+1
I hope this sorts out the gaming issues, hopefully they will limit uploads only for p2p/torrents and not for gaming as well!
VM Upstream Traffic Management Trial 1st of February
- Thread starter deuse
- Start date
+1
I hope this sorts out the gaming issues, hopefully they will limit uploads only for p2p/torrents and not for gaming as well!
Man of Honour
OR ISPs can do whatever they feel like seeing as they're private businesses after all and it isn't your right to get brilliant internet access. Then you use your discretion and brain to decide what you want, pay more for a decent service or less and accept the restrictions. It's not like you don't know what their policy is up front, you'd have to be completely dumb not to be able to find details using google. That's why I wouldn't touch Virgin media no matter how fast a connection they can offer me.
Well there is nothing wrong with having contention in a network, they couldn't sell their product at the sort of prices they do otherwise.
Managing it correctly is important and ensuring the ratio is not something ridiculous, this is where VM and just about every other cheap ISP fail to manage things.
And at the end of the day VM are a cheap consumer ISP, and when you're charging most of your customers less than £20 a month for access it doesn't leave a lot of money left over to reinvest in the network.
Especially when most of them probably don't notice or give a **** if the service isn't brilliant and most probably don't use P2P applications.
Whilst a high volume of P2P traffic is going to likely be illegal file sharing it will also be generated by a very small number of users, so taking measures to control it will in most cases have an impact for good for most of their customers.
Quality of service and maintaining a congestion free network IMO isn't viable for companies like Virgin, TalkTalk, AOL etc. (even O2 are feeling the effects of whoring themselves out at the lowest price now).
Sure it would be nice if people like VM et. al. would actually do something about the quality of the service they provide instead of chasing ever higher headline access speeds but that isn't going to happen, internet access has become a commodity service - something that is given away free with a mobile phone contract and now because of that most people won't be prepared to pay for it at all, or at least not pay very much.
Most people are incredibly ignorant about how a network functions and they only just about understand one quantifiable value and that is throughput. Factors I consider to be important for my needs like latency, jitter, levels of packet loss etc. don't mean anything to most people, and it is that lowest common denominator that companies like VM are targeting.
If you want no congestion, low latency and jitter, no traffic shaping and so on then look for a business grade ISP, but most of those aren't going to cost you less than £70 a month if you want to sit there doing some hefty downloading 24/7.
They should make a VM premium service for users who care about the quality of their connections.
I dont do much downloading but I do loads of online gaming so when the ping is erratic and jitter is high my net is useless to me. I would pay extra to guarantee my pings are stable if the was an option to do that.
I dont do much downloading but I do loads of online gaming so when the ping is erratic and jitter is high my net is useless to me. I would pay extra to guarantee my pings are stable if the was an option to do that.
Man of Honour
Then why are you with VM? Plenty of decent quality xDSL providers offering stable 11-12ms ping times, if you don't download a lot they aren't even very much.
Soldato
Hmm, perhaps, but its not up to the ISP to act as the police however.
Man of Honour
That's not the argument though, they're acting to protect their infrastructure and maximise the return on investment it gives them. The point is that by doing so they are disadvantaging a minority of users in favour of the majority, however the imperative to pay attention to that minority is reduced by the fact that a good number of them are doing wrong...
That's before you get to the fact that like it or not the government expects ISPs to act as the police, the DEA and the stupid IWF blacklist before that make that patently clear.
They aren't though, as brs says they are protecting their investment in their infrastructure.
The fact that most of these people are violating the usage policy seems to evade most people, or they decide to ignore that part of the deal.
Yes you pay VM £xx a month for a service, but in return they ask that you follow their usage policy.
I did laugh when I realised that VM runs an 'Acceptable Usage Policy' - at least they've given up the pretence of 'Fair' that got banded around in the various FUPs out there 
Will be interesting to see how this pans out when there is some decent competition at the 50/100Mb price point. And I believe the government has stated that it is our right to have 'superfast broadband' - whatever that is.
While I fully understand the argument that they are a private company and can operate as they choose, I think we are starting to see broadband as more of a utility (like gas or water) than simply another consumer service, this is certainly reflected in the importance the govt. has said they put on its improvement. Given that change in role, and the fact that VM (cable) operate a de facto monopoly in many areas (in terms of speed) I think we can resonably expect a degree of protection from sharp practice and abuse of that monopoly position.
