Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Having not been a VM customer for a while I was checking out some things and came across their Traffic management page.

First, I thought every ISP had got rid of traffic management polices, except maybe a few dirt cheap budget options. Is this traffic management actually still active?


Second, from reading through it I saw it for example say that on the 50mbit option you can only download 1.3 gb over 2 hours in the evening before they traffic manage you. have I read that wrong or is it really that bad?


Most speed tiers look like you can only use them at full speed for 3 or 4 minutes in the evening before you get capped.


Is traffic like iPlayer and Netflix excluded from the cap?


Really thought I had gone back in time reading all that!

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Virgin Media don't have any downstream management on any broadband speeds over 30Mbps. However there is still upstream management. Details of this can be found at www.virginmedia.com/traffic

For the VIVID 200 Gamer and HomeWorks + 300Mbps there is no upstream management on either of these tiers.

Virgin Media also have network level mananagement on P2P and Newsgroup traffic across all tiers.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Thanks for the quick reply.

Must admit from the quick glance I didn't notice the limits were on upstream only. Answers my other question about Netflix too.

There is a lot of text and graphs, speeds and thresholds. It's not easy information to understand for the average user.

i can't find the part that say's what hours p2p and newgroup traffic is limited and by what percent. Is there a link to that?

It's not under this part like I thought it would be

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

It's on this page

https://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-m...or-higher.html

Section 2 in the expandable table cover P2P and Newsgroups:

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Thanks BenMcr. It appears the javascript blocking in my browser stopped that from showing.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

There's also a http download cap which operates 24 hrs on a single thread download. So basically although speed test shows say 200mbps you'll between 70mbps and 90 mbps depending on the time of day. Using more than a single download you will reach maximum speed.
Virgin originally said this was by design which is probably true as it's a way of limiting traffic in a oversubscribed network. Then under pressure decided to investigate it. They have since gone rather quiet on the subject. There's 25 page thread on it here https://community.virginmedia.com/t5...026879/page/13
A few people are unaffected I'm not sure whether the gaming bundle has this limit or not.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

I've never seen that on my connection.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

I have sometimes

I agree that there is some sort of limitation which does not reflect what your connection can fully achieve but I wouldn't phrase it the way you have. When I first read it I thought you meant that VM are actively capping individual downloads and that the only way you would get max speed is if you downloaded multiple files simultaneously. I have seen it before but only ever noticed it when doing single thread speed tests. I doubt VM will ever fix it because I imagine for most people it is a non-issue. For me it is analogous to how the modems work. If you only use one channels you'll get 50mbits, so we use multiple channels to get more speed. I haven't don't any http updates or game downloads in years but when I download anything from Steam etc I have no problem pulling 18MB/sec.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Do VM detect P2P use when you use offshore VPN for torrent file transfer? I also use VPN when getting around VM blocks on torrent sites. They can't detect me doing that, but I guess that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't detect P2P traffic when I use VPN.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Igni will be the best person to answer that. When they first implement p2p shaping years ago you was ableto get round it by using a vpn because the traffic was encrypted and they couldnt see what it was. They then put some new hardware on the network for "deep packet inspection" which was supposed to circumvent your vpn and see that it is p2p traffic. I remember Igni telling us about it at the time so he can explain how it all works. It was a long time ago, i am sure it was 2011.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

The DPI stuff is, depending on route traffic takes, either in monitoring mode only, no more policing of traffic, or will be shortly.

The proportion of traffic that's P2P has dropped dramatically as more convenient and relatively cheap options to get content legitimately have been introduced, so the hardware being there to monitor network traffic patterns is really useful but there's limited value in having it police anything.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Hi

I'm one of those on the VM forum who is experiencing the issue with single-thread speeds, and have been trying to get them to look into it again (which they are now).

There are a couple of reasons why we believe this is a fault as opposed to a form of traffic management -

- During the day, single-thread download speeds can (rarely) reach full speed, but generally are well below that. They are also extremely unstable and fluctuate constantly anywhere from under 10Mb to over 100Mbps, making the overall average download speed well below the speculated 70Mbps cap.

- At peak time, single thread speeds are severely impacted even for users who don't have a utilisation fault and can otherwise reach full speed on speedtest.net. My area has a long running utilisation fault and although I get about 5-10Mb on speedtest.net, single-thread speeds drop to under 1Mb which makes even general web browsing noticeably slow. This is completely unacceptable and surely no ISP would throttle users so heavily that simple web browsing becomes an issue.

- Everyone who has reported this fault is on a Motorola CMTS. This has been verified by Jen_A on the VM forum who has recently resubmitted this issue to the networks team. She believes this may be a crucial factor which wasn't noted the first time this was raised to Networks. She has found no reports of this problem from users on Cisco or Arris systems.

- Looking through archived speed tests on Think Broadband, this fault first became apparent in November 2015. Before that, single-thread speeds were close to (or matched) the multi-thread speed. ThinkBroadband also noted in their August 2016 speed test article that they are seeing odd single-thread results from parts of the VM network.

There is probably a lot more which I've forgotten to include but they're the main reasons for us believing this is a fault rather than a deliberate traffic management policy.

