and click the Go button or press the Enter key on your keyboard. This will bring up your modem configuration pages where you can find your modem logs and signal levels. You will need to switch OFF any proxy you may have set in your web browser, or this may cause these pages not to be displayed properly.

If you are asked to enter a userid and password, try root for both or admin for both.

At this time, many websites are not built to cope with multiple connections from high-speed broadband users, and they frequently limit the speed of information that they are sending out. Until this level of high-speed broadband is more commonplace, you may see what looks like a slow connection when downloading from many websites. This is not an issue with your Virgin Media service, which does fully support its advertised speeds.

Please visit here to determine if your current modem is able to provide you with the full broadband service speed you subscribe to.

If you go to the Virgin Media General Internet Tools page, you can find the information at the bottom of the page directly after Client Host Name: A description of the information shown can be found here.

Ex-ntl customers might want to take a look here

The failures are software upgrades to the modem. These upgrades are made available to all modems, but your modem make and/or model does not need it.

Example:

The use of a download manager such as Free Download Manager, GetRight, FreshDownload, DAP etc... will manage your download by opening more than one connection to a server thus maximizing your download speed. Using a download manager will also help when performing speed tests as it will automatically combine the speeds of several connections. Check here for information on download managers.

First make sure you have power cycled your modem (turn it off at the mains then back on again). If you have and still the speed stays the same, you can phone Customer Services (Contact numbers). They should be able to push the upgrade through for you whilst you're on the phone to them.

This only works for Windows XP.

First download XP-Antispy from www.softpedia.com

Using XP-Antispy, in the "Special" menu at the top, choose "Connection limit..." then patch to at least 50 connections, then go to the "Internet explorer 6" section and make sure that "Increase MaxConnectionsPerServer to 10" is ticked. Re-boot your computer and you should hopefully now be able to download more files at a time.

An 802.11b NIC/Router is not fast enough to drive a WiFi 10Mb/s+ connection to its full speed, you will get well under 7Mb/s. If you want to get the full  L  and higher service speeds (see Q1 for current speeds) you will have to ensure that your wireless NIC's and/or wireless router are capable of at least 54Mb/s (802.11g).

Some older routers only have a 10BaseT WAN port (the port that you plug your broadband modem in to) these routers will not be able to pass the full bandwidth to the LAN ports. You will need a router that has a 100BaseT or better WAN port.

Please check with your routers documentation or manufacturers website for confirmation of the WAN port speed.

Transferring your connection is dependant upon how you connect the cable modem to the computer.

Requests via selfcare can take up to 48 hours to action and you should be notified by email when the change has been done. Once notified you should power cycle your modem (switch it off then back on) to pick up the new configuration file. You can then test your speed using methods mentioned elsewhere in this F•A•Q.

No. The requirement to register your MAC address of your Network card (NIC) and/or Broadband router was dropped some time ago. The MAC address of the modem is now used and this is done automatically.

If after a power cut the send and receive lights are flashing on your modem you might find that the modem had lost the downstream frequency value from its configuration. Follow the procedure below:

If you have a "Webstar" modem, enter http://192.168.100.1/gscan.htm or http://192.168.100.1/gscan.asp
Some modem use http://192.168.100.1/P_setfreq.asp
The modem should now connect correctly. If the value was already set to 331000000, 339000000, 330750000, 402750000, 586750000 or the above links do not work for your modem, then you will need to contact Customer Services (Contact numbers).

If you are cancelling just the broadband and NOT the TV service, you must contact customer support and they will send you a box for you to return your modem.

However, if you are cancelling TV and broadband and engineer will be dispatched to disconnect the services and reclaim the TV set-top-box he will also take the modem at this time.

This is the speed your Network card (NIC) is talking to your modem/router. This is not the speed your modem talks to the Internet at.

Your modem speed to the Internet will still be 10Mb/s, 20Mb/s or 50Mb/s depending on the service you subscribe to.

No, and currently there are no plans to provide this service.

You can use domain forwarding to point to your PWP webspace, if your domain provider has this feature.

From time to time Virgin Media do trials of new Internet speeds without informing its users. These trial last from a few minutes to a few days.

Also there are rare times when the modems configuration gets corrupted and unlocks the speed limit of the modem, these errors are usually corrected by Virgin Media automatically.

Just enjoy the speed increase whilst is lasts.

The @blueyonder.co.uk, @ntlworld.com & @virgin.net email addresses will be available after the re branding There are no plans to remove them in the foreseeable future.

Before Virgin Media makes @virginmedia.com email addresses available, they'll send you an email giving you all the information you need, and letting you know if there's anything you need to do. You'll still be able to keep the old addresses you've been using, or get a Virgin Media address, or both - the choice is yours!

When issuing the command: PING blueyonder.co.uk the response you will get will look like this:

The reason this happens is because the blueyonder servers are set to ignore ICMP requests. Try pinging www.bbc.co.uk. At the moment it also looks like you can also PING virginmedia.com

When you boot your computer the network adapter will pick up an IP address from Virgin Media's DHCP server. You will normally get a short lease (an hour?). At the end of the lease you get another lease, this time much longer (a day?) However sometimes if you have a firewall in place, or there is some other problem, you don't get the lease renewed.

