Should Virgin Media Throttle p2p traffic?

[Chrysalis]

Voted no for following reasons.

1 - protocol shaping sucks in general, false positives. plus inspecting traffic resource intensive which itself can cause performance issues.
2 - no differential on light or heavy user, this system treats a heavy http user better than a light p2p user.
3 - useless if an area is congested and no or little p2p usage to throttle.

That doesnt mean I think there should be no congestion management just that I think there is better ways of doing it than protocol shaping.

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:52 ----------

Originally Posted by craigj2k11

i understand they are working on sorting out xbox live at the moment, but why dont they just allow unidentified traffic as normal? they are blocking gaming, vpn, and even their own online backup until the update the other day

ofcom have told me they have told VM to do this. Apparently if VM dont comply they will be ordered to change their website.

[Marcus125]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Voted no for following reasons.

1 - protocol shaping sucks in general, false positives. plus inspecting traffic resource intensive which itself can cause performance issues.
2 - no differential on light or heavy user, this system treats a heavy http user better than a light p2p user.
3 - useless if an area is congested and no or little p2p usage to throttle.

That doesnt mean I think there should be no congestion management just that I think there is better ways of doing it than protocol shaping.

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:52 ----------



ofcom have told me they have told VM to do this. Apparently if VM dont comply they will be ordered to change their website.

Well thats progression...OFCOM told me to contact VM and that they are aware of the issuse or something along them lines but massively over complicated for a reply email.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Because so much P2P hides. Leaving unidentified stuff alone makes it even more worthless than it is now as every arsewipe and their dog can tick a couple of boxes on the P2P client.

Blame P2P developers who insist on obfuscating their protocols to try and get around ISP shaping. You end up with what we have now, positively identified protocols being white listed rather than P2P being black listed.

why dont VM just use a proper system like that one we discussed that comcast use. I warned everyone here protocol shaping will be problematic and is a poor way of managing traffic.

---------- Post added at 22:02 ---------- Previous post was at 22:00 ----------

Originally Posted by Marcus125

Well thats progression...OFCOM told me to contact VM and that they are aware of the issuse or something along them lines but massively over complicated for a reply email.

I got told that at first, but after about 2 weeks of daily phone calls they had logged all my calls and decided to take me a bit more serious, now I am at the stage they are consulting with VM about accuracy of their website in regards to traffic management. Bear in mind ofcom have just passed some new code of practice on this, its worth mentioning that as ofcom will look poor if they just let this drop, when I said that to them it kickstarted them into doing something.

Bear in mind VM are not been told to stop the shaping but rather to make the shaping match what is put on the website, so in affect either change the website to say what they whitelist and that rest is shaped, or to make shaping blacklist instead of whitelist.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Voted no for following reasons.

1 - protocol shaping sucks in general, false positives. plus inspecting traffic resource intensive which itself can cause performance issues.
2 - no differential on light or heavy user, this system treats a heavy http user better than a light p2p user.
3 - useless if an area is congested and no or little p2p usage to throttle.

That doesnt mean I think there should be no congestion management just that I think there is better ways of doing it than protocol shaping.

Voted no for the same reasons.

BTW Chrys, You should've received an email from Neil at samknows today. Did you get it?

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by pip08456

Voted no for the same reasons.

BTW Chrys, You should've received an email from Neil at samknows today. Did you get it?

I did, he wants me to register fresh again, will do it tommorow.

[craigj2k12]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

I did, he wants me to register fresh again, will do it tommorow.

what's this about? Sounds interesting

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Marcus125

ALSO-
Do you really think its fair the consumer pays because you under price your products? (you being VM which you obviously arent but you get my drift)

Or are you saying Virginmedia is a budget brand at a budget price? I DOUBT THEY WOULD AGREE.

The consumer doesn't pay. They have made it quite clear since they launched the 100Mb product that it came with shaping of certain traffic. No-one put a gun to your head and forced you to purchase it and if it's not suitable for your needs you should have chosen another product.

Oh wait, there's about 3,000 private customers in total in the UK on 100Mbps products apart from VM. In other words you can't get those levels of performance from anyone else, even with the peak shaping in mind.

---------- Post added at 22:42 ---------- Previous post was at 22:38 ----------

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

why dont VM just use a proper system like that one we discussed that comcast use. I warned everyone here protocol shaping will be problematic and is a poor way of managing traffic.

The current iteration is management version 1. It will progress no doubt but at the moment is based on a quite centralised system which is incapable of the granularity that the Comcast system has.

