Virgin Broadband's REAL throttle times ?

[thejoyrider]

i know virgin claims its core times are 6pm to 10pm but this simply not true on many occasions.

what's the real times of day and night that everyone is throttled to a maximum of 2mb ?

[homealone]

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

for cable - and 20mb/s customers are throttled to 5mb/s, not 2mb/s

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management2.php

for adsl

[i4000]

That's not quite the whole story though is it?

I've been sitting here tonight on my 20Mbps cable connection with a download running at 4.5Mbps and I've literally just, at 23:30, seen my download speed jump back up i.e. not at 21:00 as some may expect after reading http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

Virgin manage to be deliberately vague on their so-called definitive explnation of traffic management, they state that the traffic management period in the evening lasts for 5 hours, is that 5 hours from the point it kicks in, our are they talking about the 5 hr period between 16:00 & 21:00? I have always suspected that it's from the time that the traffic management kicks in because I often experience 4.5Mbps downloads until the early hours of the morning and then, as if someone has flipped a switch, it jumps up to 18mbps. Can anyone confirm?

[caph]

i know virgin claims its core times are 6pm to 10pm but this simply not true on many occasions.

what's the real times of day and night that everyone is throttled to a maximum of 2mb ?

Can you give some examples e.g. times and throttle levels? Could it not be an oversubscribed UBR which gets overloaded at peak times? Also what speed are you on? STM is at fixed levels depending on your speed. Anything less than this and variable rather than fixed would indicate oversubscription.

---------- Post added at 23:50 ---------- Previous post was at 23:47 ----------

I have always suspected that it's from the time that the traffic management kicks in because I often experience 4.5Mbps downloads until the early hours of the morning and then, as if someone has flipped a switch, it jumps up to 18mbps. Can anyone confirm?

Yes, as far as I understand it, and from reading posts on this forum, the STM can kick in at any time during indicated times and stays throttled for 5 hours from the time you exceed your limit. So if you hit it at 9pm you will be managed until 2am.

[homealone]

That's not quite the whole story though is it?

I've been sitting here tonight on my 20Mbps cable connection with a download running at 4.5Mbps and I've literally just, at 23:30, seen my download speed jump back up i.e. not at 21:00 as some may expect after reading http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

Virgin manage to be deliberately vague on their so-called definitive explnation of traffic management, they state that the traffic management period in the evening lasts for 5 hours, is that 5 hours from the point it kicks in, our are they talking about the 5 hr period between 16:00 & 21:00? I have always suspected that it's from the time that the traffic management kicks in because I often experience 4.5Mbps downloads until the early hours of the morning and then, as if someone has flipped a switch, it jumps up to 18mbps. Can anyone confirm?

It is from when it kicks in - I don't think the explanation is vague, the info linked clearly says that the duration of traffic management, once triggered, is 5 hours. If you trigger STM at 20.59 it will last until 01.59.

[frogstamper]

@ i4000 Yep 7your right the second time, stm kicks in between 16.00 and 21.00 as soon as you exceed your quota say 20.15, you are stm'd for five hours from that point, so in this case your speed would be on 5mb until 01.15.

PS Welcome to the forum.:):welcome:

[i4000]

It is from when it kicks in - I don't think the explanation is vague, the info linked clearly says that the duration of traffic management, once triggered, is 5 hours. If you trigger STM at 20.59 it will last until 01.59.

Thanks for clearing that up for me (and to the others who replied on the thread).

Maybe vague is the wrong word to use :) They create some confusion because the length of the STM, once triggered, is the same as the the monitoring period, so when you see 5 hours stated you could read one way or the other (or at least I could).

---------- Post added at 23:59 ---------- Previous post was at 23:57 ----------

@ i4000

PS Welcome to the forum.:):welcome:

Thanks, not bad eh? Joined October 2003 and that was my first post :)

[homealone]

Thanks for clearing that up for me (and to the others who replied on the thread).

