Re: A few things on this

Ahhh... you mean for their Catch Up and Video on Demand stuff. I read your comment as meaning those OSes were being blocked from accessing the internet (my Um Bongo boxes connect happily via my 50Mb VM connection).

As I understand things that's because they can't implement DRM on those platforms. But as I don't use it I've not really looked into it (Yay for Couchpotato and Sickbeard with Newsgroups instead!).

Re: A few things on this

@Gareth. I thought was the whole point of them using a Flash player (it provides the DRM).

Not looked into Couchpotato or Sickbeard yet, but it is retarded in the extreme that I pay for a service and then have to go pirate to actually use the service. I wonder if that is a good defence in court?

Re: A few things on this

1) RDP is relatively mild in terms of bandwidth use. Fear not.

2/3) Using modem mode and your own router works just fine. You can then do whatever you want with your traffic,

4) Agreed!

5) I'm aware of no blocking of services; I've used pretty much every OS under the sun at home at one time or another. Ethernet is ethernet...

They don't block anything. I have probably run pretty much everything at home from Windows, my usual OS X, various Linux flavours, BSD and even SCO UNIX

Re: Missing the point

It is anoying though ... when i go home to find my game provider has released a 2GB update and i then know i have to sit and wait a bit longer ...

But really ... 2GB at anything above 50MB/s is 5 mins ... go boil a kettle !!!!

---------------------------------------

They used to (two days ago) throttle newsgroups and P2P far far more than that, I haven't managed to get firm info that they still wont be, all they have said is that p2p/nntp etc count towards your daily limit, they have not said as far as I can tell that they will now up the throttling of their p2p/nntp to the 50% throttling they have introduced to the the rest of their service.

Thing is, most users aren't experiencing what you are. I see your on 120, most aren't.

I was on the 50 service and received 49.9 24/7 whatever I was doing. They introduced traffic management and often it would go to a crawl, even without me hitting any limit.

I upgraded to 100. When they throttled nntp, it would often go down to download speed, giving me estimated times of 5.5 hrs for a 750MB file, then come 11:59 would spring back into life, I'd get the full speed and 60 secs later it was complete. I don't mind them managing p2p and nntp, but not down to the speeds I was getting.

Today on their super fast 100 service, here are a few speedtests I've just this second run.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1872972597.png

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1872977641.png

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1872979018.png

As you can see, under 4Mbps on my 100Mbps service. I haven't downloaded anything today either. This is exactly what happened when they put traffic shaping on my 50 service (and I did give them a few weeks to sort it out etc)

My area is not over subscribed etc.

Why should I pay for Virgins 100 service when for a LOT less I could have Skys unlimited service and still get where I live around 17Mbps totally unmanaged. Surely the whole point of paying for their top tier is so that the speed is there for those times I want it.

Re: Missing the point

As I have just posted in another part of this thread, Virgin have just confirmed that usenet/p2p is still being throttled like it was two days ago, to quote

"The P2P and Newsgroup management hasn't been changed. It still works the same way as it did"

Re: Missing the point

When my broadband was first installed i did that too.

I went to exactly the same site and ran the same speed test with similar results.

I rang them up with the same thought you have put across and explained that 4MB is clearly not 100MB.

At first I got passed about a bit but apparently there is a 100MB only support team and once i got through to them they agreed with me and remotely accessed my computer doing the same test on a private virgin box for speed tests.

Initially it got similar results, they flicked a few switches and the problem went away.

It seems that there are a few config changes they need to do on 50MB+ lines for them to work right, and they match these up with the frequency info on your VM router.

It's worth ringing them ... and if all else fails you have the right to drop the contract as the service is not within reasonable variance.

Re: Just athought

No what they are saying is, we advertised a 100 service knowing that most people that choose to pay the extra for the 100 service do so due to them being high bandwidth users.

But now, at peak times, the times we are likely to be using it, we are only going to be given 1/2 what we are paying/signed up for should we choose to do something like download a game from steam.

Again as has been posted elsewhere, if Virgin want to say that their network can handle 50Mbps to everyone with no throttling, I think most would be happy (providing they are paying for 50 and not 100) .

But they had throttling on their 50 service, now they are upgrading people to 100, all of a sudden we can all still expect to always get 50. It simply wont happen for the vast majority of us

Re: Just athought

yes your right ... senseless random ranting always helps any situation lol.

how would we be content otherwise.

Re: VPNs

They aren't excluded though. Too many people like me who didn't mind reasonable management on nntp, got sick of our 100Mbps lines dropping to 4kbps hence used VPN's to get our downloads at the normal speed.

I don't mind my few newsgroup downloads going at 1/4 speed. I don't expect a file that should take 2 mins to take 5.5 hrs

Re: VPNs

no matter how you look at this 4KB is not 50% of 100MB ...

Give them a call, demand a better service.

