Virgin Throttling

[tARSIER]

Hello all, I would like to talk about/ask for help with this issue.

I am a new customer and I am trying to decide if I need to get out of the contract while I am in my 14 day "cooling off window" before I get locked in. I had heard good things about it and they were offering some good prices as they have just reached my area.

However, I went for the M100 fibre option, it is advertised as 108Mbps down and 10 up. I know they are not obligated to give me 108 at all times, but the minimum "guaranteed" speed for this price range is 54 Mbps. When the engineer came and installed it all he had me run a speed test and my results were 108 on the nose and 8 for upload. Since then any time I open either vpn or p2p client my speed is instantly and consistently cut really badly, it drops to less than 3 download and the upload is so slow that speed tests cant even put a number on it, the tests just fail and give "connection time out" errors. I am on windows 10 pro x64 , have the hub 3 and I am running mullvad vpn, as for the p2p clients I have tried multiple and everything in this thread applies to all of them. I fully appreciate both the speed fluctuation that companies are allowed and that vpn will slow a connection down, but simply running a vpn shouldnt drop a "minimum" 54Mbps connection to speeds so low that a single device in a single person property cant load a 3 minute youtube video

I have tried a lot of things and the only conclusion I am left to draw is that virgin, despite their claims are indeed throttling
Set exceptions in antivirus/firewall
Disabled antivirus/firewall entirely
Used TCP/UDP and wireguard connection protocols
Used the various TCP/UDP port options
Tried many servers in many countries
Tried with and without IPV6 options
Tried enabling SOCKS5 proxy, as per mullvads own guide
Tested on wired and wireless connections
Tested on multiple devices
- Which are running multiple OS'
Turned off the "ip flood protection" in the router settings
Disabled the "websafe" and "virus scan" options that are turned on by default in "myvirginmedia" account settings
Tried changing the settings in p2p clients to limit number of connections aswell as upload/download speeds

And still I am in the same position, fast connection without those programs running, if I launch either one within mere seconds my connection is so slow I cant even load a youtube page yet when I close those types of programs within seconds my speed bounces back to normal.
I hope I am missing something obvious, i hope someone can call me an idiot and tell me I am missing something and there is a fix to this because right now I have just swapped from a bad ISP to one that is mostly regarded as fast and reliable but so far becomes dead in the water if I want a shred of privacy and want to run a vpn and I would rather avoid having to try and find a 3rd provider .
Thank you if you read all this

 

[Rainmaker]

Welcome to the forums, @tARSIER.

While you weren't to know (aside from searching before posting, perhaps), this question is asked so often we really ought to have a sticky. Virgin Media do not throttle, neither VPN connections nor P2P. Here are some examples of my connection with WireGuard giving almost gigabit speeds on Virgin Media at various times of day and night (I have the Gig1 package):

and torrenting over the VPN. While it's not quite full gigabit, that's only because an Ubuntu ISO is small enough to download to 100% before the speed even hits full whack. I tend to set 15 to 20 peers per torrent but in this case I was in a live USB and the default 50 was used.

While Windows and macOS will give you slightly lower speeds than Linux or BSD, I still see over 800Mbps down on Mullvad in Windows 10 Pro x64 and >900Mbps in Linux and BSD. You should, hardware depending, be easily able to get much more than you are. Is your SuperHub 3 in router mode? It sounds like it. There's a UDP bug which won't be helping you here. Best advice is to put the hub in modem mode and get your own decent router. Search this part of the forum for a million threads on that subject.

Look again at your OS and hardware specs though. Best bet is a wired connection between Intel network cards (preferably I350 or similar, as drivers are hit and miss on the integrated I2* series). What are your system specs (motherboard, CPU, RAM, hard disk, network card etc)? What torrent client are you using and how are you testing speeds?

If VM is new in your area congestion is unlikely. Stick to wired for testing, as WiFi is far too fickle a mistress to be reliable. What torrent app are you using? I wouldn't write off VM just yet...

 

[tARSIER]

I know there is already talk on this subject, but as mentioned I have tried everything within my power to test and the problem still is happening the only other thing within my means to do is as you say put it in modem mode and get a seperate router but since my first impressions of virgin are not good and ive read hundreds of threads of people with similar issues i figured there would be no harm in asking in a place like this where its entirely possible people smarter than myself could pick up on something i missed. It has only happened with virgin, previous ISP wasnt great but didnt have these speed drop off issues, the only constant throughout my testing is virgin and it happens too consistently to be mere coincidence,also I wont deny your own experience with the company, but the fact that as you mentioned there is already a lot of talk here and also on reddit and virgin's own forums this does not appear to be a rare occurence, anecdotal evidence doesnt mean much but thousands of people having the exact same issue with 1 company points more towards deliberate pattern than happenstance, hence I made this thread, didnt mean to step on anyones toes, just hoping talking specifically about my current situation could point me in the right direction instead of leaning towards getting out of dodge in my 14 days.

