General Traffic Management Changes - April 2nd - Page 14

7031 · 06-04-2012, 05:16

I'll be interested to see how this pans out. My initial reaction admittedly wasn't too positive as I had signed up around this time last year assuming that since I was on the 50Mbps tier, I wouldn't have to worry about being traffic managed. I know, they traffic manage the upstream but that's not too important to me - I love having a fast upstream but to be honest I can't see how you'd hit the upstream caps without seeding a ton of torrents.

Before you accuse me of needing a lot of downstream bandwidth for torrenting illegal content - that's actually not the case. It's more that I use Steam and believe it or not actually do download a lot of Linux ISOs heh.

I probably download more than my fair share, although admittedly I'm more concerned with what other people in my house will download rather than what I do. For the most part I just browse forums, sit logged into WHM on however many boxes and stare at SSH screens running top. That and downloading full account backups can take a while - I don't have to do it often but it does seem to always be the case that the one time I'll need to for whatever reason I'll find that the person in question has a 20GB account.

To be honest, I'm not really that bothered about the 5PM to 9PM management or whichever time it was - it's more the daytime management - why is this necessary? My only guess is that it's for the sake of business customers. I can't imagine that many people torrent etc during the day. Obviously between 6PM and 9PM (and possibly until 12PM) you'll have a lot of people hammering away at their connections but I find it hard to imagine that the utilisation is *that* high during the day. In fact, most of the complaints on the Virgin Media forums seem to be about load during evenings. That said, for all I know they may have just found that usage patterns have changed a lot with the new speed doubling.

Regardless of the traffic management though, I'd imagine that most people are still getting much better speeds than what they would otherwise get with ADSL. That said, BT Infinity is available in my area, and admittedly this does make BT Infinity look a bit more appealing to me when my contract expires, because looking at what they offer well, a 20Mbps upload is very appealing to me, as well as a very solid 80Mbps download (without STM I presume?).

Sorry for this rant - I've almost just been thinking out my views on this as I write this. Out of curiosity, are many people on here actually upset about it? I'd imagine the main customers who would be peeved would be the customers on 100Mbps, as they would now be traffic managed once this is rolled out. I was quite upset when I first read this, but then the thought hit me that I'm still getting a minimum of 50Mbps regardless.

Sirius · 06-04-2012, 07:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jayster

I believe they where talking about watching it online via their broadband connection.

Indeed.

General Maximus · 06-04-2012, 08:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirius

Indeed.

As am I

Ken Jude · 06-04-2012, 11:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jayster

I believe they where talking about watching it online via their broadband connection.

Yes, I was watching via MLBTV's online service. Apologies for any confusion.

Chrysalis · 06-04-2012, 11:34

7031 casual torrenters may not do so much in the day however I expect the heaviest torrenters not only will be during the day but they will be dusk as well 24/7, also I have seen some torrenters turn on their pc, start utorrent or whatever app, goto work, then turn the torrent off again when they back from work so in that case its during the day. So to me the daytime management is to match daytime business peak time and the evening hours is to match residential peak time. Although judging by my level of congestion in my area its clear VM gets more use in the evenings so thats when their real peak time is and the daytime is a lesser peak time. eg. at the weekends daytime is significantly more congested than weekday daytime.

Ken Jude · 06-04-2012, 12:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by 7031

Out of curiosity, are many people on here actually upset about it?

Until the changes have happened, yes. Thereafter, I can live with it.

At the moment watching one baseball match in the 6pm start time seems to be enough to get me STMd 2.5 hours into the match and that's frustrating because the MLB service allows me to have two games running at the same time on different devices. On a 30Mbps service that should be no problem and still leave way more than enough headroom for someone else to watch iPlayer and do plenty of web-browsing and listen to Spotify and more besides.

Getting cut from 30Mbps to 7.5Mbps just covers having two games running with not a huge amount of room for anything else. And of course being STMd impacts for 5 hours so goes right through the duration of the 9pm and later starts. So they aren't giving me the unlimited service they sell me in my opinion (yes I know the small print is in there, but I don't consider running a streaming service I'm paying for to the limit the service allows to be unreasonable use of my connection).

Once the speeds are doubled and the STM cut reduced to 50% I can live with my connection being cut to 30Mbps, which will still leave me with plenty of room to do what I need to do. As long as the methodolgy for cutting the speed doesn't impact on the streaming performance.

7031 · 06-04-2012, 18:57

Just to clarify - I wrote that first post while sleep deprived.

@Chrysalis: Hmm yes. I just say that since I've noticed every time someone is complaining about issues caused by high contention it tends to be during the peak time bracket. That said, it's important that VM can deliver a high quality service to business customers. That said, I did read somewhere on these forums a few days back that VM isn't doing new business installations. Would this not imply that VM is not too interested in providing a business service currently?

@Ken Jude: Pretty much the same here actually.

I'm a bit annoyed about being traffic managed while on 50Mbps as when I signed up it was on the understanding that I would not be STMd since I was on 50Mbps. That said, I won't be complaining once the speed doubling is complete as I'd be getting the same speeds as I would get anyway as a minimum. That and considering I came from a 13Mbps ADSL line pretty much anything VM could offer me would be faster.

telfordcable · 06-04-2012, 20:28

Virgin Media should change the speed eg the minimum speed during STM & non STM on their site for more clearer!

