Virgin Media start throttling "heavy" users.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 3rd, 2007, 23:02

Virgin Media wrote:We don't like traffic jams

Here at Virgin Media, we want all our customers to get the best service possible from their broadband. That means speedy downloads for all users – not just a few.

When someone is downloading a particularly large amount of information over a long period of time, it can slow down the internet speed for other users who might just be checking their email or browsing online. So to make sure our service is fair for everybody, we sometimes moderate the speeds during peak times (4pm till midnight) for customers who are downloading an unusually large amount at these times.

This ensures that the service doesn't get blocked up with people using more than their fair share – which means a lot fewer traffic jams on the information superhighway.
Will my download speed be affected?

Your speed won't be moderated unless you're in the top 5% of downloaders. Our boffins recently ran a trial to see how much our service was being affected. They discovered that, in certain areas, just 5% of customers were downloading such a large amount of content that it was affecting the service for other users in these areas.

And we're not talking about just a few video clips. In some cases the top 5% of users were downloading as much as 3GB, just during peak times. That's around 750 music tracks in the space of a few hours.

So, unless you're downloading an unusually large amount of information at peak times, we won't restrict your service and you can download to your heart's content.

More Info

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 3rd, 2007, 23:10

This is moderately worrying as they don't say if the limits are daily or monthly.

Either way, looks like they're doing the same as plusnet did (with peak time and such) if you're lucky they won't try to throttle P2P etc separately, that really fucks stuff up.

Also, Task Scheduler FTW

Post by **FatherJack** » May 3rd, 2007, 23:27

3GB is fuck all, although most of mine happens off-peak. It worries me as I'm thinking of using them.

What the point of having 10M, or even the rumoured 50M from them if they're going to cap it? Might as well stick with slower uncapped and wait a bit longer. Why advertise what you cannot provide?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 3rd, 2007, 23:39

FatherJack wrote:3GB is fuck all, although most of mine happens off-peak. It worries me as I'm thinking of using them.

Depends, 3Gb monthly is absolutely fuck all. but 3gb a day is loads for peak time, which makes the numbers quite worrying and makes me assume it's 3GB/mo.

Post by **FatherJack** » May 3rd, 2007, 23:56

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:Depends, 3Gb monthly is absolutely fuck all. but 3gb a day is loads for peak time, which makes the numbers quite worrying and makes me assume it's 3GB/mo.

I meant daily, CoH is 2.2G and I grabbed that yesterday overnight. My beef is their advertising touts "unlimited" all over the place, if want to download a DVD's worth - I'll have it in 60 minutes at 10M when I want it, thanks - if they can't promise that, I'll keep what I've got and wait 22 hours for it.

The latency I get currently is tough to beat with anyone, so it's only really greedy impatience on those game patches, plus perhaps being able to run a radio show while gaming that makes me think of looking around.

To clarify: I normally want stuff quickly in their peak hours. If I have to schedule stuff to run between 12am and 4pm to avoid hitting their cap, it misses my gaming "window" and is therefore no different than kicking it off at 12am and coming back at 4pm when it's only just finished at 512k. I still have to wait a day before I get the chance to use it.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 4th, 2007, 0:06

FatherJack wrote:I meant daily, CoH is 2.2G and I grabbed that yesterday overnight. My beef is their advertising touts "unlimited" all over the place, if want to download a DVD's worth - I'll have it in 60 minutes at 10M when I want it, thanks - if they can't promise that, I'll keep what I've got and wait 22 hours for it.

True, I suppose it depends if they average it out or if it's a daily limit. ~90gb/mo is a fair bit, but if you get traffic-raped for downloading stuff, legit or otherwise

FatherJack wrote:The latency I get currently is tough to beat with anyone, so it's only really greedy impatience on those game patches, plus perhaps being able to run a radio show while gaming that makes me think of looking around.

Latency is a funny one, I find doesn't make much difference to me providing it's stable and not losing too many badgers etc. but slow downloads would send me wrong.

Post by **Joose** » May 4th, 2007, 7:06

I dunno, reads to me like they mean daily. im sure its more than the top 5% of thier 10meg users that hit more than 3G a month, whereas only the more technically geeky are likely to be hitting 3G between 4pm and midnight.

Unless you think that only the top 5% of people on a 2 meg connection hit 350meg a month

Personally, im not overly surprised/bothered. 4pm till midnight is generally when I wan't to use my computer for gaming and such, so downloads big enough to make them throttle my connection tend to only happen either during the day (when im at werk) or overnight (when they can throttle me if they want, I dont care if it takes 6 hours to download something that should be done in an hour. Im asleep.)

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » May 4th, 2007, 8:20

Joose wrote:Personally, im not overly surprised/bothered. 4pm till midnight is generally when I wan't to use my computer for gaming and such, so downloads big enough to make them throttle my connection tend to only happen either during the day (when im at werk) or overnight (when they can throttle me if they want, I dont care if it takes 6 hours to download something that should be done in an hour. Im asleep.)

This. I'm on 2meg with them at the moment but download a fair amount each week. Most of my downloading gets kicked off when I go to bed, and stopped when I get back from work the next day so I can use the internet again, so the peak hours are the least likely time for me to be whoring the bandwidth. I'd be interested to know how much I do download a month, but don't want to ask them in case they look too closely at what I've been downloading and how.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 4th, 2007, 8:29

To be honest, if it just stays as a bandwidth limit, it'll be fine, a little annoying, but fine.

