Virgin Media Cap & Netflix!

[moowow!]

I signed up for a trail of netflix at the weekend, and on Sunday i was watching three hours of tv programs in hd then the quality dropped i spend ages fiddling with my signal trying to make it better, but then i turn the pc on and see ive been capped by vm!!!

Virgin media need to sort out there capping system and stop capping the innocent users out there in peak time!
Netflix is meant to be the future of tv? Well not if you got virgin media cas they will cap you!!!

[Andrewcrawford23]

I signed up for a trail of netflix at the weekend, and on Sunday i was watching three hours of tv programs in hd then the quality dropped i spend ages fiddling with my signal trying to make it better, but then i turn the pc on and see ive been capped by vm!!!

Virgin media need to sort out there capping system and stop capping the innocent users out there in peak time!
Netflix is meant to be the future of tv? Well not if you got virgin media cas they will cap you!!!

think about it, you hav just said it, netflix is the future of tv, it is a direct threat to virgin own tv service, so they wont just turn of stm for netflix

it business sense to make sure sometihn that can take yoru business isnt givena free role

find aisp that isnt doign the same

[Risco]

I signed up for a trail of netflix at the weekend, and on Sunday i was watching three hours of tv programs in hd then the quality dropped i spend ages fiddling with my signal trying to make it better, but then i turn the pc on and see ive been capped by vm!!!

Virgin media need to sort out there capping system and stop capping the innocent users out there in peak time!
Netflix is meant to be the future of tv? Well not if you got virgin media cas they will cap you!!!

Netlfix and Lovefilm are coming to Virgin in the near future from what I hear. However it will be via the TiVo box, which has it's own connection and therefore will not suffer capping.

Unfortunately capping is a necessary evil with Virgin.

[General Maximus]

they arent capping you because of the "competition". Stm is Stm and once you have hit that limit it doesnt matter, whether you was using netflix, playing games of sending a billion emails. I know it sucks ass but it is all part of VMs rubbish traffic management policy to protect bandwidth and availability for all users. You havent stated which tier you are on so the only thing I can suggest is to upgrade to a higher tier like 50mbit which has a higher threshold or 100mbit which isn't subject to traffic management atm. It all depends on how much you think you are going to use netflix going forward.

[craigj2k12]

think about it, you hav just said it, netflix is the future of tv, it is a direct threat to virgin own tv service, so they wont just turn of stm for netflix

it business sense to make sure sometihn that can take yoru business isnt givena free role

find aisp that isnt doign the same

well im able to sign up sky, and other VM competition, they dont block skys website just the same way they dont throttle the "competition" - think about what you said

[Andrewcrawford23]

well im able to sign up sky, and other VM competition, they dont block skys website just the same way they dont throttle the "competition" - think about what you said

my comment has been took out of context and i think i might have put myself across wrongly.

i was not stating they block there compettion i meant that they are throttling bandiwdht hungier application which are thing like netflix which in turns blocks there ocmpetiotn for ther etv service

does that make more sense if not i am not trying to suggest there delbriate doing it just need to restrict things

[craigj2k12]

they manage traffic to lower network load at peak time, which saves them money on the otherwise required network upgrades

[AndyCalling]

Once Youview comes out VM will not be able to have everyone using it constantly capped. They would lose business massively. You are a touch ahead of the curve OP, but when IPTV becomes normal usage VM and all other ISPs will change. It makes no business sense to punish your customers for normal usage of your product, not to mention the advertising problems it would cause.

50meg has no downstream STM so I shifted to that in prep for Youview. If you are ahead of the 'normal usage' curve you may have to do the same.

[moowow!]

Once Youview comes out VM will not be able to have everyone using it constantly capped. They would lose business massively. You are a touch ahead of the curve OP, but when IPTV becomes normal usage VM and all other ISPs will change. It makes no business sense to punish your customers for normal usage of your product, not to mention the advertising problems it would cause.

50meg has no downstream STM so I shifted to that in prep for Youview. If you are ahead of the 'normal usage' curve you may have to do the same.

Thats the point, Virgin need to update there system so the cap dont affect things like your IPTV, I only watched it for 3 hours! Could you imagen if a hole family used netflix your internet would be constantly capped!! Whats the point in me having a 10mb internet connection when i cant use it!

They need smart filtering like other isps that give pritory to important traffic like iptv and voip and less importance to mass download at peek like p2p (i use p2p as much as anybody else but i make sure i download in the morning so i have peak speed)

[SkyFTW]

Thats the point, Virgin need to update there system so the cap dont affect things like your IPTV, I only watched it for 3 hours! Could you imagen if a hole family used netflix your internet would be constantly capped!! Whats the point in me having a 10mb internet connection when i cant use it!