Will be interesting to see how this pans out when there is some decent competition at the 50/100Mb price point. And I believe the government has stated that it is our right to have 'superfast broadband' - whatever that is.
While I fully understand the argument that they are a private company and can operate as they choose, I think we are starting to see broadband as more of a utility (like gas or water) than simply another consumer service, this is certainly reflected in the importance the govt. has said they put on its improvement. Given that change in role, and the fact that VM (cable) operate a de facto monopoly in many areas (in terms of speed) I think we can resonably expect a degree of protection from sharp practice and abuse of that monopoly position.
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I did laugh when I realised that VM runs an 'Acceptable Usage Policy' - at least they've given up the pretence of 'Fair' that got banded around in the various FUPs out there
Everyone has an AUP, nothing funny about them.
VM have not been some evil mega corporation who have thought 'I know, lets just have an AUP and stuff all this fair nonsense', as much as I get the impression people here would like to think
It's not that VM have moved to an AUP from an FUP to be more strict with it.
BT AUP - http://www2.bt.com/static/i/btretail/panretail/acceptableuse/
Eclipse - http://www.eclipse.net.uk/legal/index.cfm?fileid=&/E,LV54O
To show just 2.
Fair usage policies in ISP terms are a much more faffy/wooly thing that have been brought around to help try and manage network usage.
With Virgin for instance their 'Traffic Management' policy is their version of a FUP.
AUP dictates how you should use the service, what you can and can't do, FUP is there to try and manage the quality of the service.
Well it does mention it on the front page when looking at ordering the product, granted it's in the small print but still there for all to see
http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband/up-to-50mb.html
Which then has links to here
http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/acceptable-use.html
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Everyone has an AUP, nothing funny about them.
VM have not been some evil mega corporation who have thought 'I know, lets just have an AUP and stuff all this fair nonsense', as much as I get the impression people here would like to think
It's not that VM have moved to an AUP from an FUP to be more strict with it.
BT AUP - http://www2.bt.com/static/i/btretail/panretail/acceptableuse/
Eclipse - http://www.eclipse.net.uk/legal/index.cfm?fileid=&/E,LV54O
To show just 2.
Fair usage policies in ISP terms are a much more faffy/wooly thing that have been brought around to help try and manage network usage.
With Virgin for instance their 'Traffic Management' policy is their version of a FUP.
AUP dictates how you should use the service, what you can and can't do, FUP is there to try and manage the quality of the service.
Well it does mention it on the front page when looking at ordering the product, granted it's in the small print but still there for all to see
http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband/up-to-50mb.html
Which then has links to here
http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/acceptable-use.html
Does this mean sky are the only ISP in the UK that do not operate FUP and traffic shaping?
Sky do have usage policies listed here.
http://www.sky.com/shop/terms-conditions/broadband/usage-policies/
They lump everything in one policy, with the fair usage bit being one of the sections, by the looks of it.
I've no idea on if they do/do not traffic shape, but reading that there is a section 'SKY BROADBAND CONNECT NETWORK MANAGEMENT POLICY' which seems to say that they will, but it does also say 'Please note that this Fair Usage Network Management Policy does not apply to Sky Broadband Everyday Lite or Sky Broadband Unlimited.', so guess if you're on those packages you are ok
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Soldato
We definitely know that Sky will hand over your information for litigation without so much as a whimper though.
Something to keep in mind for those Linux ISO lovers.
Something to keep in mind for those Linux ISO lovers.
Man of Honour
I think VM's policies are pretty damn fair for the higher tariffs TBH.
Man of Honour
Yet 
TBH though the £6.50 extra a month saved by going 30MB is a more pleasing option!
TBH though the £6.50 extra a month saved by going 30MB is a more pleasing option!
I say the VM traffic management thing is good. It means that those users who are not sharing files all day get good internet speeds. I would personally ban access to all p2p networks and associated file storage sites that make money off other peoples hard work.
From the Cable forum "New Traffic Management updated"
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33674561-new-traffic-management-updated.html
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33674561-new-traffic-management-updated.html