120M : My Usage

[tanny]

Hi,

I phoned Virgin Media technical support team as i was only getting 4 meg upload speed as was informed i had been capped.

I was then informed by the gentleman that i could check my monthly usage via my virgin media account.

He couldn't point me where abouts in my virgin media this was located but was adamanat this was available to virgin media customers.

1. Is this available via My Virgin Media?
2. If yes where is it located.

Thanks

Tanny

[Sephiroth]

He couldn't point you to the location in My Virgin Media for the same reason as I can't find it there when I'm logged in.

I use a utility called DUMETER to keep track of my usage and warn me if there's a threshold I'm about to cross.

The Superhub provides stats, but they are not considered to be reliable. See the VM Forums for the skinny on that.

[Skie]

1. Nope
2. See above

Well over a year ago an icon for a usage page in the "my apps" section slipped out, but it was a trial apparently and nobody ever got to use it.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Skie

Well over a year ago an icon for a usage page in the "my apps" section slipped out, but it was a trial apparently and nobody ever got to use it.

It'll reappear if, or perhaps more accurately, when capped products come out. Wonder if they guy had had a briefing or heard something and misunderstood it as being available now...

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

when capped products come out

wtf

[Taf]

I have BitMeter (free) running all the time.


http://codebox.org.uk/pages/bitmeter2

[General Maximus]

I think the more important thing as far as you are concerned dude is that you don't need to worry about your total usage per se. Virgin Media don't cap you to a certain monthly allowance and once you exceed it that is it. They operate subscriber traffic management which looks only at how much you upload (send) on an hourly basis. During the evenings if you exceed a certain amount of data per hour then your "upload" speed gets reduced for 1 hour till you come back down below the thresholds. The thresholds vary per tier so you can have a look here and see how it applies to you but the important thing to bear in mind is that you aren't screwed till the end of the month. Your upload speed will be reduced for 2 hours tops and it will only happen in the evenings and weekend so I don't think you need a bb usage meter to watch your traffic (unless you are anal about uploading all evening and not wanting to hit stm).

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

<SNIP>

... (unless you are anal about uploading all evening and not wanting to hit stm).

LOL, mon General. Can be taken "either way"!

[Rajie]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

I think the more important thing as far as you are concerned dude is that you don't need to worry about your total usage per se. Virgin Media don't cap you to a certain monthly allowance and once you exceed it that is it. They operate subscriber traffic management which looks only at how much you upload (send) on an hourly basis. During the evenings if you exceed a certain amount of data per hour then your "upload" speed gets reduced for 1 hour till you come back down below the thresholds. The thresholds vary per tier so you can have a look here and see how it applies to you but the important thing to bear in mind is that you aren't screwed till the end of the month. Your upload speed will be reduced for 2 hours tops and it will only happen in the evenings and weekend so I don't think you need a bb usage meter to watch your traffic (unless you are anal about uploading all evening and not wanting to hit stm).

I just don't believe this. If they have no download management whatsoever, are you saying it would ok with them to download at fullspeed 24/7 forever? I don't doubt you personally, I doubt the information Virgin give out. They say it's only upload only but whenever I download a fair amount of data in a short amount of time that's when I have connection problems. It seems completely related to me and I don't trust Virgin's word.

[Sephiroth]

You can download 24/7 forever until VM change their policy. I do believe though that P2P downloading still has STM limits.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Rajie

I just don't believe this. If they have no download management whatsoever, are you saying it would ok with them to download at fullspeed 24/7 forever?

Yes.

They say it's only upload only but whenever I download a fair amount of data in a short amount of time that's when I have connection problems. It seems completely related to me and I don't trust Virgin's word.

Typical naive jumping to an incorrect conclusion.

1) Correlation does not imply causality
2) Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.

[General Maximus]

You beat me to it Qas. I wanted to reply at lunch time but I ran out of patience trying to copy the bits I wanted from Rajie's post and Seph's.

Originally Posted by Rajie

are you saying it would ok with them to download at fullspeed 24/7 forever?

