50M Pitifully slow newsgroup speeds during the evening

Retrovertigo · 19-01-2012, 08:31

Had this issue for months now, where when shaping/management comes in, newsgroups downloads slow to around 200K

I went on the VM forums to see many people complaining of the same thing. A message was posted by one of the tech guys saying they had identified a problem and were working on a fix - which is supposedly now in place.

But that fix hasn't helped me at all. As soon as it hits (4pm is it?) bam - down to 200k. I was told by someone that 25% of bandwidth during that time is allocated to newsgroups/peer to peer. But to drop to 200k? Nah

That plus, with the students around here in Manchester all being home during the summer and Christmas (Christmas especially was like a ghost town here) I saw no improvement in speeds whatsoever.

On a normal evening when students are here, speed tests show around 10-15 meg (bad enough as it is for the money 50meg costs) but over Christmas, speeds were fine because the majority of homes here were empty. But that slow 200k remained - even after midnight.

Come the daytime - anytime after 7am (the earliest I ever try) and speeds are back up to normal and I get get appx 6Mb/s download.

I have just spoken to VM tech support on the phone again, and they just said there is high utilisation in my area. But as I say, when there is no one around here using the net during holidays, why am I still seeing such poor performance :/

Thanks for any help

**Kymmy** · 19-01-2012, 08:44

Perhaps 25% of the pipe isn't a lot to spread round to all the students especially if you're in the main student areas of Rusholme, Withington, fallowfield..etc.. where there are a lot of users in each house so tend to have 50/100Mb with multiple people downloading.

It doesn't mean you'll get 12.5Mb but as you've already specified your area is over subscribed and as the over subscription will mainly be NNTP/P2P traffic it means that you'll all end up with minimal speed.

Programs like newsbin (and others) have schedulers built into them these days.. set your downloads to start at 2am..

General Maximus · 19-01-2012, 08:56

I don't believe anything they told you dude. Where I live the utilisation is very very low and I have never had a problom achieving top speed. When you hit "peak time" and they do the traffic shaping it is supposed to flag p2p traffic as low priority meaning that if the bandwidth isn't being used, then it is all yours.

I am sure they put an actual cap on it for a max speed though because in the year and a bit I was only 50mbit I had exactly the same problem as you (pretty much 200k exactly) with newsgroups and torrents and it is too exact to be a coincidence. If it was low priority traffic you would expect your speed to fluctuate depending on utilisation and there would be times when it should go over 1mb/sec.

Retrovertigo · 19-01-2012, 09:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Perhaps 25% of the pipe isn't a lot to spread round to all the students especially if you're in the main student areas of Rusholme, Withington, fallowfield..etc.. where there are a lot of users in each house so tend to have 50/100Mb with multiple people downloading.

It doesn't mean you'll get 12.5Mb but as you've already specified your area is over subscribed and as the over subscription will mainly be NNTP/P2P traffic it means that you'll all end up with minimal speed.

Programs like newsbin (and others) have schedulers built into them these days.. set your downloads to start at 2am..

Yeah but as I stated, during Christmas I reckon 60-70% of the properties here were empty. My uncle is a landlord and has loads of flats here - every single one was empty, but I still only saw 200k. The utilisation during the holiday periods drops dramatically, and while I see regular net speeds increase during that period, the slow newsgroup speeds remain.

I know I can schedule downloads for the night time. But I'm not leaving my P.C switched on all night wasting money :/ There is clearly a problem - tech support on the VM forums even admitted I have an issue. But beyond that, no one can say what it is.

Totally agree General Maximus. The figure of 200k was happening for a lot of people with no fluctuation in it, which you would expect to change during the capped times and during holidays. But that 200k remains with no hint of increasing. Incredibly annoying.

keepitretro · 19-01-2012, 11:07

Seems to be down to what provider, and what port you are using.

But for a while i did notice them throttling port 443 but it appears to have stopped now.

Some of the non ssl ports seem to be unaffected also.

starbug · 20-01-2012, 17:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Retrovertigo

Had this issue for months now, where when shaping/management comes in, newsgroups downloads slow to around 200K

I went on the VM forums to see many people complaining of the same thing. A message was posted by one of the tech guys saying they had identified a problem and were working on a fix - which is supposedly now in place.

