Throttled (STM'ed) at random?

[cook1984]

I just turned on my PC for the first time since around 7pm, only to find I am throttled down to 7.5meg by STM. Thing is, at 7pm, everything was fine, and I hadn't been doing downloads anyway.

Given that my wifi access point was also turned off and there are no other active PCs on my LAN, how can this be explained?

[Kiryu]

you couldnt get past 5MB on STM for VM 20MB =) I get STM'd all the time ONLY IF i was downloading/uploading like no tomorrow lol

[homealone]

I just turned on my PC for the first time since around 7pm, only to find I am throttled down to 7.5meg by STM. Thing is, at 7pm, everything was fine, and I hadn't been doing downloads anyway.

Given that my wifi access point was also turned off and there are no other active PCs on my LAN, how can this be explained?

7.5 Mb/s is not STM, you need to look for another reason for your anomaly :)

as Kiryu said the STM speed for 20Mb/s is 5Mb/s...

[Gary L]

I just turned on my PC for the first time since around 7pm, only to find I am throttled down to 7.5meg by STM. Thing is, at 7pm, everything was fine, and I hadn't been doing downloads anyway.

Given that my wifi access point was also turned off and there are no other active PCs on my LAN, how can this be explained?

See my other post
My theory (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34662957-post36.html)

[General Angel]

Been with VM for 5 days now, havent been STM'D at all and i get 16-19 meg on and off peak.
I love it

[Gary L]

Been with VM for 5 days now, havent been STM'D at all and i get 16-19 meg on and off peak.
I love it

Things might change after 28 days :)

[General Angel]

Things might change after 28 days :)
doubt it, i hope not

[Mick Fisher]

Been with VM for 5 days now, havent been STM'D at all and i get 16-19 meg on and off peak.
I love it
Early days yet, give 'em time, they will upset you soon. :D

[whydoIneedatech]

doubt it, i hope not
I download when i feel like it and have not been STMed for months, don't know if its luck or what, not every gets STMed.

[Gary L]

doubt it, i hope not

Not long to wait and find out :D

[General Angel]

Not long to wait and find out :D
meh my neighbours have had VM for months and have not noticed any speed decreases, i might just be lucky

[whydoIneedatech]

meh my neighbours have had VM for months and have not noticed any speed decreases, i might just be lucky
They say only the top 5% get traffic managed so out of 3000000+ customers less than 200000 approx at any one time get STMed still a lot but only 5% of the total customer base.

[General Angel]

They say only the top 5% get traffic managed so out of 3000000+ customers less than 200000 approx at any one time get STMed still a lot but only 5% of the total customer base.
As a family we use about 2500MB between 4-9pm so we are safe within the margin

[Gary L]

meh my neighbours have had VM for months and have not noticed any speed decreases, i might just be lucky

I thought you had a neighbour who was only getting 2Mb on the 20Mb?

[General Angel]

I thought you had a neighbour who was only getting 2Mb on the 20Mb?
He was on the 10 meg package, hes been getting 8-9 since then, might have been STM'D
But you are saying its likely
that i will be slowed down even if i dont hit the usage limit?

[whydoIneedatech]

He was on the 10 meg package, hes been getting 8-9 since then, might have been STM'D
But you are saying its likely
that i will be slowed down even if i dont hit the usage limit?
I said above that not everyone gets STMed and I work for them.

We get no special treatment and if we trigger we get traffic managed as well.

[General Angel]

I said above that not everyone gets STMed and I work for them.

We get no special treatment and if we trigger we get traffic managed as well.

I just got the impression that even if i didnt ever hit the limit my speeds would slowly deteriorate

[Gary L]

He was on the 10 meg package, hes been getting 8-9 since then, might have been STM'D
But you are saying its likely
that i will be slowed down even if i dont hit the usage limit?

I'm not saying it will, just that it might. there's quite a few people who are now getting slower speeds than they normally got before.

