Traffic Shaping Affecting All Tiers

[spurs4ever]

Im in Chigwell, Essex.

Had a constant 7-9mb on the old 10MB plan for £35.99 a month. Now got 1.5MB on the new 20MB plan and I have only just got in from work and downloaded nothing today. I've been capped and not even used any of the alloted download.

I should be getting 5MB here (which I could probably live with), and as I don't get in from work until 5pm most days I wont be getting more than 1.5MB during the week either. VNC on 1.5MB sucks when you are used to 7-9MB I can tell ya.

Lets hope it is not shaped over the weekend, else I will be one of the many phoning up and making my feelings known. Anyone know any Indian swear words LOL

Oh and for the record, my bill is £37.99 a month and I only have broadband with VM.

Hmmmm £37.99 a month for 1.5mb during the evenings. Nice.

[Paul H]

Originally Posted by jcuk

cant be throttled twice i dont think?

also - does this include all days of the week?

You can be throttled twice in one night. works out you get about 50 minutes at full speed. the rest at throttled speed. every night of the week.

http://abcde.co.uk/virginmedia/stm.html

[Lopo]

Shocking stuff....Only just come across the info on the upgrades today - I'm now on 20MB - Have been at work all day and just tried testing it out now when home. Not happy at all...

Tried a 4-5 speed tests - I'm getting 3-5MB throughput.

Traffic shaping my @rse at 4pm for going over 3GB ! This is a clampdown full stop - Contemplating leaving VM now after having been with their top service from inception,...this is bad and so not worth the money.

I'm not a heavy user, I've only just started using it for the day....Dont use torrents or P2P or ever have any machines on all the time.....this is really bad, never expected it to be below the 10MB I was perfectly happy with at £35 - AND the basts are taking £37 for the privelage now too....

Unbelievable...

[popper]

Originally Posted by jcuk

phone with tu, v+ box with xl pack, xl broadband, £15 quid a month

---------- Post added at 17:45 ---------- Previous post was at 17:45 ----------

should probably phone em up and get a bunch of 20meg lines in so i dont run outa 20meg power!

perks of the job , still you bring up a good point, when i first got the new C&W BB ,after a while away, i asked about having 2 stand alone cable modems installed, it was an easy plug-in and go as id already had two cables fitted, but apparently although end users can have several STB's on the same account they cant have more than one single modem...

i would have even been happy to take one of the CM's from the STB (as they already do around here) as its (2100c) already powered and pluged in at their UBR end and good for 4Mbit, but NO ,its not an option, at least then..., has that changed now BTW? and can we now pay for more than one CM on one account?.

thanks for the links BTW paul.

[supercyber]

lol k this is my revenge attack on VM, since i am not throttle yet plus i am on the 10Mb.

i just installed flashget and lined up about 35 different linux distros ( the dvd versions). going to be downloading 24/7, on full spped utill the day i get throttled. they can do what ever they want to do to me lol.

come on everyone join me.

just for the ppl wondering i lined up over 150 gigs in queue, whell that should take 2 days to complete lol, i need to search 4 more distros, of course i can just keep downloading the same ones. plus i need to fill the dam spacei got.


come on ppl join me. show VM what unlimited really means and stop messing with us or else.

plus i am happy i found a good use for the pentium 3 i had in stacked up lol

edit:

now qued up 390GB, i wont stop i reach the 1.1TB which my HDD space max i got free. then of course i delete all if and redownload form the same thinkns on torrent. just to shake of thier cache.

[Zee]

Originally Posted by Asha'man Jay

Ppl like you and Mr Santimonious are the reason rip off britain exists.

"Oh well, we'll just have to put up with it I suppose".

When I move house in the near future I will NOT be taking any of this VM crap with me.

I'm sorry but whats crap about traffic shaping?

Why would you need to download or upload over 3GB in just a few hours? Go to any other ISP and you'll see they'll complain to you about usage, or cut you off for using that amount in just a few hours.

