Now On 20mb with Virgin Media.
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Now On 20mb with Virgin Media.
Anyone else reboot their modem and now have 20mbit download 768k upload?
I'm very pleased. Not too pleased as if I download over 3gb in peak times my 20mb connection will be reduced 75% to 5mb for 4 hours.
:)
[edit] Just realised that others may not have it going by the roll out plan on VM's website. People in the Enfield area of London should be on a 20mb connection though.
Not too pleased as if I download over 3gb in peak times my 20mb connection will be reduced 75% to 5mb for 4 hours.
It's a very generous throttle control. I've never downloaded 3gb in one day let alone during peak times. The most I've ever done in one day was a linux iso dvd image (just over 2gb).
I can't see anyone really complaining about that limit. Surely 99.9% of users would never ever exceed 3gb download during peak times. In fact most would never exceed 1gb a day.
The whole point of 20mb is so you can download more and faster.
A 3gb limit will be used up in just 20 minutes downloading at 20mb. It's a bit low especially when VM are Advertising that they are the fastest and don't limit downloads.
If you want to know what people really think head over to Digital Spy. People have been quite Vocal over there over traffic shaping.
It's a very generous throttle control. I've never downloaded 3gb in one day let alone during peak times.
I usually don't download 3GB in an entire month.
haha awesome worked for me :D not that 10mb was slow, but still
And there was me over the moon with a 4mb connection! :)
Dabz
It's a little annoying but its only between 4pm and midnight.
When the news first emerged, I installed a bandwidth monitor so that I could tell how much I was using. I'm online between 4pm and 12 midnight every day, and I regularly go over the new bandwidth limits on a 4mb connection. It's not hard to do with so many sites offering streaming video for 1001 reasons these days. The other day I had to download 2 DVD's of content, I'd have to spread that over several days, seriously inconveniencing the provider, not to go over my limit.
I can't see the point in upgrading to the 10mb ( now 20 ) connection when as Amon points out, you'd fire off your bandwidth limit in half an hour if you actually used it. Now am I being frivolous with bandwidth? Yeah, probably. Do I need to be streaming videos off of YouTube just for the hell of it? Probably not. Could I manage my bandwidth more carefully? I guess. But if I was going to do all that, I might just as well have the 1MB account. If you're not going to be able to use it, why pay for it? I'm more tempted to drop down to the 1mb ( or are they up to 2 now? ) account than I am to go up to the top tier. So assuming I'm not the only one thinking that a downgrade is better value than an upgrade, VM have shot themselves in the foot with this.
I go about 15gb a month here, excludin' the 5 from my sis......
Anyhow, wish I had speeds of that, only means of highspeed I have access to where I live is wireless, and my ISP offers 2mb, albeit due to my distance from their tower I'm only getting 1mb.
wow awesome, my connection is rubbish compared...
My area's not listed in the rollout plan, I wonder if I'm being overlooked... (Teddington, Middlesex)
/me looks at his 1meg connection and goes limp
Verizon just bumped me up to 3Mbit/768Kbit, which is currently the fastest option in town. :-?
Gabriel you're free to go your limit, you just get a reduced speed for 4 hours if you do.
Gabriel you're free to go your limit, you just get a reduced speed for 4 hours if you do.
I know, that's what I said. Why pay for a high speed at all? If I don't use it, I'm paying for no reason, and if I do use it, I don't get it anyway. Might just as well use a slower speed and spread it out throughout the day because that's what I'm going to end up doing with the high speed anyway.
I'm assuming you both don't know the full story which is why I'm going to say this.
Traffic shaping affects all tiers. The 20mb is reduced to 5mb after the 3gb limit. The 4mb is reduced to 2mb after 750mb and the 2mb is reduced to 1mb after 350mb dowloads.
It doesn't matter what Tier you're on, after you go over a certain limit your speeds are throttled. 20mb connections are affected the most because they get reduced by 75%.
People are complaining that this new traffic shaping policy was put in place simple because the network could not possibly support everyone being on a 20mb connection downloading all the time.
