Virgin ISP - Throttling For All Users

[KM]

do you have a private police force to patrol your dedicated roads to make sure nobody else is using them? or do you just monitor your roads yourself?

[Micromecca]

rofl 

I have a No-NAT 4 IP block option (although I'm currently running 1 IP in NAT mode).

its not a managed service 

[GhostShip]

your insistence that isp's should be forced to sell nothing but dedicated lines is the problem in this thread ghost..

And you saw this quote where Bearded ?

As usual it seems when stuck for answers to rebutt my clearly worded claims we move off the subject into fantasy land, if virgin or any of the other ISP companies that throttle or cap made clear any potential drawbacks as plain as they do when proclaiming the merits of their services, that they intend to dilute that service when it suits them no one could complain, once again virgin made this decision in feburary and notified its users in may after a nice advertising campaign that didn't mention it.

Do I have to repeat myself ad infinitum before the point is taken ?

Honesty costs nothing and builds trust, it seems when it comes to ISP,s we cant expect such things as customers.

The electricity companies sell me electricity and reserve the right to shut it off when necessary, the gas company does the same, even the water company hold the same rights, whilst holding these rights the companies involved are fully aware they are not expected to use such rights unless the situation is grave and demands it and allowing over subscription of an ISP that then has to enforce rules that affect the service given to their existing users in the same category as far as I, m concerned, it is no surprise that this capping or throttling at virgin is introduced just as they introduce a premium web based service , or maybe its just a strange coincidence :roll:

[Bearded Blunder]

sorry, you're the one in fantasy land where "up to" means guaranteed 24/7..  you're the one claiming isps should deliver guaranteed 24/7, not me....

maybe it's not a coincidence that they roll out sensible traffic management at the same time they double everyone's speed at no extra cost.. regardless of if it is or not the fact that the management IS so sensible makes one wish they might roll it out sooner, because apart from a very few who treat their shared lines like dedicated ones, it's BETTER for all us customers than letting them go wild & slow the net for us all..

these are not dedicated lines..

if you overload your electricity line to the point the neighbourhood's lights dim, you'd expect the company to do something about it... likewise if you pump water or gas out of the pipes so fast that it affects yor neigbours, you can expect the company to take action to prevent it.. this is NO different (in fact the electricity company already have a device to prevent overuse .. called the board's main fuse).. go ahead & overload it.. see if it doesn't cut you off...

what virgin are doing is NO DIFFERENT

[TheMacDaddy]

Man oh Man   this is still on going ??????
I AM a virgin media customer and as of right now i am getting there 10 meg service
I fully understand where your coming from Ghost and am not happy with whats going on
BUT with that said i must say i am still getting a very good service from them as of right now
If what they are starting to do is under handed then surely trading standards will step in and investigate this
I am not happy with seeing 3 good friends of each others and mine going at it over this and feel for the best of all involed it would be best if you all agree to disagree.

Surely now it is noted that there going to cap speeds at peek times and with this said people can now make there own minds up on weather to go with virgin media or to use someone else ?

Like i said please lets agree to disagree and let the powers that be as in trading standards (or which ever group it should be) deal with this.

[KM]

I'm sure you could go to trading standards and complain that you paid for a shared 10Mbit connection and now they are giving you a shared 20Mbit connection and it's not fair...

...somehow though i suspect there would be some laughing

(actually you could complain about the £2/month price increase, however as you have been given the chance to downgrade your package instead if you wish and chose not to take it...)

[TheMacDaddy]

What i am saying KM is that if what Virgin is doing is unfair then surely Trading standars will pick up on it and deal with it.

More to the point what i would really like to see is 3 gd friends agree to disagree and get back to what will all do best  and thats Helping out on WinMX   

[GhostShip]

As I suspected Bearded you where unable to show anywhere the words you claimed I have said, same goes for KM and his expanding list of claims, whilst its nice to have opinions and differing ones at that in this case, making claims I have said things I have not is something I,m not happy with as it throws all of the trust many users have in those now making them, out of the window.

What I have found peculiar is that I have been posting this same sytle of commentary on many ISP companies here for some time now and no one complained so vigorously, yet mention a company called virgin media that has introduced a dilution of service to its users and folks who previously have not made their wish to enjoy throtling seem to fly out of the woodwork, well it seems to me that I hope you guys get the service you want with virgin the new name for a company that has been throttling for a while now surepticiously, thank god for the honest companies, the problem seems to be finding one.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/21/blueyonder_gets_throttled/

Luckily they also have commited users to remind them to update their site "to reflect reality"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/22/virginmedia_claims_no_usage_limits/

A useful statement of the future for virgin was found here
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/virgin_media_analysis/

Even more interesting is that Virgin Media only spent £3.5m on upgrading or rebuilding systems, with an additional £15.4m spent on "scalable infrastructure". This is hardly the spend of a cable company busy upgrading its systems getting ready for DOCSIS 3.0 and 50meg to the home. In fact, it smacks of a company spending the absolute minimum to keep things going

I am concerned about the recent capping applied to heavy downloaders. In a scenario where there is no capacity constraints, no capping would be required, and obviously caps destroy the urban myth that the cable network is magically different than the ADSL network. To be fair, Virgin Media caps are still probably the least restrictive of all consumer ISPs in the UK.

