Wrongly throttled - damn you VM!

[thingi]

Here's a copy of an email I've just sent VM.....

I am totally disgusted by your Broadband technical support department. Please check you phone records for the time that I called your server centre. At present I'm still 'being transferred' after being put on hold near 10.00pm by one of your incompetent Indian Call Centre staff.

Now to be quite frank I really am rather cheesed off to say the least. The call to tech support was regarding why my broadband connection had been 'throttled' today. I know for a fact that I have not hit the limits imposed on the 10mb (Broadband L) service today yet I've still been 'throttled'.

Please note that my broadband package = L = 1500mb download limit between 4pm and 9pm.

The agent was very dismissive (although not overly unpleasant) right from the start of the call. However after some persistence on my part I got the agent to advise me of what volume of data had been downloaded on the 18th November 2009 (today).

The figures quoted were:-

between 4-5 = 1.572Gb
between 5-6 = 1.349Gb
between 6-7 = 1.32Gb
between 7-8 = 5.212Gb

Please forgive me for actually knowing that the figure quoted by the agent are obviously complete rubbish!

The reason I can comfortably say the figures are garbage is that it is technically impossible to download 5.2Gb on a 10 megabit connection within an hour.

The maximum my connection can download is around 3600mb per hour (+ ~200mb because your connections have always been slightly higher than the quoted figures (which is nice of VM imho)).

Now let me be frank - The agent I was speaking to didn't have a clue what a Megabyte was, let alone what a Gigabyte is and lets not even mention his complete lack of knowledge of the difference between gigabits/gigabytes - it was almost embarrassing speaking to him at this point during the call.

Now here's where the problems really started. I knew the figures quoted (which the agent refused to send me in an email) were rubbish and I advised it's technically impossible for me to download that volume of data - so why had I been 'traffic managed'.

The agent agin was very dismissive - 'The computer says this so basically go away' was the attitude and response which came back.

At this point I was put on hold for over 15 minutes while 'he worked out the figures and that his manager would need to deal with the call' - the clock was ticking and 10pm was nearing....

Surprise, surprise just before 10pm the agent came back on the line and said 'sorry my manager was on another call - transferring you now' - guess what….. the call got transferred to a ringing line which went on for a while then dropped to music that goes along the lines of:

do do da do da doa, do do da do da doa etc.

It's now 22:44 - I'm hanging up the phone as no one is going to answer this dodgy transferred call. Funny how it was transferred at just the right time to get rid of me (I've worked in a call centre ya know - one with just a bad a reputation as Virgin Media).

What's the betting the call won't be logged at VM either (look at my phone records they should prove it actually happened).

Anyway back to the point - I think I know what the issue actually is - I spent so long on hold that I worked it out myself.......

I appear to be being traffic shaped like a customer on an 'upgraded M Package' 10mb connection instead of a 10mb L Package - from the figures quoted this is the only way that I could have been 'traffic managed' in the way I was today.

I await your response with trepidation (please note a copy of this email has been posted to the cable forum and please forward a copy of this email to your complaints department.

Yours Sincerely

[Mick Fisher]

VM deal with emails in the same manner as they manage call backs so you have wasted your time.

[Digital Fanatic]

Here's a copy of an email I've just sent VM.....

I am totally disgusted by your Broadband technical support department. Please check you phone records for the time that I called your server centre. At present I'm still 'being transferred' after being put on hold near 10.00pm by one of your incompetent Indian Call Centre staff.

Now to be quite frank I really am rather cheesed off to say the least. The call to tech support was regarding why my broadband connection had been 'throttled' today. I know for a fact that I have not hit the limits imposed on the 10mb (Broadband L) service today yet I've still been 'throttled'.

Please note that my broadband package = L = 1500mb download limit between 4pm and 9pm.

The agent was very dismissive (although not overly unpleasant) right from the start of the call. However after some persistence on my part I got the agent to advise me of what volume of data had been downloaded on the 18th November 2009 (today).

The figures quoted were:-

between 4-5 = 1.572Gb
between 5-6 = 1.349Gb
between 6-7 = 1.32Gb
between 7-8 = 5.212Gb

Please forgive me for actually knowing that the figure quoted by the agent are obviously complete rubbish!

The reason I can comfortably say the figures are garbage is that it is technically impossible to download 5.2Gb on a 10 megabit connection within an hour.

