Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by SimonB79

These Torrent Bandits are probably the same people that leave their water taps running constantly and cause water shortages.

If you hadn't of said that I would have took you seriously.
Who leaves their taps running constantly?

---------- Post added at 10:34 ---------- Previous post was at 10:26 ----------

Originally Posted by TheDon

Actually setting up their own p2p network would be just about the best thing they can do. Internal traffic costs peanuts, p2p between customers on the same ISP would cut their costs dramatically.

They won't lose people because every other ISP is either already doing it, or will be in the future. You can go on about how o2 and be don't, but they will.

You can't use the excuse that every other ISP is either already doing it, or will be in the future.
Not every other ISP is already doing it, and not every other ISP will be doing it in the future.
the only ISP that wants to censor the internet is Virgin. and censoring the internet will lose them customers.
Berkett is an idiot. he thinks that he is the leading broadband supplier and he seems to think that changing what we can do on the internet is his role in life as an idiot.

[Toto]

Originally Posted by Gary

the only ISP that wants to censor the internet is Virgin. and censoring the internet will lose them customers.
Berkett is an idiot. he thinks that he is the leading broadband supplier and he seems to think that changing what we can do on the internet is his role in life as an idiot.

Your views on Berkett aside, can you please explain how giving a lower priority to p2p traffic over other traffic types is censoring?

For the record I don't disagree it will loose VM, or any other ISP customers, that's a given, and probably a partial goal too.

[Impz2002]

Originally Posted by SimonB79

(Its about time this was introduced.... people are killing the bandwidth by running torrent servers 24 / 7 and everyone else is suffering put em at the bottom of the pile that's what I say.) These Torrent Bandits are probably the same people that leave their water taps running constantly and cause water shortages.

I think that is a very uncompromising position to take. Bittorrent users have just as much right to their share of the bandwith and any shaping should be done equally so it is fair for everyone and dosnt just pick out certain protocols. Also this shaping should be controlled on the fly depending how much traffic there is on the network. if its 9pm and a quiet night I would like to see the throttling reduced or stopped if there is sufficient bandwith together.

I saw something somewhere about a US ISP that has a very good traffic management. Instead of having their speed reduced for a number of hours the system gave people who have not used their bandwith much priority over people who hit the trigger. but if there are only a few users on at a particular time nobody is shaped but if its really busy during peak hours the heaviest downloaders are pushed to the back of the queue for bandwith.

Impz

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Toto

Your views on Berkett aside, can you please explain how giving a lower priority to p2p traffic over other traffic types is censoring?

Speaking after Virgin Media announced its 50Mb/s super-fast broadband package, Berkett also branded as "naive" any of his rivals who think that they can keep increasing the speed of the connections they offer customers without also taking some responsibility for what those customers then do online, especially if they use their internet connection for illegal filesharing.

Berkett said dealing with illegal filesharing and using information about what customers do online in order to create better targeted online advertising are both issues that involve the emergence of a "digital conscience" within the industry.

Berkett, however, said calls for legislation to stop filesharing - as is being attempted in France - should not be heeded. Instead, customers will ultimately only change their behaviour when the content industry and the ISPs work together to create applications that mean people do not feel the need to illegally copy intellectual property.

"I think it is naive, to say the least, for a network provider on one hand to be talking about leading in next generation broadband and creating intelligence across their networks that ultimately they can monetise, and then (to be) sticking their head in the sand and saying they have no obligation to help in terms of (protecting) intellectual property," he said.

[Toto]

Still not seeing it as censoring, can you explain please?

[Impz2002]

Originally Posted by Toto

Still not seeing it as censoring, can you explain please?

I don't see the logic in calling this censoring its not like that at all !

[Richy99]

if you want to see censorship then look at be* with the iwf and acertain wikipedia page...

[General Maximus]

maybe discriminating would be a better word instead of censoring

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Richy99

if you want to see censorship then look at be* with the iwf and acertain wikipedia page...

