Peak Time Latency Strikes Part of Virgin Media’s UK Network UPDATE2

Some broadband customers on UK ISP Virgin Media’s (VMO2) fixed line network are reporting a noticeable increase in peak time latency – usually between around 5:30pm and 11pm, which appears to have begun at around the end of last week. This can see latency times become very slow (double or more vs the usual baseline).

Latency is a measure of the time that it takes for a packet of data to travel from your computer to a remote server and then back again (ping). The delay is usually measured in milliseconds (e.g. 1000ms = 1 second) and modern broadband connections will often have an average latency of anything from around c.5ms to 40ms (what is normal for your connection will depend on lots of different factors – see below)

A lower score (shortest time) is always best for latency, although the times can be affected by various things, such as the performance of remote internet servers, the connection technology being used, network congestion at your ISP, peering / routing problems and the setup of your own home network etc.

Complaints about latency spikes and surges are of course nothing new in this market, which makes it difficult to spot whether something is reflective of a growing trend or merely related to an isolated incident in a particular part of the country. But since the weekend we have received a number of emails about this, and some seemingly related topics can be found on Virgin Media’s Community Forum (examples here, here and here).

Consumers don’t always notice problems with latency unless they’re using applications that are more likely to be impacted by it, such as while playing fast-paced online video games or making time sensitive live video calls or streaming broadcasts. Suffice to say, we have seen a small but noticeable up-tick in complaints from such groups, which has now been confirmed by data from Thinkbroadband’s network monitoring tools (here).

We contacted Virgin Media about this during the early afternoon and are still awaiting their response. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

UPDATE 14th April 2022 @ 11:17pm

We’ve had an update from Virgin Media.

A Virgin Media spokesperson said:

“We’ve investigated the reports and found no issues with latency on our network. It appears the erroneous reports were the result of how traffic was being routed to ThinkBroadband’s monitoring tool, which has now been resolved.”

UPDATE 6th May 2022 @ 10:04am

After chasing, the operator has provided an updated statement.

A Virgin Media spokesperson said:

“We’ve now determined the root cause of the issue and can confirm that it’s an issue exclusively impacting traffic passing through an interconnect from our network to the ThinkBroadband server site.

General traffic on our network is not impacted and as a result, the TB BQM is not reporting accurate latency data for Virgin Media customers right now. Whilst we’re looking to address this, we recommend that customers use the SamKnows RealSpeed application or Ookla’s Speedtest.net’s ping test if they wish to check their latency or network performance.”

In response, Andrew Ferguson OBE of Thinkbroadband, said: “It is good that Virgin Media has identified the root cause but we are not happy with the spokesperson appearing to suggest that the BQM is not accurate, it most definitely is accurate and was reflecting the state of all the links between the BQM systems and the customers router. Similar with the speed test we have always run that in a state that will highlight speed issues for individuals rather than trying to counter congestion by opting for a closer server or adding more download/upload links to compensate.”