Virgin Media UK Begins Throttling P2P Traffic

Duke · 8 Mar 2011 at 08:30

http://www.unitethecows.com/content/359-virgin-media-uk-begins-throttling-p2p-traffic.html

Could be a good thing, to be fair.

robgmun · 8 Mar 2011 at 08:42

it's ony upload, which is fine, any 2p2 downloader will tell you that 25-30kbps is the optimum upload speed anyway, any faster or slower and it will kill my download speed

Sp00n · 8 Mar 2011 at 08:46

Throttling newsgroup upload? Pity :x

robgmun said:
it's ony upload, which is fine, any 2p2 downloader will tell you that 25-30kbps is the optimum upload speed anyway, any faster or slower and it will kill my download speed

Depends on the connection upload + equipment.

Gammawolf · 8 Mar 2011 at 09:00

robgmun said:
it's ony upload, which is fine, any 2p2 downloader will tell you that 25-30kbps is the optimum upload speed anyway, any faster or slower and it will kill my download speed

I'm not sure i concur, i'm always doing 130KB/s and still managed to download at 4MB/s, same experience when uploading at 1MB/s

mrk · 8 Mar 2011 at 14:15

Oh, so no issues for newsgroup users then.

thepeganator · 8 Mar 2011 at 14:20

Limiting newsgroups upload??

Ok....

benftl · 8 Mar 2011 at 14:38

I thought they had been throttling P2P for a couple of months now? I haven't noticed either way as I'm a usenet guy

/smug

asim18 · 8 Mar 2011 at 14:39

Im sure my download is throttled aswell... and has been throttled for a few months now.

I've had to use port 476 or something instead of the usual 556 or whatever to get around the throttle.

thepeganator · 8 Mar 2011 at 14:47

benftl said:
I thought they had been throttling P2P for a couple of months now? I haven't noticed either way as I'm a usenet guy

/smug

p2p is so 2008

There are still things that just aren't on Usenet, or are too old to download, old linux iso's etc.

VM's own server is pretty good too, gets 7+ days of retention, enough for the latest linux episodes each week, but I do have an astraweb sub too

dbmzk1 · 8 Mar 2011 at 15:21

This is not new news is it? They have been doing it for ages as far as I know.

Who uses P2P any more anyway?!

thepeganator said:
p2p is so 2008

There are still things that just aren't on Usenet, or are too old to download, old linux iso's etc.

VM's own server is pretty good too, gets 7+ days of retention, enough for the latest linux episodes each week, but I do have an astraweb sub too

love it

KIA · 8 Mar 2011 at 16:52

Old news and it is referring to upload. They have been shaping download for ages.

ecksmen · 8 Mar 2011 at 20:40

By no means conclusive but my pings have dropped on average down 15ms.

antijoke · 9 Mar 2011 at 00:02

This is not old news, they are trialling upload throttling this week, I have been having problems with black ops in 360 due to this.

Dave85 · 9 Mar 2011 at 00:47

I don't agree with there policies and they need to be seriously pulled over the coals with the re adverts still stating truly unlimited broadband.

Actually makes me ashamed to be with them shame there's not an alternative.

paradigm · 9 Mar 2011 at 08:00

Really not bothered to be honest. My upstream traffic is mainly VPN or FTP based rather than P2P, so it shouldn't affect me too much anyway.

It was inevitable anyway, providing such bandwidth for the costs they were passing on to the consumer was never going to work, at least not with current bandwidth costs to the ISP.

antijoke · 9 Mar 2011 at 08:40

After the successful out of hours trial of our combined upstream and downstream file sharing traffic management policy we will be trialling this new policy between 17:00 and 00:00 (12:00 and 00:00 at weekends) for one week starting on Wednesday 2nd of March.

Between these times P2P and Newsgroup upstream traffic will be managed in a similar way to our current downstream traffic management. If the trial is successful we'll launch the new policy immediately.

We'd like to hear you feedback in the following threads about how this affects your broadband connection and if this has any affect on your gaming experience online.

Thanks

This was a major issue for me last night on Black Ops on the 360.

I was host in a game of groundwar with full teams, and when someone left/joined the game was awfully laggy for everyone, and at one point everyone got booted out of the game.

I am on 50meg and if this is rolled out and that happens on a regular basis I will not be happy.

hyper_piper45 · 9 Mar 2011 at 08:53

robgmun said:
it's ony upload, which is fine, any 2p2 downloader will tell you that 25-30kbps is the optimum upload speed anyway, any faster or slower and it will kill my download speed

lolwut?

MikeHunt79 · 9 Mar 2011 at 09:19

Khaaan! said:
Oh, so no issues for newsgroup users then.

Newsgroups aren't really P2P if you think about it...

Rainmaker · 9 Mar 2011 at 09:38

I love how Usenet newbs say things like "p2p is so old fashioned, Usenet's where it's at", when Usenet downloading is older than the Web itself.

VM do shape Usenet downloads between 5pm and midnight on all tiers (i.e. including 50 and 100 meg). If you switch to port 443 with SSL instead of 563 (SSL) or 119 (non-encrypted) you'll get your speeds back.

As for P2P folks, sorry - you're out of luck.

As a side note, I tried hiding non-encrypted NNTP inside a VPN during managed hours to see how that worked out, but it got throttled regardless. Either they have broken VPN encryption to inspect the contents (highly unlikely, and illegal) or else they're throttling VPN usage during peak hours as a means to prevent circumvention of the throttling?

antijoke · 9 Mar 2011 at 09:52

I just hope last nights issues with Black Ops where more to do with poor programming from Treyarch and not in anyway related to this new P2P measure.

Guess the only way to tell is try MW2 GroundWar.