[popper]

Originally Posted by supercyber

yea, u should ask if they do the bonded services, 5 lines and get 100mbits all is goona cost is 7.50£

thats will be the best 100Mbit

you dont even need bonded service though if all your doing is taking up bandwidth on torrent and news servers, just get your mates around you to make a wireless LAN use Azureus to grab the torrents at the same time over all the modems and setup a local 'hamster' news server on a machine to collect the groups chosen news etc.


the majority of the total traffic then goes over your FAR Faster local LAN rather than back up the WAN of CM/UBR then.

i cant seem to find any really usable 'bonded service' liveCD out the box as yet, anyone got some pointers perhaps?, if everyone drops their VM BB down and gets an active BT line and be or something then this bonding liveCd and small scale community Mesh wireless networking could take off BIG TIME.

[kar]

I've been affected by traffic shaping most nights, but tonight and I've gone a bit nana's on the us version of the ps3 network and I've not been limited.

Have done close to a gig after 4pm on the 4MB plan. Has virgin changed something?

---------- Post added at 19:48 ---------- Previous post was at 19:45 ----------

Just rolled over a gig, and stm triggered.

I think Virgin have upped the 'cap' on 4M to 1gig.

If so that's good stuff

[welwynrose]

Originally Posted by supercyber

lol k this is my revenge attack on VM, since i am not throttle yet plus i am on the 10Mb.

i just installed flashget and lined up about 35 different linux distros ( the dvd versions). going to be downloading 24/7, on full spped utill the day i get throttled. they can do what ever they want to do to me lol.

come on everyone join me.

just for the ppl wondering i lined up over 150 gigs in queue, whell that should take 2 days to complete lol, i need to search 4 more distros, of course i can just keep downloading the same ones. plus i need to fill the dam spacei got.


come on ppl join me. show VM what unlimited really means and stop messing with us or else.

plus i am happy i found a good use for the pentium 3 i had in stacked up lol

edit:

now qued up 390GB, i wont stop i reach the 1.1TB which my HDD space max i got free. then of course i delete all if and redownload form the same thinkns on torrent. just to shake of thier cache.

to be honest I thinky you're taking the mick if you really are doing that

[madonion(uk)]

Originally Posted by supercyber

lol k this is my revenge attack on VM, since i am not throttle yet plus i am on the 10Mb.

i just installed flashget and lined up about 35 different linux distros ( the dvd versions). going to be downloading 24/7, on full spped utill the day i get throttled. they can do what ever they want to do to me lol.

come on everyone join me.

just for the ppl wondering i lined up over 150 gigs in queue, whell that should take 2 days to complete lol, i need to search 4 more distros, of course i can just keep downloading the same ones. plus i need to fill the dam spacei got.


come on ppl join me. show VM what unlimited really means and stop messing with us or else.

plus i am happy i found a good use for the pentium 3 i had in stacked up lol

edit:

now qued up 390GB, i wont stop i reach the 1.1TB which my HDD space max i got free. then of course i delete all if and redownload form the same thinkns on torrent. just to shake of thier cache.

at least we know where the bandwidth is going now...

[nofrills]

Don't know what the hell is going on at the moment but it all seems to be going downhill.

Noticed I wasn't getting my usual rock solid 10meg connection today, was downloading at 900k-ish. So out of curiosity I reboot my modem and I then have the 20meg upgrade. So the upgrade has resulted in a worse connection, you would think they would learn from previous mistakes. Ironic thing is I was having a nice chat with a local tech about how good the local network was and the lack of congestion then this happens.

Also am I to understand upload is not being monitored? If true that's not the way to control so called 'p2p-kiddies'. They could be leaving all those torrents on for other ppl after they have finished. In my opinion they should have capped uploading if anything at all.

Sadly it's another reason to leave after the whole sky one fiasco, you'd think they'd be trying to keep their customers happy. They should invest in a network capable of delivering 10meg all the time instead of providing an upgrade that most people probably wouldn't want given the choice of that or 5meg during 1/3rd of the day at the time most ppl want to use their connection.

