STM after 9pm

[pk1209]

Hi,

This has probablt been covered many times, but a I couldn't find what I wanted when I searched.

STM is meant to be - from VM site:

"between 4pm and 9pm. In extreme cases, we’ll now also reduce the speed between 10am and 3pm"

Tonight, I paused a download a 2.5gb (on 20mb) at 8:30pm, while it was downloading at full pelt.

I resumed it at 10pm or so. 0.5gb later, I'm on STM. I didn't breach the limit within the 4-9pm timeframe so why is this happening?

I phoned VM tech support, and was told it's probably load on the server, which of course it isn't because my download is glued at 0.5mb. I told this to the chappie who didn't have any answer for it, an repeated it was server load. After a brief laugh, I hung up.

Is this a common thing, are VM lying about their STM hours?

Cheers,

pk

[Stabhappy]

Do yourself a favour and post on the virgin media newsgroup virginmedia.support.broadband.cable

Post this and a tech should easily be able to tell that it's an issue that needs to be solved, and you can be sure that it'll get solved quickly.

Note: are you on a shared connection? it's possible that you hit the STM in-hours and didnt know about it until you tried to download.

[homealone]

Hi,

This has probablt been covered many times, but a I couldn't find what I wanted when I searched.

STM is meant to be - from VM site:

"between 4pm and 9pm. In extreme cases, we’ll now also reduce the speed between 10am and 3pm"

Tonight, I paused a download a 2.5gb (on 20mb) at 8:30pm, while it was downloading at full pelt.

I resumed it at 10pm or so. 0.5gb later, I'm on STM. I didn't breach the limit within the 4-9pm timeframe so why is this happening?

I phoned VM tech support, and was told it's probably load on the server, which of course it isn't because my download is glued at 0.5mb. I told this to the chappie who didn't have any answer for it, an repeated it was server load. After a brief laugh, I hung up.

Is this a common thing, are VM lying about their STM hours?

Cheers,

pk

STM lasts for 5 hours from when it triggers, if you trigger it at 20:59 it will not release until 01:59..

- even though you thought you had 'only' loaded 2.5 GB, the system presumably disagreed & had triggered STM - it is a pain, but scheduling downloads for after 21:00 does currently work, in my experience..

[ultimate]

What you received on your hard drive is usually smaller then the actual bytes downloaded, I do not know the technicalities, perhaps someone here can expand on it.

[pk1209]

I understand the the 5 hours STM even at 8:59, but like I say, it was downloading at full pelt when I stopped the DL.

Maybe I was very close and went over edge browsing the web or something.

Might do some more testing on it though.

[Jonathan90]

0.5mb well that oversubscription lol 20mb gets capped to 5Mb

[Kymmy]

The OP's on 10Mb from his profile so it should have been 2Mb on STM

Always check your upload as that's one of the best indicators for STM instead of ringing up CS/TS.. If the upload is normal then it's over subscription, if the upload is down to STM levels then obviously it's STM

[mr,m]

Not wanting to sound really stupid here,but what's stm? I have had similar dramatic slowdowns too.

[Kymmy]

STM is a dynamic cap put on to your download/upload speeds in response to download/upload limits at different times of the day.

Here's the webiste page about it (http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php)

[pk1209]

0.5mb well that oversubscription lol 20mb gets capped to 5Mb

sorry - that's what i meant :|

Think I'll install DU meter and run some tests with it.

[Kymmy]

sorry - that's what i meant :|

Think I'll install DU meter and run some tests with it.

Which package are you on as 5mb is stm levels for XL where your profile states you;re on L (10Mb) which has a 2.5Mb STM limit

[xspeedyx]

thats correct what you said web browsing and utube and stuff like all use bandwidth more than you would think as home said just download after 9pm if downloading on the night

[pk1209]

reply - oopsy again, i'm on 20mb - just never got around to updating the profile.

[Kymmy]

Mind you looking at your area I would more suspect oversubscription ;)

[xspeedyx]

Just like my area but according to Alex Brown its not oversubscipted just in need of a upgrade

[Ignitionnet]

It is a pity that VM don't show the same kind of openness that Comcast have recently:

Today, Comcast has approximately 3300 CMTSes deployed throughout our network, serving our 14.4 million HSI subscribers.

Each CMTS has multiple “ports” that handle traffic coming into and leaving the CMTS.

In particular, each cable modem deployed on the Comcast HSI network is connected to the CMTS through the ports on the CMTS. These ports can be either “downstream” ports or “upstream” ports, depending on whether they send information to cable modems (downstream) or receive information from cable modems (upstream) attached to the port.

Today, on average, about 275 cable modems share the same downstream port and about 100 cable modems share the same upstream port.

OK So it's a nerdy interest but would be interesting to see VM's numbers. You can get contention ratios from this stuff.

38Mbit / 275 subs = 138.2kbit/s downstream each and 12.9 / 100 = 129kbit/s upstream each. Upstream figure is a guesstimate but should be about right considering Comcast have deployed a fair bit of DOCSIS 2 upstream action at 3.2MHz / 64QAM.

Based around a standard tier of 6Mbit down and 2Mbit up gives contention of 44:1 downstream and 15.5:1 upstream

[xspeedyx]

That doesnt seem that good

[Ignitionnet]

If someone can remember the Virgin Media customer split between M / L and XL you can also guesstimate it on VM. I reckon in a fully L upgraded area the average speed as sold would be 6.2Mbit down and 384k up. Assuming that you'd be looking at 44.86:1 downstream on VM and 4.36:1 upstream, we assume 275 subscribers on a 38Mbit downstream and 100 subscribers on an 8.8Mbit upstream who are split roughly 60 / 30 / 10 between M / L / XL.

EDIT: I should mention that the upstream bit isn't always going to be the case, I know that in a lot of instances Virgin are only running 4.4Mbit upstreams, and I have serious doubts that Virgin's network has so few customers per downstream.

[pk1209]

I used to think over-subscription was the problem, but since I switched to Giganews, my dl is 20mb without fail, then when i hit STM it's 5mb without fail.

[Antiself]

I also have similar problems to this , i've been using DU meter to monitor my connection for the past month or so and even tho i've only used a total of 1.3gb over a 7 day period im still being managed down to 5mb once 4pm arrives,every week without fail.I've taken this up with virgin many times all to no avail , the only response i can seem to get is that my router is to blame, yet i can get my full 20mb before 4pm with the router in the loop.