Traffic Management Policy

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by Lee

If downloading from newsgroups is slow.. what known source would you use? Not much point comparing to a download from a HTTP source.

gamefiles.virginmedia.com

if you are getitng full speed or close to it there then you can pretty much safely say yu are being throttled on newsgroups and if oyu can get closed to full speed form microsoft downlaod site then again it safe to say

[watzizname]

Originally Posted by broadbandking

as for the traffic shaping this should end at midnight and your speed should return to normal.

Many thanks for that..

I'll put it down as a tempory glitch then, was just getting a little concerned that i might be expected to wait till after midnight, to be assured of full speed.

Guess i'll see how it goes

[kkevin666]

Bad news I'm afraid.

The slowdown appears to be throttling plain and simple.
Not only are we traffic managed but also now newsgroups only barely run at a tenth of the previous speeds.

Streaming utube videos to be throttled next perhaps?
Whats the ****ingpoint of having any connection above 2m now.

[deakin]

I feel you pain, right now i'm getting about 90kbps while using 10 threads.
This from a 50MB connection ? During the day adn after midnight(ish) i get the full 6000ish
so i can take from that it's not a local problem and it's this new traffic management thing.
I'm sure i read here somewhere that it's meant to be capped to 25% of your total download
speed ie 50/4 = 12.5mb Am i wrong ?

[brundles]

Apologies if I've missed this and it's buried in another thread, but do we have any indication of just how they're doing this traffic management?

Does all P2P and newsgroup traffic just get throttled to stupid levels, or is it (as the VM page implies) a cap that's split between those in the area giving the option of getting lucky if people near you don't use them?

At the moment I might typically grab something to watch when I get home from work which will hit the connection for about 10 minutes (on a 20 meg connection) and that's me done for the night. Hardly an abuse of the network IMO!

[lordy]

If it keeps up at this rate there is no point me personally having XL - I might just drop down to a lower package or back to ADSL (3M again ).

But I have to work out if there is any legitimate breach of contract argument here - otherwise I'll stick it for a year then bail out. STM I could handle but this last throttling is just bad for me.

And usenet alone is actually is only a small percentage of overall traffic these days.

@brundles, MY astraweb connection was throttled to about 2Mbps right away on Sunday at 15:30 even though I had not even touched the internet all day! (had a lie in) - So if they dont want my custom they should release me from contract rather than take my money and treat me like a [bleep]. (I'm on 20Mbps)


Its now running at 6-7Mbs but speedtest indicates I'm unthrottled (14Mbs), because I have only been doing normal surfing all day , and fired up the client a few minutes ago.

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by lordy

If it keeps up at this rate there is no point me personally having XL - I might just drop down to a lower package or back to ADSL (3M again ).

But I have to work out if there is any legitimate breach of contract argument here - otherwise I'll stick it for a year then bail out. STM I could handle but this last throttling is just bad for me.

And usenet alone is actually is only a small percentage of overall traffic these days.

@brundles, MY astraweb connection was throttled to about 2Mbps right away on Sunday at 15:30 even though I had not even touched the internet all day! (had a lie in) - So if they dont want my custom they should release me from contract rather than take my money and treat me like a [bleep]. (I'm on 20Mbps)


Its now running at 6-7Mbs but speedtest indicates I'm unthrottled (14Mbs), because I have only been doing normal surfing all day , and fired up the client a few minutes ago.

its in the terms and services they can implenment it if they choose to or if ti affectgs or services you have ahrd fight tryign to prove otherwise

[lordy]

Yeah to be honest I'd simply wait it out. but if T&C allow them to arbitrarily throttle any sites they want (even before I've downloaded anything at all) - well there is such a thing as an unfair contract. - but granted my Usenet downloading is not all Linux ISOs. (much like news.virginmedia.com)

Also bit-torrent (which I dont use) is a legitimate file transfer protocol , used by Game distributors etc. so I can see that being lots of fun for people (unless VM are targetting hosts and not just deep packet inspection).

I'm typing at

23:59 with download running at 4Mbps. ....
00:10 same slow speed after bouncing connection ...
00:20 back up to speed. I only wanted two movies - but I feel compelled to queue up a load of crap now and get my monies worth...

[buba3d]

think its bad now, wait till 100mb takes stage

[brundles]

Originally Posted by lordy

Yeah to be honest I'd simply wait it out. but if T&C allow them to arbitrarily throttle any sites they want (even before I've downloaded anything at all) - well there is such a thing as an unfair contract. - but granted my Usenet downloading is not all Linux ISOs. (much like news.virginmedia.com)

Also bit-torrent (which I dont use) is a legitimate file transfer protocol , used by Game distributors etc. so I can see that being lots of fun for people (unless VM are targetting hosts and not just deep packet inspection).

I'm typing at

23:59 with download running at 4Mbps. ....
00:10 same slow speed after bouncing connection ...
00:20 back up to speed. I only wanted two movies - but I feel compelled to queue up a load of crap now and get my monies worth...

Got to admit, you're right. Although I don't get that much these days as I mentioned, when I do occasionally get a chunk of stuff I used to do it off-peak hours anyway out of consideration for other users/network as i didn't need it. Their treatment doesn't really make me feel like doing that any more which actually makes it worse for them overall...

[garak112]

Personally I think it is just super that VM have decided that people who work a 9-5 shouldn't be allowed to use the internet properly.

I am glad that they have finally realised that it is the end user who decides when companies put huge game patches online, and that we are just being greedy trying to come home and not spend the evening twiddling our thumbs.

Hooray for VM!

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by garak112

Personally I think it is just super that VM have decided that people who work a 9-5 shouldn't be allowed to use the internet properly.

I am glad that they have finally realised that it is the end user who decides when companies put huge game patches online, and that we are just being greedy trying to come home and not spend the evening twiddling our thumbs.

Hooray for VM!

the poitn is this is wha there trying to achive alllw people to come how ohme and have the banwidwht for games and video streaming etc not for p2p, but a lot of sites use p2p protocols to get teh patches etc to cusotmer so virign backend stuf just treats as that hecne why a recent game update virign had to remove it from teh throttling to until they cold fix it

[Milambar]

They appear to be using a "default deny" rule, that is, if their servers don't recognise the traffic as "legitimate", it assumes its "illegitiate" and throttles it. Instead of instead having rules toi explictally deny usenet and p2p.

As long as they have rules registering all known traffic types as valid, this is a legitimate solution (if a bit assbackward), the problem is, sometimes a legitimate system changes their traffic type (packet size, ports, src, dst, etc), which means their servers no longer recognise it as legitimate, and throttles it. I believe this is what happened to world of warcraft, ending up with the game being throttled hard (seems to be fixed now), and this is exactly why its a bad idea to use a "default deny" rule.

Also their servers don't seem to recognise RTMP streams (real time messaging protocol) as valid, which is used by flash videos, and BBC iPlayer, because that appears to be throttled pretty harshly too. I spent over an hour last night trying to download a program off iPlayer, a program that normally downloads in minutes. In fact I will set another program downloading off iPlayer later, to see if that gets a similarly abysmal speed, and report back.

[lordy]

Well it will be interesting to see in 12 months time, what percentage of the 50Mb subscribers are big filesharing downloaders, and if they will decide to downgrade to a smaller package.

I'm on 20Mb but if I stay with VM, I wont keep this tariff next year, as they is no point me having it if I dont have the opportunity to quicky grab a movie in the late evening.

10Mb will satisfy My normal surfing and forced after 12pm downloading.

[buba3d]

as i said before (maybe on another forum) that the vm's 50mb xxl has became the uk's most expensive dialup.