Am I being capped?

[ghell]

With most ISPs I would call up tech support to find out if I was being capped but the fact that it took me a month of phone calls just to get my serial and pin numbers to even activate my modem (self installation of modem + welcome pack never arrived) discourages me from this with Virgin Media.

I have the 20mbps XL package. It has been activated for 2 weeks now to the day. A few days ago it went sharply down to exactly 2mbps/256kbps and has not got any higher (or lower) than this since it went that low. This is not just 4pm to midnight as some websites suggest (can't actually find the caps listed on virgin medias website). This was pretty annoying as I was in the middle of installing Debian linux under VMware when it went sharply down so what is normally a few minutes install ended up taking 2 hours. I went to check the caps but it says even if I were capped it would be 5mbps down.

Just before the "cap" my girlfriend was on bit torrent for a while (not a week non stop or anything like that) but with the upload capped in utorrent at 10k (for some reason if I have the upload capped any higher than this utorrent downloads very slowly). However, I was under the impression that VM only caps the users who hog the upstream rather than an outright cap on all bit torrent users.

So, do you think I am being capped? If so is there any known way to resolve this with VM? It seems almost as if I am on the M (2mbps uncapped) package or capped on the L (4mbps capped to 2mbps) package but I should be on the XL package.

EDIT: I can provide details from the modem's web interface if they are useful. Under operation config it says:
Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 2048000
Maximum Upstream Data Rate : 200000
(2mbps/200kbps?)

[Artemis]

Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 2048000

Is your problem. 2048000 = 2,048,000 b/s, or 2mb. You might want to hassle them about that and get them to change it. I'm on 20mb and my modem is configured as:

Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 20480000

so you're missing a zero at the end.

[flowrebmit]

I find it easy to misread the downstream data rate (I have counted the correct number of zeros), so I always check the upstream data rate, which should be 768000 for VM XL.

And to answer your original question, you can not tell whether you are being capped by looking at your modem config, as the capping takes place in the uBR.

[alferret]

As Artemis has said it seems as though someone has downgraded your package to 2mb, give em a bell to sort it out.

Or you could log in to VM and go to upgrade your service to 20mb and see what your on at the moment (think you can still do that)

[ghell]

OK I clicked on the "upgrade your broadband" button on the "my account" section of virginmedia.com's "customer zone" and after checking my modem the site told me that im on M and can upgrade to L or XL.

*sigh* looks like another long and painful set of calls to virgin media tech support :dozey:

Thanks anyway folks.

Does anyone have a decent phone number that will take me directly to them? Usually I have to call customer services and get passed around a lot. The only number I see that is for tech support would be ntl's 25p/min rate. VM's TS and CS seem to be the same number according to their site.

[fatassmichael]

ghell, no need to call tech support, cust services can sort it out for you.
If you have a VM phoneline then dialling 150 will get you to cust services.

[ghell]

OK, thanks :)

I don't have the phone line. The only reason I am on XL is because it was cheaper to get 20mbps and no phone line than 8 or 16mbps from another ISP and a BT or other phone line (that I never use anyway)

---------- Post added at 14:46 ---------- Previous post was at 14:29 ----------

Right, after a little convincing I got the person to switch me to XL with the discount (they wanted me to pay £37 but I should only be paying £25.. that's what my bill says anyway).

Roughly how long will it take to update the connection to 20mbps?

[fatassmichael]

If the advisor has done it correctly, it should be immediate. Try rebooting your modem and checking the config.

[ghell]

I tried that before I asked and again now, it still says the same on the operation config and the broadband tests I have tried (plus my DU Meter) still show it at 2mbps.

The account upgrade page still says I am on M too.

[kgibsonuk]

At the moment VM are going through a system upgrade so for certain parts of the country package changes aren't possible until everythings moved over to the new system.

[McMav]

I applied for upgrade on Saturday morning it came through at around 10:20 pm that night. I had to manually reboot my modem.

I'd give that another go.

[ghell]

Still nothing. I was aware of VM's current changes but I thought I read somewhere that they ended on 6 Oct. Never mind, I'm not in a particular rush as long as it comes and doesn't take too long of course.

[McMav]

If its still not there I'd give CS a call and chase them up.

[ghell]

OK, it's still not. Same old nthell I suppose. I'll give them another call tomorrow. I just know that by the end of this I'm going to end up registered for 3 * £37/mo contracts with a massive cancellation fee when I should only be on a £25/mo (with discount) XL line.

[ghell]

Eugh.. gave them yet another call and this time they refused to give me the £37 discount to £25 (this is after my first bill of £25 too) and would only give me £29 (don't know where that came from, the offer when I joined was £25 and the current one is £23.50 [with virgin phone, though I don't have virgin phone]) which means an extra £4 a month for 12 months = £48 more than I should be paying.

At least this time I've been assured that they have definitely made the changes and asked me to reboot my modem (said officially it takes up to 24 hours but is usually immediate)

....

And there we go. In the time it took me to type this message:
Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 20480000
Maximum Upstream Data Rate : 768000

[ZebUK]

Just a quick comment about torrents.

Many forget that torrents are also used for legitimate uses. I for one prefer to download software from companies via torrents if they supply them as they are often much faster than a direct HTTP or FTP link.

[Sirius]

Just a quick comment about torrents.

Many forget that torrents are also used for legitimate uses. I for one prefer to download software from companies via torrents if they supply them as they are often much faster than a direct HTTP or FTP link.

But you would have to admit that the VAST amounts of torrents are not legitimate ;)

[ZebUK]

Hence the words "also" and "legitimate"

[ghell]

I wouldn't be so sure about how often they are used for legitimate things. For example many games (I'm pretty sure this includes Blizzard's World of Warcraft and the upcomming Starcraft 2 as well as other games such as Gunz Online etc) use bittorrent for updates. Also pretty much every linux distro out there prefers its users to torrent. This means that you have some things that you can't avoid torrenting (and, indeed, might not even know that you are torrenting) and the most community conscious users who seed the most are probably running linux (this might explain why most large linux distros typically have several thousand people seeding at once).

Also, "legitimate" is a bit fuzzy. For example I don't (can't) take most of the hundreds of dvds and cds I own licences to use with me wherever I go (to university for example). I can get someone to look at my physical disk and tell me the licence key by email but I can't ask them to transmit a DVD image in the same way. As you pay for a licence to use software rather than the actual software, it is usually legal to download a disk image (using bittorrent, for example) as long as you only use it with a valid licence.

The problem with the technology behind bittorrent is that almost all of the internet is asymmetric but bittorrent assumes you can upload as much as you can download. This clogs up the upstream and everyone suffers as a result. If your upstream is maxed out your downstream will be completely crippled (buffers asside, if you can't request a packet, you won't get it sent to you.)

I'm not actually sure if Virgin Media's capping is to do with how much you download, how much you upload or both. Some sources say it is the major uploaders (ie bittorrent users) that get capped, some say if you download X amount in peak hours you get capped etc. I've tried asking before but it seems the people that know this type of thing for certain can't tell the public because they have signed a non disclosure agreement.