I read on the Blueyonder newsgroups that they are trialling 50mb connections using DoCSIS 3.0 but to get the whole network upgraded would cost money. So they insetad settled for Traffic Shaping.
[edit]
The reason they can't upgrade or won't is because cash is limited. VM are 8 Billion in debt or thereabouts. People are already talking about the company folding completely. Especially since the removal of the Sky Basic CHannels which to keep would have cost us customers 3p per day. Much cheaper than channel 40 million in to a new Virgin One channel.
No I know that traffic shaping happens on all tiers, but as you yourself point out, the penalty on the highest tier is twice what it is on the middle and lower tiers, which is why I said what I said about the cheaper options being better value. I'd rather pay for 2 and get 1 ( or 4/2 ) than pay for 20 and get 5. That just seems like a kick in the teeth. But you're right, of course, Virgin Media - as with so much of the Virgin Empire lately - is in dire straits.
EDIT: Plus, come to think of it, it was only a 2mb account when I signed up, and was upgraded to 4mb for free about a week after I had it installed, so I'd struggle to find anything to complain about there.
I never seemed to get any of my upgrades. I was supposedto be on 10mb by now BUT *sigh* no luck. I havent budged since I was on 2mb.
And yes, i've been considering a downgrade BUT i need the extra upload speed. 256kbit is damn awful....
Virgin are in trouble, but theyre the only one who provides me with a quick and easy service.
Damn those ADSL "Login" dialogue boxes. I like "Always on" to mean "Always on" :)
The 20mb service was 10mb until recently, so really it is still a 50% drop.
I'm definately considering a downgrade, I am a heavy media user and I do hit 3gb cap a month easily.
going from 10mbps to 5mbps is unacceptable for me and I am now in the market for a new provider -- any suggestions are welcome but I want what I pay for: 10mbps guaranteed.
The only reason I stuck with blueyonder is because it wasn't throttled or limited.
3gb cap a month? The virgin 'cap' for 20mb line is 3gb a day. Anyone who needs more than 4mb speeds could easily hit 20gb a day, not something that's easy to manage without downloading things you shouldn't be.
Are VM shares low now? Could be a good time to gamble and buy some.
I knew there was a reason I pay nearly £65 monthly for my internet.
No sodding bandwidth caps, limits or throttles.
Are VM shares low now?
I doubt it. There's been talk of a buyout/takeover, so it's probably as high as it's going to be for a while.
hell, I've downloaded 60 gig in a day before. I'd have to kill someone if I was that throttled. :)
Who on earth is going to buy VM?
Who on earth is going to buy VM?
Well they actually have a good market position. It's only their poor management, poor decisions and lack of money which has put them in such a bad place. If an investment company with enough money came in, they could still make a great deal of profit simply because VM ( and NTL before them ) are squandering a great market position.
This kind of traffic shapping is what some swiss providers tried as well ... but not for long, the users found about this kind of shapping without official notice and they had to alter their advertisement accordingly as this is false advertisement which is highly illegal. (5mb with no limits just means that. If shapping is applied then it has limits)
I've a 3.5mb, thats good enough, still gives me 5+gb per day which is not too uncommon with streamed videos and fan subbed TV recordings.
No shapping, if they tried to I would take legal steps straight away as they've broken their contract with me.
Regardless if you use your connection for illegal downloads, porn, dvd film downloads or whatever isn't even the issue here.
The issue is..... is the service giving you what they advertised? its one thing signing up for a service and another thing when the company CHANGE that service and effectively downgrade it (Which for me, they have).
Technically even with shaping the service is unlimited, it's just not immediate or particularly fast. As long as its not capped they can get away with it.
No, not if they sell you a 20m connection and invisibly shape it to something below that.
Might be that they sell "best effort" but best effort does not allow them to shape and especially throttled 25% of the sold speed (not because a server does not deliver that much or anything else) is not best effort but active break of advertised and contracted speed.
problem is I bought a package which always guaranteed to me it would be unmetered -and- unlimited. Now they have changed that package and if it wasn't for this forum I would not have known.
