Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by broadbandking

OMFG is all I can say, I knew it would go down hill, too good to be true looks like Trax's was right

It's all very clever stuff.
Make out that you are the best there is with all the gimmicks, talk and promises. get the publicity and the sign ups based on the gimmicks, talk and promises, and screw em later on. when the bad publicity starts all over again, just come up with some more gimmicks, talk and promises all over again.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by bywater

I thought bittorents are P2P and actually Skype VOIP uses P2P.

Can anyone tell me what the difference is between bittorent and P2P is because I'm dammed if I know. Also in the article it mentions restrictions based on applications now that could be almost any service we use the internet connection for. Whats to say Virgin start throttling my Vonage service so I am forced to take there phone service or throttle BBC ,C4 and all the other media offerings coming on line to force customers onto there own cable service.

It is p2p.

Bittorrent is just the most popular form of p2p at the moment, and the basis for a huge amount of other p2p protocols (such as many streaming video services, they mostly all use the tracker based methodology that bittorrent made popular, and are in many cases only minor alterations to the bittorrent protocol.)

[Fatec]

Any of you suprised? Any of you really believed what neil said about allot just being used for network monitoring/data purposes? oh where oh where is broadbandbug to deny new allot equipment was installed when it's been admitted.

The trials have been going on for quite some time, i'm suprised no one noticed their torrent speeds going to hell, and i should note, he quotes it's about bandwith and not bittorrent in general, DPI is gonna be going after anything using high amounts of bandwith, that newsgroups too.

[bmradio]

Be* here I come

... as far as I understand it .. imposing these changes constitutes an alteration of the terms and conditions in my contract therefore nullifying my 12 month contract that I am tied into unless of course I add a new service / take a deal from virgin

am i correct ???.. if so ... bye bye virgin ! .. after nearly 8 years ! LOL

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Fatec

The trials have been going on for quite some time, i'm suprised no one noticed their torrent speeds going to hell

I'm still pulling a constant 20meg on all my torrents.

[city-boy]

Been with them since they did broadband. But I could get BeThere at 20Mbit. I'd be off in a shot if they do this. I dont' even download that much on BitTorrent.

This could be the end!

[moroboshi]

Virgin seem determined to alienate as many people as possible. What little quality of service they have left will be further torched by this. What a bunch of clowns.

[Kymmy]

It does state that these measures will not be introduced until the middle of next year.. (they'll probably wait till the full 50Mb and 20Mb to docsis3 is rolled out)

[qasdfdsaq]

Oh the irony... Wait till full rollout of upgrades/conversions to increase capacity to er... save capacity?

[hoohim]

Originally Posted by TheDon

Except it's not.

If it was all the other ISPs that employ traffic shaping (and there are many) would have gone bump by now. Strangely they haven't, why is that?

Traffic shaping makes perfect sense when you're forced to oversell capacity to even break even (people seriously underestimate how cheap it is to provide bandwidth to end users). If you don't want shaping and want gaurenteed bandwidth go get a leased line. Residential connections will ALWAYS be oversubscribed so will always need measures in place to ensure latency dependant applications get priority when usage exceeds capacity.

You make an excellent point, and in principle I too have no problem with traffic shaping per say. I signed up last week knowing this was the case.

But let's get real here. I would speculate that a VERY large propotion of Virgins customer base have some form of p2p software installed which they like to take advantage of from time to time. Surely not everyone needs a 20mb line just to d/l the odd e-mail and browse Ebay. If that service is suddenly capped then peeps wont be happy. In addition, if it is known that an ISP caps p2p then who would sign up to it? A smart advert on a rival ISP website saying "we wont cap your p2p like Virgin do" would take a percentage of virgin customers away I'm sure.

If Virgin wish to ditch their customer base who use p2p then good luck to them. Times are tough, competition is firece. Service is king.

[Toto]

Originally Posted by hoohim

<snip>Times are tough, competition is firece. Service is king.

I think you've hit it on the head.

Service is the key, and if VM know what percent of their customer base is using P2P on a regular basis (and they should if they have been using DPI this last year), and that figure is not as high as some claim, then the service could be improved for those who don't use it as much, but feel the ill effects of those who just don't stop using it.

We can argue till the cows come home that making the pipe bigger to allow more free flow is better than reducing the pipe, but IF the pipe can be reduced just for those who are taking more of their share of the flow....

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by hoohim

In addition, if it is known that an ISP caps p2p then who would sign up to it? A smart advert on a rival ISP website saying "we wont cap your p2p like Virgin do" would take a percentage of virgin customers away I'm sure.

If Virgin wish to ditch their customer base who use p2p then good luck to them. Times are tough, competition is firece. Service is king.

I can pretty much gaurentee NO isp would ever dream of running an advertising campaign like that.

The profit for an ISP comes from the low usage customers who subsidise the cost of providing service to the high usage ones, this is what makes contention workable, for every heavy downloader you have a great many more people who hardly use their connection. To advertise that you don't throttle p2p you're inviting every heavy downloader to sign up, and you're suddenly going to see your contention rates being unworkable as your network becomes saturated, then all the people that joined you because you don't throttle p2p will leave because your network can't cope with their traffic, and your original customers will leave because their service has been adversely effected by a huge influx of heavy downloaders. It'd be an extremely short sighted short term scheme that would hurt the long term sustainability of the service.

They might not say it, but every ISP in the world would LOVE to ditch their heavy p2p using customer base because these are the customers who provide the lowest chance of profit, the cost of providing them with service is often (especially when it comes to ISPs using BT wholesale) many many times greater than the revenue they provide.

Originally Posted by moroboshi

Virgin seem determined to alienate as many people as possible. What little quality of service they have left will be further torched by this. What a bunch of clowns.

So you're complaining that the QoS techniques they bring in are going to adversly effect the QoS?

[Impz2002]

People seem to forget VM is a contended service, Providing everyone with a guaranteed bandwith weather it be 2meg or 50meg is not a viable option. there are always going to be times when people are all trying to use their connection at the same time. TheDon makes a very good point, has anyone ever wondered why a leased line is massively expensive ? its the guaranteed service level agreement that goes with it that costs so much. There isn't a single residential ISP in this country that provides a non contended service.

I believe that STM is a fair way of making sure all customers have a fair level of service. I think the trigger points for STM are low and don't reflect the things people use their connection for these days as the appetite for bandwith is just going to keep increasing.

I am assuming this Bittorrent shaping must be achieved by DPI which is a whole new bag of snakes.

I think people really need to realise what the network would be like if it was a free for all with no management. I guarantee there would be alot more moaning posts about slow speeds in peak times.

So in conclusion I support whatever method VM employ to make sure everyone gets their fair share as long as it reflects the changing times and treats everyone the same.

You don't get anything for free in life so lets just be glad we arnt all capped to x amount of gigs a month. Compared to some ISP's VM's STM is generous !

Impz

[hoohim]

Originally Posted by TheDon

I can pretty much gaurentee NO isp would ever dream of running an advertising campaign like that.

Well.. you're probably right and I'm probably stetching it a bit, but they could do it. Just use the old *.
(*FUP) applies.
But if it's known that an ISP caps p2p, and even if you only use it once in a blue moon.. would you sign up to it? I would suspect the masses generally wouldn't.
Absolutly agree heavy users spoil it for the rest and the business model has to be sustainable. It is a business after all and not an emergency service. If peeps don't like it, leave.

But someone has to feed the lions.

[broadbandking]

I am right in thinking utorrent passes the throttling? with the encyption option enabled?