Wasn't it the case with Virgin too?
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16569

---------- Post added at 11:16 ---------- Previous post was at 11:15 ----------

Originally Posted by General Maximus

maybe discriminating would be a better word instead of censoring

Ok, we'll use the word discriminating. but Berketts goal is to eventually censor. he has already said as much.

[Horace]

Most of my heaviest downloading comes from torrent sites, the rest from Usenet which is also mentioned. I'm well out of my original contract so I'll wait and see how bad things get before deciding to jump (including Phorm). There may not be many alternatives by that time and even then the overall effect of having a much lower maximum speed due to ADSL line length may be greater than VM's throttling.

[moroboshi]

Originally Posted by Toto

Your views on Berkett aside, can you please explain how giving a lower priority to p2p traffic over other traffic types is censoring?

For the record I don't disagree it will loose VM, or any other ISP customers, that's a given, and probably a partial goal too.

Censoring probably isn't the best word to use, but certainly Virgin will be an ISP with a very unbalanced, discriminatory, intrusive, restricted, and highly spied upon internet service.

The combination of very limiting download caps, difficult to avoid phorm spyware installation, over the top prices, and now the throttling of P2P makes Virgin look like pretty much the worst ISP around.

It's only the speed they're able to offer (if you live in the right areas) that makes them in any way appealing.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by comicbookguy

Amazing I pay them nearly £400 a year for my broadband and I'm not allowed to do what I want with it. it's bad enough we get traffic shaped at the moment but hammering down Torrent bandwidth too surely means we should get a rebate or a reduction in costs.

Just to put that into perspective, your £400 a year will pay for just over 1.5Mbps of external transit. Add on the costs of the equipment within VM's network, the cost of supporting it, the costs of the billing and support departments, and then think about that when you think you're not getting what you pay for.

Surely that means you should get billed for the bandwidth you use, or an increase in costs? Thought not.

Originally Posted by Gary L

You can't use the excuse that every other ISP is either already doing it, or will be in the future.
Not every other ISP is already doing it, and not every other ISP will be doing it in the future.

It's not an excuse, it's an explanation.

If after all I've said in this thread you can't see why all ISPs eventually need some control over the usage of their networks then you have a pretty blinkered and one sided view of the situation.

I'll repeat it again, it's simply NOT VIABLE to offer a truely unlimited service. The costs involved with providing transit out to the internet, the costs of the internal infrastructure, the costs of supporting it, are all far too high to ever beable to offer a truely unlimited service at residential broadband prices.

As such we have pseudo-unlimited service, where it's unlimited whilst price of service x number of subscribers x average bandwith used is less than the cost of providing that total bandwidth. Once average bandwidth used increases to make the cost of providing it higher than the revenue from the consumers you WILL see limits on all ISPs. There is no way Be, Sky, or O2 will provide you with a service at a loss, so once enough people are hammering it so as they can't make money on it, they will limit.

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by TheDon

Just to put that into perspective, your £400 a year will pay for just over 1.5Mbps of external transit. Add on the costs of the equipment within VM's network, the cost of supporting it, the costs of the billing and support departments, and then think about that when you think you're not getting what you pay for.

Surely that means you should get billed for the bandwidth you use, or an increase in costs? Thought not.

They dictate the prices. they tell us all these heavy uses we can do with it. infact they encourage it at the signup page. they keep throwing all this speed at us to tempt us to buy it. but at the end of the day they can't afford to do it really, and we should all stop doing anything with our connections but keep paying them the money because we feel sorry for them.

[HSp8]

I blame the BBC and their bloody iPlayer

why can't they just buy a newsgroup server to take the perssure off the network?

[Xan]

The only reason i am with VM is to download films, game, demos and so on at a cost of £25 a month if that goes i will move to sky and pay the same price and get a package off them with free internet or pay £10 slower speed but i get that with VM as i download at peak when i am on my comp.