Virgin not throttling anymore?

UnworthyBean · 19 Nov 2009 at 23:40

On the Medium 10mb package and usually when I go over 1.5gb download per day, It'll throttle me down to 200KB/s. However, I've noticed 2 days this week when I've went over that, My speed stayed the same.

Thought It might be they've done away with the Medium 10mb and just gone onto the Large now, Meaning I have 3gb per day. So went upto 3gb now, Still no throttling, Upto 3.8gb now and still happily at 1.1MBs/s.

Have Virgin done away with the throttling? Am I lucky? Just certain times?
Not complaining, Just wondering.

Bloomfield · 20 Nov 2009 at 00:04

When i was on medium it was 3GB between 10am-3pm, this was then reset and you could download a further 1.5GB between 3-10pm. They havn't removed the throttling afaik (I left because of it, so dont know tbh), so you're probably just splitting the downloads between those times.

If you're downloading now, then there are no caps.

Matteysan · 20 Nov 2009 at 00:15

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

All traffic management details are there.

I think you've just got lucky

Bloomfield · 20 Nov 2009 at 00:24

Heh, seems i was talking about the large not medium, forgot the caps were that small

.

I doubt he was lucky, by the looks of it he was downloading at the time he posted, which means the traffic management had ended 2.5 hours previous to him reaching the cap.

Matteysan · 20 Nov 2009 at 00:55

Bloomfield said:
I doubt he was lucky, by the looks of it he was downloading at the time he posted, which means the traffic management had ended 2.5 hours previous to him reaching the cap.

Yeah I've only just noticed the time he posted. Definitely downloaded all that after 9pm.

UnworthyBean · 20 Nov 2009 at 14:23

Didn't know they ended after 9pm, That'll come in handy.

I was downloading during the day once and went over 1.5gb, But must have just split it between time periods. Wierd really, Never happened before and now I thought it happened twice in the same week.

Cheers for the help.

Illusion · 21 Nov 2009 at 14:34

I was getting excited for a minute then. I have been on Virgin 20Mb for about 2 weeks and although I haven't been throttled yet I'm finding it quite annoying having to think about what I download. I'm almost tempted to go onto 50Mb just so there is no throttling, not particularly for the speed.

cokecan · 21 Nov 2009 at 21:04

Illusion said:
I was getting excited for a minute then. I have been on Virgin 20Mb for about 2 weeks and although I haven't been throttled yet I'm finding it quite annoying having to think about what I download. I'm almost tempted to go onto 50Mb just so there is no throttling, not particularly for the speed.

that seems a bit excessive? As has been posted, Virgin publish all the details about the traffic shaping on they're website, it's not hard to work round them. Just pause your downloads until 3pm for that hour of no capping till 4pm, or just wait till after 9pm to download uncapped for the rest of the night

Even still the 3gb and 1.5gb limits aren't too bad (depending on what your downloading) and you could still get away with downloading some stuff during the traffic shaping hours without being capped. Plus your only capped to 75% of your overall speed anyway so on 20meg you should still be getting around 5meg after the cap which isn't exactly slow

UnworthyBean · 21 Nov 2009 at 21:07

cokecan72 said:
that seems a bit excessive? As has been posted, Virgin publish all the details about the traffic shaping on they're website, it's not hard to work round them. Just pause your downloads until 3pm for that hour of no capping till 4pm, or just wait till after 9pm to download uncapped for the rest of the night

Even still, your only capped to 75% of your overall speed anyway so on 20meg you should still be getting around 5meg after the cap which isn't exactly slow

Its much nicer to just be able to download all day at full speed, Rather than having to think about when to download and how much to download at certain times.

Even though they say its 75%, I'm seem to often be capped to much lower than that.

Jabbs · 22 Nov 2009 at 16:03

That's a old traffic management end of May the next one will include the 50mb cap i bet.

Matteysan · 22 Nov 2009 at 16:37

Jabbs said:
That's a old traffic management end of May the next one will include the 50mb cap i bet.

It is still the traffic management they are using at the moment though.

They are trialling a newer policy though which can be found here:

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffictrial_otherareas.html

It is only in some areas though & 50Mb is not included at the moment.

Jabbs · 23 Nov 2009 at 08:34

Its only a matter of time there is no way they are going to leave people to download 24/7 on 50mb, the fact its on the traffic management page shows its going to get crippled at some point.

PistolPete · 23 Nov 2009 at 18:30

One thing to bear in the mind is that downloading 24/7 gets harder with increased speed.
It requires more disk space and more available content to download.

Going from 4Mb -> 20Mb -> 50Mb and my downloading has bearly changed. I utilise the net just the same, it's just that I do it a lot faster these days.

And as for the STM being added to 50Mb - course it will, it's only a matter of time.
However I think it's on the STM page as a kind of carrot to upgrade rather than as a placeholder for what's to come.