Virgin introduce morning traffic caps

I think the cap is pretty annoying when it is advertised as "unlimited"

but the worse thing is that when you are STM'd the service gets shot as well with higher pings and slower than the % percentage you are meant to be getting. this is clearly more an oversubscribing issue than a downloading one
 
arknor said:
heavy downloaders didnt bring on the STM! it was over subscription in a lot of areas, luckily i live in chav central so enjoy good speeds
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Again I disagree, inenvitably it was Virgin that brought on the problem by advertising as 'unlimited' 20Mb/50Mb connections, thus attracting all the bandwidth hogs who need there linux iso's faster.

Fair enough there are issues of oversubscription in some areas, I know of this first hand - however its unproven but I reckon with Iplayer, multiple PC usage etc the average household would use 15-20GB per month.

However the oversubscription would be eased somewhat by less bandwidth hogs, Virgin dont have the cash to upgrade there infrastructure as needed so resort to STM. They advertise as the fastest unlimited connections then create their own problems when people want to use their connections as they please hence STM. Its a vicious circle, it really is but 300GB+ a month bandwidth usage really makes me sick - abuse of a shared resource etc.

Look at BE/O2, they make it a point that they dont throttle/cap and they are a huge company making massive profits (imo). However I reckon some form of traffic management will come in time... Look at Sky they removed the FUP and now advertise as unlimited, traffic management? you betcha - but as long as the userbase gets nice speeds without any hassle I bet 98% of the userbase is happy and dont even notice - Virgin could learn a lot of lessons. No STM needed as such.
 
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I usually always get the capacity issues after 9pm to about 11pm. Speeds are just under 10Mbit, pings are higher etc.

They initially brought it in to combat the "heavy" downloaders, however, that percentage is rather minuscule compared to how many people they have sitting on their pipes and all trying to share it.
 
The 'heavy' downloaders may be the minority, but that minority can be uses hundreds or thousands of times the bandwidth of the majority.
 
Whilst 5MB capped between 10am and 9pm is perfectly fine I feel the Threshold at which this activates is way too small.

At 20MB I can download over 1GB in 10minutes so if I bought a game on STEAM whilst at work for example then that 3GB threshold goes over several times and I will be stuck on 5MB for several hours until the counter resets.

The threshhold should be 10GB at least not 3GB. My monthly download figure for the whole household is around 250-300GB a month (monitored using DUMeter).

Temptng to just get 50MB once launched in my postcode to not have a cap of this sort...
 
I have an awful connection with Virgin (100KBps/30KBps) but ever since I sarted using P2P, I can somehow get 100KBps uploads speeds. Is this because I encrypt outgoing connections or is this some cool new feature?
 
Rabtech said:
Again I disagree, inenvitably it was Virgin that brought on the problem by advertising as 'unlimited' 20Mb/50Mb connections, thus attracting all the bandwidth hogs who need there linux iso's faster.

Fair enough there are issues of oversubscription in some areas, I know of this first hand - however its unproven but I reckon with Iplayer, multiple PC usage etc the average household would use 15-20GB per month.

However the oversubscription would be eased somewhat by less bandwidth hogs, Virgin dont have the cash to upgrade there infrastructure as needed so resort to STM. They advertise as the fastest unlimited connections then create their own problems when people want to use their connections as they please hence STM. Its a vicious circle, it really is but 300GB+ a month bandwidth usage really makes me sick - abuse of a shared resource etc.

Look at BE/O2, they make it a point that they dont throttle/cap and they are a huge company making massive profits (imo). However I reckon some form of traffic management will come in time... Look at Sky they removed the FUP and now advertise as unlimited, traffic management? you betcha - but as long as the userbase gets nice speeds without any hassle I bet 98% of the userbase is happy and dont even notice - Virgin could learn a lot of lessons. No STM needed as such.
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They begs the question if they know they don't have the capacity for more users, and they say the magical top 5% are supposedly hogging bandwith WHY on earth would you advertise your service as Unlimited and download fast 24/7 on TV adverts if you know full well you CANNOT sustain or support the service as it is now nevermind with more people coming on, STM! is the reason why. As for 50MBIT they will just wait for enough users to be locked into 12 month contracts then drop the STM bomb, then as these irrate people are coming to the end of their contract further down the line they will probably start to push the Unlimited Fiber Download 24/7, with another overpaid Actor and the carousel begins again.