VM would need to do some quite heavy duty upgrades to facilitate a Comcast-like system. Their current systems just aren't capable of dynamic service flow changes or such timely traffic monitoring while the Comcast systems were thanks to their running IPDR to police their 250GB/month cap and their more advanced QoS management from their PacketCable system to supply VoIP over the cable network.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The consumer doesn't pay. They have made it quite clear since they launched the 100Mb product that it came with shaping of certain traffic. No-one put a gun to your head and forced you to purchase it and if it's not suitable for your needs you should have chosen another product.

Oh wait, there's about 3,000 private customers in total in the UK on 100Mbps products apart from VM. In other words you can't get those levels of performance from anyone else, even with the peak shaping in mind.

so given the lack of competition why they price it so low, who put the gun to VM's head?

---------- Post added at 22:43 ---------- Previous post was at 22:42 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The current iteration is management version 1. It will progress no doubt but at the moment is based on a quite centralised system which is incapable of the granularity that the Comcast system has.

VM would need to do some quite heavy duty upgrades to facilitate a Comcast-like system. Their current systems just aren't capable of dynamic service flow changes or such timely traffic monitoring while the Comcast systems were thanks to their running IPDR to police their 250GB/month cap and their more advanced QoS management from their PacketCable system to supply VoIP over the cable network.

in short its been done on the cheap?

[craigj2k12]

If vm add any more things into the network they're just going to make it worse. The more things they put our traffic through the higher pings will be

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

so given the lack of competition why they price it so low, who put the gun to VM's head?

---------- Post added at 22:43 ---------- Previous post was at 22:42 ----------



in short its been done on the cheap?

In answer to part 1 the price of the rest of the market did - note BT's pricing of their Infinity service and its increment over their standard broadband price - zero.

In answer to the other point yes, absolutely, done on the quick and cheap. They are doing it quite cleverly and in the cheapest feasible way however you misunderstand why it was done. It was done to relieve pressure from transit and peering not local networks.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by craigj2k11

what's this about? Sounds interesting

Here

[|Kippa|]

I think that even with application shaping on the 50mbit and 100mbit connections, that Virgin Media are offering are excellent products for the price that they ask for. It wasn't that long in the past when 0.5mbit cost around £50 when it was first introduced. Comming from using 56k modems that was lucky to have a 3k download rate I think that users today are exteremly spoilt and want quite a lot for relativley nothing.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

In answer to part 1 the price of the rest of the market did - note BT's pricing of their Infinity service and its increment over their standard broadband price - zero.

In answer to the other point yes, absolutely, done on the quick and cheap. They are doing it quite cleverly and in the cheapest feasible way however you misunderstand why it was done. It was done to relieve pressure from transit and peering not local networks.

even more baffling, we both know now days transit and peering costs are very low historically. For an isp to employ management to control transit utilisation is rather unusual in 2011?

Also worrying in that VM obviously consider their port utilisation issues to not be a problem if the management wasnt even put in place to control that.

BT are selling a up to 40mbit product, VM's is superior on paper so there is no need to copy what BT are doing. They just need a better marketing team who can take advantage of BT's weaknesses. Consumers do have the cash, they spend horrific amounts on mobiles phones. gas, electric etc.

Perhaps Igni can tell us whether VM's current system is the same as Plusnet DSL's implementation? Using both services I know VOIP on Plusnet is absolutely faultless, the downside is p2p on their network is virtually dial-up at peak times.
I can't actually get Asterisk to get along with the Super Hub properly to test call quality on VM these days. From past experience there were lots of packet loss, jitter and other unpleasant stuff to make it unusable. If their new system is DPI I'd expect it to be perfect now when it comes across VOIP packets.

[Chrysalis]

plusnet shape but they also do priority class's for different types of traffic. gold silver bronze etc.

so they will throttle specific things down such as p2p and as you say very severely. Then on top of that if their pipes are hitting saturation point then stuff in their bronze class will be further throttled by deliberatly dropping packets to maintain the higher class's. Things like VOIP are in their platinum class I think. Web browsing is in gold class, and if you on their PAYG product everything is gold. So plusnet's is more advanced.

VM appear to have no system's in place that react to saturation and is a simple protocol shaping mechanism. My thoughts based on what I read here and elsewhere and what I know of plusnet's system (as they quite open about it). Plusnet even admit they shape unidentified traffic.

They even do things like throttle gaming traffic to 2mbit but put it in a high priority class. This I guess means if they accidently mark traffic as gaming or someone fakes it, they will still be throttled but gamers wont find their packets been dropped as they in a high priority class.