You should copy the output from both and send to Virgin Media support. They may ask for the output from the cable modem logs etc... as mentioned elsewhere in this F•A•Q.

The interesting information is:

If you add a new router you have to reset the cable modem. The best way to do this is to power off all equipment wait for 2 minutes then power on again as follows:- cable modem, router, computer, waiting for 2 minutes after each one.

The size of your basic webspace allocation has increased from 30MB to 55MB but there was no announcement for this change. Also it has been discovered that the advanced webspace is also being increased from 100MB to 200MB.

The 2 tier system that was operated prior to the re branding has been abandoned though those paying the extra £4.00 per month will still be provided with the extra features and still. be charge the monthly amount. Customers will no longer be able to sign up to tier 2.

The incoming ports that are being blocked are as follows:

Also during large scale virus attacks that are targeting specific ports, these ports may also be temporarily blocked until the attacks subside.

If any mailbox is not logged into by a customer for 90 days, the mailbox will be reduced from its 30MB to 2MB in size and any emails cleared out.  The account is emailed at this first 90 day mark advising that the mailbox will be re sized and cleared.

If the mailbox is not logged into for a further 90 days, the mailbox will be closed, and any aliases will be returned to the pool. The main mailbox, e.g. abcd12345 or ab123c4567, will not be deleted, but the aliases would be removed.  This gives a total of 180 days before the aliases are deleted.

An email alias that is assigned to your PWP will not be affected by the above.

Virgin Media Technical Support work from 8am to 10pm, 7 days a week.

If you require support out side these hours then phone Customer Services (Contact numbers).

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (32bit), Basic (32bit) and Ultimate (32bit) are supported by the technical support teams.

Click here for the Virgin Media information on Microsoft Windows Vista.

For fully supported operating systems please see Q35.

The supported operating systems are:

Take a look here for more details.

Once you have cancelled all of your Virgin Media services and your account is closed, all of your mailboxes will be deleted along with your PWP.

Fixed IP addresses are not available to Virgin Media residential customers. All IP addresses are dynamically allocated.

You can get some of the features of a fixed IP address by using a Dynamic Hosting service such as: dyndns or no-ip

Sometimes when you enter http://192.168.100.1 into your web browser the page is not displayed. You may be able to get the page to work again by doing one or more of the tasks below:

If your IP address changes, and you then have problems accessing a Web site, it may be a known issue.

Sometimes when Virgin Media are issued with a new range of IP addresses they may get a range that are flagged as unused, these addresses are put into a special filter list on some servers so that you cannot connect to them. Look here for more information.

If you are affected by this then you will need to contact support to have the IP address range removed from the filter lists.

At the moment Virgin Media do not, but watch this space.

Preston, Blackpool and Wigan, are usually used for trials. Ashford, Dover and Folkestone have been used in the past for the 50MB service trial.

At this time Virgin Media do not have any plans to introduce usage caps, though they have implemented Traffic Management across the entire network, see Q43 & Q44 below for more details.

Virgin Media plans to introduce application-specific restrictions this year (2009) to target BitTorrent users. Such a move would mark a significant departure from its current policy of application-agnostic throttling.

If you are a cable internet user, please visit http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php for help with this issue.

ADSL users should check out: Virgin Media ADSL FAQ

See Q44 below.

STM is the way Virgin Media restrict the speed of your service if you go over certain upload/download thresholds at various times of the day. Please visit http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php for more information.

Yes they have newsgroup servers available to ALL their broadband users.

The server address is news.virginmedia.co.uk

The internal newsgroups will shortly be replaced by a web forum: http://community.virginmedia.com/

There have bee some Usenet groups set up in the free.virginmedia.* hierarchy to mirror the ones that virginmedia use to supply internally on their own servers, now everyone has access and not just VirginMedia customers. See Q47 below, for more info.

Yes there are many available but as some are quite new (as of 23/03.2010) you might have to get them added to your preferred server. news.albasani.net is one free server that carries the new groups.

The groups are as follows:

Though it looks rude, it is not. FU actually stands for follow-up. A follow-up is set when a thread goes off-topic and the rest of the discussion is sent to another more relevant newsgroup. Please consult your news client for instructions on how to set follow-ups (followup-to).

You will usually see something like the examples below placed at the bottom of a post that has follow-up set.

If your modem has one, you may have accidentally pressed the standby button on the front of the modem.

When the modem is in standby the LED's will light up briefly the all switch off, even when you first power the modem on.

The standby button is used to stop the network traffic from the modem to the computer it has the same result as physically removing the CAT5 or USB cable from the computer. Also the LED's on the front of the modem are switched off.

PCGuard will only work from a Virgin Media internet connection:

"You must be a Virgin Broadband subscriber for PCguard to work, and you need to be connected to the Virgin Broadband network. PCguard will not work while you are connected on another ISP's network. It will start to work again once you reconnect to Virgin Broadband." Source

This means if you have a notebook (or any mobile computer with PCGuard installed) that you use outside your house on a public WiFi connection, or any other non-Virgin Media connection, you will not be protected.