It was only a matter of time; Virgin Media start packet shaping

stigggeh said:
Just search on here, you will see quite a few people with internet crawling to almost a halt. Search cable forums.. a similar story.

google... yep similar story.
Let's see... I live in Preston, you know, the place they actually trialled ALL of this before pretty much anywhere else (in conjunction with Wigan, Chorley etc.) The speeds started going up before the caps were put in place, too.

There were no bad pings, no packet loss, no disconnects, no slow speeds and the reason my city was chosen is because "according to Virgin Media" it is one of the worst for excessive downloading. So much for that, etc.

But hey, if you don't want to listen to someone who saw the origins of this, your loss. :)

cymatty said:
Show me proof that they are lying.
You claimed they weren't, the burden of proof is upon you not me.
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
You claimed they weren't, the burden of proof is upon you not me.

No because I believe what they say, it makes logical sense that there is only enough bandwidth to go around. If you think this is rubbish then prove me wrong. :)
 
cymatty said:
No because I believe what they say, it makes logical sense that there is only enough bandwidth to go around. If you think this is rubbish then prove me wrong. :)
See above and see where I live.

20Mbit trials come in, service was fine. Traffic-shaping trials come in, loads of people get mad and Virgin say "it's going away in May when 20Mbit rolls out."

Oh look, it became official on Thursday.

But hey don't listen to me, it's not like experienced all this from the very beginning. It's not like I live in Preston or anything is it.

In the end you can believe what you want, I am not going to convince anyone to spend their money elsewhere and I don't want to because it's not my money. Fact is though that I've seen how this service affects me personally and why the reasons Virgin Media give for implimenting it are practically rubbish, for these reasons I'll be switching. Enough said.
 
Fair enough, however the story may not be the same everywhere. I get major slowdowns sometimes and bag pings, but can't prove why.

Now to me and probably a vast majority of Virgin users this won't affect us and so we are not bothered, however it will affect the people who hog all the bandwidth ;)

If these people jump ship and I get a more stable service then I am more than happy and will say well done Virgin.
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
the reason my city was chosen is because "according to Virgin Media" it is one of the worst for excessive downloading. So much for that, etc.

got a source for that?


edit: just because its ok in one area does not mean the other area's can cope, as i understand it some parts of the network are weaker than others (ex C&W are the worst iirc).

maybe virgin have decided with the trials in your city that the backbones cannot cope at peak times if all the other citys downloaded the same amounts as yours.
 
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And to think this is just the beginning. Its going to get worse :( Im going to move my parents onto xDSL when I come home from uni.
 
Nathan said:
And to think this is just the beginning. Its going to get worse

And don't you think it will also get a lot worse on ADSL?

So lets put this into perspective -
If I download on my 4 meg connection after midnight I've got all day up until 4pm coming down at around 5 meg (what I usually get)?
After 4pm (when I've reached my limit) it still comes down at a very fast 2 meg which should be more than enough for everybody?
And then at midnight it rolls back to a 4 meg download?

I consider myself to be a bit iffy on the net but I can't imagine what some of you are getting up to.
I suggest you use newsgroups and not torrents.
 
dmpoole said:
And don't you think it will also get a lot worse on ADSL?

So lets put this into perspective -
If I download on my 4 meg connection after midnight I've got all day up until 4pm coming down at around 5 meg (what I usually get)?
After 4pm (when I've reached my limit) it still comes down at a very fast 2 meg which should be more than enough for everybody?
And then at midnight it rolls back to a 4 meg download?

I consider myself to be a bit iffy on the net but I can't imagine what some of you are getting up to.
I suggest you use newsgroups and not torrents.

paying 25quid to download at 4 / 2 meg, rather than paying 24quid to get around 12 / 13meg constant?
 
Since yesterday I've been unable to access certain websites, but can still download at 1MB/s over bittorrent. MSN still works, but I can't connect with IRC. For example, I can get onto these forums, but http://www.imdb.com/ won't load for me, it just times out. Does anyone have an idea of the problem or how I can fix this?

