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Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users
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Old 17-12-2008, 19:18   #151
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

Has this not happened already ?

I'm not a heavy torrent user - occasionally download but when I do I open up a 1000 connections.

Thought I'd kick off a few downloads today and hit 14mbps down with torrents - 800 connections but at 5pm I got whacked bad by Virgin media - 40% packet loss.

It felt like being capped by the dropping packets. My home connection is basically unusable now.
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Old 17-12-2008, 19:54   #152
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

Broadbandings - "Serving a group of customers with 200Mbit downstream and 8.8Mbit or best case 27Mbit upstream doesn't make for a nice ratio if it only takes 3 / 8 customers uploading full whack, seeding a torrent for example, to degrade service for everyone else, 10, 20 and 50Mbit alike"


This is what really bugs me. They have supposedly been upgrading their network yet if they can't even make sure more than 5 customers gets the actual 50*1.75 what is the point of even offering it? They would be better off not wasting everyones time and just leave us with 20mbit till they are actually in position to deliver what they are advertising. I am not saying that i expect full speed 100% of the time but i would say at least 70% of the time and if they know the network is going to be congested during certain times of the time and week they need to act accordingly and plan their upgrades around making sure that the numbers of customers can receive X amount of bandwidth during those peak times. They had might as well advertise 200mbit*27mbit because "in theory" i can receive that if i was the only person using it.
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Old 17-12-2008, 20:10   #153
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

Quote:
Originally Posted by General Maximus View Post
Broadbandings - "Serving a group of customers with 200Mbit downstream and 8.8Mbit or best case 27Mbit upstream doesn't make for a nice ratio if it only takes 3 / 8 customers uploading full whack, seeding a torrent for example, to degrade service for everyone else, 10, 20 and 50Mbit alike"


This is what really bugs me. They have supposedly been upgrading their network yet if they can't even make sure more than 5 customers gets the actual 50*1.75 what is the point of even offering it? They would be better off not wasting everyones time and just leave us with 20mbit till they are actually in position to deliver what they are advertising. I am not saying that i expect full speed 100% of the time but i would say at least 70% of the time and if they know the network is going to be congested during certain times of the time and week they need to act accordingly and plan their upgrades around making sure that the numbers of customers can receive X amount of bandwidth during those peak times. They had might as well advertise 200mbit*27mbit because "in theory" i can receive that if i was the only person using it.
Considering that it takes 2 20Mbit customers to saturate a network segment at the moment, and even on my future 120Mbit service not even 2 customers to saturate the network, it's not that bad.

They advertise it that way because it's statistically unlikely that enough people will be downloading at full speed to cause issues at any one time.

Never consider broadband networks by their actual contention ratio but by apparent contention. Contention of 150:1 is fine so long as the bandwidth isn't filled up, likewise in some areas 20:1 wouldn't be good enough.

I have a 20Mbit service, there are 400 people of various levels of service sharing 38Mbit, and on average the usage tops out at 26Mbit. I saturate it if I download a bit at peak times, but then that's what STM is for.

VM budget I think about 128kbps per modem at peak times, which appears to work ok in my area's case.
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Old 17-12-2008, 21:43   #154
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

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Linux distros my ARSE... dodgy porn & pirate software more like
Although i dont do the dodgy porn & pirated software thing myself i do download the odd Linux distro but i could never quite understand those who give "Linux Distro`s" as a reason for the 100`s of GB`s they admit to downloading every month.
Even if someone did the top 100 on Distrowatch every month it would still be far less than just the 100GB`s.

Quote:
Damn,thats the 98th time i`ve downloaded teh Linux but this MD5 thingy still keeps failing......better try again
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Old 17-12-2008, 21:52   #155
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

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Originally Posted by xpod View Post
Although i dont do the dodgy porn & pirated software thing myself i do download the odd Linux distro but i could never quite understand those who give "Linux Distro`s" as a reason for the 100`s of GB`s they admit to downloading every month.
Even if someone did the top 100 on Distrowatch every month it would still be far less than just the 100GB`s.
Obviously not, but the point is that legitimate users will be hurt, not just pirates.

As for connections, my global limit is 450 within my client, so I can't be hammering things that badly
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Old 17-12-2008, 22:00   #156
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

One of these days they'll make their minds up. First its classed as Unlimited broadband, then they start capping you when you download too much. But they're still able to advertise as Unlimited downloads. Then they say don't download illegal music and movies, but they can't and won't do anything to people who do that except give them a friendly warning.

Now they say they are going to go after the users who use Torrents.

Now I've just been looking at their home site advertising the 50MB broadband and couldn't believe what I saw.

Take a look. Thats telling me a whole different story.
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Old 17-12-2008, 22:04   #157
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

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Originally Posted by highroyds View Post
One of these days they'll make their minds up. First its classed as Unlimited broadband, then they start capping you when you download too much. But they're still able to advertise as Unlimited downloads. Then they say don't download illegal music and movies, but they can't and won't do anything to people who do that except give them a friendly warning.

Now they say they are going to go after the users who use Torrents.

Now I've just been looking at their home site advertising the 50MB broadband and couldn't believe what I saw.