The maximum my connection can download is around 3600mb per hour (+ ~200mb because your connections have always been slightly higher than the quoted figures (which is nice of VM imho)).

Now let me be frank - The agent I was speaking to didn't have a clue what a Megabyte was, let alone what a Gigabyte is and lets not even mention his complete lack of knowledge of the difference between gigabits/gigabytes - it was almost embarrassing speaking to him at this point during the call.

Now here's where the problems really started. I knew the figures quoted (which the agent refused to send me in an email) were rubbish and I advised it's technically impossible for me to download that volume of data - so why had I been 'traffic managed'.

The agent agin was very dismissive - 'The computer says this so basically go away' was the attitude and response which came back.

At this point I was put on hold for over 15 minutes while 'he worked out the figures and that his manager would need to deal with the call' - the clock was ticking and 10pm was nearing....

Surprise, surprise just before 10pm the agent came back on the line and said 'sorry my manager was on another call - transferring you now' - guess what….. the call got transferred to a ringing line which went on for a while then dropped to music that goes along the lines of:

do do da do da doa, do do da do da doa etc.

It's now 22:44 - I'm hanging up the phone as no one is going to answer this dodgy transferred call. Funny how it was transferred at just the right time to get rid of me (I've worked in a call centre ya know - one with just a bad a reputation as Virgin Media).

What's the betting the call won't be logged at VM either (look at my phone records they should prove it actually happened).

Anyway back to the point - I think I know what the issue actually is - I spent so long on hold that I worked it out myself.......

I appear to be being traffic shaped like a customer on an 'upgraded M Package' 10mb connection instead of a 10mb L Package - from the figures quoted this is the only way that I could have been 'traffic managed' in the way I was today.

I await your response with trepidation (please note a copy of this email has been posted to the cable forum and please forward a copy of this email to your complaints department.

Yours Sincerely

Hi,

Prob best to post your issue in the VM's Support Newsgroups. They are very good.

Here is a link to set up...

CLICK ME! (http://www.virginmedia.com/help/cable/newsgroups/faq.php)

HTH :)

[Ignitionnet]

Interesting, given that VM are unable to report exact quantities of data downloaded according the the 2nd line newsgroup guys who have direct access to the kit, that this agent was able to provide those stats.

I would suggest he was picking those figures from his hindmost.

Well done by the way downloading 5.2GB in an hour on a 10Mbps connection that, according to his figures, would have been throttled an hour earlier too.

[Kymmy]

I wonder what the email equivalent of "do do da do da doa, do do da do da doa etc." is???

[Ignitionnet]

I wonder what the email equivalent of "do do da do da doa, do do da do da doa etc." is???

A Virgin Media press release?

[Sephiroth]

Here's a copy of an email I've just sent VM.....

.......
The figures quoted were:-

between 4-5 = 1.572Gb
between 5-6 = 1.349Gb
between 6-7 = 1.32Gb
between 7-8 = 5.212Gb

Please forgive me for actually knowing that the figure quoted by the agent are obviously complete rubbish!

The reason I can comfortably say the figures are garbage is that it is technically impossible to download 5.2Gb on a 10 megabit connection within an hour.

The maximum my connection can download is around 3600mb per hour (+ ~200mb because your connections have always been slightly higher than the quoted figures (which is nice of VM imho)).

....
Notwithstanding a no doubt perfectly valid complaint on your part of being unjustly throttled, your maths is a bit out!

As long as you're not mixing your Bs and bs, the maximum you can theoretically download in an hour is 10 Mb * 3600. So that's 36 Gb/hour.

Throttled to 25%, that's 9 Gb/hour. Or is my maths out, BB?

But you're perversely lucky; VM won't bother to pick up on that because they won't bother.

You might care to refer VM to ofcom or the OFT.

[Ignitionnet]

Notwithstanding a no doubt perfectly valid complaint on your part of being unjustly throttled, your maths is a bit out!

As long as you're not mixing your Bs and bs, the maximum you can theoretically download in an hour is 10 Mb * 3600. So that's 36 Gb/hour.

Throttled to 25%, that's 9 Gb/hour. Or is my maths out, BB?

Your maths is fine, but he was referring to Gigabytes, the usual units related confusion and either way usage is referred to on everything, from Cisco and Motorola operating systems through to DUMeter, in bytes. Comms volume in bits, storage volume in bytes as per.

