Should Virgin Media Throttle p2p traffic?

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Brian Hertz

No, of course they shouldn't.
They shouldn't filter or ban anything.

In 'the ideal world' their infrastructure should be suitable to cope with the demands of their subscribers, anticipating that they all might actually use the bandwidth they're paying for (yeah, I know, "up to" etc.... shut up!).

There are already daily traffic quotas in place for the lower tiers.
How any paying customer uses his or her quota should be their own business, besides which, isn't bittorrent usage in decline anyway?

Supposedly but unfortunately none of us live in "the Ideal World" that is just a pipe dream which will never happen!

We tend to live in the "Real World!"

[AndyCalling]

Just my ideas about what's going on:

In the US at the moment ISPs are all trying to add hard caps to connections because however much bandwidth they provide for new applications, torrenting (and newsgroup downloading) mops it all up immediately in some areas. They need a solution and pumping up the system isn't working. It won't likely work either, until torrenters can download all they could possibly want for the day in about 30 mins. This is a long way off as normal internet usage is unlikely to drive such speed boosts soon and torrenting alone is not something ISPs want to key their upgrades around. Normal users won't see the benefit.

1) Hard caps. Users hate them, even so US ISPs are risking such. In the UK however, BBC iPlayer (and the coming YouView) would be knackered with hard caps and customers will not accept this. No-go for anything other than the most value of ADSL products aimed at the emailer/light browser type of customer.

2) Ban torrents on normal packages and have expensive torrent packages for such users. This is too extreme as many of us want to check out newsgroups and torrent on occasion. Just not 24h a day. The half way house is to have 100meg connections available which tend to attract torrenters and to use the extra income to provide enough capacity on the top tier connection to cope. This means the rest of us on lower tiers won't have to pay to cover torrenters needs. I think 100meg should be more expensive if VM aren't getting enough extra from it to do this.

3) Prioritize. ISPs in the UK have suggested the idea of content providers paying for priority net access but customers have not reacted well. The alternative is to drop the priority of torrent traffic as VM is doing.

VM's current strategy needs a few tweaks as far as I can see:

1) Price 100meg so that it can cover the cost of providing the capacity torrenters need.

2) On lower tiers, drop the priority of torrents (and newsgroup downloads) for a user if that user is affecting the net for nearby users. Do NOT limit everybody else in the area who have not behaved badly just because of the actions of a few chancers who won't pay the extra for the top tier and still want to torrent all day long. This is little different to the problems that congestion caused anyway, a few bad apples ruin it for everyone else. Just limit the offender. I do not see why my torrent speed should be slowed because others are being the digital equivalent of noisy neighbours.

3) Drop speeds when managing them ONLY for torrents and newsgroup downloads. Not for everything you don't recognise. This is not easy, I get it, but some ISPs around the world do manage this I hear on these forums, so find out how and do it. This is absolutely essential or you will constantly be peeving well behaved customers.

It seems simple to me. Am I being unreasonable?

[pip08456]

Yes.

I would surmise that those who torrent or download via newsgroups are the majority of those who go for the higher speed packages, the difference between the two is torrenters use upstream bandwidth as well.

Gamers don't need higher speeds, they need low ping and jitter.- Not good if torrenters are prevalent in their area due to them gobbling up the upstream bandwidth.

IMHO the ISP's have to swallow a lot of the blame for it. They gave the wrong impression to users by selling products as unlimited when there was in fact limits on it! It's all about how you look at it and marketing.

Torrenters and newsgroup downloaders should really be looking at the niche providers like Be, et al, and paying the premium for it. That will upset the newsgroup users who already pay for the quicker download from the newsgroup server.

It's a total can of worms and I cannot see how the ISP's can solve it to the satisfaction of everyone.

I could go on but I don't want to fill a whole page with a post.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by AndyCalling

1) Price 100meg so that it can cover the cost of providing the capacity torrenters need.