But, what plusnet (and I think a few other ISPs) did was introduce bandwidth limits, then soon after added traffic shaping*, which is fucking terrible for gaming.

*Inspecting every packet not on pre-set ports to work out what priority it gets, pretty much killing gaming outside of arbitrarily select port ranges.

Also. Bethere FTW.
Uptime: 10 days, 12:32:56
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,274 / 7,444
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [GB/GB]: 29.20 / 139.84

amblin · Post by **amblin** » May 4th, 2007, 8:57

ellachen · Post by **ellachen** » May 4th, 2007, 9:01

I never really trusted virgins!

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » May 4th, 2007, 9:45

I'll have to bear this in mind when I switch from Plus.net. I was going to go for VM but not so sure now. Although they are still probably the best option for me.

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » May 4th, 2007, 10:59

hmm, hopefully won't effect myself too much, but it's not like I've got an option really, keep my 6meg line, or drop to 512k with BT (yes, I happen to live at a faaabulous distance away from the bt exchange.

Still, tis a bit shit really.

pixie pie · Post by **pixie pie** » May 4th, 2007, 16:50

This is just fucking stupid on their part. Superfast broadband is the one thing they can trump any ADSL offers on at all. And to make it limited brings a mockery of the best thing they can offer. They're complaining about Sky being silly with their dominant position in television, when they're chucking it away doing something like this.

I can see where they're coming from, but I think they could be a bit more subtle about it. They're targetting themselves at "Joe Average" checks his emails twice a day types (Those who don't need superfast broadband basically).

cheeseandham · Post by **cheeseandham** » May 4th, 2007, 19:42

I was very worried when I saw this thread, I've been a premium Telewest line holder since they pretty much offered their cable service, and always been happy with them.
I'm still slightly annoyed that they've put limits, but the limits are per day from the link that Berk posted, the limits are measured per day and measured between 4pm till midnight. I do understand why they're doing it at the end of the day. Bandwidth is not free.

So:-
a) if you're sweeping, sweep between midnight to 4pm.
b) if you do hit it, your speed gets halved for 4 hours

As far as traffic limits go, they're not as bad as I've seen some other providers. For instance Demon still advertise themselves as "unlimited" and yet a customer hit a 60Gb unadvertised limit and had their speed throttled to 128kbit for over a month! If I could have been bothered I'd have reported them the Trading Standards.

Post by **FatherJack** » September 4th, 2007, 18:37

Been finding out some more from current customers.

They've now doubled their top speed to 20M, and while they've increased their mysterious, undocumented "allowance" - they haven't actually doubled it. This led to some consternation among users, as it basically meant they'd just hit the limit faster.

There are noises that the worst offenders speeds are not halved, but throttled to around 512k - but with the agreement that this is then truly unlimited.

It still seems the best solution for me, even though it should properly be advertised as "20M burst speed", as the alternative is 16M* ADSL, or - as we've been vocalising today - "sixteen meg star". Where the star means anything from "not really" to "only if you live within 1m of an exchange and your line was put in in the last few weeks".

At least cable's 20M is really 20M, or at least it's only a broken modem or contention issues which can prevent it being 20M.

Still no news on the rumoured 50M, any ideas that the biggest users have been "invited" to trial it are probably wishful thinking, as it's clearly their capacity that's an issue for them.

Why do I care? The LoTRO client, for example is 5GB. Pretty much anyone interested in modern games is going to download 3GB "in the space of a few hours" at some time, that "750 music tracks" analogy is just stupid.

I might have to look into a way to trickle news downloading though - that sustained max out of internet connections that it does is sure to get one noticed.

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » September 7th, 2007, 17:42

what annoys me most about virgin at the moment is their package structure: 2mb, 4mb, 20mb

Why such a massive leap? I'm on 2mb at the moment and thinking of upgrading, but i think that even 4 might not really be enough sometimes, like when sweeping large files, however i don't think i can justify the cost of 20mb, when i won't be using it all the time, even if i start hosting loads of large games on xbox live.

Why can't they offer an 8mb package, or even 10? Presumably with cable the only thing limiting the speed is a 'switch' on their system, defining what a particular account is paying for, surely it wouldn't be much bother to them to introduce another level of service, somewhere between 4 and 20mb

Post by **FatherJack** » September 7th, 2007, 18:38

Their 20Mb option was a free upgrade from 10Mb, word is they'll be doubling the others for free sometime too.

thewombleofdeath · Post by **thewombleofdeath** » September 7th, 2007, 19:01

The Incredible... wrote:what annoys me most about virgin at the moment is......

everything!

my tv has gone crap lately with it sometimes not turning on properly, and once it does, it doesnt show listings and then eventually goes black again

<b>and</b>
internet is being throttled and as incredible said, there is no middle choice like 10 or 12 megs or anything

im thinking of swapping to sky tv and possibly getting their internet service with it because virgin IMO is really not up to scratch like telewest used to be

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » September 7th, 2007, 19:04

thewombleofdeath wrote:im thinking of swapping to sky tv and possibly getting their internet service with it because virgin IMO is really not up to scratch like telewest used to be

from what I've heard sky interweb isn't much better