Traffic management transparency

mattford63 · 24-03-2009, 15:34

[Updated some wording to make things clearer in response to Broadbandings]

Hi All,

In an earlier post I talk about what I have to do scheduling wise to ensure that I have plenty of available bandwidth for normal/gaming use (see
here).

Now, I don't mind having traffic shaped and throttled but I do mind that I don't know when it will kick in and when it will finish.

If Virgin made available to me a status page with my current upload and download rate limits (not realtime rates but the max I can expect) I could adjust my torrent usage dynamically and ensure that I always have bandwidth available.

They have this data on the back-end all ready as they track everyone's usage individually - it would just take a PHP script or two to expose the info (well it might be a bit more work that this ;-) ).

Perhaps there is a way all ready? And I just don't know about it. A brute force way for me to do this is to test my rates periodically but this isn't so elegant a solution.

The exposure of rates and throttling would go a long way to improve the transparency of traffic management IMHO.

Ignitionnet · 24-03-2009, 15:39

No ISP in the world tells you how much bandwidth you are using in kbps nor do they store this information, they only know how much data has been used within x period and when you have been throttled.

Really trying to keep your torrents paced at an acceptable rate for gaming is your problem, the only thing VM should do is permit you to check if you are throttled or not, however to go to a webpage and check this is every bit as much effort as a speedtest, more so infact as you have to login

haydnwalker · 24-03-2009, 15:50

They could keep it on a monthly tally so you could for example check how many times you hit the throttling in the month, and then you could adjust your limits that way. It might take a few months of tweaking for it the user to manage to get it just so though.

I don't regularly hit STM but when I do - I deal with it. Gaming doesn't use THAT much bandwidth usually. I can use XBL for ages before STM kicks in and I'm only on 2mb!

Simple answer is - Don't torrent while gaming and vice versa, as its torrenting that causes latency as it uses (in default settings) all of the available bandwidth from what I understand.

Ask yourself "Do I really need that Linux Distro right now? Or can it wait until I'm finished on COD4?"

mattford63 · 24-03-2009, 16:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

No ISP in the world tells you how much bandwidth you are using in kbps nor do they store this information, they only know how much data has been used within x period and when you have been throttled.

I agree, I wasn't talking about my actual real-time rates (should have been clearer in my original post) but the maximum rates I can expect at that point in time (they do have this info). I want to know it's 10MB/s and be notified when it drops to 2.5MB/s. Similarly I want to know when it changes back.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

Really trying to keep your torrents paced at an acceptable rate for gaming is your problem, the only thing VM should do is permit you to check if you are throttled or not, however to go to a webpage and check this is every bit as much effort as a speedtest, more so infact as you have to login

Throttled or not is a start, but as above knowing the actual limited rate helps more.

---------- Post added at 16:02 ---------- Previous post was at 15:54 ----------

Further this approach means that as a customer I never need worry about the actual Traffic Management policy again. As long as set my usage to a percentage of available rate (with some minimum) Virgin can do what they want to the time periods and throttling amount.

The Installer · 24-03-2009, 16:18

I really don't get what you mean

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...t/traffic.html
Here is the traffic managment information which is already on the VM website which shows you when they monitor usage and how much data transfer will cause you to be STMd.

If you don't want to be STMd then alter your usage.

Its also quite obvious if your managed or not, why do you need a webpage to tell you? If you are managed torrenting will just kill your connection all together so you kind of know.

Ignitionnet · 24-03-2009, 16:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattford63

Throttled or not is a start, but as above knowing the actual limited rate helps more.

The limited rate is constant depending on service tier so that's not such an issue.

mattford63 · 24-03-2009, 16:57

I've been thinking more about doing the speed test, but this won't work on a heavily used connection. The only sensible place to accurately get your current allowed upload and download rates is from the Virgin database.

graf_von_anonym · 24-03-2009, 17:00

The hardware used for STM should be able to tell Virgin when you've been traffic managed and for what. That's almost certainly linked to your modem's MAC address, which should be associated with your account. What probably presents the technical challenge is pulling that data off the UBR/CMTS in real time, feeding that through the account, and then putting it into somewhere accessible to the customer. I've no idea how complex Virgin's billing system actually is, but I suspect such a process would involve yet more tiers added to what I imagine is a legacy system riddled with cruft.

The Installer · 24-03-2009, 17:20

General Maximus · 24-03-2009, 18:03

i found it a royal pain in the ass when VM first introduced stm but i learnt to adapt (can't find a Borg emoticon).

Think about what you do during the day and how much your normally download (you know how big your files are before you download them) and do the following

- after 9pm through to 10am (all night) queue and download whatever you want
- between 10am and 3pm dont download any more than 5gb (leaves you 1 gb to play around with for other stuff)
- dont do any downloading between 3pm and 9pm and just do your normal browsing and gaming and stuff

it is pretty easy to manage, you just arent downloading anything late afternoon and early evening.

slowcoach · 24-03-2009, 21:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by General Maximus

i found it a royal pain in the ass when VM first introduced stm but i learnt to adapt (can't find a Borg emoticon).

Think about what you do during the day and how much your normally download (you know how big your files are before you download them) and do the following

- after 9pm through to 10am (all night) queue and download whatever you want
- between 10am and 3pm dont download any more than 5gb (leaves you 1 gb to play around with for other stuff)
- dont do any downloading between 3pm and 9pm and just do your normal browsing and gaming and stuff

it is pretty easy to manage, you just arent downloading anything late afternoon and early evening.

Check the link http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...t/traffic.html
things are actually better or worse now depending on your time online.