But the biggest problem for Virgin Media is that its balance sheet is based upon the premise of extracting monopoly rents from appreciating assets. Unfortunately for Virgin Media, there is no monopoly in the UK market or even a situation comparable to the US cable companies, and neither is there likely to be. Furthermore, I don't believe that even political and media lobbying of gargantuan proportions will change the situation.

And Finally...
Gentlemen let me make something 100% clear to you, annoying Me_Here in the chat room over this issue will gain you something worse than bad Karma, kindly take up your literary boxing gloves here and reply in kind with supporting information that backs your views as I do,  or do we step up the next level of a split between us over trust ?

[KM]

What I have found peculiar is that I have been posting this same sytle of commentary on many ISP companies here for some time now and no one complained so vigorously

such as? as i have not read anything about any other ISP with an even remotely similar policy, so i must have not seen any of those posts you have made? perhaps you could point a few of them out so we know which other ISPs have also decided on a policy of keeping peak bandwidth down without penalising p2p users by breaking anything... as i'm not aware of any, and it would be useful to know of other ISPs with the same policy as virgin - just in case i ever need to change

[Bearded Blunder]

Ghost, anyone reading this thread will see you've effectively said that if an isp puts 10Mb or 20Mb in their advertising.. then you should be able to get that at all times, seemingly regardless of the fact they state it to be a maximum.. well in order to do that they'd *have* to sell dedicated lines Q.E.D.

The style of your commentary on other ISPs may indeed be similar, however the substance of what those ISPs have done is in no way similar, they generally have restricted a users choice of what they can use the connection for by breaking things, wheras Virgin are merely preventing taking more than your reasonable share of a shared connection, a completely different & much fairer approach

And finally if Me_Here decides to take some throwawy remarks & lighthearted banter personally instead of in the lighthearted spirit it was meant, that's not my fault.

[GhostShip]

Oh dear KM still at the same old tricks of trying to hijack what I,m saying into something you can claim I said to rubbish it, try to be more original, its tiresome to keep pointing out the simple differences between what I said and what your claiming.

Please use the site search function to locate many tens of posts from myself setting about companies including the one I,m with now for introducing throttling /capping, you,ll see virgin is just the latest.

Bearded I agree with how the virgin system is intended to operate as being one of the better methods but thats not what I claimed or posted about, I,m anti capping and anti throttling and make no secret of it.

As I said in the first page.

They should provide what they claim, and unlimited should mean just that, its their job to set a realistic price for their services.

I cant make this any clearer than that.
 

[Bearded Blunder]

Then Ghost, if they're not allowed to cap or throttle users in any way..there are only 4 possible approaches left open to them..

1) sell only dedicated lines (& go broke because nobody could or would afford it)
2) sell limited pay per bandwidth services (& virgin still is unlimited on aggregate, with a restriction at peak times if & only if you download a LOT)
3)  allow that one user in 20 to degrade the service for everyone including themself (current situation in areas they havn't rolled out the system)
4)  sell 8Mb as the fastest package at the price they currently sell 20Mb & let everyone max it out who wants to.. personally i think the current approach is better, the capacity is there for us to burst to 20Mb at peak times.. & to use 20Mb the rest of the time.. & i can get way more on it than that 8Mb connection that would better suit your definition of "unlimited"

i've yet to see a UK isp who claims "unlimited" without also stating "subject to fair usage policy" so they are providing what they claim..

in the current uk isp market i think approach #3 is the only one where they wouldn't go broke & frankly i prefer the traffic managed situation, as does KM & as would anyone who understood the situation & was faced with the choice

& finally ALL connections are limited (even those dedicated lines)
n Mb times x amount of time - effect of heavy net traffic = limit

or are you also suggesting we should get unlimited speed too if they say unlimited anywhere?

i prefer "you can have up to 20Mb all the time but we'll slow it to 5Mb for 4 hours if you take more than 3 GB between 4pm & midnight" over "you can have 8 or 10Mb have at it" for the same money... you evidently prefer the latter

[KM]

you forgot options 5 and 6 (many ISPs use 5)

5) tell them it's unlimited, but break any programs they use that might actually let them use the bandwidth, so whilst the connection is there they can't actually use it

6) 95%ile billing with the potential to land you with a huge bill if you accidentally leave something running for a couple of days

you'll actually notice that if you did get a leased line, you'd find that they almost always sell it on a 95 percentile amount, which basically means you're allowed to burst higher if you want, but if you use a lot of bandwidth all the time you pay more

they could go with that approach, although of course the bandwidth to them is effectively free off peak, and it's only aggregate bandwidth that matters to them - it's not really a suitable option for a home user ISP or for such low bandwidth connections (it is best suited to the high bandwidth connections that it is used on)

as for the previous posts... please point a couple out, as i said i haven't seen any announcements regarding any ISP with an even remotely similar policy... you mentioned your ISP, however as far as I know they don't have such a policy either?