I did notice some improvement yesterday with a Thinkbroadband test download peaking at 173Mb/s and not wildly fluctuating like normal. Peak time single thread speeds were also vastly improved last night and reaching full speed (10Mbps) so I'm hopeful some progress has been made, but haven't heard anything official yet.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

yeah VM appear to be running some kind of QoS, (at least in some areas) that limits per thread speeds.

Hasn't been confirmed by anyone with credibility tho.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Just done a test today and 100mb on single download and full whack on multi thread download.
I'm on a cisco cmts so that put's a hole in the motorola idea.
I do suspect it's some sort of traffic management. It would be interesting too see those who have this capping are in areas where congestion is a problem or potentially can be.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

I would also like to see the stats (which VM will be able to do) on the cpe being used. All shubs or all 3rd party routers or mix of both. Something has got to be causing it. If it was something VM were implementing/exacerbated by congestion then it would affect all users in a given area. Either something has got to be causing it or something has got to be relieving/masking the symptoms (e.g. a proper router)

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

That's an interesting development and perhaps the first confirmation of this issue on a non-Motorola CMTS.

When downloading do you get a stable 100Mbps, or does the speed fluctuate?

I've attached a graph showing how unstable the download speed is for me. This was done at 10:30 on a Friday morning so the traffic on the local network should have been quite low.

I could accept a 70Mb per thread cap (as long as they were honest about it) but the speed variances seem far too extreme for this to be a deliberate policy. It can reach 170Mb then fall to 7Mb.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

One person reporting something is hardly confirmation.

Traffic management, at least at the level of the CMTS, does not work at a TCP flow level. It works per service flow, and all VM customers bar those trialling the WiFi sharing only have the one right now.

Something that does have visibility per flow, though, is the scheduler that runs on the CMTS. The Motorola BSRs have different schedulers from either the Arris or Cisco kit. If the issue is there it's not going to be fixed as the BSRs are almost all replaced now and what's left will be going in the not too distant.

Curious what people are using to test this, in terms of remote site and operating system, and whether the same issue is present on UDP flows.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

It would be easier to list sites which aren't affected, as I've only ever found one! www.twit.tv has videos available to download hosted on the CacheFly CDN, and these always download at solid full speed (200Mb off-peak).

Everything else shows poor download speeds and huge variations during the download. This includes DropBox, Google Drive, music downloads from Amazon, Windows updates, app updates from Google Play, or even just things like downloading a large PDF file from the Ofcom website.

I've tried connecting to the SuperHub directly instead of going through my ASUS router but the problem is still evident. It affects every device including Windows PC, Chromebook and various Android devices.

I suspect it's somehow related to the Motorola CMTS, as Jen_A believes on the VM forum. As you say, one person reporting something similar on a Cisco CMTS isn't confirmation of anything and might not be directly related to this problem. I'm told there are no imminent plans to replace my CMTS (KNOW12) with an Arris or Cisco, but to check again every so often.

Are there any sites to test UDP speeds?

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

All hubs are being migrated to CCAP, which precludes use of Motorola BSRs. If it's not imminent it should be pretty soon.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

That site is certainly affected downloads at the same speed as any other site.

---------- Post added at 12:27 ---------- Previous post was at 12:25 ----------

Depends on the time of day evenings it will vary. The one I did yesterday was rock solid at lunch time.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Igni is correct. The BSRs are old hat now. In the franchises I work in, there are 3 hub sites remaining to be moved over to E6000s. These are taking a bit longer as due to space issues the transmission suite has basically been rebuilt, but I'm told the cutover is in the next month or so

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

For me it's the only site which is able to download at full speed and remain stable throughout the download.

Here are two graphs again showing a 1GB file from Thinkbroadband vs. 1GB from twit.tv

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

What software on ubuntu are you using for that graph?

---------- Post added at 13:09 ---------- Previous post was at 12:57 ----------

Interesting test just now http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedt...0282393855.png

---------- Post added at 13:10 ---------- Previous post was at 13:09 ----------

Interesting graph just now http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedt...0282393855.png

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

The graphs are from my ASUS router's admin interface, I've also tried connecting directly to the SuperHub (in both Router and Modem mode) but got the same unstable download speeds.

As downloads from twit.tv aren't affected it seems to point to something at the VM end, finding out what causes that site to behave differently may be the key to solving the problem, although we've gone through Traceroutes etc on the VM forum thread and haven't found any clues.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Like I said before downloads from twit.tv are affected and other users have confirmed this.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

suspect if it were some kind of traffic management speeds would be a tad more stable.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Traffic also has dropped, at least in the UK, because most torrent sites are denied to all but the determined file sharer. To access them, VPN is essential.

I hadn't realised that P2P traffic had dropped so much, to the point that policing may not be worthwhile. The number of seeders does not appear to have dropped per torrent, but I guess the global picture is different than the national one.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

People still torrent? It is all about Newsgroups now at least it is with me for several years.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Their torrent throttling isn't terribly effective anyway.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Torrenting is alive and well but most is now via private sites.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Not really but regardless the end result is the same. Sufficient numbers of people pay for content or use legitimate free sources that it makes DPI shaping of traffic not worth the bother.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

I can still saturate my link (down) with two or three torrents. No apparent caps in my region.

Re: Traffic management - Still a thing?
 

Overnight hopefully.