50meg Virgin BB worth it ? Heavy newsgroup user!

HighlandeR

HighlandeR

HighlandeR

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
England
Ive just noticed special offers via there website of £25 for 50meg BB, and £15 for the 1st 3 months, im currently an old o2 broadband customer (no limits/restriction/shaping/p2p shaping etc at all) but I only get 12meg out of my 16meg line.

Is it worth me considering going Virgin broadband ? Im already a tv line/tv package with them.

Ive been put off in the past since ive heard they still p2p traffic shape people even at 3am when there not suppose too ! and other many horror tales...

but id be happy to newsgroup from 12pm to 10am if it means I get full speed ?
 
I use newsgroups and 50mb ever since it has been out. not a single issue at any time maxes out at 5.8mbps download constantly. No matter how much I download. SSL and port 443 is all thats needed.
 
DAvE18 said:
I use newsgroups and 50mb ever since it has been out. not a single issue at any time maxes out at 5.8mbps download constantly. No matter how much I download. SSL and port 443 is all thats needed.
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Cheers That sounds good im on SSL and port 443 with Astraweb, can I ask do you just fire up your newsgroup client after 12pm mon-fri ? how about weekends...

On 5.8mbps you proberly could do 100gig within 3-4hrs id imagine ?
 
from what i have read (i looked into it heavily before deciding)

if old customer - 50mb connections is not shaped

if new customer - 50mb is shaped even if they say it isnt

and on that basis, i decided not to bother :p
 
I'm only on Virgin 20Mb and Astraweb but I found SSL 443 was massively throttled. Down to ~1Mbit.

I switched to some non SSL ports that aren't the common ones (check the Astraweb site) and it maxes out my connection.
 
panyan said:
from what i have read (i looked into it heavily before deciding)

if old customer - 50mb connections is not shaped

if new customer - 50mb is shaped even if they say it isnt

and on that basis, i decided not to bother :p
Click to expand...

Yeah ive been endlessly reading about it as well....

Doesnt seem like theres definate answers out there cos a lot of guys are saying even at 3am there down to 1mb....

I wouldnt mind if it wasnt for that fact cos one could just do all there downloads after 12pm with just what there paying for....

Interesting about the port switching to get back the speeds...

Im gonna post this on cable forums see what replies get back also, but id appreciate anyone elses inputs as always.
 
Doesn't matter when I download its always full speed. Cant comment for other parts of the uk though seems to be hit and miss.

Should go for it
 
panyan said:
from what i have read (i looked into it heavily before deciding)

if old customer - 50mb connections is not shaped

if new customer - 50mb is shaped even if they say it isnt

and on that basis, i decided not to bother :p
Click to expand...

I can tell you that i'm a very recent customer (less then 2 months) and i haven't noticed any shaping at all
 
I've had 50MB since Nov '09 and put it this way, when/if I move house, I'm making sure there's cable availability there.

The highest speed I've had with astraweb is 5.97 MB/sec - crazy really
 
TBH if you've got a decent unshaped 12Mb line, for a price you're happy with, don't rock the boat.

I was a fairly heavy newsgroup user too when at Uni (was downloading enough that watching it all was pretty much a full time job), and even the 10Mb Virgin was more than enough. TV shows came down over RSS whilst I slept and 10Mb was enough to stream 720p x264's.

I'm even getting by on 2Mb nowadays, gotta love the time difference between us and America. Streaming is limited to dvd quality xvids though.

I'd love a faster connection, but can't see much point in spending for over 10Mb, A little patience can save a lot of money. Of course, multiple heavy user households are a different story, but then the bills are split.
 
DAvE18 said:
I use newsgroups and 50mb ever since it has been out. not a single issue at any time maxes out at 5.8mbps download constantly. No matter how much I download. SSL and port 443 is all thats needed.
Click to expand...

I am regularly throttled and download loads using port 443 SSL encrypted.

I have been on the 50MB service for about 6 months and it has a always been the same: No throttling between midnight and mid afternoon then from 4pm onwards to midnight the service gets throttled down to about 1.1mbps

To be perfectly honest it doesnt bother me in the slightest, if there are some big files i want i just set them off before i go to bed.

Oh and i regularly achieve over 6.0mbps, normally its sat at around 5.9mbps.
 
Some people have reported letters from VM on the 50Mb service asking them to not download so much. I've never seen such letters and the reports of this are few and far between but it's possible.

Some claim to have downloaded 250GB in a month of gotten letters, other 1TB+ in a month and no letters.
 
I use virgins supplied newsgroup access and its been great for as long as I can remember. The shaping between 4pm-12pm sucks but what can you do, at least its free. :)

Never had a letter here and easily done over 1TB in a month total, dunno about just through newsgroups as i'm a 50/50 usenet/torrents kind of guy. Newsbin is reporting i've nearly hit 6TB downloaded though. :D
 
History Size: 1.06 TB this month alone, thats not including torrents lol

Thats a bit sucky too hear people getting letters from just 250gig and some from 1tb got none seems very hit and miss, you would expect if you are being good and downloading during non peak times they shouldnt care regardless.....
 
HighlandeR said:
History Size: 1.06 TB this month alone, thats not including torrents lol

Thats a bit sucky too hear people getting letters from just 250gig and some from 1tb got none seems very hit and miss, you would expect if you are being good and downloading during non peak times they shouldnt care regardless.....
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Christ, what the hell are you grabbing? I used to do about 300GB/month of Hi-Def films+TV, and that took an unhealthy amount of time to watch. I don't think it's physically possible to consume 1TB of media a month.
 
I am on 50Mb and using SSL connections to NG's and do not get shaped at any time of the day constant 5.8Mbps, using non SSL on the Virgins NG server is a different story though and downloads crawl.

I am a fairly recent (January 2011) upgraded user to 50Mb.
 
Zarf said:
Christ, what the hell are you grabbing? I used to do about 300GB/month of Hi-Def films+TV, and that took an unhealthy amount of time to watch. I don't think it's physically possible to consume 1TB of media a month.
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Linux ISO... lots and lots of linux isos :p
 
not far off from isos, a lot of softwares and recovery isos part of work but yeah also a lot of linux isos :)

good too hear virgin bb is still a prime choice ill definatly consider it :)
 
I used to have 50mb and never got throttled and always downloaded at 6MB/s

Im only 100MB and ever better now :)
 
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