Anyone actually been cut off/restricted because of the Detrimental Usage?

[jagsman]

I have a 10mb connection and I received the 2nd letter a couple of weeks ago. I do the majority of my downloading between 9pm and 9am, but i have been caught out on quite a few occasions during the day due to my kids downloading stuff for their Xbox, so a lot of times I've seen my connection "managed" during the day. What I would like to know is, how can my 10mb connections over-use, cause the network to grind to a halt for other users? What would happen if several new customers in my area took a 50mb connection? Would the network just implode? I dont think so.

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by Nopanic

Not really a useful reason is it ..

I never suggested it was although the people running that project would disagree with you. All I said was it was a completely legal way to consume vast amounts of bandwidth and doing so would still earn you a snotty letter.

[AdamD]

Originally Posted by kwikbreaks

Well if the VM backup actually worked I imagine a few terrabytes of backup would keep everything busy but as anybody who's tried it already knows it crawls and it would probably be quicker viewing your data in a hex viewer and transcribing it to parchment using a quill pen.

lol, to true
It's a shame, I would use the service if it actually worked as advertised.

[Dave9946]

Well having speed tested at several times per day over the last week apart from 1 occasion which I think was just a glitch we never once get less that 46MB out of our 50MB connection. I've even questioned virgin on this today and even they have said they cant explain those results if the letter is claiming we are causing a total loss of servive to other customers and major disruptions for others!.

In fact we are currently getting 64MB now and thats we 2 pc's on the net. If I were to download and getting full speed then how can that be as we would be causing the capacity to drop that much several others will loose connection all together, what, they all on 2MB connection or something?. Then again just scanned the area and there are 4 superhubs in range right now.

[Nopanic]

Originally Posted by kwikbreaks

I never suggested it was although the people running that project would disagree with you. All I said was it was a completely legal way to consume vast amounts of bandwidth and doing so would still earn you a snotty letter.

OK if you're going down that route, you could download from download.com all day ..

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by Dave9946

Then again just scanned the area and there are 4 superhubs in range right now.

They must be better hubs than mine - that drops out above about 10m away.

The fact that you can still download at pretty much full tilt proves to me at least that you can't be having much impact on others. I'm pretty much convinced that this is all about VM weeding out uneconomic customers which, apart from their misleading advertising, they are perfectly entitled to do.

[Dave9946]

Originally Posted by kwikbreaks

They must be better hubs than mine - that drops out above about 10m away.

The fact that you can still download at pretty much full tilt proves to me at least that you can't be having much impact on others. I'm pretty much convinced that this is all about VM weeding out uneconomic customers which, apart from their misleading advertising, they are perfectly entitled to do.

Possably why the guy I spoke to today did'nt want to go into that lol. Currently tested 47.2MB down and 4.4MB up. I'm in all day tomorrow so going to try testing on a more regular basis to see how slow I can test as much as how fast as I may be in a position to refute there claims if I can generate enough tests to suggest otherwise. By the way when is the utmost bussiest peak period hours. I'm guessing 4-9pm?.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

also could queue up a large file in a ftp client again and again and set it to auto overwrite when it repeats.

nice link you posted, you got one for upload also?

I was going to saturate my upload to boost my UBR's utilisation to escalate an upgrade but it seems I may not need to now as VM seem to be doing some work on it.

I could easily run up 200GB/day or more with my offsite backup if I felt like it. Not business use, not illegal, not useless, and something I would usefully like to do but can't because of VM's Unlimited* service.

* Subject to arbitrary limits we won't tell you about.

Actually the fact that I can pay £20 for 6TB of bandwidth a month at 100meg vs. VM's £35 for ~350GB/month at 50 meg is pretty shameful.

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Actually the fact that I can pay £20 for 6TB of bandwidth a month at 100meg vs. VM's £35 for ~350GB/month at 50 meg is pretty shameful.

You aren't comparing like with like though. Providing bandwidth to a sever in a datacentre is vastly cheaper than the same amount of bandwidth over a fibre/coax network to individual homes.

This policy is simply because one high usage customer can require the same resources to support as dozens of users who do not serially download anything.

VM have a perfect right to choose who they sell their product to. Where they are wrong is in not making clear what that product really is because "unlimited downloads" it isn't.

[Nopanic]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

I could easily run up 200GB/day or more with my offsite backup if I felt like it. Not business use, not illegal, not useless, and something I would usefully like to do but can't because of VM's Unlimited* service.

* Subject to arbitrary limits we won't tell you about.

Actually the fact that I can pay £20 for 6TB of bandwidth a month at 100meg vs. VM's £35 for ~350GB/month at 50 meg is pretty shameful.

so do it ...

[Peter_]

Just because people are paying what in real terms is a small fee for their connection does not give you the right to hoover up the internet and if you dislike what you have agreed to under the Virginmedia Terms and Conditions then you can always vote with your feet and look elsewhere, I doubt in most cases you will get the same speeds as you get from Virginmedia.

[Dave9946]

Originally Posted by Masque

Just because people are paying what in real terms is a small fee for their connection does not give you the right to hoover up the internet and if you dislike what you have agreed to under the Virginmedia Terms and Conditions then you can always vote with your feet and look elsewhere, I doubt in most cases you will get the same speeds as you get from Virginmedia.

I do agree with that in part myself. But it still does remain that virgin dont detail in the letters what the peak time useage was and they dont hold the data to make it available by the time a customer is in a position to ask about useage. So unless they are provided with the detailed information they cant follow the terms because virgin dont detail what they are or even what they have used in a fixed period peak hours.

What's to say there is an unknown reason for any apparent high use of bandwidth that the account holder does not know of or could solve with the information?, whats to say the connection is not being externally used (hacked it you like), Whats to say an error has not occured where heavy bandwidth from offpeak has not slightly overlaped into peak hours and the total has been collected for peak hours etc without the information being provided at the time or seemingly impossable to provide by the time they call Internet Security then what steps can they take apart from being told not to use bandwidth using abilities?.

And for us, which virgin simply seem unable to grasp it's not about the speed as such, it's not really about any AUP, it's more about not detailing it when they can, not providing the only detail when they can and pretty much the way they are implimenting this whole detrimental useage issue.

We would be far happier on even a 10MB service where they detail useage and speed capping after a certain limit and dont have such a draconian threat to cut there customers off.

[AbyssUnderground]

The way I see it is if VM can't afford to give you at least 50% of the connection speed 24/7 they shouldn't be selling it. Simple as that. That's like buying 50 litres of fuel and being told you can't use it all. I've said it all along that if they can't supply it they shouldn't be trying but they never seem to understand that.

[Dave9946]

Well for us it came down to a refusal to say how much equivilent of full speed bandwidth per day\month we could use. And how much we have used after the letters. In theory an estimated 10GB per day total peak time is fairly reasonable (if useable inside half an hours full speed) to use IF it were stated and stated how they impliment it. There is clearly a limit they have and work to for these letters but they wont tell us citing daily fluctuations in capacity demand, which is simply an excuse than a reasonable reason.

[Welshchris]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

It makes me laugh that people could get cut off for downloading on a connection they pay for. Isn't Virgin just risking throwing money away by cutting people off? Makes no sense...

u pay to drive ur car doesnt mean u can be lawfully stopped for breaking the rules.