Nothing will come of the complaint anyway, VM's offshore staff appear unofficially trained to cover their tracks (log the inevitable repeat call after a customer has been blagged by a colleague in a slightly different way to avoid it being seen as a repeat) and VM will always stick their fingers in their ears and sing 'la la la' to any criticism of the offshore centre as, damnit, it just saves so much money.

[thingi]

Interesting, given that VM are unable to report exact quantities of data downloaded according the the 2nd line newsgroup guys who have direct access to the kit, that this agent was able to provide those stats.

I would suggest he was picking those figures from his hindmost.

Well done by the way downloading 5.2GB in an hour on a 10Mbps connection that, according to his figures, would have been throttled an hour earlier too.

Hmmn - that's really odd - the 5.2Gb in the hour hour would be bang on if the units used for the figure was Megabytes - I did download ~520mb of data in that hour and the rest of the usage really does tie in with what I used if megabytes are used as the basis for the figures (which is why I suspect I'm being throttled at 750mb instead of 1500mb (M vs L).

If even the 2nd line peeps can't tell what's been downloaded then how is the throttle level worked out - surely there must be a server log somewhere for bandwidth usage?

If VM can't prove exactly how much data has been downloaded then the OFT/Ofcom could hit VM with a ton of bricks over throttling since that could be classed as a 'deceptive practice' - I wonder how many other L customers are being throttled at 'M 10Mb settings' ?

thingi

[Welshchris]

Thingi i remember a number of years ago being told by support that sometimes you "may" get throttled if they suspect you will be downloading a lot and it cracked me up.

What happened was i had been to London and PC and modem had been switched off for almost 4 days, i came home and it downloaded an Antivirus update and i was throttled and i asked why and was basically told sometimes if the modem has been off for a while it could mean you "might" try and catchup with downloading what uve missed and they will throttle you. It cracked me up to be honest. This was beginning of 2008.

They must be training their staff with Crystal balls now!

[Ignitionnet]

Hmmn - that's really odd - the 5.2Gb in the hour hour would be bang on if the units used for the figure was Megabytes - I did download ~520mb of data in that hour and the rest of the usage really does tie in with what I used if megabytes are used as the basis for the figures (which is why I suspect I'm being throttled at 750mb instead of 1500mb (M vs L).

If even the 2nd line peeps can't tell what's been downloaded then how is the throttle level worked out - surely there must be a server log somewhere for bandwidth usage?

If VM can't prove exactly how much data has been downloaded then the OFT/Ofcom could hit VM with a ton of bricks over throttling since that could be classed as a 'deceptive practice' - I wonder how many other L customers are being throttled at 'M 10Mb settings' ?

thingi

Well the plot thickens. There certainly wasn't a log for bandwidth usage though if they have one now, most interesting.

You are right though, with the introduction of the new AUP policies where the most heavy users get a talking to they would have introduced monitoring, at least during peak periods. I am somewhat surprised that they would give such tools to a first line tech support guy though.

Seems odd also that the data is presented in bits.

I may well stand corrected in that case. My info is out of date and will be accordingly amended to a 'They might be able to see', still seems rather dodgy to me though but that's my new thing for the day learned.

[Ignitionnet]

OK - the guy was indeeed making it up or didn't realise what he was reading, see below:

Hi Carl,


The information we can see if the average hourly download over the last 30
day period.


-- Kind regards Kyle Virgin Media Technical Support

If that's what the guy was quoting back at you shame on you for your excessive bandwidth usage between 8 and 9! :p:

On the upside we now know that's what they can see, which is nice.

[thingi]

OK - the guy was indeeed making it up or didn't realise what he was reading, see below:



If that's what the guy was quoting back at you shame on you for your excessive bandwidth usage between 8 and 9! :p:

On the upside we now know that's what they can see, which is nice.

Thanks for the info - If he did indeed quote this figure to me the bloke is an idiot. I'm like a rottweiler with a baby after I've been cheesed off. VM are in trouble :D

thingi

[piggy]

Thingi i remember a number of years ago being told by support that sometimes you "may" get throttled if they suspect you will be downloading a lot and it cracked me up.