That is clearly not the intended functionality of this STM / other related stuff.

a 100mb/s line should give you 10MB/s down when not throttled and 5MB/s when throttled, if you are seeing something other than this you need to tell virgin to sort it out and if they wont legally you have the right to drop the contract under their terms and conditions.

Re: VPNs

no matter how you look at this 4KB is not 50% of 100MB ...

Give them a call, demand a better service.

That is clearly not the intended functionality of this STM / other related stuff.

------------------------------------

I have contacted Virgin and posted numerous comments on their forums about this.

The 50% reduction has nothing to do with newsgroups, as I have said in nearly every post in this thread, the 50% reduction is for everything else that wasn't previously managed .

Their traffic management on their newsgroups is completely separate to any other traffic management and the speed I get is correct according to them. Which is why numerous people ended up paying for VPNs, all said they wouldn't mind a decent restriction on newsgroups, but not down to download speeds.

Virgin would not give the exact figures but people were complaining of the same speeds as me.

All Virgin would say was point us to

"At peak times we also slow down the speed of file sharing traffic – that's services like Limewire, Gnutella, BitTorrent and Newsgroup (Usenet) traffic. You will, of course, still be able to use these services, but downloads and uploads will take longer during these peak periods"

not once did they say our speeds were unexpectedly slow.

IPlayer Bandwidth

I used to use IPlayer on my old connection before i moved ....

Could stream the "higher quality version" just ... and only just on a 2mb/s line.

Technically i'm on the 100MB package but according to my router it's currently connected at 120MB.

I'm not gonna complain.

Re: This is an IMPROVEMENT

i) Currently rolling out a charge-free doubling of bandwidth to all their customers

I don't mind this change too much as im on the 50mb (soon to be upgraded to 100mb) package so will still be at 50mb while throttled. I'm not so sure it is charge-free though as I think I got the doubling email in the same week I got a we are raising our prices email!

Re: This is an IMPROVEMENT

"VM are

i) Currently rolling out a charge-free doubling of bandwidth to all their customers"

It's not free, prices have gone up accordingly. Even VM aren't claiming it's free, merely doubled.

Re: This is an IMPROVEMENT

So the news is, their product is now much more attractive to the vast majority of users, leaving a small vocal minority of whiners who seem to think it's their right to monopolize an optical fibre so they can torrent media as fast as possible.

--------------------------------

I think you miss the point.

Those few times I do download from newsgroups (the last one being when my virgin TV box crashed and failed to record something I wanted to watch when I got in), I couldn't care less if they dropped the newsgroup speed to 10Mbps from 100.

Most people buy the 100 because they are high users.

Re-install windows, apply all the updates, maybe a service pack, re-install your software and apply the updates, chances are your already close to your limit.

Stream 15 mins of films in HD from Netflix (again one of the reasons many opt for the fastest speed) and you've already downloaded 800MB

Buy a new game such as Portal 2 from steam, it's 10/5GB download, again you hit your daily limit.

I paid for my 100 service so that the few times I need the speed it's there. Last week I had to rebuild my PC. I play Starwars online. That's a 20GB download by itself yet alone my CS4, Office, all my pro music software updates etc.

That's the first time this year I've downloaded anything large. Those few times that I do, I don't expect to be penalised for it, more that that , should I get home from work and hit the limit say at 8:30pm, I don't expect to be "fined" by having the limit applied for another 5 hrs, 4.5 of it after their management finishes for everyone else.

I am getting a bit sick and tired of people like yourself presuming that everyone who complains is torrenting 24/7. Last time I used torrent software was a few years ago because the makers of X-plane flight sim at the time, insisted on me doing so for my updates.

The internet has changed a lot on just the past year.

Streaming movies in HD is more and more becoming the norm.

Buying games and downloading is more and more becoming the norm.

Buying and downloading software is more and more becoming the norm.

I pay for my 100 service so that the times I buy a game that's 10 - 20GB ( not a weekly or even a monthly occurrence) , I can get it in a short period of time and be up and playing. Not being able to do that is a fair complaint in my opinion.

All that aside, if they couldn't provide their 50Mbps users with an unmanaged service, what makes you really thing that when everyone's upgraded to 100 they will suddenly magically now be able to give everyone a guaranteed 50.

Judging by all the slow speed complaints and youtube buffering complaints in both Virgins 50 and 100 forum sections (last week on the 100 service, I couldn't get more than 3Mbps for 2 days and they assure me my area is not over subscribed) , somehow I don't see them managing to provide what they now offer at all.

Just in case you don't know, the register report is wrong, P2P and newsgroups are managed in a completely different way and your lucky if you will get 5kbps, it's everything else that drops by 50% when you hit your limit.

Re: This is an IMPROVEMENT

Sorry to hear your not happy.

The hint is in the bit that reads "top 5% of users" the plan is to "add this type of thing" to those users packages to ensure that they are kept in check from what i understand.

It doesn't mean that the second you down more than 5GB during a peak time you will be treated like a criminal.