As for my specs I have
ryzen 7 1800x
corsair Vengeance 64gb DDR4-3600 RAM
MSI B450 GAMING Pro carbon Mobo
Sabrent rocket q 1tb m.2 for my system drive
and my pc is connected to the hub via cat6 "virgin media " cable the engineer gave me

I do not have a seperate network adapter because my mobo should be more than capale of the 56Mbps average I was expecting to get. There have been some known speed issues with this motherboard but I have tried different versions of drivers which had no impact and again, since this issue only started with virgin and occurs on all devices I own it doesnt appear to be related to any specific piece of hardware ( short of somehow being the hub itself maybe?)

Thanks

 

[DeliciousStorage]

Issues with Virgin Media and VPN's are not real, they're imaginary. Just ask @Rainmaker

 

[Hawk Tuah]

Dammit, I was googling for some proper hardcore snuff, and ended up here reading about bloody networks. Fap ruined. :/

 

[Sp00n]

I would set up a TBB monitor to rule out congestion/packet loss: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality

 

[Rainmaker]

Issues with Virgin Media and VPN's are not real, they're imaginary. Just ask @Rainmaker

Yes, because my getting 900Mbps consistently over VPN demonstrates that the issue isn't with Virgin Media's policies (which they categorically state don't exist). That's not a difficult assertion to validate or rebut.

Edit: Nobody said you weren't having issues reaching decent speeds over VPN, @DeliciousStorage - rather I objected to your insistence that it was VM's 'throttling' at fault. The fact you can't get into treble figures over either WireGuard or OpenVPN speaks more of your network or local machine's horsepower than it does either the VPN or the uplink ISP. In fact, you admitted you were connecting via Oracle VirtualBox - a system with a notoriously bad (slow) NAT implementation.

Right this moment, at peak time, Mullvad over Virgin Media on a Windows machine temporarily (hence a little slower than usual, thanks to userspace limitations):

https://www.speedtest.net/result/d/e689da90-130d-459f-89f6-50c9c9b2b799

QED.

OP, check your modem power levels (upstream and downstream). It may be worth a post on the VM community forums. It'll take a couple of days for staff to reply atm, but once they do they generally sort you out.

 

[visibleman]

@tARSIER - Have you done simple HTTPS/FTP download file tests (https://www.thinkbroadband.com/download has a load of 1GB test files), no P2P at all running, whilst connected to a local Mullvad server (what ever is closest to you; both OpenVPN and WireGuard)?
If so, what sort of speeds where you getting?

@DeliciousStorage - It is worth noting that @Rainmaker will be using a SH4 whereas the majority have a SH3 which is plagued with problems. I use a SH2 and i hit the limits of my VPN provider (~12MB/s) rather than any throttling applied by VM.

 

[DeliciousStorage]

Yes, because my getting 900Mbps consistently over VPN demonstrates that the issue isn't with Virgin Media's policies (which they categorically state don't exist). That's not a difficult assertion to validate or rebut.

Exactly, so the speed issues OP is experiencing with VPN's are imaginary.

 

[Rainmaker]

@tARSIER - Have you done simple HTTPS/FTP download file tests (https://www.thinkbroadband.com/download has a load of 1GB test files), no P2P at all running, whilst connected to a local Mullvad server (what ever is closest to you; both OpenVPN and WireGuard)?
If so, what sort of speeds where you getting?

@DeliciousStorage - It is worth noting that @Rainmaker will be using a SH4 whereas the majority have a SH3 which is plagued with problems. I use a SH2 and i hit the limits of my VPN provider (~12MB/s) rather than any throttling applied by VM.

The SH4 still has the cursed Puma6 chipset unfortunately. Like the Hub 3 before it, however, it's mostly adequate in modem mode.

I would rather suggest that the OP test with IPERF3. The 10 and 40Gbps servers in France are very fast and reliable. I max out my line over VPN (>940Mbps) using UDP or TCP consistently. For example:

iperf3 -c lille.testdebit.info -p 9200 -P 10 -4 -R -V -O 3 -u -b 1000M

You can add the -Z switch to test in RAM on a *nix box but not Windows. For me this gives:

[SUM]   0.00-10.04  sec  6.74 GBytes  5.77 Gbits/sec  0.000 ms  0/5016071 (0%)  sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.11 GBytes   954 Mbits/sec  0.043 ms  4151885/4975637 (83%)  receiver

iperf Done.

 

[visibleman]

The SH4 still has the cursed Puma6 chipset unfortunately. Like the Hub 3 before it, however, it's mostly adequate in modem mode.

Ah, i thought they had stepped away from the Puma to something else. I'm guessing it exhibits the exact same issues as the SH3 whilst in router-mode?

Out of interest, what are you using for routing?

 

[Rainmaker]

Ah, i thought they had stepped away from the Puma to something else. I'm guessing it exhibits the exact same issues as the SH3 whilst in router-mode?

I wouldn't know, I never trusted or allowed an ISP device to do my routing or firewalling. They offloaded the ICMP to the WiFi chipset last I read, which 'fixed' (hid) the issue.

Out of interest, what are you using for routing?

An x86 box running vanilla OpenBSD, atm. It's a '1 litre' ultra small form factor box with a Pentium G4560, 4GB RAM and a couple of onboard Intel NICs. My 'main' router is a Dell Optiplex 8010 (Core i7 3770, 8GB RAM, SSD, Intel I350 dedicated PCIe quad port NIC) but it's out of production for a service atm. You can see my router stats page here, if you're interested. I've not been online much the last month or two, so the stats aren't massively interesting. I'm still on target to hit 2.6TB of data this month though.

Edited to add: Sorry, I have three young kids climbing up me presently. I forgot to say the stats are basic (live TBB plot, vnstat traffic graphs, pfstat firewall info) as it's just a plain HTML file I quickly threw together in vi. Does the job for now though.

 

[Avalon]

Exactly, so the speed issues OP is experiencing with VPN's are imaginary.

Surely you can see the obvious flaws with assuming P2P + VPN = Throttling? Op obviously has a connection problem, nobody has said it’s imaginary, but nothing you or anyone else has posted thus far proves what you seem to think.

I'm still on target to hit 2.6TB of data this month though.

Must try harder

 

[Rainmaker]

Must try harder

I know. Once the babies got a bit older (i.e. toddler stage) my Internet usage lulled. Thank Stallman for Sonarr! Now they're hitting school age though, all bets are off... I'm contemplating a Supermicro/Epyc Unraid rig with room for a lot of drives.

 

[Rainmaker]

Dammit, I was googling for some proper hardcore snuff, and ended up here reading about bloody networks. Fap ruined. :/

It has to be said, this one passed me by originally. Here is your roflcopter, Sir. Apologies for its belated nature.

 

[DeliciousStorage]

nobody has said it’s imaginary

Rainmaker said that issues with VM + VPN's are imaginary, which is clearly not the case. Whether they are caused by their shambolic routers or throttling is besides the point.

 

[Rainmaker]

Rainmaker said that issues with VM + VPN's are imaginary, which is clearly not the case. Whether they are caused by their shambolic routers or throttling is besides the point.

No, I said that the ongoing implication from people with poor setups that VM throttle VPNs was imaginary, and I demonstrated so.

 

[DeliciousStorage]

No, I said that the ongoing implication from people with poor setups that VM throttle VPNs was imaginary, and I demonstrated so.

The VM issues are not 'real' they're imaginary.

The only thing you demonstrated is that you were able to achieve good speeds with non standard equipment in your particular area. That doesn't actually rule out the possibility of throttling VPN's in congested areas just because they pinky promised that they don't do it anymore.

 

[Rainmaker]

The only thing you demonstrated is that you were able to achieve good speeds with non standard equipment in your particular area. That doesn't actually rule out the possibility of throttling VPN's in congested areas just because they pinky promised that they don't do it anymore.

Yes, pertaining to your own posts about VM's 'well known throttling'... Your 'throttling' did turn out to be imaginary - you're running on, iirc, rather pedestrian hardware AND under known-dog-slow virtualisation product.

Non standard equipment? What kind of plonker runs lowest-bidder ISP equipment and then moans it doesn't perform like a racehorse for VPNs (a 'non-standard connection method' to use your own choice of phrase)? Please, take it back to your own thread if you wish to discuss further and quit derailing the OP's.

 

[DeliciousStorage]

Yes, pertaining to your own posts about VM's 'well known throttling'... Your 'throttling' did turn out to be imaginary - you're running on, iirc, rather pedestrian hardware AND under known-dog-slow virtualisation product.

You recall incorrectly, I didn't mention what hardware I was using but it's a Ryzen 5600x which is more than adequate.

Non standard equipment? What kind of plonker runs lowest-bidder ISP equipment and then moans it doesn't perform like a racehorse for VPNs (a 'non-standard connection method' to use your own choice of phrase)? Please, take it back to your own thread if you wish to discuss further and quit derailing the OP's.

There's a world of difference between "doesn't perform like a racehorse" and "it drops to less than 3 download and the upload is so slow that speed tests cant even put a number on it".