They need smart filtering like other isps that give pritory to important traffic like iptv and voip and less importance to mass download at peek like p2p (i use p2p as much as anybody else but i make sure i download in the morning so i have peak speed)


Or they could just do what Sky have done, Provide a big fat over kill of a fibre back haul and just open up all pipes. No traffic management at all at anytime, No usage limits, No traffic shaping its just one big free for all...

Oh and they also offer a "gamers" profile, all for the massive sum of £7.50 a month.

[Andrewcrawford23]

Or they could just do what Sky have done, Provide a big fat over kill of a fibre back haul and just open up all pipes. No traffic management at all at anytime, No usage limits, No traffic shaping its just one big free for all...

Oh and they also offer a "gamers" profile, all for the massive sum of £7.50 a month.

virign backhual isnt the problem it is the last mile so to say, from teh node to eth hosue they are contentieneded inteh form virign are sellign to many connection for the line, so increase backhual will improve tihngs but the smt would sitll be needed, and virign already sdhaped p2p during peak hours , they jsut uste stm as a way of limiting there costs not jsut from teh fact of the required upgrades but fromt eh cost of the internet bandwidth to

[General Maximus]

They need smart filtering like other isps that give pritory to important traffic like iptv and voip

Virgin claim the whole point of stm is to stop the minority (something like 2%) of users from negatively impacting network performance to the detriment of other users. What you suggest goes directly against that philosophy atm. They have capped you because of the volume of traffic you are generating, especially on docsis 1, and uncapping it and actually prioritising the traffic screws things up big time.

You have lead us to a very good point though which many of us have raised before. Technology has got to the point now where even the slowest of connections are fast and like many users have argued, what do you need more than 1mb/sec for? The OP shouldn't have to upgrade to 50mbit or 100mbit to be relieved of stm when the speed he is getting atm is more than sufficient. I think it would be a great idea for all the tiers is there was a level 1 and 2 where 1 is the more expensive and un-stm'd and 2 is cheaper and stm'd. As an example (I don't know how much 10mb is so this is an example).

10mbit unmanaged on docsis 3 for £15/month for peeps like the OP for netflix and whatever else

10mbit managed with stm on docsis 1 for £10/month, designed for light/moderate use (like it is now)

Both offer you respectable speed which everyone is happy with however they are designed for different usage patterns. I would say you could do the same for up to 50mbit however I think anyone on 100mbit would argue that they want the speed because they download tonnes and want it done asap so they wouldnt be interested in paying less for thresholds to be impossed which would only screw them over.

(I am charging 10% commision on the above idea :) )





virign backhual isnt the problem it is the last mile so to say, from teh node to eth hosue they are contentieneded inteh form virign are sellign to many connection for the line, so increase backhual will improve tihngs but the smt would sitll be needed, and virign already sdhaped p2p during peak hours , they jsut uste stm as a way of limiting there costs not jsut from teh fact of the required upgrades but fromt eh cost of the internet bandwidth to

reminded me of this:

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs!

cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

[arcimedes]

Or they could just do what Sky have done, Provide a big fat over kill of a fibre back haul and just open up all pipes. No traffic management at all at anytime, No usage limits, No traffic shaping its just one big free for all...

Oh and they also offer a "gamers" profile, all for the massive sum of £7.50 a month.

Fine but we all know how fast the average ADSL speed is compared with VM's average:D

[kwikbreaks]

Fine but we all know how fast the average ADSL speed is compared with VM's average:D
You are making the mistake of confusing speed with bandwidth. Sky can support widespread use of IPTV because they do have the bandwidth. VM won't be able to because they don't have sufficient bandwidth at node level to do so. Most IPstream based ISPs won't be able to support it either because it won't be economic to do so given the BTw charging structure.

Unles YouView pay the ISPs for the bandwidth their service will require they simply won't get it and it will be them that fails not the ISPs.

[SkyFTW]

Fine but we all know how fast the average ADSL speed is compared with VM's average:D

Well my ADSL line gives me around 14Mb, your 30Mb will give you 30Mb but..

If we both download a lot in 24 hours you will be throttled by as much as 75% of your speed leaving you with around 7.5Mb for 5 hours, I will be getting 14Mb constantly no matter what I download. Your peer2peer is managed all the time and alsorts of STM kicks in at peak times--I can download what I want via any protocol 24 hours a day.

