Traffic Management Policy

[telfordcable]

I might go for sky unlimited 20mb and wave goodbye to rubbish Virgin Media, the worse service is going downhill now. Don't bother with 100Meg, it will be a joke as a dial up for £45 a month standalone. Get lost Virgin Media. Your loss!

[lordy]

Originally Posted by domo247

It sounds like VM are having a disaster.

All companies expect a bit of moaning when they do stuff like this. The only thing that will be a disaster is if profitability is affected or branding is 'hurt'. And thanks to contract lock-in, it's early days yet.

However my guesstimate is most normal people go for 10mb or 20mb.
People that get 50mb now (and 100mb in future) either

1) dont really need or use the extra speed, but have lots of disposable income and just like to have "the best"

2) Really do want to "download 15GB HD movies in one hour" as the product is advertised.

All people in group 1 will be unaffected.

As for people in group 2, I don't know what they will do. I'm going to wait a month to see the full impact, maybe Virgin will relax the throttling?

I'm guessing they are not even doing prioritisation, they are just capping all p2p bandwidth, even if the rest of the network has spare capacity.

Virgin might not even care in the short term, if peering and infrastructure savings are greater than the amount lost by people avoiding the product (defecting or downgrading etc), then they will be happy.

They really should change the way they market the product though, as right now there are not many (any?) legitimate unthrottled download services available in the UK where you can get 15GB HD movies at full-speed (not streaming).

[domo247]

Originally Posted by lordy

All companies expect a bit of moaning when they do stuff like this. The only thing that will be a disaster is if profitability is affected or branding is 'hurt'. And thanks to contract lock-in, it's early days yet.

However my guesstimate is most normal people go for 10mb or 20mb.
People that get 50mb now (and 100mb in future) either

1) dont really need or use the extra speed, but have lots of disposable income and just like to have "the best"

2) Really do want to "download 15GB HD movies in one hour" as the product is advertised.

All people in group 1 will be unaffected.

As for people in group 2, I don't know what they will do. I'm going to wait a month to see the full impact, maybe Virgin will relax the throttling?

I'm guessing they are not even doing prioritisation, they are just capping all p2p bandwidth, even if the rest of the network has spare capacity.

Virgin might not even care in the short term, if peering and infrastructure savings are greater than the amount lost by people avoiding the product (defecting or downgrading etc), then they will be happy.

They really should change the way they market the product though, as right now there are not many (any?) legitimate unthrottled download services available in the UK where you can get 15GB HD movies at full-speed (not streaming).

I know they are not having disaster - it was a figure of speech.

Indeed - the traffic management policies don't affect the majority of their customers, most probably don't know what they are or understand them. Its quite possible Virgin see this as a forum for moaning geeks - who don't really represent the views/desires and of their average customer - i.e. most of there customers wont have heard of never mind used the newsgroups.

Anyway putting that to the side - why I would say they are having a problem is that they feel the need to introduce such stringent traffic policy rules. It suggests that their network infrastructure is not good enough, there crap at project management or they are not interested in quality just high markup sales.

Hence, they are pushing for 100MB and the undoubted high mark up sales it will bring, rather than increasing the durability and performance of the whole network.

---------- Post added at 22:35 ---------- Previous post was at 22:16 ----------

And whilst I say most VM users dont use the newsgroups etc. In the next 10 years I am sure there will be rapid increases in HD streaming, game/film downloads and VM at the moment are saying they cant handle that.

[telfordcable]

I think 4pm to midnight is for ADSL National only (not cable ??) not sure:

http://help.virginmedia.com/system/s...RTICLE_ID=3703

[broadbandking]

I must be ok as my torrents seem to be able to hit 1,2,3Mb a second fine during 4-12pm, maybe my area isn't got heavy downloaders, as I understand all protcols that are managed have to fight over 25% of network which is left for NTTP and P2P.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by buba3d

i was speaking to a vm bb tech today asking him about the 100mb, he asked me what i was on and i told hiim, he said he's quite shocked at what vm are doing and the punters wont be too happy when their next plan hits, i asked him what he meant about that and he replied, a couple of us yesterday were having a chat outside the depot and one of them said did you hear vm's next plan, apparently vm are going to stm all internet activity.

meaning traffic shaping on p2p and usenet and surfing

if tht's the case i wont be with vm for much longer

VM are already doing it now on all tiers and it will include 100Mb.

[nomadking]

The 2 big things that I don't like about all this are 1) the blanket nature of when and where it is applied regardless of whether there are any problems and 2) the drastic reduction to 25% of your speed.

If it could be tailored to any specific problem times and areas it wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't have that much of a problem if my max speed was reduced by an appropriate amount, if there was a local traffic problem. But to be reduced to 2.5Mb for quite a long period is unreasonable and disproportionate.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by lordy

All companies expect a bit of moaning when they do stuff like this. The only thing that will be a disaster is if profitability is affected or branding is 'hurt'. And thanks to contract lock-in, it's early days yet.

However my guesstimate is most normal people go for 10mb or 20mb.
People that get 50mb now (and 100mb in future) either

1) dont really need or use the extra speed, but have lots of disposable income and just like to have "the best"

2) Really do want to "download 15GB HD movies in one hour" as the product is advertised.

All people in group 1 will be unaffected.