Many thanks.
 
Psypher5 said:
paying 25quid to download at 4 / 2 meg, rather than paying 24quid to get around 12 / 13meg constant?

The point is that I will still get what I want but it will take a bit longer.
Since I'm in bed or at work it won't make the slightest bit of difference.
My £25 for 4 meg (maybe 2 meg) is an absolute bargain.
 
SaBBz said:
Since yesterday I've been unable to access certain websites, but can still download at 1MB/s over bittorrent. MSN still works, but I can't connect with IRC. For example, I can get onto these forums, but http://www.imdb.com/ won't load for me, it just times out. Does anyone have an idea of the problem or how I can fix this?

Many thanks.

When NTL plays up a bit in my browser I switch servers and use this address in my proxy - swan-cache-2.server.ntli.net
 
Oh Noes... l3ssPiratedDvdsMu5ic4andTvd0wnloadsd3gradingtheservicefor everyoneelse.... one!!!11!!1elevn! :rolleyes:


cymatty said:
If these people jump ship and I get a more stable service then I am more than happy and will say well done Virgin.
Agreed... :D
 
dmpoole said:
When NTL plays up a bit in my browser I switch servers and use this address in my proxy - swan-cache-2.server.ntli.net
Should that go in the router setting somewhere? I've tried it in my FF settings and it doesn't make any difference.
 
Unfortunately I don't think that will make a difference to IRC will it? Strange thing is, it only started doing this at about midday yesterday.
 
*LONG POST WARNING * :rolleyes: al you like....

Some of the comments made in this thread are based on misconceptions, firstly VM is a shell for the NTL/TW merger, 'Virgin' has nothing to do with anything other than letting NTL inc. use the name for a decade as part of the mobile deal. You have in all fairness many of the same people doing the same/similar jobs so saying bring back Blueyonder or NTL a little ironic considering yu have them already.

Also the point made about VM choosing the cheapest way to upgrade the network is again untrue, each franchise area (for example remember why it's called an ex C&W area ?) had it's own equipment installed to whatever standard they wanted back in the day, some did it well with a longer term outlook, others did a half arsed job (parts of London, most of Liverpool, Plymouth, Southend on Sea off the top of my head but many more exist) this is the main reason that those area's have either been delayed in moving to digital or in the case of parts of southend on sea regraded back to analouge. This wasn't done by TW or NTL it was done years before either company existed in the form we know today, they inherited a non standard network built by many smaller cable co's that were taken over/merged many many years ago, the cost to standardise would be shocking (you know haw many different switch types they have on the telco side alone? even offering a standard basic range of call features is an utter pita).

We all want xxmbit without download limits but we also want to pay as little as possible and if it's not as fast as advertised we feel hard done by. If an unlimited service is limited in any way we jump up and down and moan (unless it's an Enta reseller as they are quite transparent about it and people like them for it). With the exception of Dave offering to pay up to £80 for a truely unlimited service no-one else seems willing to be offering to cough up anything near the price required for a truely 24/7 unlimited service.

I'm a lot more forgiving of a 3GB@20mbit if I can't get what I want in the other 16 hours @ 20mbit then 4 hours @5mbit as it's more than enough for streaming media or downloading/games/demo's then another 3GB@20mbit than I would be with a capped product such as 60GB a month then bugger all or £0.25/GB etc. It's not ideal but it's the least restrictive option I can see. I'd like to see an option that allowed the payment of an additional premium for a top level unrestricted service - I remember paying £50 for 512/128 at launch and would be quite happy with that sort of price level again for the right service.
 
Avalon said:
We all want xxmbit without download limits but we also want to pay as little as possible and if it's not as fast as advertised we feel hard done by. If an unlimited service is limited in any way we jump up and down and moan


I call that false advertising tbh. Therefore, yes I would moan.
 
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