Virgin Media almost eradicates downstream traffic management

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6125-virgin-media-almost-eradicates-downstream-traffic-management.html

While we reported a some minor tweaking to the traffic management policies of Virgin Media back in June, today sees the start of a roll-out of a set of changes that for downloaders should make the throttling back almost invisible. Downloaders who hit the 1 hour threshold will only see a 10% drop in speeds, and things only get slightly worse if you continue downloading and trigger the 2 hour threshold which has a 16% drop in speeds.

The situation on the upstream side remains unaltered, which will suit most Virgin Media customers, as while cloud storage is becoming more popular generally this is a background activity.

Traffic Management Policy for Virgin Media from 24th October

Broadband Package XL30 XL60 XL120

Download speeds 30 Mbps 60 Mbps 120 Mbps

Weekday 4pm - 11pm 4pm - 11pm 4pm - 11pm
1 hour threshold 2750 MB 3600 MB 5000 MB
1 hour reduction 10% 10% 10%
1 hour reduced speed 27 Mbps 54 Mbps 108 Mbps
2 hour threshold 3500 MB 4500 MB 6250 MB
2 hour reduction 16% 16% 16%
2 hour reduced speed 25.2 Mbps 50.4 Mbps 100.8 Mbps

Weekend 11am - 11pm 11am - 11pm 11am - 11pm
1 hour threshold 2750 MB 3600 MB 5000 MB
1 hour reduction 10% 10% 10%
1 hour reduced speed 27 Mbps 54 Mbps 108 Mbps
2 hour threshold 3500 MB 4500 MB 6250 MB
2 hour reduction 16% 16% 16%
2 hour reduced speed 25.2 Mbps 54 Mbps 100.8 Mbps

Upload speeds 3 Mbps 3 Mbps 12 Mbps

Weekday 4pm - 11pm 4pm - 11pm 4pm - 11pm
1 hour threshold 900 MB 900 MB 2200 MB
1 hour reduction 50% 50% 50%
1 hour reduced speed 1.5 Mbps 1.5 Mbps 6 Mbps
2 hour threshold 1200 MB 1200 MB 2950 MB
2 hour reduction 65% 65% 65%
2 hour reduced speed 1.1 Mbps 1.1 Mbps 4.3 Mbps

Weekend 4pm - 11pm 4pm - 11pm 4pm - 11pm
1 hour threshold 900 MB 900 MB 2200 MB
1 hour reduction 50% 50% 50%
1 hour reduced speed 1.5 Mbps 1.5 Mbps 6 Mbps
2 hour threshold 1200 MB 1200 MB 2950 MB
2 hour reduction 65% 65% 65%
2 hour reduced speed 1.1 Mbps 1.1 Mbps 4.3 Mbps

Virgin Media is the last of the large broadband providers with a complex traffic management system and with these now relatively minor drops in speeds, it is going to be difficult for customers to judge whether its throttling or just plain old congestion with other users of the service and the wider Internet that are slowing down their downloads.

Who knows, just maybe the poll we ran back in April 2013 has had some effect over at Virgin Media. In that poll 32.8% indicated that a 10% reduction was what they considered a moderate reduction in speed, following on from an ASA ruling the previous week. Another 23.8% indicated that anything below 20% was moderate, the suggestion therefore being that Virgin Media is now implementing traffic management that the majority of broadband customers will be happy with.

Those of you, who like me, have had to suffer Vigin Medias slashing reductions in speed over the past years will welcome this change. It's a pity that it has been such a long time coming.

[GhostShip]

I don't ever see anything good in anything Virgin Media do unfortunately, from whats been posted above it seems theres been an increase in throttling as its my belief that previously only those few customers who did a lot of continuous downloading day after day where throttled and now its every account that faces this threat.

Also bear in mind that Virgin supports the media cartels as it has gained many lucrative deals after publically  doing so, in short until they look at their customers as something other than tethered sheep I wont ever have a nice word to say about them.

PS: I wonder why the bearded one has gone offshore to his own private island, some would say its to pay no tax in the UK ..

[RebelMX]

To be honest though if you hit the limits in an hour for the throttling then your probably a movie/film/tv series pirate anyway as:

On the 30 Mbps line you need to get an average speed of 30 Mbps for a full 13 minutes to get anywhere near that limit.
On the 60 Mbps line you need to get an average speed of 60 Mbps for a full 8 minutes to get anywhere near that limit.
On the 120 Mbps line you need to get an average speed of 120 Mbps for a full 6 minutes to get anywhere near that limit.

This is even though Virgin don't actually do a 120 Mbps line, only 100 Mbps package.  So the reporter has been lazy and got their facts wrong in the first place.

These statistics assume that Virgin actually give you the maximum bandwidth that your package is rated to, when in actual fact each and every one is "up to".  In actual fact the packages are actually going to be considerably lower i.e. the small print on Virgin's site states that the 100 Mbps is 13 times faster than ordinary broadband which was rated at 6.5 Mbps.  13 * 6.5 = 84.5 Mbps.  So to lose the 10% off the top is not exactly a massive loss when you've already lost 15.5% is not really considerable.  Therefore on a 100 Mbps package if your hording tv series/movies legally or illegally then you're still getting a nice 75 Mbps.  Doesn't sound too profit orientated to me.

[GhostShip]

I'm not sure why you point to movies etc as the src of such files sizes, I regularly repair computers for folks and running microsoft updates can take hours on end and I know a lot of folks in the community here who use linux as their operating system of choice, so while folks running bit torrent may well fall foul of throttling its also quite trivial to accidently hit a limit without knowing it by installing an operating system.

[RebelMX]

Well since a linux download is approximately 710 MB that means you would need to download 7 different flavours in the one hour before you hit a throttle which will reduce your speed by less than you've lost from the quoted "up to" speeds you are expecting anyway.  Movies in high definition/3D are the main cause of bandwidth usage, be it p0rn or non-adult material (since something like 95% of all internet traffic is p0rn its reasonable to assume that it will be used for that).  Their size means that if collected on a good network (be it bit torrent or even via a webpage) there is a chance they will be completed within an hour, and at approx 25GB per file this would put you over the throttle limit and even over a 2 hour throttle limit.

Scare mongering for something Virgin have implemented well and improved the service they were providing.  Agreed that there should not be a throttle, however 10% is not a worry to most users.

[GhostShip]

Scare mongering ...

You may have a short memory but please dont insult the rest of us who have been watching this company play tricks on its customers many years now.

http://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-20Mb-or-lower.html

http://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-30Mb-or-higher.html

You will notice that the throttling policy states that p2p traffic is always throttled at peak times regardless of any usage limits and as "peak times" is defined as 4PM to 11PM in the week and from 11AM to 11PM over the weekends this significantly changes the landscape of their service for p2p folks.

I think this makes what you have said a bit misleading , they are still throttling p2p etc regardless of usage limits and thus what I have posted is not scare mongering its clearly to let p2p folks know that this company has a history of anti p2p activities.

[Pri]

I'm with them as they are the fastest I can get in my area (120Mb). I wish we had more competition.

[GhostShip]

Competition is something few are able to access in the UK, those even fewer who are able to enjoy  fibre connections are truly the lucky ones, some in this country are still using 2mb lines due to lack of investment by the major isp companies, a woeful state of affairs.