Octimon
13-04-2009, 17:36
Hi, please could someone clarify the STM download limits to me as I believe VM are applying them unfairly to me though this is the first time I have hit them. Over the easter weekend I have been playing with Linux and downloading various distros (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Suse, etc), some of which are quite chunky, in a search for a distro that is suitable for my needs.
The STM page http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php states the limits as
10am to 3 pm - 6000MB
4pm to 10pm - 3000Mb (it is definitely a small "b" so first question - do they mean Mb or MB. Have they craftily reduced the limit even further? If the former then we get less than 2Mb M customers so I am assuming the latter??)
My interpretatiuon therefore is that I can download 6GB til 3, then as much as I can squeeze in from 3 til 4 and then 3GB after 4. I have been very careful to ensure that I stick to the limits by some margin. However, I have been STM's twice this weekend when downloading around 5.5Gb by 3 and then downloading much less than 3GB after 4.
As I say, this is the first time I have hit STM and it may not be a huge issue again but I just need some clarification.
I note that they are being taken to Court in Scotland over this and in some ways I really hope that they lose (though I accept it could cause problems with none of us ever getting max speed if they have to remove STM). With a system that can't cope they continue to try and woo customers with ever increasing maximum download headline speeds but hide away in small print the fact that you can only reach that speed for about a minute a month and the rest of the time you are fighting with several thousand other customers for what little bandwidth they actually have. It's a bit like buying a car based on a 0-60 time of 4 secs only to find that you can only actually achieve that by launching it from a satellite in the close gravitational pull of Jupiter.
The STM page http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php states the limits as
10am to 3 pm - 6000MB
4pm to 10pm - 3000Mb (it is definitely a small "b" so first question - do they mean Mb or MB. Have they craftily reduced the limit even further? If the former then we get less than 2Mb M customers so I am assuming the latter??)
My interpretatiuon therefore is that I can download 6GB til 3, then as much as I can squeeze in from 3 til 4 and then 3GB after 4. I have been very careful to ensure that I stick to the limits by some margin. However, I have been STM's twice this weekend when downloading around 5.5Gb by 3 and then downloading much less than 3GB after 4.
As I say, this is the first time I have hit STM and it may not be a huge issue again but I just need some clarification.
I note that they are being taken to Court in Scotland over this and in some ways I really hope that they lose (though I accept it could cause problems with none of us ever getting max speed if they have to remove STM). With a system that can't cope they continue to try and woo customers with ever increasing maximum download headline speeds but hide away in small print the fact that you can only reach that speed for about a minute a month and the rest of the time you are fighting with several thousand other customers for what little bandwidth they actually have. It's a bit like buying a car based on a 0-60 time of 4 secs only to find that you can only actually achieve that by launching it from a satellite in the close gravitational pull of Jupiter.