As for people in group 2, I don't know what they will do. I'm going to wait a month to see the full impact, maybe Virgin will relax the throttling?

I'm guessing they are not even doing prioritisation, they are just capping all p2p bandwidth, even if the rest of the network has spare capacity.

Virgin might not even care in the short term, if peering and infrastructure savings are greater than the amount lost by people avoiding the product (defecting or downgrading etc), then they will be happy.

They really should change the way they market the product though, as right now there are not many (any?) legitimate unthrottled download services available in the UK where you can get 15GB HD movies at full-speed (not streaming).

No I do not have lots of disposable income. I took out the service because of what was promised.

Less contention, less hold-ups and no management.

Others were told that the 50Mb service would be on a seperate network than the lower tiers but they have, or are in the process of being, migrated to the same overlay network. VM have to do it for the upload upgrades that are being rolled out. That is not what 50Mb was sold at!

I can see VM suffering for this but only time will tell as it effects all tiers.

Who's the idiot going to buy 100Mb to have traffic shaping???

---------- Post added at 00:39 ---------- Previous post was at 00:30 ----------

Originally Posted by nomadking

The 2 big things that I don't like about all this are 1) the blanket nature of when and where it is applied regardless of whether there are any problems and 2) the drastic reduction to 25% of your speed.

If it could be tailored to any specific problem times and areas it wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't have that much of a problem if my max speed was reduced by an appropriate amount, if there was a local traffic problem. But to be reduced to 2.5Mb for quite a long period is unreasonable and disproportionate.

It is not a drastic reduction of your speed to 25%, your speeds can be less than that and so far seem like they are.

It is 25% of the network being given to the P2P and newsgroup protocols which means that of that 25% being shared to P2P and newsgroups it is dependant on how many are using it as to how much speed you get.

Simple terms only 25% of the network is available for P2P or newsgroups no matter the load on it during the shaping period.

THB it doesn't impact much on me personally I just don't like goalposts being changed without my prior consent or knowledge.

[Chrysalis]

thats quite an assumption to make to say it wont affect most customers. I noticed side affects on things like web browsing and iplayer. I agree most customers wont complain but not so confident on the most arent affected.

[Chad]

The guys posting on Virgins forum are going crazy about the Traffic Management Policy. Seems people are having issues with just about everything, not just downloading. There's complaints that HD videos on iPlayer and You Tube are stuttering badly or stopping, people being banned from Xbox live because they are being cut off continually between games, websites now taking ages to load, hi resolution pictures are not loading on websites etc. etc. etc.

Customers are not happy, VM are taking a roasting on every forum I've visited about this subject. Virgin have taken a fantastic service, the jewel in their crown, and f'd it up royally.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Chad

The guys posting on Virgins forum are going crazy about the Traffic Management Policy. Seems people are having issues with just about everything, not just downloading. There's complaints that HD videos on iPlayer and You Tube are stuttering badly or stopping, people being banned from Xbox live because they are being cut off continually between games, websites now taking ages to load, hi resolution pictures are not loading on websites etc. etc. etc.

Customers are not happy, VM are taking a roasting on every forum I've visited about this subject. Virgin have taken a fantastic service, the jewel in their crown, and f'd it up royally.

Yep! I don't just use this forum and it is going to impact VM, but then again they are only bothered about the "5%" of heavy users most of whom purchased 50Mb.

[telfordcable]

Say no to 20Mb XL
Say no to 50Mb XXL
Say no to 100Mb XXXL
Say no to 200Mb XXXXL
Say no to 400Mb XXXXXL

Say yes to 10Mb L

[AdamD]

I must confess, I didn't notice the changes much until recently, as things like FTP, which I rely on quite a lot, are noticeably slower

I use to get 5Mb-6Mb/second to my server in France and my backup company in the UK, now I'm lucky to get 2Mb/second to my server and less than 1Mb to my backup company.

I also notice general downloads from gaming companies and sites seem a lot slower than they used to be

I needed to reinstall Sins of a solar empire, through their Steam like program, "Impulse"

That would always be around the 4Mb/sec to 6Mb/sec, it's now anywhere between 200kbps-1Mb/second.

Not liking these changes at all.

Originally Posted by Chad

The guys posting on Virgins forum are going crazy about the Traffic Management Policy. Seems people are having issues with just about everything, not just downloading. There's complaints that HD videos on iPlayer and You Tube are stuttering badly or stopping, people being banned from Xbox live because they are being cut off continually between games, websites now taking ages to load, hi resolution pictures are not loading on websites etc. etc. etc.

Customers are not happy, VM are taking a roasting on every forum I've visited about this subject. Virgin have taken a fantastic service, the jewel in their crown, and f'd it up royally.

This is turning into a farce. Presumably when people start leaving they will do something about it.

[scoobydoo[uk]]

Traffic management is messing up my connection to the itunes store and youtube.

Pre 5pm i can access itunes store no problem, post 5pm and its hit and miss, times out all the time, takes forever to load a page.

Also having problems with youtube videos after 5pm with stutter and jerky playback, fine before.
Im not near my download limit either.

My 20mb connection has been rock solid 24/7 until this new traffic management policy came in, looks like its not just p2p and usenet thats been affected but its messing up everything. Hope it gets sorted soon.