General STM always enforced? - Page 16

Kushan · 21-10-2013, 09:26

An interesting development, then. I've definitely been hit with STM recently and there was a time there when I wasn't getting STM at all, so it does lead that this is temporary.

The thing that strikes me as interesting is that I never experienced any degradation when I was STM free, I was able to get full speed during peak times without a hitch.

Chrysalis · 21-10-2013, 12:20

reducing servers has the benefit of less maintenance and complexity. I can see why VM would want to do that.

qasdfdsaq · 21-10-2013, 13:24

It also means you need faster servers to cope with the higher load, since overloaded shaping equipment has been known to cause congestion issues in the past.

As for maintenance, any enterprise/carrier network administrator worth his salt has everything automated anyway, so economies of scale mean additional units cost zero maintenance. The only issues that wouldn't scale that way would be hardware issues, which would normally be dealt with by the vendor support contract anyway (unless VM like acting macho and taking them on in-house)

I'm a bit confused though as to whether we're talking about equipment at the internal edge, i.e. customer-facing end or at the external edge, i.e. border-gateways. I'm also confused what these TMS servers do. STM as far as I know is implemented on the UBR and nowhere near the peering links, P2P shaping on the other hand, has nothing to do with STM.

Sephiroth · 21-10-2013, 14:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

reducing servers has the benefit of less maintenance and complexity. I can see why VM would want to do that.

VM got back to me with the answer "same or more servers....".

qasdfdsaq · 21-10-2013, 14:23

First piece of good news I've heard all minute.

telfordcable · 22-10-2013, 18:01

I got hit by STM for the first time

The PIT · 23-10-2013, 21:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by telfordcable

I got hit by STM for the first time

Just downloaded osx maverick on two macs and got stm. That and other updates came to about 14 gig.

Martin_D · 24-10-2013, 18:34

Traffic Management Policy Update

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...p/2033926#M163

General Maximus · 24-10-2013, 18:43

excellent news but for all the difference 16% is going to make they had might as well get rid of it altogether. It is a step in the right direction though and hopefully they'll look at getting rid of it after xmas. Everyone should note though that it is downstream only. Upstream is still capped to 50%.

qasdfdsaq · 24-10-2013, 18:51

Hmpf. What the hell?

Kushan · 24-10-2013, 19:14

That's amazing news, us 120Meg users should never dip below 100Meg now. That makes me happy. As GenMon has said, it's a step in the right direction and hopefully a sign of things to come.

Shame the upload thresholds are still as bad as ever, though. Hopefully that's next.

Qtx · 24-10-2013, 19:37

Knowing VM they will add a couple of hours to the STM monitored times

With all the other truly unlimited providers now, VM must be heading towards that direction, so not sure of the point of moving all this equipment around. They must still want to traffic shape for the foreseeable future.

General Maximus · 24-10-2013, 19:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qtx

Knowing VM they will add a couple of hours to the STM monitored times

I thought that as well, I was expecting day time stm to be brought back

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qtx

not sure of the point of moving all this equipment around

ditto, for the miniscule difference stm is going to make now (unless they plan to keep upstream in place for torrents) I can't understand the cost/benefit analysis for moving the traffic management servers.

Kushan · 24-10-2013, 21:09

It's not like Virgin only has so much bandwidth per day, it's the peak bandwidth they need to manage. Perhaps all the recent upgrades have indeed been worth it. When we all had our recent spat of zero-STM, most of us found that we were still getting full speed - there were a few that weren't, of course, but I think the majority were happy. That says to me that in many parts of the network, there is indeed bandwidth to spare.

Perhaps this change in STM is just testing the waters a bit, a way of seeing if almost no STM is feasible. It's clear that the next step is to remove it all together (or start concentrating on the upload speed STM, who knows) but time will tell.

Whatever happens, this is a good thing. Unless you're in a congested area, but I was never convinced that STM had much of an impact there anyway.

neilt0 · 24-10-2013, 21:29

That 16% reduction is interesting, as it may mean they can claim they have the fastest (generally available) broadband service at 84mbps 24/7 vs BT's fibre's 76mbps.

Also, 16% off 120mbps is 100mbps.

ETA: I just started a download at 21:30, the download was very much throttled at about 4,500KB/sec. I rebooted my router and I resumed the download. This time, it's coming down at 12,000KB/sec. Nice.