What happened was i had been to London and PC and modem had been switched off for almost 4 days, i came home and it downloaded an Antivirus update and i was throttled and i asked why and was basically told sometimes if the modem has been off for a while it could mean you "might" try and catchup with downloading what uve missed and they will throttle you. It cracked me up to be honest. This was beginning of 2008.

They must be training their staff with Crystal balls now!

:doh::doh:

[graf_von_anonym]

Ignoring (for the moment) what the agent said to you, what led you to believe that your connection was traffic managed? I assume it was slow speeds, what I mean is what led you to eliminate all other sources? Was your upload affected?

Also, to clarify (and I'm not sure how much of this is protected/commercially sensitive, but as far as I am aware it has all been disclosed here, on the newsgroups, or is intrinsic to the function of the hardware used), what Virgin can tell about your connection in terms of throttling comes down to this:

1st line agents who have access to a specific (formerly NTL exclusive) tool can tell you if you are being traffic managed at that moment in time. 1st line agents who can tick some boxes and interpret some data in that tool can also tell you if you've been traffic managed in the last couple of days, but the nature of the information derived is crude, and requires some entrails be decoded.*

1st line agents who have access to a second tool can tell you historically when you have been traffic managed (assuming the data links are working properly, which is usually the case). Agents who have access to this tool can also tell you two sets of things about your downloading habits (and upload); that which has been discussed already, effectively a 'slicing' of your down or upload over approximately the last thirty days. So if you tend to download between 0200 and 0300 it will show how much you've downloaded between the last four weeks of that hour of the day. It's not brilliant, but it is useful for looking at usage patterns. It also shows the total amounts downloaded or uploaded across those thirty days or so. I am led to believe that it has the capacity to show information from further into the past, but that it doesn't work properly.*

2nd line agents have access to the same tools as 1st line agents. In addition, 2nd line agents have some access to the hardware (the CMTS/UBR) that actually enforces the traffic management, and can in some circumstances see the current actual throughput. They can also see historical enforcement, and it usually falls down to arithmetic to determine if it was correctly applied. In the overwhelming majority of cases it has been - mistaken application of STM isn't impossible, but is usually a product of a minor error in a configuration file for the deployment thereof.*

That's it. There may be other bits and bobs that can be derived, but for all intents and purposes not only is the information above sufficient, it's relatively readily accessible where it is required. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of information it would be nice to have about connections, but there's a break-point involved where more information would either confuse those looking at it or infringe on civil liberties, and what Virgin do keep track of is minimal enough to determine if STM has been applied, why it was applied, and from that one can determine if it has been done correctly. There are other tricks - upload roughly half of download is a common signifier of the use of peer-to-peer tools, STM applied before arithmetically possibly suggests a config file is triggering incorrectly


I'll just quickly reiterate (or, indeed, formulate) a brief introduction to what goes wrong with Traffic Management:

The Policy is relatively clear, but poorly understood by both customers and staff*. The Implementation is relatively simple, but as with all complex systems errors can creep in and sit undetected; lament, programmer, lament, for the misplaced semicolon! Detection is relatively straightforward for staff paying attention, and STM is often jumped to as source for slowness on connections. If STM is not being enforced when you are experiencing slow speeds then it's not to blame - that something can do a given thing does not mean it is responsible for all instances of that thing. Correction is not within bounds: If STM has been applied to your connection, it will come off when the penalty applied by the UBR wears off. For all practical intents and purposes there is no way around this. The reasons behind it are various* but amount to this - if you don't have a way to use a thing, you also lose a way to have that thing abused.

So, those footnotes:

* Large organisations make mistakes. Small organisations make mistakes. People make mistakes. How they go about dealing with them, however, says a lot about them, and culturally it does sometimes seem that Virgin have a problem. It ultimately all comes down to a pathological aversion to spending time and money where less or fewer would be 'good enough'. This extends and is made even worse by the realities facing their outsource partners, and the dysfunctional if not outright abusive relationships that exist between them and Virgin, and, often, their staff. It's further complicated by the ludicrously heterogenous nature of the network - built by literally hundreds of companies, the cable side of things has different models of different hardware from different manufacturers being asked to produce consistent results. Again and again the miracle is not that it doesn't work sometimes, but that it ever manages to.

