New STM/Virgin traffic managent confirmed - so that's why it's slow!

[Ed2020]

Originally Posted by ceedee

Won't this be the situation once DOCSIS3 is in place for the 50Mb and 20Mb services?

Dropping STM for the 10Mb? I doubt it, but I certainly hope so. As far as I'm concerned that would make the move from 20Mb to 10Mb an upgrade, and presumably with a cost reduction as well!

Ed.

---------- Post added at 22:02 ---------- Previous post was at 21:59 ----------

Originally Posted by Angry@VMedia

So there we have it, virgin media's internet IS LIMITED!!!

And why on earth are they STILL advertising it as UNLIMITED?

I think they mean "unlimited, relative to more limited services". I guess you could apply that logic to just about anything really....

Ed.

[Sput]

I have just found this article describing a process designed by Samknows.com to measure real ISP performance and expose marketing "bandwidth smokescreens":-

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...d_performance/


It will be interesting to see the results of this exercise.

[Robertus]

I sent Neil an e-mail this morning...e-mail and reply:

Hi there,

How are you on this fine morning?

Anyway, I would just like to voice my concerns over STM. At the moment
the current STM (4:00pm-9:00pm) is "ok".

Now if the company decides to go with 10:00am and beyond then quite
frankly that is quite ridiculous.

With the advent of the iPlayer, demos, itunes, free games - it would be
impossible to use the 20mb connection. I would be limited within 20minutes.

Now I have been with Blueyonder since they introduced the 512kb service
and it was awesome - infact it's still awesome. We rarely have any issues.

So if you really want to stand out over the ADSL crowd - please, please
do not go down the 24 hour STM route, nor the 10:00 - 3:00/4:00 - 9:00
avenue.

People will just jump ship to Be* or even worse Sky.

I'm presuming that this e-mail will go unanswered, but if you really do
want my make broadband your main focus - don't hit us with 9+ hours of STM.

Regards,

Robert.


--------------------------------------------------------------------

Thx for your comments. My focus is to improve not reduce our Quality of Service. The bonding technology we are deploying will go a long way to addressing this desired improvement.




Now I don't know if the e-mail posted here was legit or not, no idea. It could be a random person replying to me for all I know.

[ceedee]

Originally Posted by Robertus

I sent Neil an e-mail this morning...e-mail and reply:
[...]

Thx for your comments. My focus is to improve not reduce our Quality of Service. The bonding technology we are deploying will go a long way to addressing this desired improvement.

Now I don't know if the e-mail posted here was legit or not, no idea. It could be a random person replying to me for all I know.

Regardless of who replied to your email, what I understand the answer to actually mean is that VM believe that upgrading to DOCSIS3 over the next 9 months or so and then transferring the 50Mb/s (and reportedly, 20Mb/s) connections over to it, should relieve the pressure on bandwidth for the M and L level users.

At that point, I guess there's a chance that STM could be reduced or withdrawn but until then...

[AndrewJ]

Well if they are willing to offer a truly unlimited service for MORE money I would be interested.

As it stands per an email I sent and was replied to today I am giving them a few more month while I search about for costs of moving ISP if things are still in this state then I shall have little choice to move.

[Jelly]

Originally Posted by Angry@VMedia

So there we have it, virgin media's internet IS LIMITED!!!

And why on earth are they STILL advertising it as UNLIMITED?

Unlimited downloads in the technical sense would mean unlimited speed: we, in this universe, are limited by the speed of light, which has a direct effect on our fiber-optic connections and thus the amount of data we can download. There are no limits put in place by VM, but there are limits put in by the customer, who pays for a certain speed, and the laws of physics.

[ceedee]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Well if they are willing to offer a truly unlimited service for MORE money I would be interested.

I don't believe any ISP will be able to offer a contended service that guarantees that you'll be able to download as much as you want, when you want it, at a quoted (ie. fixed) speed.

To get that, you need a managed or leased connection that, I suspect, will cost far more than you'll be willing to pay.

[AndrewJ]

It is unlimited as in even with a slower speed you can still download an unlimited amount of data, you are not charged per MB as with some providers or even cut off as in some cases.

So it is still UNLIMITED in the sense of the above.

---------- Post added at 21:23 ---------- Previous post was at 21:22 ----------

Originally Posted by ceedee

I don't believe any ISP will be able to offer a contended service that guarantees that you'll be able to download as much as you want, when you want it, at a quoted (ie. fixed) speed.

