Application Throttling/Management

[Uncle Peter]

Originally Posted by Nemeth

He didn't say throttling. Sounds more like QoS type rules to prioritise certain gaming traffic and improve pings.

No, it's a tool for increasing revenue at your expense. You can't just give something to someone then take it away and expect them to pay the same price.

[Angry@VMedia]

To be quite honnest, these days the internet is just getting more and more full with useless garbage, there are more self-obsessed idiots than ever before, the amount of spam has grown to an unbelievable amount, more profile sites than I can count on 2 hands, too many pricks either conning / offering pointless crap, and then there is phorm....

My online MSN contacts are practically nill (god I remember the good old days when i'd have 6 or 7 chats going at once, not even a second to breath myself) as they have ditched their internet, and to be quite honest, I would not miss it at all, so if virgin DO make this live, i will tell them to stick it and go without!
I could probably do with spending more time with family, and with a library just 10mins away from me offering free wifi, I could use a laptop to download what I want/need and screw the lot of the other rubbish out there!

Really, I think i am out-growing the internet, years ago it was really exciting, now its quite boring and not half as much fun as ot used to be!

Bye bye virgin, you can shove your "services" that you screw us PAYING customers with and i hope you sink faster than the titanic!!!

[Toto]

Originally Posted by Angry@VMedia

God with all this crap that VM & alex BROWN are doing, will they have ANY customers at all by the end of this year / begining of next??

If I find out they are throttling ANY port or application on my "unlimited" broadband, I will tell them exactly WHAT i think of them and the way they are screwing customers, and tell them quite plainly and clearly to stick their rubbish (I'm sure everyone knows the word that would come next) and cancel straight away, and if they dare to chagre, i'll take them to the small claims court!

THEY(vm) are in my eyes the criminals here, ripping people off, stealing back most of what is been sold, then there is the blatant lies, treating its customers like dog chod etc...

Looks like I just like many here will soon be an ex-virgin media customer!!!

I think you are over reacting to Traxs' news.

The Allot system is essentially designed to maximise traffic throughput on certain protocols, prioritising certain types of traffic over others.

Essentially it tries to give an even playing field to all users.

As Trax mentioned for example it could help ping times for certain online gaming such as World of Warcraft, or give priority to other data types at different times.

Lets be upfront here, most people think that VM's problems are down to lack of capacity, the pipe. They think that if you increase the flow, or enlarge the pipe - everything will be ticketyboo. WRONG.

It's simple, if people are taking more than they reasonably should, you should not give them a wider door to go through, no sir. You controll the flow, making it fairer for the majority, that is what the Allot DPI system provides. It gives VM mission critical data to help them manage peoples expectations of traffic flow. This is ultimately what people want, the ability to turn on their PC, do what they have to do then get off.

Virgin Media are not criminals just because you're not happy, they have to manage a massively complicated network with a burgening demand from its customers and all the various content out there.

Trust me when I say this, the problem is global. The bigger the ISP, the bigger the problem. Traffic management isn't a nice to have, its a must have and the quicker we accept this the better.

Can I suggest something though? Leave, leave now.....you're not happy, and this system has been in place for months, possibly a couple of years but VM have never used it, its going to happen, so cut your losses and head off to ADSL land. Be Unlimited seem to offer good packages, and there are other ADSL providers who will provide a premium service for a premium price, that is give you priority traffic at peak times if you pay more - oh wait - that wouldn't be fair in your eyes, sorry.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Toto

Can I suggest something though? Leave, leave now....

Hopefully they will do as you say by the bucket load

But remember everyone that does leave Pick a none Phorm ISP when you do leave

[HSp8]

I can just about put up with STM - I have a pretty solid service

but if my newsgroup activity starts being affected as stated in the OP, then I'll be off like a shot.

It'll be a shame, but certainly won't miss the tv - I'll be more than happy with Freeview, and hopefully, get an OK speed with ADSL

I think this will hit VM hard - certainly only a tiny fraction of VM users frequent this forum, but I'd bet the majority of 20Mb users out there aren't just browsing/checking e-mails and do actually know what they should be expecting

people are a lot more savvy these days

[zing]

Originally Posted by Nemeth

He didn't say throttling. Sounds more like QoS type rules to prioritise certain gaming traffic and improve pings.


Agree. As part of a Sky type package, £10pm or even free I can understand draconian measures like this. But to charge broadband-only customers £38pm for this is disgusting.

he didnt say it wont be throttled either

[duffman]

This is disappointing to read. I always thought VM were good value for money in the past for what i got and used. Then STM came in but i stayed out of the problem hours and survived ok. Then STM hours were increased to most of the day (and lets face it the night is just round the corner) and that has made me think about moving. Now i see this and think my time with VM is definatly up as i feel i am going to be paying way over the odds for a service that ADSL can supply just as well for my needs.

Goodbye VM, hello BE*

[jamiefrost]

Is this does come into effect I will probably be going, at the moment we have VIP package, that will be reduced to TV only (can't get SKY) and maybe keep the V+ box.

As far as broadband goes they can forget it, I can just about live with STM but this will be taking it to far.

Unless of course they advertise it as what it will be, a restricted broadband service (but thats a whole other discussion) and price is accordingly.

JJ

[Nemeth]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

he didnt say it wont be throttled either

To be fair I'm reading the info in that Allot link, not simply what Trax said.

To ensure high-quality performance of delay-sensitive applications, Allot solutions classify traffic through Layer 7, monitor network activity...

Ie. prioritising delay-sensitive traffic, which in the case of a consumer ISP is likely to be gaming-related traffic.

And anyway what's the point of throttling traffic that uses a relatively small amount of bandwidth? We're talking bandwidth usage for most games, WoW included, in the single-figures of Kbps.

Originally Posted by Nemeth

To be fair I'm reading the info in that Allot link, not simply what Trax said.


Ie. prioritising delay-sensitive traffic, which in the case of a consumer ISP is likely to be gaming-related traffic.

And anyway what's the point of throttling traffic that uses a relatively small amount of bandwidth? We're talking bandwidth usage for most games, WoW included, in the single-figures of Kbps.

I will just clarify something here.

VM are using this to throttle p2p and usenet for people they class as "heavy" users.

As i said this is in and out of peak hours and in their FUP completely seperate to STM.

And the reason for throttling games is quite simple, the uplink on *some* games affects the network in oversubscribed areas.

[AmAtoL]

I am pretty patient with VM generally, and I can see where they are coming from regarding the heavy downloaders etc (not that I agree with them btw), but.. when they start thinking about blocking/throttling game ports or whatever then that is a bit too much.
I just phoned BT 2 minutes ago, they are coming next Friday to reactivate my line, and hopefully I will be up and running soon with a decent gaming ISP.

[Kymmy]

One slight problem..most news servers allow the usage of port80...surely if they restrict that then they're restricting all web based traffic for the user??

Kymmy

Originally Posted by Kymmy

One slight problem..most news servers allow the usage of port80...surely if they restrict that then they're restricting all web based traffic for the user??

Kymmy

Not really, as with ALLOT it has deep packet inspection, they can easily tell if ur using usenet even with SSL.

[Uncle Peter]

The days of gaming traffic (with notable exceptions) using single digit bandwidth figures is a thing of the past unfortunately. The majority of Xbox live games for example are user hosted and rely on peer-to-peer connectivity.A mid double-digit figure is a more realistic estimation in this case depending on the game in question.

[HSp8]

why pick on newsgroups?

I thought it was the P2P users that caused congestion on the network with uploading