It can be difficult, the sheer litany of horror stories here should attest to this, to get to someone within Virgin (or its components) that can give you the answer you want. However, there are usually two reasons for this - either what you are asking for is outwith the ken of those you are asking (asking rug salesmen about fitting carpets), or what you are asking for is outwith the ability of those you are asking with to do for you (asking rug salesmen to fit a carpet). They'll do, and it's worth marking this with another asterisk or two, *the minimum that they feel they need to*, and then what they can on top. Sometimes, and don't get me wrong, it's not easy to deal with from either side, but astonishingly frustrating as a customer, that "what they can" extends to telling you things that are either predicated on misunderstanding or designed to help an agent meet their real target, handling calls, rather than the target we all would hope for but cannot measure in a discrete numerical format, "customer satisfaction".

[Ignitionnet]

It also shows the total amounts downloaded or uploaded across those thirty days or so.

Oh dear. :erm:

Thanks for that great information dude.

[Sephiroth]

......So, those footnotes:

* Large organisations make mistakes. Small organisations make mistakes. People make mistakes. How they go about dealing with them, however, says a lot about them, and culturally it does sometimes seem that Virgin have a problem. It ultimately all comes down to a pathological aversion to spending time and money where less or fewer would be 'good enough'. This extends and is made even worse by the realities facing their outsource partners, and the dysfunctional if not outright abusive relationships that exist between them and Virgin, and, often, their staff. It's further complicated by the ludicrously heterogenous nature of the network - built by literally hundreds of companies, the cable side of things has different models of different hardware from different manufacturers being asked to produce consistent results. Again and again the miracle is not that it doesn't work sometimes, but that it ever manages to.

I'd like to take you up on two points.

1/
The heterogenous network as you put it works because of standards such as DOCSIS and TCP/IP . So no miracle there.

2/
The dysfunctional side of VM is fully under VM's control and they are fully to blame for the poor customer experience. VM's Director of Quality (an oxymoron in this case) is Peter Evans (I think he's still there). He said publicly in January 2009 that VM's process were "fundamentally broken". So he was turning to the magic of Six-Sigma and Lean to get VM into good shape. Why is he still in is job? Things have got worse. Look at WelshChris's case. If I were a VM boss, my policy would be to appoint an accountable senior manager to resolve these area cases with an obligation to keep the customer informed. The customer would have a contact point for the case and would not have to go through the sh*tty CS route. Ownership of issues and accountability are necessary to restore reputation and incalcate a quality culture.


It can be difficult, the sheer litany of horror stories here should attest to this, to get to someone within Virgin (or its components) that can give you the answer you want. However, there are usually two reasons for this - either what you are asking for is outwith the ken of those you are asking (asking rug salesmen about fitting carpets), or what you are asking for is outwith the ability of those you are asking with to do for you (asking rug salesmen to fit a carpet). They'll do, and it's worth marking this with another asterisk or two, *the minimum that they feel they need to*, and then what they can on top. Sometimes, and don't get me wrong, it's not easy to deal with from either side, but astonishingly frustrating as a customer, that "what they can" extends to telling you things that are either predicated on misunderstanding or designed to help an agent meet their real target, handling calls, rather than the target we all would hope for but cannot measure in a discrete numerical format, "customer satisfaction".

It is much simpler than the way you've put it. VM know exactly where over utilisation occurs and should not be taking new/upgrade business in those areas without telling the customer what the situation is, how and by when the situation will be resolved. VM need to make honest use of their technical tool set.

They are trying to sell their TV channels for £300m to concentrate on their core business (broadband). is it too much to expect them to invest that in the network? Will VM be open and without spin tell us how they plan, area by area, to improve the customer experience?

[bomber_g]

Here is the official word on it from the VM site

Virgin Media Broadband:Traffic management - & Traffic management (http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html)

so there must be Logs somewhere that store how much data each modem has down / up loaded - I always thought the STM profiles were based on average download rates over certain periods of time - guess i was wrong.

Any staff care to confirm whether you can check downloaded data against individual MAC's?

I wouldn't have thought UBR's have capacity to store that much info, so it must either be getting fired off to a database somewhere or not being stored at all...

[Ignitionnet]

The CMTS just holds average throughput over the course of that particular monitoring period then removes it at the end of the monitoring period, this is also how STM is triggered. For overall usage it's not hard at all to get this information from a CMTS, IPDR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPDR) has been around a while and usage can be pulled in near real-time. From there it goes to the data warehouses, big, big databases. All modems on a CMTS have counters for throughput, they roll over fairly quickly but it's not hard to pull the data before roll over.

