Video Streaming using RTSP and Virgin

[Avorax]

Hi all,

Very sorry if this is a repeat question, but...

So quite often, when I'm trying to watch a video over Youtube, iPlayer or 4oD for example, it seams to be streaming to my system at around 0.3mbs at best. So, I get annoyed, do a speedtest with speedtest.net and I get a result of 6mbs on average.

This really confuses me. It suggests that when I'm streaming, I've still got about 6mbs of my line free. If I use youtube as an example, and I'm watching something that has more than one part, I'll open the reamining parts in new tabs, and they ALL only stream at 0.3mbs'ish. I'll speed test, and the results go down accroding to how many 'tab streams' I've got open. I've got a Desktop Gadget which reports current activity, and with each new tab, it goes up, and I can do this right up to my 7mbs theoretical limit.

So for every tab I open, it notches up 0.3mbs, but no one tab will stream higher than that.

Other times, It'll stream fine, in sort of 2 second bursts of between 4 and 6 mbs.

This confusses the hell out of me. Has anyone got any ideas why? It's like virgin are throtteling the video stream per http connection or something. Anyone think of why this is?

I get the same results with Chrome, IE8 and Firefox.

Thanks.

[Sephiroth]

Maybe you've got a bandwidth policy set in your router.