But that fix hasn't helped me at all. As soon as it hits (4pm is it?) bam - down to 200k. I was told by someone that 25% of bandwidth during that time is allocated to newsgroups/peer to peer. But to drop to 200k? Nah

That plus, with the students around here in Manchester all being home during the summer and Christmas (Christmas especially was like a ghost town here) I saw no improvement in speeds whatsoever.

On a normal evening when students are here, speed tests show around 10-15 meg (bad enough as it is for the money 50meg costs) but over Christmas, speeds were fine because the majority of homes here were empty. But that slow 200k remained - even after midnight.

Come the daytime - anytime after 7am (the earliest I ever try) and speeds are back up to normal and I get get appx 6Mb/s download.

I have just spoken to VM tech support on the phone again, and they just said there is high utilisation in my area. But as I say, when there is no one around here using the net during holidays, why am I still seeing such poor performance :/

Thanks for any help

I am in Didsbury and my entire service in this last few weeks has become useless almost, if it gets any worse i will be tethering off my iphone, cancelling and ordering ADSL. I have the 50mb package and i also subscribe to giganews for decent retention and ssl which had kept the speeds hones during peak times up until recently.

The best speeds i have managed in the last 7 days have barely peaked at 1 Mbps

Retrovertigo · 20-01-2012, 21:10

The best part of this farce, is tech support saying there is very high utilisation in the area, but mail shots being posted through the door twice this week trying to get customers to sign up. VM sticking two fingers up to people in the area.

caph · 20-01-2012, 23:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Retrovertigo

Had this issue for months now, where when shaping/management comes in, newsgroups downloads slow to around 200K Thanks for any help

How much news do you really need in one day anyway? Just browse the Guardian website, that's pretty good.

The 15MBit is pretty slow and you definitely want to complain about that, but coming on here complaining you can't get a good speed on illegal downloads is really taking the ____. Pay for your films/games/software and then complain to VM about slow speeds on your legitimate usage.

narco220 · 21-01-2012, 00:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by caph

How much news do you really need in one day anyway? Just browse the Guardian website, that's pretty good.

The 15MBit is pretty slow and you definitely want to complain about that, but coming on here complaining you can't get a good speed on illegal downloads is really taking the ____. Pay for your films/games/software and then complain to VM about slow speeds on your legitimate usage.

What other way do we truely know we are getting what we pay for (50mb)?

Newsgroups use to be the only way to max out your connection and to see if we really can hit the download speedS they tell us we are paying for!

so called online speed tests are bull all giving different readings!

Now with this traffic management going on 24/7 I'm lucky if i can hit 10mb so why bother paying for 50mb?

General Maximus · 21-01-2012, 08:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by narco220

Now with this traffic management going on 24/7 I'm lucky if i can hit 10mb so why bother paying for 50mb?

traffic management and/or shaping isn't 24/7

Chrysalis · 21-01-2012, 14:29

are you guys downloading from european servers?

for a few days now (maybe since that major outage) I have been seeing packet loss on many eu servers and am having to reroute all my traffic over a uk proxy I own to bypass it all. All the other isp's are blaming VM saying a de-cix link is down for ntl which I am going to pester VM about on monday.

narco220 · 21-01-2012, 16:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by General Maximus

traffic management and/or shaping isn't 24/7

Yes it is for newsgroups.

After you have downloaded around 5gb per month from usenet virgin throttle your connection with your usenet provider so you will never get over 10mbps even at off peak times and less than half that during peak hours, (Thats on a 50Mb service not sure about others)

**Kymmy** · 21-01-2012, 17:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by narco220

Yes it is for newsgroups.

After you have downloaded around 5gb per month from usenet virgin throttle your connection with your usenet provider so you will never get over 10mbps even at off peak times and less than half that during peak hours, (Thats on a 50Mb service not sure about others)

Who exactly told you that?

narco220 · 21-01-2012, 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Who exactly told you that?

Its the conclusion I've reached with my serivice after trying 3 different newsgroup providers,

And also being told by 2 of them that there aware of virgin throttling there servers.

**Kymmy** · 21-01-2012, 18:54