You can happily have the CMTS literally stream the data to a collector, or can poll it every so often, simples.

[graf_von_anonym]

Sephiroth, I appreciate that there are standards like DOCSIS and TCP/IP, and that that greatly enhances compatibility, but I was in part talking about maintenance and upgrade. Here's an analogy - my mother's car is road legal, and my car is road legal too. When I borrow hers, despite having done thousands of miles in it, it takes me a while to remember how to turn the headlights on and find the controls for the wipers. While what each vehicle does is the same, how it goes about allowing you to do it can be subtly different. Needing to reinterpret intent to allow successful execution across different platforms can cause problems.

As for the 'quality' point, I appreciate what you are saying. In the dim and distant I worked with an Investors In People consultancy, and I've worked with countless organisations who have gone after Six Sigma or ISO9000 or various Contact Centre Awards. Almost all of these are product of a disconnect between what it is that a company does and what it is that a company can measure. Customer statisfaction is an intangible, unreachable thing - it has no benchmark, no baseline, no discrete markers. You can see when a customer is dissatisfied, perhaps, and seek to rectify that, but that works against the tendency for people to like their imaginary numbers to go up.

As for what VM's "Quality" people should be doing, the picture that you get interacting with them is only half the story. Virgin have several outsource suppliers providing the bulk of their customer services, certainly out of hours. Many of those contracts predate not only VM, but NTL:Telewest, and the situation is further complicated by the fact that many of those outsourced staff work in the same offices as Virgin's own staff, though Virgin's ability to change their processes is constrained by the contracts. Throw in the fact that as with most call centres they are selling rugs, not fitting carpets, and of course you're going to run into problems. Badmouthing customer services in general won't win you any favours here, even if you are frustrated. You're not going to get 'single points of contact' for the same reason that you can't ask to be transferred to a UK call-centre and why the appointment you're offered for a technician visit is the first available at that time - doing anything else would basically result in the status quo, but an opportunity to work around it having been denied. It's just a version of "Refusal often offends"; if the answer is no from the start, it's frustrating, but it's better than there being a slim chance of it being yes before you hear it.

As for oversubscription, again, I understand exactly where you are coming from, but it isn't going to happen. Virgin are under no obligation to disclose which areas are oversubscribed, not least because they offer an "up to" service. Beyond that, refusing to sell broadband products in a given area would be commercial suicide for an organisation listed on the stock exchange. BT have (or at least had) a legal requirement to attempt to provide broadband to everyone on a BT line. Virgin will attempt to do the same not because they are required to but because it would be lunacy for them not to do so. I know that what you are proposing is rational, and might even work, but Virgin are not beholden to the individual customer save through a contract designed to protect them more than you by their lawyers. What they are beholden to is their crushing mountain of debt and the random, if not sociopathic, vagaries of the stock exchange and their shareholders, and their various contract partners.

Peter Evan's words aren't just meaningless because they are corporate waffle, they are not designed for your ears - he's bigging up the old shareholder confidence, which is why he's using phrases like "Lean Six Sigma" and "Processes" rather than "making people happy" and "not ****ing up too often". You don't need to tell me that his priorities aren't aligned with what we could charitably call "common sense" - it's still not possible to speak to someone about cancelling on a Sunday.

Bomber G, I posted some info that might answer your question earlier, and you can see echoes of it in discussions elsewhere on the forum and on the support newsgroup, and indeed in the manuals for the UBR hardware; Virgin can see (if they look) what your transfer rates are in real time. Virgin record (automatically) total daily up and download, but that information goes into a gigantic series of databases, and I would be amazed if that whatever scripting language they use to interact with that many data sources and points (there are easily thousands of UBRs, and literally millions of modems) works properly in all cases.

There is, as I said, a tool that lets an agent see what you've up or downloaded in a single day, but whether a given agent knows about it, has access to it, and can interpret it correctly appears to be a bit random. In general I would trust that they are doing their best, and they'll look to see if they can find out for you. I believe that the cancellations/Customer Relations team had reliable access to that information, but I don't know if that's still the case.

