bandwidth throttling?

[mrwolf]

Hi,

I am a virgin media customer with a 10Mbps conection.

Every time I use Utorrent to download stuff, my conection drops to 2Mbps, even after i have closed the program completely.

This happens every time consistantly.

My speed is currently measuring at 2Mbps and I closed uTorrent an hour ago, and when it was downloading it was only at 20Kbps.

Does this happen to anyone else?

Does virgin media have a policy of penalising torrent users regardless of their bandwidth usage?

I am assuming its a technical problem at my end for now, as the virgin media saleman told me specifically that my bandwidth wouldnt be throttled unless I used more than 20Gb a week, and i wouldnt like to think that Virgin media staff lied to me on purpose just to get a sale.

[martyh]

what are your connection and bandwidth settings in utorrent ?

[AbyssUnderground]

You probably triggered STM (Subscriber Traffic Management). You have been fed porkies by the salesman. You would be surprised what lies sales people can tell sometimes to make that sale. They have targets to hit remember.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html will show you your limits. If you are on BB 'L' then its...

3GB DOWN between 10am - 3pm
800MB UP between 3pm - 8pm
1.5GB DOWN between 4pm - 9pm

If you trigger any of those then your speed will drop to 25% of the normal speed for 5 hours.

[mrwolf]

hmm. i dont see how i could be triggering those.

Today for example I was downloading one file of about 700Mb and I was only downloading it for maybe 20 mins and got about 2 percent of it in that time. So i cant see how i can be triggering the bandwidth cap. It only happens when i use uTorrent.

Im going to try a different torrent client and see if it still happens.

[AbyssUnderground]

Remember uploading also plays a part in it. Do you have Wifi? Is it secure? If not then someone might also be using it and adding to your usage.

[Tony.]

hmm. i dont see how i could be triggering those.

Today for example I was downloading one file of about 700Mb and I was only downloading it for maybe 20 mins and got about 2 percent of it in that time. So i cant see how i can be triggering the bandwidth cap. It only happens when i use uTorrent.

Im going to try a different torrent client and see if it still happens.

How much have you been uploading during that period. This could have caused you to hit the STM :dozey:

[mrwolf]

Ahh, thats true.

I didnt check that.

I am afraid to open uTorrent again tonight as i am still waiting for my bandwidth to go back to normal.

But i will test it and watch how much is uploaded next time.

[AbyssUnderground]

Opening it now won't affect it. It automatically goes off after 5 hours regardless of your usage.