I think a lot of angry users are not the 500gb+ a month brigade, because they can still do this with the STM in place, I think it is folks that decide they want to do a large download now and again at peak times and they cannot do this and feel restricted and not being able to enjoy a service they expect rather than the current dictatorship of a service.
 
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What if you buy a new game online? Cant even download that without triggering some stupid limits :( and when I say game I mean a decent FPS or MMO which is over 6gb in size.
 
gnr26 said:
I think a lot of angry users are not the 500gb+ a month brigade, because they can still do this with the STM in place, I think it is folks that decide they want to do a large download now and again at peak times and they cannot do this and feel restricted and not being able to enjoy a service they expect rather than the current dictatorship of a service.
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Agreed, I used to schedule all my downloads off peak and never once hit STM as far as I was aware - besides the point I couldn't download over 4Mb/s at peak time anyway due to oversubscription. As per the above post also, say you wanted to get the latest game which is over 6GB you get punished without necessarily being in the 300GB+ brigade.

Bring on traffic management and/or caps and watch the 300GB+ brigade squirm I say.
 
What I can't understand is why not charge more. some of us don't download huge amounts. but when we do download stuff we want it fast. I would much rather have a 10mb line at full speed and cost the same as a throttled 20mb line.
 
What's the point of having a 20mb connection that gets capped after you download a bit.

Really ****es me off when these companies advertise unlimited downloads and then you get throttled. Luckily I found a local ISP that never throttles.
 
AcidHell2 said:
What I can't understand is why not charge more. some of us don't download huge amounts. but when we do download stuff we want it fast. I would much rather have a 10mb line at full speed and cost the same as a throttled 20mb line.
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That kinda works like the tortoise and the hare. say you wanted to watch a Hd film at 8gb and its 6pm, your better off having a 10 meg connection than the 20meg capped one.

At 10 meg (1.34 meg a sec) you will have the film in about 1hr 50 min. on the 20 meg tho it will take about 3/4 hours (2.3 meg sec @First 3GB) then(.5 meg sec for the next 5GB).
 
ifihaditall said:
What's the point of having a 20mb connection that gets capped after you download a bit.

Really ****es me off when these companies advertise unlimited downloads and then you get throttled. Luckily I found a local ISP that never throttles.
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Every thread like this i have to explain it, faster connections like 20Mb are not just about downloading BIG files. 20Mb means you can do lots of stuff faster. Even if its just downloading some songs on itunes, or small game patches, whatever you download its faster then a 10Mb connection.

So the point of a 20Mb connection is that if you time your downloads you will never get capped, and if you dont download huge ammounts you wont get capped. Even if you do decide to buy a game on steam and end up getting capped, thats just 1 day, and even then being limmited only lasts a max of 5 hours, after that your connection is back to 20Mb. So if you buy 1 steam game a month and decide you HAVE to download it at prime time, well then 1 day a month you will be capped for 5 hours. 5 hours a monthly is hardly something to cry over.
 
HAz said:
At 10 meg (1.34 meg a sec) you will have the film in about 1hr 50 min. on the 20 meg tho it will take about 3/4 hours (2.3 meg sec @first 3GB) then(.5 meg sec for the next 5GB).
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Your math is way out, you've forgotten that the 10Mb service is throttled after 1.2GB.
 
Dist said:
Im on 20Mb, and 6GB limit in the morning, and 3 GB in the evening, and unlimited from 9pm to 10am, and 3pm to 4 pm (so over half the day unlimited). is perfectly reasonable IMO.
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It's rubbish. Be/O2 don't cap. Can download as much as you want at full speed. 1.7mbs goodness.
 
beh* said:
It's rubbish. Be/O2 don't cap. Can download as much as you want at full speed. 1.7mbs goodness.
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Well maybe its rubbish for you, but its been great for me. Whenever i download i just do it off peak, or simply time it so if i start a download at prime time, it wont reach the limit. So basicaly i download at 20Mb/s whenever i download, which i prefer over be/o2 if they only give 1.7MBs like you mentioned.
 
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