The "top 5% of downloaders" that usually gets bandied about when discussing STM isn't a real time figure - if you think about it the best that you could do would be apply it historically, because real time monitoring of download across multiple points isn't impossible but it would add significantly to the workload of the equipment. Every instruction that a UBR engages in that isn't routing data is an opportunity for its CPU(s) to be too busy to do its main job. Beyond that, what subsection of the network would you look at download for? Oversubscription affects individual UBRs, rather than areas, so national usage in real time is next to useless for resolving the problem. So it's a historical average that's used to set the figures. Those figures have changed, and will almost certainly change again, but they are set by historical analysis rather than calculated in real-time, for the reason I've mentioned (simplicity) but also because in their current form they can be posted so folk can avoid triggering it. It's much easier to obey an absolute figure than it is to adhere to a relative condition - that's why we've got speed limits, rather than being allowed to drive up to the "maximum safe speed on a road".

With regards to how it works, the UBR continually measures throughput as part of its natural function. I believe it does so in chunks of less than one hour, but that's probably set as a variable by whatever configuration files Virgin pop into them to get it compliant with their flavour of DOCSIS. That information will get put to a database, probably by a recurrent polling tool.

When the average rate of download is above a given value for a given period of time, STM will kick in. Average rate of download is a regular measure as we've discussed. When an rate of say, 1MB/s has been in place for, say, 10 minutes, then by maths we can determine that about 36GB has been downloaded. There isn't, as far as I know, an exact counter for how much has been downloaded, just a derived figure from average rate. The way that it's implemented is with a series of flags (true/false), which from my reading of the Cisco STM documentation trigger as follows:


STM Enforcement Period?
No; Is Penalty File active?
No; leave it.
Yes;
Has End Time for penalty passed?
No; leave it.
Yes; End Penalty
Yes;
Is Average Rate over Given Time greater than Trigger Value?
No; leave it.
Yes;
Set Trigger Time and End Time for penalty.
Replace modem's Configuration File with appropriate Penalty File.
Send notification to Database?


Now I'll apologise for the quality of that pseudocode, but it should be clear enough. I've put a question mark on the last bit there, because I'm not sure if the hardware has any capacity to "push" information out, or if all the interaction is by polling which may be automated. It should also be pretty obvious to anyone who reads thedailywtf or similar communities where a scripting or hard-coding error could produce some complications.

Broadbandings, aye, that'd probably be the most efficient (easiest) way to do it, so it almost certainly is what Virgin do. The real issue with all the numbers that are collected isn't so much that they aren't being written down, it's that many staff members seem unable to access them, or as was the case with the incident that led to this thread, interpret them correctly. Historically I imagine that Virgin can probably track usage over periods of months, if not years, but how accessible some of that information is after a while I dread to think. Given how eager the Head of Quality is to sweep away old processes, the damage that a single zealous CTO could do to accrued statistics makes me shudder. Not least because statistics are my only friends.

[Ignitionnet]

You can have the kit fire SNMP traps out to monitoring equipment, can do syslogging, and they are IPDR compatible so they can certainly send out information and indeed do to existing monitoring systems for things like interfaces going up and down.

[Sephiroth]

.......As for oversubscription, again, I understand exactly where you are coming from, but it isn't going to happen. Virgin are under no obligation to disclose which areas are oversubscribed, not least because they offer an "up to" service. Beyond that, refusing to sell broadband products in a given area would be commercial suicide for an organisation listed on the stock exchange. BT have (or at least had) a legal requirement to attempt to provide broadband to everyone on a BT line. Virgin will attempt to do the same not because they are required to but because it would be lunacy for them not to do so. I know that what you are proposing is rational, and might even work, but Virgin are not beholden to the individual customer save through a contract designed to protect them more than you by their lawyers. What they are beholden to is their crushing mountain of debt and the random, if not sociopathic, vagaries of the stock exchange and their shareholders, and their various contract partners.

We could argue abiout the other points you made - and the truth prolly lies between our two viewpoints. But this one is worth arguing the toss over. The "up to" get-out isn't a full protection for VM. They have price differences between 10Mbps and 20Mbps. If they KNOW that when they sell you a 20 Mbps upgrade or service that you can't get to that speed except in the middle of the night, they know that they're taking extra money under false pretences. The consumer sees "up to 10" and "up to 20" as different value propositions. If VM knowingly offer this when it can't be delivered, it would seem to me to be disreputable at least and in breach of consumer law in likelihood and deception at worst.