Sadly if most of these guys aren't interesting in paying for the content they are torrenting (and please people spare me all the stuff about legal and illegal content we all know that virtually all the data torrents and NNTP shift is copyright theft, I am not for a moment saying it all is and am quite aware that CF has the largest concentration of legal NNTP / P2P users in the world) there is little indication that they are inclined to pay more for their services.

The cost of 100Mb would be... unpleasant if unlimited and unmanaged.

cf has the largest concentration of legal nntp / p2p users in the world

rofl

[ErnieBean]

as p2p people pay they have they same rights as the rest of us.
What the pass across is a different matter.
I use it to download the latest driver-packs.

Yes, a lot of people seem to do that, approx 60GB of drivers per day.....

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

quite aware that CF has the largest concentration of legal NNTP / P2P users in the world)

Well said

---------- Post added at 10:09 ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 ----------

Originally Posted by Hugh

Yes, a lot of people seem to do that, approx 60GB of drivers per day.....

Originally Posted by ErnieBean

I use it to download the latest driver-packs.

Are those drivers updated EVERY day as well

[ErnieBean]

They are updated frequently but not daily

---------- Post added at 10:20 ---------- Previous post was at 10:19 ----------

If you just download, say xp 32 bit they will only be around 4Gig

[Ignitionnet]

I must admit to not being sure on this one, I only tend to download drivers for hardware I actually own and only update them when I have a reason to.

C:\>dir *.mui /a /s | find "bytes"
9543 File(s) 235,703,368 bytes

C:\>dir *.drv /a /s | find "bytes"
12 File(s) 2,394,112 bytes

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

I must admit to not being sure on this one, I only tend to download drivers for hardware I actually own.

C:\>dir *.mui /a /s | find "bytes"
9543 File(s) 235,703,368 bytes

C:\>dir *.drv /a /s | find "bytes"
12 File(s) 2,394,112 bytes

There the new linux iso's

As for me i just download the internet

Stream the internet

And any thing else i can do on the internet


You could call me a serial bandwidth abuser

Exactly - if you are going to to it, be loud and proud.

Not "I only download drivers and linux ISO's" (and have 4 x 1TB drives to store them on).

[_wtf_]

There seems to be a perception that if you're a high bandwidth user you can only be doing so if you're into illegal file sharing.

I would guess that the real people who are affecting the network know how to pretty much circumvent any traffic shaping. VPN's not only hide their IP address but should also scupper the ISP's traffic management systems, that is, if they really are not inspecting peoples VPN packets, which I personally think they are doing.

The internet is becoming, if it isn't already, a utility so why not have a meter outside the house? I pay something like £80 p/m for my electricity and when I want to use it I can. Yet I pay half of that for my internet and basically can use it to it's full extent when I should be sleeping and can hardly use it at all for what I really want it for, gaming

---------- Post added at 11:44 ---------- Previous post was at 11:39 ----------

Originally Posted by Sirius

There the new linux iso's

As for me i just download the internet

Stream the internet

And any thing else i can do on the internet


You could call me a serial bandwidth abuser

LMAO.

Bet you don't play games though!!

3x50MB How on earth does that work?

---------- Post added at 11:49 ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 ----------

Originally Posted by Hugh

Not "I only download drivers and linux ISO's" (and have 4 x 1TB drives to store them on).

LOL, I have a dedicated server to store my Linux ISO's on. It also runs Transmission to share them with everyone else

[SOSAGES]

seems a shame i have a 50MB connection and have to wait until midnight to use it fully.
ho hum.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by _wtf_

Bet you don't play games though!!

Bet i do.

Proud clan member of www.nthwgaming.co.uk

i play BFBC2, MW2, COD4, COD5, COD Blackops

Originally Posted by _wtf_

3x50MB How on earth does that work?

I work for VM and i have been asked to do some testing

And before anyone asks i only use my paid for connection for gaming and leaching. I do not use the test connections for anything other than testing and the test connections are only active when testing is in progress. Considering how some on here act with members of staff i feel it best making sure they are aware of that fact.

Originally Posted by _wtf_

LOL, I have a dedicated server to store my Linux ISO's on. It also runs Transmission to share them with everyone else

I did have one for a while located in Germany