is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

hi all if you dont know http://www.onlive.co.uk/ launched in UK last Thursday. If youve not heard of it its a service that allows playing of full games via streaming from low spec laptops, tablets, pc, macs and you can buy an optional console version for non computer owners.

Anyway the busiest forum for onlive is called onlivefans and a few uk members on virginmedia have signed up. they seem to think the service is being shaped via virginmedias traffic management.

played fine earlier since 4pm its practically unplayable. could that just be there server issues dealing with influx of new users? is it likely a given VM ARE traffic shaping it at peak times?

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

If a customer is on 10, 20 or 30Mbit then OnLive will be managed as per the normal STM management i.e the total . download/uploaded amount

50Mbit customers with 5Mbit upload also have normal STM on upload only

It's not covered by application management

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

Thx for reply Ben, no idea what protocol onlive using to stream the games and the worry wad it would be getting lumped into the p2p/newsgroups traffic managed catagory.

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

It's best to get anyone who does think something may be incorrectly set to post to the Community Forum so that it can be investigated

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

The service appears to use about 2gigabytes per hour when playing - so most people will be experiencing capping during the peak hours.

VM would be well advised to strike a deal with OnLive as this application could be a 'killer app' for their internet service. Put OnLive servers directly on their network backbone and offer cheap microconsoles short term as well as building the functionality into STBs longer term with no charges/limits on OnLive gaming bandwidth and they'd have a compelling package....

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

Ah no way please not yet!! Let VM catch up with its current upgrades... ;)

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

It doesn't use much upstream capacity so it's largely fine. This said gaming isn't something VM are too good at right now ;)

OnLive already have a deal going with BT until the end of the year, probably an exclusive one.

---------- Post added at 20:45 ---------- Previous post was at 20:44 ----------

I'll test it. Given how long Onlive has been live for in the US and that BT are able to not shape it you'd hope that VM will be fine, however the problems with the management of the application management hardware have been well documented.

---------- Post added at 20:53 ---------- Previous post was at 20:45 ----------

Baseline taken, I'll check it again when the shaping is off and compare.

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

Confirmed not a lot of upload used. in a 90 min gaming session i read 3.38 gig downloaded but only 69mb uploaded.

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

Do you know (reliably) if VM are using white-list or black-list based management?

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

White, same as everyone else.

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

I'm inclined to disagree, peak times its unplayable. (Pretty much before 9pm)

OnLive support claim im suffering 30% packet loss and up to 600ms ping spikes.

EVERYTHING else works fine during these times.

I just spent an hour getting no where with VM support who haven't even heard of the service and just kept telling me "we manage some speeds to make customers happy".

Im not happy as I was advised to upgrade to my current VM package by the sales guys as OnLive would work pefectly even after the 75% throttle, yet it doesnt bloody work properly even before it :(

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

Is there any way to speak to an Onshore VM tech?

I'm getting fed up now.

OnLive techs insist everything is ok at their end, but my connection to them is suffering 20~30% Packet loss and prolonged latency spikes of like 600ms for 1 minute every other minute.

Pingtest.net and Speedtest.net results are fine, everything else works fine (World of Warcraft, PSN, Xbox Live, Skype). OnLive itself suddenly works fine after 9pm on an evening, regardless of if I have been knocked down by 75% or not.

The Offshore VM support team can't grasp what the OnLive service is, keep telling me random things about the 75% throttle (which isn't the issue) or that if I can see OnLive.co.uk then its not their problem. It seems to me (and OnLives techs) that they are "managing" the OnLive UDP traffic as if it were BitTorrent traffic.

All I want is a straight answer from VM that they are or aren't "managing" the traffic so I can take appropriate action, namely going back to OnLive and telling them it MUST be their end, or cancelling my VM plan upgrade as the sole reason I did that was for OnLive and their (Virgins) own sales people told me that was a good idea.

(Not that I was overly impressed with the upgrade, £30 forced fee for a new modem/hub thing and they still managed to mess up the speed change resulting in multiple calls)

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

Have you posted this over on the Community Forum so it can be investigated?

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

Indeed I have:
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...ve/td-p/768313

Virgin Media managed to by proxy leave me a message saying "its fixed" but Im not entirely sure they grasped what I was trying to explain to them, so I'm not sure what the "Its fixed" message relates to.

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

They could do that but it doesnt bypass the UBR chokepoint.

Saying that tho I think they can loosen downstream STM, its upstream that needs to be tight not downstream.

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

Great news, so if i fancy a few 8 hour day time sessions when i'm working nights, i can expect to download 15gb during peak times. It wont be long until virgin decide to send me a letter telling me to do my gaming after 9pm then :D

Re: is Onlive being traffic managed?
 

indeed, im expecting the same "Please tell your children to only game after midnight" ;)