Virgin introduce morning traffic caps

I couldn't be happier with my Cable connection, always faster speeds than all my friends who are on ADSL. I also get better pings and even if I do hit STM, which I never have since moving to the 20mb tier. I still get faster speeds.

It's all win win in my area. Been with them for 6 years and no trouble.. not many customers can say that about their ISPs.
 
JimAroo said:
I couldn't be happier with my Cable connection, always faster speeds than all my friends who are on ADSL. I also get better pings and even if I do hit STM, which I never have since moving to the 20mb tier. I still get faster speeds.

It's all win win in my area. Been with them for 6 years and no trouble.. not many customers can say that about their ISPs.
Click to expand...

not many people will say that about virgin :)
 
Dist said:
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.
Click to expand...

Sorry I meant that's rubbish. I get 1.7 megabytes per second down constantly.
 
Bhamid said:
Are you talking about Megabytes (MB) or Megabits (Mb)?
Click to expand...

03543185.png
 
Virgin are awesome :)

When I had 20mb connection it would max out (until capped).

I have had 50mb since Jan and I get full speed all the time any day or night :)

6MB/sec download speeds rocks!
 
Dist said:
People rarely seem to talk about a service when it works great, they only talk about the problems which make virgin seem worse then it actully is.
Click to expand...

Exactly my VM has only borked twice in 2 years, the rest of the time it's connected 24/87 and I have little to complain about.

5MB cap during peak ours of heavy usage is nothing, it's not like my game pings are going to increase by 50ms or something either.

It can be annoying seeing your 2.1MB/sec download drop to a fraction but what can you do!
 
Saltank said:
It's unreasonable when you want to rent an HD movie from xbl marketplace or iTunes and it doesn't pull it off. It's also unreasonable to be limited to some stupid curfew by someone else, I've run in to occasions when I need to download a large file really fast but it ruins that idea because of these damn caps.

What they have in the US is a "throttling" service. It is the same here, except they falsely lead the customers to believe they get 20Mbit all the time :)
Click to expand...

I think to actually be capped you have to be downloading some seriously high amount of stuff in a short period.

And if you are then I dont think its all legal is it ;)
 
bloodline76 said:
I think to actually be capped you have to be downloading some seriously high amount of stuff in a short period.

And if you are then I dont think its all legal is it ;)
Click to expand...

Yes and no. As HD content becomes more readily available the need for sustained bandwidth will increase. With what's happening to the pirate bat atm I'm not sure how long people will be able to get away with P2P content, illegal or not.
 
Although I'm not denying a lot of people are using thier bandwith to download illegaly, there are honest people who download and max out their cap just doing regular stuff.

Although the numbers probably don't amount to a hill of grapes in the larger scheme of things, a lot of people on these boards alone will typically download hefty ps3, 360 and wii demos (sometimes all three in the same night though I'd imagine that's rare). Add in random streaming services like iplayer, photobucket uploads, facebook, youtube, etc etc etc. It all adds up.

I get the feeling that ISP's are around 3-4 years behind the curve of modern culture, whether that's deliberate or not. Some of those download caps are just antiquated. I can burn through my cap, legally, without even thinking about it, in 30 mins or less. Just last night I d/led a mod for for a 2 year old game, it weighed in at around 3gb. That's 3 times over my limit for one download. I am boned for the rest of my night now.

I know, I know. The caps are there and I can work around them if need be. But the data we download is growing greater and greater by the year, and the caps that are inplace (that we are told should be sufficient) are all out of whack. If I were a betting man, I would put money on the caps increasing oveer time, of course. But always staying behind the curve.

That's not right. We're getting a below par service, whichever way you cut it.
 
Last edited:
HAz said:
This might be old news, but i was over my dads today on his 20meg and noticed it got capped to gay 500ksec rubbish!
So i had a look on virgins web site and found this.

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

Basically its from 10am to 9pm now:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

As people have already said - you've probably been hit so hard by this...I mean it's not as if it's been in place for a year already :p
 
Dist said:
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.
Click to expand...
The way I see it, if it's advertised as unlimited it should be unlimited or at the worst the cap should be set monthly at a decent figure e.g. 150gb per month.

Personally I think having a 20mb connection so I can download songs faster as you put it is a bit daft, and I think you're being very naive if you think that justifies the premium over a 6-8mb connection. A 6-8mb connection would be more than adequate for downloading songs at excellent speed and browsing the web and gaming.

Most people who want a 20mb connection want to download more large files and download them quicker.

I have used a 40mb connection and a 8 mb connection and can tell you first hand when it comes to every day web browsing there was little if any discernible difference.
 
ifihaditall said:
The way I see it, if it's advertised as unlimited it should be unlimited or at the worst the cap should be set monthly at a decent figure e.g. 150gb per month.

Personally I think having a 20mb connection so I can download songs faster as you put it is a bit daft, and I think you're being very naive if you think that justifies the premium over a 6-8mb connection. A 6-8mb connection would be more than adequate for downloading songs at excellent speed and browsing the web and gaming.

Most people who want a 20mb connection want to download more large files and download them quicker.

I have used a 40mb connection and a 8 mb connection and can tell you first hand when it comes to every day web browsing there was little if any discernible difference.
Click to expand...

I agree with you about unlimited should be unlimited, but I don't understand the criticism of Virgin Media when it comes to the concept behind their traffic management. The hardcore torrent/usenet downloaders really shouldn't care; on a 20Mbps connection they can download somewhere in the region of 4TB a month if I haven't got my figures totally wrong. That's out of a possible 6TB uncapped.

As for 'normal' users, downloading 6GB daytime or 3GB evening is usually the exception to the rule and after that time it goes to down 5Mbps...hardly the end of the world.

I'd hate to think what overall performance would be like if it was a free for all. I'm quite happy that I don't have to keep an eye on overall traffic here; if we get capped it's a bit annoying for a few hours but after then we don't have to worry.
 
VM rocks the traffic management is fine and they advertise Unlimited it is in a sence you can download as MUCH as you want just you will get STM in the busy hours.

Lets face it BE/02 is no longer the Jewel in the crown so to speak as there network is now getting over subscribed and areas are paying, i guess at some point they will have to introduce something to help out, unless they are just willing to spend money and upgrade as needed( most likely).
 
While I dislike the caps I think the overall VM service is incredibly good. Assuming stm hasn't kicked in I always get my full 20k/768 speeds, with pretty much zero downtime. I've learnt to live with the caps, I just download my stuff in the mornings and at night.

To top it off, VM offer a completely free unlimited usenet service (ignoring normal stm), with the full 20k download speeds. I can get 6GB+ worth of 720p shows from the US before the caps can even kick in if I want to.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom