Virgin Throttling

[kully1972]

Virgin throttle p2p networks with or without vpn enabled.
You need to limit your connections to less than 20 to stop this.
Vigin must have some sort of auto detection software on their end.
I'd be more than grateful if someone could explain other ways to bypass this.
I'm using a Draytek router and hub 3 is in modem mode.
Vpn is pretty good using keepsolid/ vpn unlimited.
Thanks in advance

 

[Avalon]

Virgin throttle p2p networks with or without vpn enabled.
You need to limit your connections to less than 20 to stop this.
Vigin must have some sort of auto detection software on their end.
I'd be more than grateful if someone could explain other ways to bypass this.
I'm using a Draytek router and hub 3 is in modem mode.
Vpn is pretty good using keepsolid/ vpn unlimited.
Thanks in advance

Perhaps read the earlier posts where torrents are proven to be absolutely fine over VPN for some, or perhaps they are coming after just the three of you I mean in theory it could be an area specific ‘feature’, but I suspect it’s something else. My news connections can hammer my connection 24/7 if needs be over VPN, same with P2P, it performs as expected.

 

[Screeeech]

I remember there being a bunch of bugs with some of the older superhubs, where they suffered from low throughput and/or packet loss, if you're constantly getting issues - might be worth upgrading the firmware or swapping it out. Especially if you're running via an Ethernet cable and it's still doing it.

It's unlikely that VM are throttling P2P traffic because it's really difficult for them to do, nobody really can do it effectively and most ISPs gave up throttling torrents ages ago, it's easier for them to block you outright than it is to constantly monitor everyone and only rate-limit their torrent traffic. Same with VPNs - it's very expensive and difficult to rate-limit everybody who's using a VPN, and somebody like VM probably wouldn't bother too much with it - as it just costs them money, when adding more bandwidth to the network would probably be cheaper anyway, and lead to happier customers.

 

[neodude]

No issues for me on Virgin M350 with SH3 in modem mode. Get full speeds on NZBs and around 30% of full speed running over OpenVPN (Hoping this will increase when I switch to wireguard).

 

[Kiggelywog]

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

It seemed to me as well that Virgin was throttling my connection. I could clearly see that every time I started a torrent, my download speed plummeted from 200+Mbit/s to less than 1Mbit/s. The torrent would start at a fair speed but then go down to about 300Kbit/s or less. A minute after pausing the torrent, the speed would return to 200+Mbit/s. This was repeated several times. It was clearly not the massive speed of the torrent that caused the drop in measured speed either. I was convinced, but 10 min ago I tested with an Ethernet cable directly to the hub, and now there is no speed drop. I'm not entirely certain what is going on here, since I have seen 800 Mbit/s speeds in a previous house with Virgin through my Asus Wi-Fi 6 router. I'm using the same wifi router, cables and computer now, but a new hub in a new place.

 

[Rainmaker]

It seemed to me as well that Virgin was throttling my connection. I could clearly see that every time I started a torrent, my download speed plummeted from 200+Mbit/s to less than 1Mbit/s. The torrent would start at a fair speed but then go down to about 300Kbit/s or less. A minute after pausing the torrent, the speed would return to 200+Mbit/s. This was repeated several times. It was clearly not the massive speed of the torrent that caused the drop in measured speed either. I was convinced, but 10 min ago I tested with an Ethernet cable directly to the hub, and now there is no speed drop. I'm not entirely certain what is going on here, since I have seen 800 Mbit/s speeds in a previous house with Virgin through my Asus Wi-Fi 6 router. I'm using the same wifi router, cables and computer now, but a new hub in a new place.

Welcome to the forums. That's one heck of a thread necro. Asus networking gear is junk. Do you actually need a separate router? If not, stick with the SuperHub. If you do then build, beg, borrow or buy something decent (plenty of threads on here can advise).

 

[moogle]

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.

Is this server still running? I keep getting a timeout when trying to connect on this iperf server.

 

[Rainmaker]

Is this server still running? I keep getting a timeout when trying to connect on this iperf server.

Yes they can be a little unreliable. Try this one instead, it's by Init7 (10Gb and 25 Gbps home Internet provider in Switzerland). Very reliable and fast:

iperf3 -c speedtest.init7.net -P 10 -4 -R -V -O 3 -Z

Omit the final -Z if you're on Windows or OpenBSD. It works fine on FreeBSD and Linux though.

Edit: BTW @moogle there's a list of public iperf servers on the project website, in case you didn't know.

 

[moogle]

Yes they can be a little unreliable. Try this one instead, it's by Init7 (10Gb and 25 Gbps home Internet provider in Switzerland). Very reliable and fast:

iperf3 -c speedtest.init7.net -P 10 -4 -R -V -O 3 -Z

Omit the final -Z if you're on Windows or OpenBSD. It works fine on FreeBSD and Linux though.

Edit: BTW @moogle there's a list of public iperf servers on the project website, in case you didn't know.

Thank you very much, I've been running it on my router and the PC to test. Great stuff!

I also found a few here to share https://github.com/R0GGER/public-iperf3-servers as a return favour in case it helps anyone