To get that, you need a managed or leased connection that, I suspect, will cost far more than you'll be willing to pay.

Very true, perhaps what I mean is a decent overhead in relation to my speed and modern day internet usage.

I'd be happy to fork out £50 a month for 50MB down 1.5MB up with a 10GB cap per 24hour period.

I think that sounds fair?

[ceedee]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Very true, perhaps what I mean is a decent overhead in relation to my speed and modern day internet usage.

I'd be happy to fork out £50 a month for 50MB down 1.5MB up with a 10GB cap per 24hour period.

I think that sounds fair?

But your £50 buys you a contended connection -- if a large number of other 50Mb/s customers on the same UBR want to download at the same time, your speed will fall.

I had a look at the Zen Internet website earlier and they offer <8Mb/s download / 832Kb/s upload with no download restrictions for just £79+vat.
But down at the bottom of the page, you find:

Please note:
* Actual Broadband download speeds will be no higher than 7,150Kbps
* BT Wholesale estimates that 78% of customers will achieve Broadband download speeds of 4Mbps and above.
* Fluctuation in Broadband line speed is expected to occur within the first 10 days of service whilst your line speed adapts to the maximum it can reliably support.
* It is likely that Broadband speeds no greater than 2Mbps will be achieved at peak usage times.
* Broadband speeds are affected by line length, quality and peak Internet usage periods and will range from 160Kbps to 7150Kbps. Further details on what affects speeds is available in our support knowledgebase.

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

It is unlimited as in even with a slower speed you can still download an unlimited amount of data, you are not charged per MB as with some providers or even cut off as in some cases.

So it is still UNLIMITED in the sense of the above.

---------- Post added at 21:23 ---------- Previous post was at 21:22 ----------



Very true, perhaps what I mean is a decent overhead in relation to my speed and modern day internet usage.

I'd be happy to fork out £50 a month for 50MB down 1.5MB up with a 10GB cap per 24hour period.

I think that sounds fair?

So you'd happily pay £50/month for a connection with a cap which you could hit within what, 30 minutes...

And again, you wont get 50mbit down with only 1.5mbit up.

[annabd]

Grr... We're with Virgin ADSL broadband and they've capped us. We're in a student house with 5 users (it's secure) but we don't excessively download anything. The occasional song but no movies or streaming. So why have we been capped?

About 10 days ago i downloaded some programming software which was about 100MB, do you think this could have caused it?

Is there anything we can do? They are saying we'll be capped between 4 and midnight until Sunday. Which is sooo annoying.

Having spoken to them again i've been told that we've gone over 5G. This is ridiculous... there's no way we've gone over 5G. My housemates are all yelling at me... i'm the only one who understands computers/networks in our house, so apparently it's all my fault.

[AndrewJ]

Originally Posted by TraxData

So you'd happily pay £50/month for a connection with a cap which you could hit within what, 30 minutes...

And again, you wont get 50mbit down with only 1.5mbit up.

Depends if I am downloading flat out, and let us be honest not many people can do that

Most of the time I am uploading constantly over a network to people on slower downloads whom cannot download the larger 5GB + mods so use torrents.

I am pretty sure things will be changing soon for both 20MB and 50MB

[Ed2020]

Originally Posted by Robertus

Now I don't know if the e-mail posted here was legit or not, no idea. It could be a random person replying to me for all I know.

I don't have any concrete evidence but I am pretty sure Neil is replying in person to these emails. If he is then I have to give him a certain amount of credit for it, despite my *numerous* misgivings about some of the things VM are doing/planning at the moment.

Ed.

[deed02392]

Originally Posted by Sput

I have just found this article describing a process designed by Samknows.com to measure real ISP performance and expose marketing "bandwidth smokescreens":-

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...d_performance/


It will be interesting to see the results of this exercise.

I just signed up. I also very much look forward to seeing the results of this exercise, and would also like to be within the loop.

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Depends if I am downloading flat out, and let us be honest not many people can do that

Most of the time I am uploading constantly over a network to people on slower downloads whom cannot download the larger 5GB + mods so use torrents.

I am pretty sure things will be changing soon for both 20MB and 50MB

Not many people do that? you think people are gonna pay £50/month for a premium package just to view emails quicker?

Think about, the whole point of a fast connection is to download faster, not download faster, hit a limit then get cut back 75%

It completely takes away the whole god damn point of having a fast connection.

And 10GB is way, way, way too low.