Like this

Virgin Media Broadband:

Up To 15Mb (STM) Up To 30Mb (9pm to 10am & 3pm to 4pm 7 days a week with no limit of download per month)
Up To 30Mb (STM) Up To 60Mb (9pm to 10am & 3pm to 4pm 7 days a week with no limit of download per month)
Up To 50Mb (STM) Up To 100Mb (9pm to 10am & 3pm to 4pm 7 days a week with no limit of download per month)

General Maximus · 07-04-2012, 21:49

somewhere in this thread someone said that they were being hit with the pre-upgrade stm limits (30 instead of 60 i think) and that customer services told them that would be the case until the upgrades are completed. That got me thinking that if that was being applied to all tiers, 100mbit would still be stm free.

Before anyone starts moaning their ass off normally I am very good and leave all my mass uploading and downloading for overnight but I deliberately uploaded as much as I could this evening as a test and I havent been hit by the stm. The limit is 12gb and I know I have uploaded more than 14gb this evening.

Tomorrow I'll test the download limits. It will only take me 28 mins to hit the limit at full speed if it is in effect.

Chrysalis · 07-04-2012, 22:21

VM stated the STM will be rolled out prior to the speed upgrades, they posted a list of areas on their forums been activated this weekend.

SnoopZ · 08-04-2012, 00:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

VM stated the STM will be rolled out prior to the speed upgrades, they posted a list of areas on their forums been activated this weekend.

Can't find the list do you have a link to it please?

craigj2k12 · 08-04-2012, 01:36

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...132719#M123721

SnoopZ · 08-04-2012, 10:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by craigj2k12

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...132719#M123721

Thanks, i will check later as i am 200 miles from home right now.

General Maximus · 08-04-2012, 10:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

Thanks, i will check later as i am 200 miles from home right now.

let me know what page it is on because I couldnt be arsed to trawl through all 50 of them

kwikbreaks · 08-04-2012, 11:17

It's the Mark Wilkin post on the page the link goes to (#48). To see the list you need to click on "spoiler".

To save you the effort here it is ...

Quote:

acto-cmts-01
acto-cmts-02
acto-cmts-03
acto-cmts-04
aztw-cmts-22
aztw-cmts-23
aztw-cmts-24
aztw-cmts-25
bagu-cmts-10
basl-cmts-09
basl-cmts-10
belf-cmts-09
bexl-cmts-07
bmly-cmts-08
bmly-cmts-09
bolt-cmts-13
bolt-cmts-14
bour-cmts-05
brad-cmts-18
brad-cmts-19
brad-cmts-20
brig-cmts-15
brig-cmts-16
brig-cmts-17
bsfd-cmts-07
camd-cmts-13
camd-cmts-14
cmbg-cmts-14
cmbg-cmts-15
cosh-cmts-11
cosh-cmts-12
cove-cmts-11
cove-cmts-12
craw-cmts-06
croy-cmts-17
croy-cmts-18
croy-cmts-19
croy-cmts-20
dudl-cmts-09
dudl-cmts-10
dudl-cmts-11
dund-cmts-11
dund-cmts-12
dund-cmts-13
finc-cmts-11
finc-cmts-12
finc-cmts-13
finc-cmts-14
gate-cmts-09
gate-cmts-10
gill-cmts-14
gill-cmts-15
gill-cmts-16
grth-cmts-08
harb-cmts-08
harb-cmts-09
hart-cmts-09
haye-cmts-15
haye-cmts-16
haye-cmts-17
haye-cmts-18
hudd-cmts-09
hudd-cmts-10
ipsw-cmts-01
ipsw-cmts-02
king-cmts-09
king-cmts-10
lee2-cmts-10
lewi-cmts-13
lewi-cmts-14
lewi-cmts-15
lewi-cmts-16
lewi-cmts-17
linc-cmts-11
linl-cmts-07
live-cmts-19
live-cmts-20
live-cmts-21
live-cmts-22
live-cmts-23
live-cmts-24
lutn-cmts-10
lutn-cmts-11
maid-cmts-05
mfld-cmts-14
mfld-cmts-15
midd-cmts-15
midd-cmts-16
newc-cmts-13
newc-cmts-14
newc-cmts-15
newt-cmts-29
newt-cmts-30
newt-cmts-31
newt-cmts-32
nfds-cmts-13
nfds-cmts-14
nmal-cmts-16
nmal-cmts-17
nmal-cmts-18
nrwh-cmts-09
oldh-cmts-09
pete-cmts-09
pool-cmts-12
pool-cmts-13
rdng-cmts-20
rdng-cmts-21
rdng-cmts-22
rdng-cmts-23
salf-cmts-05
seac-cmts-19
seac-cmts-20
seac-cmts-21
seve-cmts-18
seve-cmts-19
seve-cmts-20
seve-cmts-21
shef-cmts-10
shef-cmts-11
shep-cmts-11
slam-cmts-05
slam-cmts-06
slou-cmts-01
slou-cmts-02
smal-cmts-11
smal-cmts-12
soli-cmts-05
stkn-cmts-13
stkn-cmts-14
stok-cmts-15
stok-cmts-16
uddi-cmts-19
uddi-cmts-20
uddi-cmts-21
wals-cmts-09
wals-cmts-10
walt-cmts-12
walt-cmts-13
walt-cmts-14
walt-cmts-15
warr-cmts-05
warr-cmts-06
watf-cmts-08
watf-cmts-09
watf-cmts-10
wiga-cmts-11
wiga-cmts-12
wolv-cmts-14
wolv-cmts-15