[General Angel]

I'm not saying it will, just that it might. there's quite a few people who are now getting slower speeds than they normally got before.
I guess so, better keep my fingers crossed

[cook1984]

you couldnt get past 5MB on STM for VM 20MB =) I get STM'd all the time ONLY IF i was downloading/uploading like no tomorrow lol

Yeah, sorry, I meant 5mb, was getting confused with the 50meg thread :)

[Stabhappy]

Don't worry, I've been on VM for nearly 2 months now and I'm still getting absolute maximum bandwidth (2400kb/s solid from newsgroups) at any time of day.

[alferret]

STM is STM there are no in between bits anyone who says otherwise is scaremongering. Rules have been set and those rules are abided by. Why do some people automatically assume that because their speed is slower that stated as soon as their PC has been switched on that this is the result of some random STM'ing.
There are other factors to weigh in when poor speeds come in to play. VM do not own the internet, it is made up of many enteties and they [VM] as such have no control over it. The only infrastructure VM can guarantee their stated speeds over is their internal network (and yes even that can get a little slow at times due to demand) ANYTHING outside the network is not the responability of VM.

[piggy]

Yeah, sorry, I meant 5mb, was getting confused with the 50meg thread :)

i have the same problem i very often read on the internet then forget my download speed :erm:

[ntl.wotcha]

Any way to tell if you've been STM'd ?

[whydoIneedatech]

Any way to tell if you've been STM'd ?
Your connection will slow significantly details below.

-------------------------------------------------
http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

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

[pabscars]

after all the palarva i went through last night, i found out it was my UBR had been over subscribed and was running over capacity 40% of the time, this drastically reduced my through put at peak times.
So whats the point in having traffic management, just oversubscribe all networks, it has the same effect ha ha.

[Sigma]

My connection has just been shaped at 9:45PM. I started a download a few minutes earlier that was flying along at about 1,200Kbps, then it suddenly dropped to around 290. A speed test confirms that my connection has been shaped. I'm on the 10 meg tier and this is the first time my connection has been affected after 9PM.

[moroboshi]

Tonight I'm getting 2mbits from my 20mbit line. I shouldn't have been throttled as I'm a good boy (read: beaten into submission) and only download during the night.

Frankly the quality of Virgin's broadband is beyond a farce. Even the US with it's ancient and backwards network is getting fios now.

[Sigma]

Verizon FiOS at 50Mbps down, 20Mbps up starts at $139.95 a month if you also have a Verizon phone, so it may be nice but it's not exactly cheap. The 10mbps package is £10 a month more than I pay for 10Mbps with VM too, although the uploads are much faster and I don't think they traffic shape.

[Fatec]

Verizon FiOS at 50Mbps down, 20Mbps up starts at $139.95 a month if you also have a Verizon phone, so it may be nice but it's not exactly cheap. The 10mbps package is £10 a month more than I pay for 10Mbps with VM too, although the uploads are much faster and I don't think they traffic shape.


Or if you want to do a fair comparison, roughly £60 which is £8 more for what VM will charge for 50/1.5 with traffic management.

Still seem expensive?

[Sigma]

$139.95 isn't "roughly £60" though. It's £87.75, which means it's not £8 more. It's over £35 more per month.

[Fatec]

$139.95 isn't "roughly £60" though. It's £87.75, which means it's not £8 more. It's over £35 more per month.

I was taking into account of income tax/taxes/general pay/conversion over here, it would be priced around '60' here if Fios were avail.

And for an uncapped near symetrical service i'd gladly pay £87

And that's for their 50/20 tier.

The lower tiers are much cheaper.

[cook1984]

Bah, Japan has had 100/100 fibre with no throttling/management/caps etc for years, at around £25/month with current exchange rates.

They are now upgrading to gigabit (1000/1000) in a lot of places. There was a bit of an uproar when NTT introduced a 30GB upload cap (still unlimited downloads) on one of their services, although that's PER DAY not per month. They are the only ones though, all other ISPs like Hikari are still unlimited.

[Harry56]

Any way to tell if you've been STM'd ?

Your connection for which you are paying for drops dramatically. I've been throttled back twice now just because I had the audacity to download a couple of PS3 demo games onto my PS3.