Maybe vague is the wrong word to use :) They create some confusion because the length of the STM, once triggered, is the same as the the monitoring period, so when you see 5 hours stated you could read one way or the other (or at least I could).

just ensure you don't start your downloads until after 21.00 & you should be ok :)

[Milambar]

In my opinion, and I suck at reading through reams of legalese, I think its more about what they are NOT saying on their traffic management page.

They state that if you download more than a set amount between set times of the day, then you will be STM'd automatically, but nowhere do they say that they won't STM you at other times if they deem its needed.

On a side note:
That webpage looks crap and is actually hard to read on my widescreen monitor, because it uses fixed column widths, and a fixed font size. Surely it'd be better to publish the page with dynamic widths and sizes to allow for people with larger monitors?
What they don't state is that they won't STM you outside of those hours, therefore leaving themselves a nice backdoor to STM you at all times if it's needed really.

[Welshchris]

That's not quite the whole story though is it?

I've been sitting here tonight on my 20Mbps cable connection with a download running at 4.5Mbps and I've literally just, at 23:30, seen my download speed jump back up i.e. not at 21:00 as some may expect after reading http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

Virgin manage to be deliberately vague on their so-called definitive explnation of traffic management, they state that the traffic management period in the evening lasts for 5 hours, is that 5 hours from the point it kicks in, our are they talking about the 5 hr period between 16:00 & 21:00? I have always suspected that it's from the time that the traffic management kicks in because I often experience 4.5Mbps downloads until the early hours of the morning and then, as if someone has flipped a switch, it jumps up to 18mbps. Can anyone confirm?

20mb, 4.5mb download? thats just not possible!

[homealone]

20mb, 4.5mb download? thats just not possible!

can you explain why it isn't possible for an STM affected pc to download at 4.5mb/s, rather than 20mb/s??

[Stuart]

Virgin manage to be deliberately vague on their so-called definitive explnation of traffic management, they state that the traffic management period in the evening lasts for 5 hours, is that 5 hours from the point it kicks in, our are they talking about the 5 hr period between 16:00 & 21:00? I have always suspected that it's from the time that the traffic management kicks in because I often experience 4.5Mbps downloads until the early hours of the morning and then, as if someone has flipped a switch, it jumps up to 18mbps. Can anyone confirm?


Well, I personally take it that if you reach your quota at any time during the throttling hours (currently 16:00 to 21:00 hours evening and 10:00 to 15:00 hours daytime), you will be throttled for five hours from the point you are caught. So, if you reach your quota 20:59, you will be throttled from 9pm to 2am.

Otherwise, Virgin would not bother saying five hours because unless you hit the limit at the start of the managed hours, it would be incorrect. They would just say you would be throttled until 21:00, not mention five hours at all.

[c64]

If your on a crappy ubr you are stm'd permanently like me.

[alferret]

If your on a crappy ubr you are stm'd permanently like me.
No one get's STM's permanently. Over subscription is the usual culprit. phone VM, thats all you can do or wait until 50mb has rolled out nationwide and people start taking up that service which will free up bandwidth in other area's.

[Woodw23ard]

What are the times these days? I'm on 30mb.

[Hugh]

What are the times these days? I'm on 30mb.Link (http://www.virginmedia.com/images/tm-table-su-large.jpg)

Download Failed (1)

[pip08456]

What are the times these days? I'm on 30mb.

A 3 year old thread revived!

Here's the info.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/04/55.jpg

NB If you are on the upgraded higher upload rate the upload amount is different but the times are the same.

We also moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer (“P2P”) applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic.

[colin135]

A 3 year old thread revived!

Here's the info.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/04/55.jpg

NB If you are on the upgraded higher upload rate the upload amount is different but the times are the same.

We also moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer (“P2P”) applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic.

Surely this does not apply to 50mb speed ? Although ive had download speed problems on my 50mb for nearly two weeks from about 6pm-midnight ,its ok again at 5mins past midnight.Its like someone flicks a switch and im back to the right download speed again.

[pip08456]

Traffic shaping (not traffic management, table above) is on all tiers. It just depends on the load on your local network as to what speeds you get for P2P and newsgroups.