I do torrent, a lot ... last night over night i downloaded over 100GB via torrent.

My experience of the internet these days is that a correctly configured client on a correctly configured windows install connected to a correctly configured router on a correctly configured line is super rare and I have spent hours getting my line right.

I'm a software developer myself and at one point went to the extreme of downloading the source code for my torrent client so i could examine what it was doing as i thought i was being throttled.

Further examination reveals that actually your probably not as hard hit as you might think.

It's a learning curve for VM they wont always get it right ... look at microsoft and windows ... how often do they get it right ... before the Iphone when did apple ever release a massive product ... what has google really done for us since search?

if you're really being hit hard by this talk to virgin, i found that just being polite to the right person at the right time can often reveal some neat trick to get you some extra boost they dont really want you to know about at times (like the fact that im on a 100MB package with a 120MB connection at the moment)

Re: the traffic thats managed is everything

In reality they are selling an ever faster service when a lot of their network cant handle it. Most people would rather a 20 unmanaged unthrottled service than a promise of 100 that's constantly throttled. Took me 42 mins last night to download a 351mb file that's more than a 50% cut.

provided that VM hold up to the posted limits (and that is a big IF) then I would still prefer 100Mb throttled as it will be 50mb vs 20mb

Re: the traffic thats managed is everything

Yep I can see that. But as I just put in another reply, they had throttling on their 50 service and their forums were full of people not getting anywhere the advertised throttled speed.

Now they can miraculously provide 50 for everyone, no limits at all, including all the people they are in the process of upgrading to 100.

I personally don't see it.

I don't mind them advertising a 50 Mbit min service that when bandwidth allows can rise up to 100 but we're not guaranteed the 100. What I object to is signing up to 100, paying for the 100 and being offered 50 (which a heavy user will effectively end up getting a lot of the time).

I like many others only signed up to the 100 and paid the extra to do so as they introduced management on the 50.

Re: the traffic thats managed is everything

I agree it should be sold as a 50MB min service with up to 100MB possible.

Thats a problem with the industry though not VM

Re: As long as they publish their limits...

True. Where some people are having a problem is that they are under a 12 month contract and Virgin are saying that because the way their T&C is worded, the fact that they have never (for the last 10 years anyway) had management on their top tier except for monitoring p2p/usenet, its tough if anyone wants to leave their contracts early.

People are saying that they signed up for a service with no limitations and Virgin has now introduced ones that make the service not worth the money.

Personally, I'm out of contract and have just switched to Sky.

Totally unlimited, in Skys words I can hammer it as much as I want, bearing in mind with VM at peak times nntp was going slower than dial up on my 100 line.

VM, No call line identification on my phone line and no plans to do it in my area.

VM No Sky Atlantic

VM traffic management that makes my paying for 100 service pointless.

VM bill for my bb, Top TV package (no movies or sport), phone = £70.65 per month inc phoneline rental

Yesterday evening Sky gave me the following deal

all installation costs and phone activation costs waved.

Free netgear router.

Totally unlimited BB.

Top package (no movies or sports) yay I get Sky Atlantic

HD package (far far more HD channels than Virgin)

Call line identification working and included in my package

no minimum contract for TV, 12 months min for phone and BB

First 6 months for the lot inc line rental just £38.25 per month rising to £55.00 after that.

So for 6 months I save £32.40, then I save £15.65 a month, more HD channels, better phone service and I can download a 20 min TV show in under 5 hours at peak time.

I warned Virgin numerous times that I'm not paying for a 100 service if I don't get to use it as and when I need it (such as the 20GB star wars game I recently had to download). Still around £90 with calls they've lost. If their top tier had no traffic management, I would have remained a customer.

As I keep telling the Register, they have the report wrong. NNTP and P2P traffic management hasn't changed, when it kicks in it's still at dial up speeds, the new traffic management introduced yesterday cuts everything else down to 50% of your speed and has zero to do with newsgroups or p2p.

Well that's not quite true. anything you download now from newsgroups/P2P will count towards your daily limit for non P2P/newsgroup stuff, so when you hit your limit, your normal usage will be dropped by 50%. In addition as you have found out, whenever the P2P /newsgrouop management kicks in, it will drop to dial up type speeds. Which is what I keep telling others on this thread who have been mislead by the report on the Registers page to believe that when the limit is reached, newsgroups/P2P are dropped to 50%.

I've sent a note to the registers correction department,

The fact that this is implied, also makes the Registers poll null and void, I would have voted it a good deal if we hit a limit and just newsgroups were dropped 50%.

I've had estimates of 5.5 hrs to download a 750MB file over the past few weeks on Virgins 100 service, come midnight or if I used a VPN, I got the full speed and it took a couple of mins.

Of course their new system means all data is counted so a VPN will still kick in the 50% slowdown, but does that mean that with a VPN we still get to download at 50Mbps from newsgroups? I'm sure someone will test it soon.