So I'm going to take great delight in telling VM what they can do with their broadband and advise them to read a dictionary to see what the adjective "unlimited" means :)

[pabscars]

i,m curious, does anyone know how long you can play online on the xbox 360, not downloading demos, but just playin call of duty etc, before you hit any upload or download limit, i normally play after approx 7 pm but can be on till 2 in the morning sometimes,

[alferret]

i,m curious, does anyone know how long you can play online on the xbox 360, not downloading demos, but just playin call of duty etc, before you hit any upload or download limit, i normally play after approx 7 pm but can be on till 2 in the morning sometimes,

Don't quote me but I would imagine that you would be hard pressed to consume more that 100mb per hours game play.

[pabscars]

would it make a difference if you host games, as on the odd occasion i do, my router lights flash like mad, meaning its working overtime to keep up, granted it doesnt do it for long as i dont normally host games for more than a minute or two before everyone gets booted back to lobby, but it must use more bandwidth under these circumstances dont ya think.

[Stabhappy]

You won't come anywhere near the limits just online gaming. Even if you're hosting 8 people for hours.

[pabscars]

thanks for that Stabhappy, as well as that i suppose only getting 1.5 meg down on a 20 meg line wont let you get stm'd anyway. This is the speed i got last night, from blueyonder game downloads, at 1 am in the morning for god sake. Now i know i had not been stm,d because my upload was still 710 plus.

i must say i am seriously considering politely asking VM to remove there hardware, as they are clearly not providing anywhere near the service they should,

although i have complained and had the next couple of months bb costs reduced, would i be better off actually down grading to 10 meg, and will this give me a far more stable line.

i dont think its fair for VM to advertise (up to 20 meg) i think it should be called, (it depends how overcrowded your ubr is, but some days you might get close to 20 meg, if you get up early enough)

does anyone know if any work has been scheduled for the WA1 UBR, if at all.

[whydoIneedatech]

If anyone feels that they are being throttled at random times then the best thing to do is to call in and ask why.

Tech Support is available on 151 option 3 calls are free from a Virgin landline or 0845 454 1111 option 3 for a BT line calls are charged at local rate.

[pabscars]

just rang them now whydoineedatech, said there may be a problem as my upload and download speeds are at zero, what ever that means, and apparently that is worse than being stm'd, she also said the largest download ive ever done is, 0.223 GB on the 29th October, which shows i,m not a heavy user.

i will have to ring them back in my lunch break from home, and did inform me that work was being carried out in the area,

She also said that if an area gets to within sort of 80% capacity that it should trigger a reaction that the ubr needs upgrading, so i told her the last time i rang tech support they told me it was at 140%!!!!!!!

oh the joys,

i will keep my fingers crossed and hope they find a problem that is easily rectified, i just hope things improve in time for friday, as the new cod 5 is released.
would you or anyone care to impart a little knowledge on these findings please

---------- Post added at 10:37 ---------- Previous post was at 09:50 ----------

the nice lady also told me that i share the same line with 200 other users which she said was quite high.

[Turkey Machine]

just rang them now whydoineedatech, said there may be a problem as my upload and download speeds are at zero, what ever that means, and apparently that is worse than being stm'd, she also said the largest download ive ever done is, 0.223 GB on the 29th October, which shows i,m not a heavy user.

i will have to ring them back in my lunch break from home, and did inform me that work was being carried out in the area,

She also said that if an area gets to within sort of 80% capacity that it should trigger a reaction that the ubr needs upgrading, so i told her the last time i rang tech support they told me it was at 140%!!!!!!!

oh the joys,

i will keep my fingers crossed and hope they find a problem that is easily rectified, i just hope things improve in time for friday, as the new cod 5 is released.
would you or anyone care to impart a little knowledge on these findings please

---------- Post added at 10:37 ---------- Previous post was at 09:50 ----------

the nice lady also told me that i share the same line with 200 other users which she said was quite high.

Quite high? F**k me, that's the understatement of the year! I thought 50:1 was bad... how the hell did they get away with 200:1?

[pabscars]

i,m buggered if i know, but at least i now know that i,m not getting STM,d, which certainly was a concern at first, and given i have downloaded demo,s from xbl and continued to play till the wee hours in the same evening and not hit any STM is good, so i am quite pleased about that,
just wanted to say thanks again to whydoineedatech, for taking the time out to check a few things for me. you is da man.