If neither of us download then speed doesn't matter as browsing the web on 30Mb or 14Mb will give the same results. Or at least not a noticeable difference, If we both have kids streaming HD Youtube, gaming, facebooking both connections will cope fine.

The only real difference will be I pay £7.50 maximum you pay £22ish

ADSL speeds are increase all the time and for those stuck on very long lines fibre from the EXCHANGE is being looked at as a solution. Removing the long poor quality copper line and replacing it with fibre optic.

[qasdfdsaq]

The average BT "fibre" connection is nearly 3 times as fast as the average VM "fibre" connection. And it's uncapped.

[DaMac]

I live less than a mile from my exchange, i can walk it in 5 mins, my neighbour gets about 9mb! on his BT total broadband, i have looked at the update schedule for infinity and my exchange isn't even listed (some of the surrounding areas are listed for December) so as my info implies... i am indeed a VM prisoner :(

[Andrewcrawford23]

Virgin claim the whole point of stm is to stop the minority (something like 2%) of users from negatively impacting network performance to the detriment of other users. What you suggest goes directly against that philosophy atm. They have capped you because of the volume of traffic you are generating, especially on docsis 1, and uncapping it and actually prioritising the traffic screws things up big time.

You have lead us to a very good point though which many of us have raised before. Technology has got to the point now where even the slowest of connections are fast and like many users have argued, what do you need more than 1mb/sec for? The OP shouldn't have to upgrade to 50mbit or 100mbit to be relieved of stm when the speed he is getting atm is more than sufficient. I think it would be a great idea for all the tiers is there was a level 1 and 2 where 1 is the more expensive and un-stm'd and 2 is cheaper and stm'd. As an example (I don't know how much 10mb is so this is an example).

10mbit unmanaged on docsis 3 for £15/month for peeps like the OP for netflix and whatever else

10mbit managed with stm on docsis 1 for £10/month, designed for light/moderate use (like it is now)

Both offer you respectable speed which everyone is happy with however they are designed for different usage patterns. I would say you could do the same for up to 50mbit however I think anyone on 100mbit would argue that they want the speed because they download tonnes and want it done asap so they wouldnt be interested in paying less for thresholds to be impossed which would only screw them over.

(I am charging 10% commision on the above idea :) )







reminded me of this:

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs!

cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!


and surprisely i can read that with no problem but i doubt anyone else could ;)

[craigj2k12]

i can read that, only becuase the first and end letters are correct

[jb66]

Heavy user on a lite broadband package, what do you expect

[SkyFTW]

Heavy user on a lite broadband package, what do you expect

I'm a heavy user on a SkyBB £7.50 package and I never hit any issuses. So surely someone paying £22 for less speed than I get for £7.50 must be paying a premium price.

[jb66]

You can't get sky broadband without line rental

[Andrewcrawford23]

I'm a heavy user on a SkyBB £7.50 package and I never hit any issuses. So surely someone paying £22 for less speed than I get for £7.50 must be paying a premium price.

you could be pyaing £1 but someone else £50 but have totally differnet service but jsut becaus oyu pay more doesnt mean it is premium

[|Kippa|]

My connection is 50mbit and I use Netflix heavly. I haven't noticed any of my HD streams being turned off/lowerd to standard definition. If you are on a lower package than 50mbit then I would suggest you think about upgrading.

[satellite-man]

I signed up for a trail of netflix at the weekend, and on Sunday i was watching three hours of tv programs in hd then the quality dropped i spend ages fiddling with my signal trying to make it better, but then i turn the pc on and see ive been capped by vm!!!

Virgin media need to sort out there capping system and stop capping the innocent users out there in peak time!
Netflix is meant to be the future of tv? Well not if you got virgin media cas they will cap you!!!

makes no odds what your using your bandwidth for if you go over you get capped simples, why should they not cap you just cuz your using Netflix ?

---------- Post added at 23:09 ---------- Previous post was at 23:04 ----------


reminded me of this:

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs!

cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

nice you are aint ya, as his signature says:

I am dyslexic so please do not criticize or moan if you can not understand what i have written.

Any views or opinions i express are my own and not of my company

[SkyFTW]

You can't get sky broadband without line rental

Line rental is £9.90 if you pay in advance so £17.40 for unlimited,unmanaged, unshaped 14Mb BB with unlimited calls evenings and weekends is pretty damn good.

The same from VM is £33 but with strict upload and download managment which mean at peak time you could be cut back to 2.5Mb for 5 hours. An even if you don't download your line will have management at peak times.