Take a look. Thats telling me a whole different story.
You do realise that the are legitimate download sites such as I-Tunes out there and that is the type of site they will mean.
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Old 17-12-2008, 22:15   #158
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

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Originally Posted by whydoIneedatech View Post
You do realise that the are legitimate download sites such as I-Tunes out there and that is the type of site they will mean.
Yeh. while it looks like they're telling the thieves and pirates why they should have it. they're actually talking to the law abiding people out there.

they don't even want the thieves and pirates
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Old 17-12-2008, 22:19   #159
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

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Originally Posted by highroyds View Post
One of these days they'll make their minds up. First its classed as Unlimited broadband, then they start capping you when you download too much. But they're still able to advertise as Unlimited downloads. Then they say don't download illegal music and movies, but they can't and won't do anything to people who do that except give them a friendly warning.

Now they say they are going to go after the users who use Torrents.

Now I've just been looking at their home site advertising the 50MB broadband and couldn't believe what I saw.

Take a look. Thats telling me a whole different story.
You my friend have done it, you have just become the undoing of virgin's advert there. I'm going to submit a complaint to ASA. Because you would be capped before you could finish downloading it wouldn't do it in an hour!
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Old 17-12-2008, 22:31   #160
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

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Obviously not, but the point is that legitimate users will be hurt, not just pirates.
I actually dont agree with it myself either and i really dont give two hoots what anybody does with their connection.Apart from the first few months of the 20Mb last year our connection has always been fine and the STM has never been an issue.

Quote:
As for connections, my global limit is 450 within my client, so I can't be hammering things that badly
A mere 150 here,on the odd occasion i use Deluge.Any downloading i am doing is done through the night anyway so it`s neither here nor there in reality.
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Old 17-12-2008, 23:11   #161
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

I must mention that, in my humble opinion, it is none of anyone else's business what other customers do with their service.

Also I am concerned myself, Bittorrent is used for other things besides porn and warez. World of Warcraft updates run peer to peer, both from other customers and from Blizzard's own peers in their datacentres. warcraftmovies.com uses Bittorrent, as do a number of other perfectly legal and legitimate systems.

I would rather a flat, protocol agnostic monthly cap. Perhaps a PAYG system or reasonable charges for overages.

Though I'm quite a big fan of net neutrality...
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Old 18-12-2008, 00:57   #162
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

20meg with a 40 to 80gig monthly cap for £25 a month would do me fine.
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Old 18-12-2008, 01:21   #163
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

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Originally Posted by whydoIneedatech View Post
You do realise that the are legitimate download sites such as I-Tunes out there and that is the type of site they will mean.
And legitimate download sites such as itunes are far far cheaper to provide bandwidth for than p2p.

The issue isn't with the volumes of traffic with p2p, it's the TYPE of traffic.

Whereas with iplayer and itunes they can peer with the content providers at provide the bandwidth at marginal cost you can't with p2p, you just can't peer with every ISP around, especially globally. This means p2p traffic is expensive, not just through network utilisation, but though cost per mb.

If you do want to download like a whore, newsgroups are FAR better from both the end users (they don't leave you open to copyright distribution charges, downloading is not a crime, sharing is), and an ISP's perspective. Sites such as giganews have extensive peering that makes it cheap for the ISPs, hell, they could just outsource their newsgroup service to giganews like a fair few ISPs do and it'd be even cheaper.
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Old 18-12-2008, 01:25   #164
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

same here Simon, and then you can buy downloads in blocks like texts for mobiles, another 20gb for £5 or something. Either that or i would actually prefer to stay on current stm as much as i hate to say it.
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Old 18-12-2008, 15:09   #165
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Re: Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

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Originally Posted by TheDon View Post
And legitimate download sites such as itunes are far far cheaper to provide bandwidth for than p2p.

The issue isn't with the volumes of traffic with p2p, it's the TYPE of traffic
Then wouldn't something like P4P be a good option? Both save cash and increase customer satisfaction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proacti...pation_for_P2P

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...downloads.html

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...peer-tech.html

Maybe products from Cachelogic?

ISPs have options to think outside the box, away from the corporate network model of throttling / blocking anything you don't like. Distributed network caching, utilising anycasting, CDNs, these guys have multiple datacentres, extensive control over their networks and their connectivity to the outside world.

I'm also not sure why you keep mentioning transit as a major cost driver - it isn't. The major cost driver is and always will be the last mile bandwidth on an ISP network. Less than a tenner per Mbit/s/month on transit pales somewhat compared to the cost of an optical resegmentation, pulling KM of fibre, installing lasers, civils of building a new node, a few grand on a CMTS card to supply another 38Mbit/s to 400 customers.

Joe Average's 10GB/month costs VM at most £1.25 assuming 128kbps peak usage and being 100% transit traffic. This is why STM is there, to lower the spike at peak times from heavy users. Transit charges are at 95th percentile so it's purely based on peak usage, which STM reduces.

BT throttling on cable is nothing at all to do with transit bandwidth, no cable ISP throttles torrents to reduce their transit bill, they throttle them to reduce their upstream loading - this is why cable ISPs in Canada and the US only throttle uploading, and why Comcast's equipment exclusively targetted upstream. In the case of DSL ISPs they throttle to reduce interconnect bills with incumbents or load on ILEC rented CO/exchange links.
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