Of course if I leave Virgin I'd need a BT phone so I might as well cancel the whole lot and get Sky TV while I'm at it. Pointless rant but I'm another angry customer and really hope they reverse this as I really can't be a**ed moving but don't know how long I can take this for. I;d downgrade to 4meg but that has an even more stupendously ridiculous cap which is seemingly in place for the sake of it.

[popper]

Originally Posted by madonion(uk)

at least we know where the bandwidth is going now...

im rather concerned about how Vm will balance the new wish/requirement for users to keep their machines on longer so as not to be effected by the new throttling in normal off working hours and the statement here.
http://www.virginmedia.com/about/csr/
"
At Virgin Media, we aim to put Corporate and Social Responsibility at the core of everything we do. We take our impact on the environment and the community around us seriously.

We’re committed to developing initiatives to reduce the impact of our business on the environment and make a positive contribution to the community where we work. Developing the way we manage our network, run our offices or deliver our services.

Put simply, we believe in being a responsible corporation. Behaving ethically and responsibly to create a better society and a cleaner environment. "

perhaps we can get some B&Q wind power and start powering our STB's/CM's/computers/monitors/wireless routers etc that way and save some £15 extra a week on our electric meters

[Asha'man Jay]

Originally Posted by Zee

I'm sorry but whats crap about traffic shaping?

Why would you need to download or upload over 3GB in just a few hours? Go to any other ISP and you'll see they'll complain to you about usage, or cut you off for using that amount in just a few hours.

I don't need to download over 3gig. My cap is less than a third of that because I'm on 4mb.


Why cant they just port throttle p2p and leave the rest open?

[spurs4ever]

ooohhh,

Just called NTL / Virgin Media customer services 08454540000 and spoke to a rather sexily voiced scottish lady by the name of Carol.

Told her that not only had I not been given the 3GB allowance before the cap came in, I also only get 1.5MB download during the cap. I made a point of telling her right at the beginning that I know it was not her fault (and started to flirt with her too!). She apologised and told me that I was probably the calmest person she had spoke to tonight and then refunded this months BB payment of £37.99 and also reduced my package to £18.50 for the next 3 months.

I asked her if she had been told to do this by Mr Branson due to the many hacked off people paying £37.99 for the service and she told me that she was doing it on an individual basis dependng on the status of customers accounts.

Did I say she had a horny voice?

Anyway, went through to Carl (senior tech in Swansea) who told me that 1.5 was not right) and agreed that I did not download the 3GB quota, so could only assume that the upload of the 20MB config file to my modem was corrupted in some way hence the slow speeds. He also told me that it would show as 5MB instead of 20MB in the modem Config itself when the cap was in-place. (Will check this myself)

Basically, he suspended connection to my modem, removed the 20MB config file and reset my modem allowing it to download the config file again, along with a new IP address too. Doing this suspended my connection for around 30 mins.

Plugged the power back in and checked the modem....now im maxing at around 4MB which is better i suppose. Still not downloaded 3GB this evening so should be at top whack and my config is still showing 20MB.

[deckmonkey]

I still don't see that any of the services should be throttled. People pay a premium for cable broad band (and a big one at that) so that they don't have to suffer shaping and limits. Now that's gone too. I wouldn't mind if it was a temporary thing while they upgraded the network but it doesn't look like it is and the lower packages are being disproportionately nailed so that they can brag about 20 and 50 meg connections that are, for the most part, pretty pointless. I dowwnload quite a lot off stuff but I'm happy with a 4 or 5 meg connection to do it on.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a reliable, truly unlimited service at a lower speed rather than weak attention grabbing headlines about speeds which will almost never reach their full potential? I'd definitely pay a premium, and happily, for that over the hell that is ADSL.

Edit: I meant to say, to the person who questioned why you would need to download 3GB in an evening, it's easily done. The demo for Command and Conquer 3 was 1.3GB. The demo for Gran Turismo for the PS3 (for those lucky enough to have PS3's!) is over 650MB and that's a very limited demo. As many folks have already mentioned, Linux distros are often in the GB and anyone who uses 4OD or the upcoming BBC iPlayer to name but two online TV services will soon find they are hitting the buffers quick enough if, like me, they catch up with TV via the web rather than sitting in front of the telly itself.