[bubblegun]

Line rental is £9.90 if you pay in advance so £17.40 for unlimited,unmanaged, unshaped 14Mb BB with unlimited calls evenings and weekends is pretty damn good.

The same from VM is £33 but with strict upload and download managment which mean at peak time you could be cut back to 2.5Mb for 5 hours. An even if you don't download your line will have management at peak times.

Not to split hairs but it's £9.95/month with £119.40 upfront payment.

This will *probably* rise in May as that's when Sky phone prices go up and all other phone providers prices have gone up in the last year.
Sky's price freeze wasn't applied to line rental. If the Openreach cut in line rental cost is forced through by OFCOM then it may not rise but who knows?

[jb66]

Line rental is £9.90 if you pay in advance so £17.40 for unlimited,unmanaged, unshaped 14Mb BB with unlimited calls evenings and weekends is pretty damn good.

The same from VM is £33 but with strict upload and download managment which mean at peak time you could be cut back to 2.5Mb for 5 hours. An even if you don't download your line will have management at peak times.

Sky only do 6meg on my area, so unless your close to the exchange sky is a no go.

[muppetman11]

Sky only do 6meg on my area, so unless your close to the exchange sky is a no go.
For now they do ;) I only get 9mb with my Sky ADSL line but it allows Netflix HD , iplayer HD and other video sources to be streamed without the constant buffering I got with my VM 30mb connection and saves me a small fortune. People talk about contention now , I wonder how the network would cope if Netflix/Lovefilm were added to TIVO as a deal for XL customers also throw in VM BB customers with Sky+HD TV streaming Anytime+ from Easter , hopefully the VM upgrades will have catered for this explosion in video streaming and should alleviate this problem.

[moowow!]

My connection is 50mbit and I use Netflix heavly. I haven't noticed any of my HD streams being turned off/lowerd to standard definition. If you are on a lower package than 50mbit then I would suggest you think about upgrading.

But im paying for a 10MB connection and netflix is not even using half of that! why should i pay for higher speed connection when the connection im paying for is more then powerful enough, its a con making you pay for more speed then you need!

[SkyFTW]

But im paying for a 10MB connection and netflix is not even using half of that! why should i pay for higher speed connection when the connection im paying for is more then powerful enough, its a con making you pay for more speed then you need!


Surely you don't think Virgin over throttle lower speeds to get people to upgrade?

The days of me paying £30+ just for an internet connection are history.....

[Andrewcrawford23]

But im paying for a 10MB connection and netflix is not even using half of that! why should i pay for higher speed connection when the connection im paying for is more then powerful enough, its a con making you pay for more speed then you need!

netflix uses a lot of bandwidth and during peak tiems stm for 10mb i believe is about 1.4gig dn qoute me on that as i dnt have the exact figure but the 10mb doesnt have a big a ount it can download duirng peak times but outside peak times there is no restrictions

[General Maximus]

nice you are aint ya, as his signature says:

:doh: I know that, me and Andrew have participated in loads of threads together and I have not once criticised his spelling, sentence structure or english as a whole. Tbh his post made me laugh and I posted what I did to prove to everyone else that although it can be frustrating, we can all still read it no problemo.

[Andrewcrawford23]

:doh: I know that, me and Andrew have participated in loads of threads together and I have not once criticised his spelling, sentence structure or english as a whole. Tbh his post made me laugh and I posted what I did to prove to everyone else that although it can be frustrating, we can all still read it no problemo.

never took one bit of offence to it because i know of the study and i have tried in the past to show people but for some reaosn some people think taht spelling adn grammer are so important that they get offence with people who are not good at it, i dnt jsut mean dsylexic people i mean people witha small vocalbally, people who have had strokes etc and no longer have speech or sound reconisation i mean pronounce a sound like K

the only place i believe english spelling adn grammer should be important is ENGLISH EXAM OF SOME DEGREEE nothing else should matter

[craigj2k12]

the only place i believe english spelling adn grammer should be important is ENGLISH EXAM OF SOME DEGREEE nothing else should matter

totally agree.... as long as its readable there shouldnt be a problem

[jb66]

But im paying for a 10MB connection and netflix is not even using half of that! why should i pay for higher speed connection when the connection im paying for is more then powerful enough, its a con making you pay for more speed then you need!

Your not maying for a 10mb connection, your paying for a level of service and L is not appropriate for heavy downloaded

[qasdfdsaq]

Your not maying for a 10mb connection, your paying for a level of service and L is not appropriate for heavy downloaded
I used to think of it as paying for a 2.5mb unlimited connection that's burstable up to 10mb for half an hour a day...