[GhostShip]

Your choice of ISP is not the matter under debate Bearded, I dont even concern myself with your conclusions as they are for you to decide on, thats the point of having a news section, to generate discussion and ferment opinions for or against the topic in point, in this case you have expressed your opinion and I mine, we will not agree on any of the salient points it seems, openness and honesty are the only reason I have kept replying in this thread, I being merely a customer would like ISP companies to either be more honest and upfront with their sales pitches or face the brunt of my "cyber tongue", wading through small print and making up excuses for why they wont deliver the services people are sold with loud fanfare, is not for me, nor should it be for other users to have to worry about.

KM as you deemed yourself above apologising for your previous misleading posts there will be no further interaction between us.

[Bearded Blunder]

i fail to se any dishonesty, attempts to mislead or any such thing ghost.. they havn't exactly hidden trafic management, in fact they've made it very public, the only isp i know of to actually be open about their policies

[workinFor the ISP]

Boy, did I wonder into a big thread, just checking things out. Maybe I can help out with this, a little, with another point of view. I myself work for a very, very large ISP provider. Now. this provider so far, does not introduce throttling, as of yet, at least. Things of course can change in the future. However the reason I am replying to this thread, is maybe to point out another side of this. Regardless of your connection, being DSL, or Cable...ISPs have the ability to see exactly who on that network node is the heavy users. the ISP I work for, has the ability to limit that specific user if needed. to maintain the quality of it's network and nodes.

 For example: say you have a neighborhood on one node, that serves 20 households. 1, out of 20 is a heavy user. Most ISPs can recognise that one heavy user, and limit their usage to maintain the stability of the node and network. Some may not have that ability, you might want to check on your isp.

In essence, what I am saying, is that this ISP in dispute does NOT have to add peak times, and limits. They are just choosing to do so, to lower costs during the peak times when people are at home, relaxing, and enjoying their connection. Why limit only the heavy users, when you can limit the entire network, and save some costs on data transmittal, etc? Seems to me, they are choosing the easy way out. I have not experienced a limit yet, and at times I download heavily and constant; others, i don't. I am on a shared connection, and find no change in my connection which remains at a constant 2.9mb, and I pay for 3.0.

all in all, I feel i have the right to recieve the speed which I pay for; barring network outages, upgrades, or maintenance. or periods of peak usage, due to the usage. A good ISP will maintain it's networks, in order to provide the service it advertises, and maintain that level of quality that should be expected. If they cannot deliver, then maybe a change in ISPs is needed. That's my two cents.

[Bearded Blunder]

As you said, ISPs have the ability to limit specific users if they use heavily enough to impact network performance, & they do so when needed, all Virgin have done (it appears to me) is in an effort to be both open & fair, stated exactly how heavy use will trigger this action & for how long, & to what speed...

Since it was happening anyway (with them & others) i personally like being told why it happens & when it will be triggered... so now they publicly state that 3GB in 4 hours between 4pm & midnight trigger a speed reduction for 4 hours.. they can't quietly decide that 1.5GB will instead, they'd have to inform us all.. if they had kept (as most do) the levels that trigger action secret.. then they could play with them at any time... & quite possibly use more restrictive ones..

[workinfor the ISP]

Oh I agree with you, it's a lot better that at least they are being open and honest about their limiting instead of just doing it whenever they choose to do. Anytime a company is honest about their practices, is a much better thing; it does help in your level of repect with that company. It is definitely a GOOD thing, they're being open about it, unlike many.
However..I also think that customers who pay for the larger connections, yet aren't considered to be "heavy users" should get what they pay for, or at least close to it. It's not an incentive to have that connection, if it's going to be limited during the time most consumers use it. With the ability to limit the heavy users, I am only questioning their method;It's just as easy to limit only those for the safety and maintenance of the networks, instead of all. They have the ability to provide the service they offer, while restricting those who abuse the bandwidth at the same time; they are juts choosing not to do so, which is the only problem I see in this situation.

[GhostShip]

Its nice to hear the other side of the coin from someone in the "trade" Workinfor the ISP, as you mention its simplicity itself to identify those heavily using the network and limit any problems concerning their use, I believe the announcement of throttling/limiting is because it was an open secret that its been going on since november 2006 and its about time they where honest with their customer at long last, I heard about the impending moves to throttle/limit in Feburary and thats why I am not happy to listen to those proclaiming this ISP is honest to its customers, prior to May it has not been.

Increasing consumer demands on any ISP's network is a problem and the real answer is to increase capacity and to do so as part of their business model, doing otherwise to save a few shillings for a year or two to satisfy the shareholders is a false economy and short sighted, lets hope we hear of expansion in the future and the limits dropped or removed as capacity becomes a non issue, no doubt this will take a while but if Cable in general is to survive the constant threat to its business from the monopoly phone giant it will need to take the plunge sooner rather than later.