VM's contract is bounded by what's under their control and the knowledge about the state of the area into which they sell is under their control.

The point you make about VM's perception on the stock market is absolutely correct. But when BT gets it's 21CN fully rolled out to a wider geographic area, passing more homes, VM's customers will vote with their feet. VM knows this and I suspect that the £300m they hope to raise from the sale of their TV channels will be invested in broadband, now their core business. Of course it's not enough and in a few years time, I believe that VM will be ground into the dust.

Peter Evan's words aren't just meaningless because they are corporate waffle, they are not designed for your ears - he's bigging up the old shareholder confidence, which is why he's using phrases like "Lean Six Sigma" and "Processes" rather than "making people happy" and "not ****ing up too often". You don't need to tell me that his priorities aren't aligned with what we could charitably call "common sense" - it's still not possible to speak to someone about cancelling on a Sunday.

Peter Evans' words are there for all to see. The shareholders' investment is worth squat if the customers look like they're gonna desert VM.He's fair game and it's only a matter of time before the press will home in on this on a day when there's little other news.

......

[graf_von_anonym]

From what I have seen discussed here, if Virgin can't provide "up to 20" in an area they will renegotiate someone to the "up to 10" or offer a rolling discount. They'll then eventually remedy that shortfall in capacity with new-build or resegmentation.

They won't disconnect customers except as a last resort. As for "knowingly" selling something that "can't be provided", there's too many variables involved to determine if someone is going to get the speeds they expect from their connection consistently. It's pretty easy to see the edge cases, but what of occasional slowness? As far as Virgin, the market, and, indeed, the customer is concerned, it's better to try and fail than not try at all. Virgin can certainly provide an internet connection, the question then falls down to one of interpretation of quality. Again, you know and I know that in a perfect situation people would have a decent expectation of what they should be getting, and should then receive that, but in practise one or t'other of those is off, and though folk will usually want what it is they are meant to be getting they will often settle for a discount. Again though, it comes down to cold equations - it's better for Virgin to disappoint a handful of customers in a given area by not providing them all of the services they signed up for than it is for Virgin to signal to their shareholders that there are areas where they are either unwilling or unable to provide services.

Again, and I want to make this explicit, I don't think you are talking nonsense. I do, however, think that your expectations of what Virgin (or any other ISP) are capable of doing don't match the situation as it stands. As for "VM [being] ground into the dust", well, that's not going to do anyone any favours. There's no network in the UK that could cope with, what, three million plus customers being dropped onto it. Hell, Virgin's barely manages. As for press coverage, you're not going to generate outrage about Virgin's practises there. Cableforum is a subset of a minority of Virgin's subscribers. Yes, vocal, yes, sometimes heeded, but still a miniscule proportion of a massive customer base.

Also, broadband isn't Virgin's core business, even after they sell their television channels. They're a domestic subscription service provider. Set top boxes for televisions outnumber modems by a massive amount, and they've got telephony both fixed and mobile too. It's certainly a key component of their core business, but it's not the whole of it. There was, after all, a cable industry before the Internet, and one imagines that as long as there are televisions there will be a cable television industry. Given how quickly subscription charges add up, I'd honestly be surprised if VM's headline income from broadband was equal to, never mind greater than, their income from television services.

[Ignitionnet]

Isn't about the headline income though is it, it's about profitability. If VM and their various complaints about Sky are to be believed that bit isn't profitable at all, that VM give TV away free with a phone line also suggests that it's not a great money maker.

[graf_von_anonym]

That might be true, but by a raw profitability measure McDonalds core business is selling Coke. Also, am I missing something? Virgin are divesting themselves of their content division, that is to say making television programming, rather than getting out of the business of providing television services to homes, yes? That's hardly a change to their core business, it's getting out of a diversification "forced upon them" by Sky.

[Ignitionnet]

I think Sephiroth is referring to statements made by VM's own management where they say they regard HSI as their core product. This is especially relevant given that the TV is evolving towards being delivered over IP and away from the traditional digital delivery systems.

[Sephiroth]

I think Sephiroth is referring to statements made by VM's own management where they say they regard HSI as their core product. This is especially relevant given that the TV is evolving towards being delivered over IP and away from the traditional digital delivery systems.

Exactamundo. And that then brings us to BT's 21CN and their ambitions to grind VM into the dust.

Where's the smart money going? BT or VM? In the long run.