Yes you can download 24/7 forever and that is why the connection is advertised as an unlimited connection. Full speed though? No. No residential isp plans the capacity for every customer to run their connection at max speed simultaneously and this is why speeds aren't guaranteed. This is why you see some users complaining about congestion; there are too many customers in their locality all on the internet at the same time so the finite amount of bandwidth which VM have has to be shared between everyone. Even if it was first thing in the morning and everyone was at work and school and you could get full speed, depending on what you was doing (e.g. everyone hammering youtube for the latest star wars trailer) the youtube servers might not be able to cope with the demand and you might still get a slow connection. As an example, last week a game came out which I have been waiting for nearly a year for called Killing Floor 2 and it got released at 18:00 on Tuesday. I was sitting at my PC hitting refresh in Steam as I am sure many other people were as well, waiting to download it. Now say for example 50,000 people wanted to download it in England. I very much doubt Steam had 50,000 x 150mbits (7.5tbits) of bandwidth just for that one game (they haven't got it at all). Even if Steam had oodles of bandwidth, lets say 200 people in Lincoln (where I live) wanted to download it. Just for us 200 people VM would have to have 30gbits of bandwidth going out of Lincoln through to their core to download that game at full speed and VM don't have that either.

So in answer to your question, yes you can download 24/7 but the speed you get will vary depending on multiple factors depending on what you are doing. That being said, I live in an area which is has low utilisation and I can pretty much get max speed all the time so in response to your specific assertions, VM do not turn around and say "oh no, you have downloaded 1gb so your speed is now reduced". I have downloaded over 100gb in one day many times before, I just leave queue my downloads and leave them ticking away. That is what you are supposed to be able to do and that is what we pay for. The speed will go up and down depending how many other people in my area are doing stuff but that is how the technology works.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I do believe though that P2P downloading still has STM limits.

With regards to what Seph mentioned, VM do traffic shape p2p traffic which is different from stm. With stm, if you "upload" more than X amount in one hour your speed will get reduced by X% temporarily. Traffic shaping is different and your "download" traffic is flagged as low priority which means you get whatever juice is left on the network once everyone else has been looked after. For some people in congested areas this can be a killer and reduce their download speed to a few k/sec but like I said, I live in a good area so I hardly notice it. There are no thresholds, you just keep on downloading as much as you want and you get whatever speed is available on VM's end.


All the blab above is to explain how things work and the "bigger picture" in a hope that you understand that is happening is nothing to do with VM. You need to look at your other thread for your problem, I don't actually thing it is anything to do with VM and speed, I think it is a connectivity issue between your client and router.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

I was sitting at my PC hitting refresh in Steam as I am sure many other people were as well, waiting to download it. Now say for example 50,000 people wanted to download it in England. I very much doubt Steam had 50,000 x 150mbits (7.5tbits) of bandwidth just for that one game (they haven't got it at all).

That would involve 50,000 saddos spending their whole evening hitting Refresh on Steam the entire time

A couple places where your case falls short though, Steam probably do have enough bandwidth, given the average UK broadband speed is 25Mbps, not 150. And even on cable, most customers still stay on the lowest package, making the average just over 50Mbps. It's not unheard of to get 2Tbps or more over a single fibre, and Steam has several CDNs in the UK and a dozen or so more in neighbouring countries. Steam's own stats show average download speeds on VM are 35Mbps, only 16Mbps across the UK, and global traffic hitting nearly 2Tbps on a daily basis, with no indication it's anywhere near the limit.

Interestingly enough LINX traffic charts show a ~0.3Tbps bump around 8PM on Tuesday

To be fair though, I don't think KF2 is that popular a game to be making a huge impact. The all-time worldwide peak players count is barely 20,000 so the idea of 50,000 people downloading it at the same time in England alone is a bit far fetched.

Even if Steam had oodles of bandwidth, lets say 200 people in Lincoln (where I live) wanted to download it. Just for us 200 people VM would have to have 30gbits of bandwidth going out of Lincoln through to their core to download that game at full speed and VM don't have that either.

Again, assuming incorrectly, that everyone is on 150Mbps connections. Given the actual average of around 50Mbps, that'd "only" require 10Gbps of bandwidth "to their core".

Pretty much all core network links these days are a minimum of 10Gbps, typically much more with major networks running multiple 40Gbps or 100Gbps links. Even a single mobile phone transmitter can get a 10Gbps connection put in by VM these days.

Any problems with congestion or capacity, if they exist, are nearly always on the local HFC node, not the core or backbone.

P.S. There's an average of about 30Gbps of Steam traffic going into the VM network 24/7 by the way, given the traffic patterns I wouldn't be surprised if it peaked at over 100Gbps some parts of the day.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Again, assuming incorrectly, that everyone is on 150Mbps connections.

I know. Because Rajie was flapping about "full speed" I was trying to use VM's top tier as a worst case scenario for the sake of keeping things simple.

[qasdfdsaq]

Worst case scenario is when everyone's been upgraded to 300Mbps