Virgin 50Mb - NNTP restrictions

Aod · 15 Jul 2011 at 16:47

Hello All,
been wondering about this for a while now and Virgin-Media's website seems to deny the very existence of this, but i'm wondering what time-periods Virgin throttle NNTP and HTTPS downloads?

I usually seem to get full-speed downloads after about 1AM until about 2PM. is this about right?

RomanNose · 15 Jul 2011 at 16:55

Weird, What port are you using? I am using port 563 and I have been getting a consistent 6mByte/s whatever the time of the day. I believe that there might be variations caused by oversubscribing and I have heard that is from 9am -9pm for the throttling. If you are getting slow speeds at 1am I would think it's either a fault with their throttling software or your area is oversubscribed.

Aod · 15 Jul 2011 at 17:28

i'm using port 443.
I'll try 563 now and see if it helps

RomanNose · 15 Jul 2011 at 18:12

Aod said:
i'm using port 443.
I'll try 563 now and see if it helps

Yes also remember the very nature of nntp using small files it probably won't max out your connection compared with http on a single file. ( this is what I was told the reason why you get a slower speed on usenet, but I am not sure if it's true)
What speed are you getting and does it fluctuate?

Aod · 15 Jul 2011 at 19:08

That explanation you were given sounds like a complete load. when there's no shaping in effect I get the full 5.6 to 6.1MB/s maxing out my connection.

at the moment it's wavering around the 1MB/s area.
I'm running ethernet directly to the modem and i'm currently the only one on the connection so wifi or in-house contention aren't the issue.

KIA · 15 Jul 2011 at 23:04

563 is definitely shaped.

Aod · 15 Jul 2011 at 23:05

yes. yes it definitely is. :eek:

RomanNose · 16 Jul 2011 at 09:05

Aod said:
That explanation you were given sounds like a complete load. when there's no shaping in effect I get the full 5.6 to 6.1MB/s maxing out my connection.

at the moment it's wavering around the 1MB/s area.
I'm running ethernet directly to the modem and i'm currently the only one on the connection so wifi or in-house contention aren't the issue.

Yes it sound like quite a load of tosh, but I should be getting 6.5 as I can get that with IDM with 8 connections. Why shouldn't I get that with nntp? Unless the speed is extrapolated differently then I don't see why nntp is 400 kbyte/s slower. Anyhow, I have not noticed shaping on this port. It's 9:03 am and I am getting

HarryPainful · 16 Jul 2011 at 11:50

There is no shaping at all, maybe your area is over subscribed or something.

I get 6MB/sec regardless of the time of day, using astraweb.

Aod · 16 Jul 2011 at 13:01

they admit that they do restrict the speed of Usenet-downloads and torrenting at some times.

http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.html said:
"At peak times we also slow down the speed of file sharing traffic – that's services like Limewire, Gnutella, BitTorrent and Newsgroup (Usenet) traffic. You will, of course, still be able to use these services, but downloads and uploads will take longer during these peak periods."