It would have taken me a month or two to find out.
Whats more the throttling affects all packages, not just the fast package.
TBH Cable broadband is still the most reliable form of broadband there is. I've been with my fair share of ADSL providers and they all had show stopping problems.
Since I've been with VM ( Formerly Telewest - AHHH I Miss Telewest, they were the best ) My broadband connection has been fast, solid and I have had no disconnections. I don't think I could ever convince myself to go back to ADSL.
With Traffic shaping the Idea is to penalise those who hammer their connections 24/7. According to VM these people are the top 5% of mass downloaders who's connections are constantly downloading all day, every day.
Cable works in the way that there is a UBR in the local area that supplies the bandwidth to everybody connected to it. There is only so much bandwidth the UBR can churn out. If your next door neighbour is hammering his 20mb connection 24/7 thats bandwidth being used all the time that is being robbed from everyone else on the UBR. If everyone did this then the UBR would choke and speeds for those who don't mass download would suffer while the mass downloaders get their constant 20mb.
So, Traffic shaping, although not nice, is essential to keep everybody getting top speeds when it matters and that's when they get home from work and want to use the net.
Traffic Shaping only happens between 4pm and midnight which are the peak hours. If you are Traffic SHaped it's only for 4 hours and then your speeds return to normal. The rest of the day you can download at full speed to your hearts content.
It's worth phoning Virgin to see what you can get out of them if you were a Telewest customer when they took over.
I wanted to drop my 4meg line to 2, as I wasn't using the bandwidth, and any cash in my pocket is better off than in theirs. A week of trying to get through to them (yes, a week - when they were Blueyonder it took 30 seconds) and I just wanted to cancel my account. They turned round and offered me the 2meg line I'd wanted (which should have been a fiver cheaper), all my UK landline (01) calls and my tv package at £15 cheaper than what I was paying. Considering I wasn't getting any free phone calls at all at the time, it ain't too shabby.
So, if you're a customer, it might be worth calling them if you haven't done recently.
Yep, I've been on the phone to retentions threatening to leave and they gave me the VIP service (normally £85 a month for just £65 a month for the next 12 months.
That's another thing that is currently crippling VM. They are losing so much money through retention deals which they happily give in order to keep customers. People arne't happy with VM at the moment. Sky basic Channels gone, a new 0901 tech support number 25p per minute, Traffic Shaping and not to mention, compared to the competition, an expensive service. £37 for top tier broaqdband, Expensive TV Package and phone package etc.
BSKYB are laughing at them. VM lost 45,000 customers when the Sky Basic channels were removed.
Well, i'm going to call them this week, I dont need digi TV, my internet is crappy, and generally, they were once the *best* provider, now one of the worst, yet I will not go to ADSL for the same reason Amon wont- quality.
As it is now I may as well be back on 512kbits. heh...
Anyway, going to cut everything down to the cheapest cheapest cheapest possible. First, i'll try leaving. :P
I work for Virgin Mobile, who was recently acquired by Virgin media. I know internally, a lot of people who work for the media call centres are as annoyed about the traffic shaping as you - the customer - are. The 25p/m tech support number is just another kick in the teeth.
To be brutally honest, I hope to christ they don't pull us (virgin mobile) down with them if they're on they're spiralling down into debt. Because I'm in a customer facing position, when people come into my store and complain about the 25p/m tech support line, or traffic shaping, or expensive packages, or sky one, or distance from the exchange on off-net broadband, or customer call centre wait time, or anything else I can't help but agree with them.
I'm not in a cable area, unfortunately, but I am on the off-net broadband and telephone package. It's not too bad. Always on, ok speeds and as far as I'm aware, unlimited downloads (they state 40 gig, but nobody's bothered me about my usage. yet).
The one saving grace is that our service is upgradable, expandable and has plenty of potential. Sky is at the limit of their technology/speed and they know it. This pisses them off. Hopefully we'll get our thumbs out our arses and start using our potential.
My 2p.
So can you watch youtube without it stuttering with 20meg? :)
I thought Virgin Media are being bought out by a private equity consortium?