Virgin media - throttling?

[Mullet]

Hi All,

A couple of months back I upgraded my BB speed from a 1mb to a 4mb connection. After the upgrade I ran the speedtest.net application which measures BB upload, download and latency. One a week (ish) I'd run this and it was always returning speeds of around 4300kb/s download and 384kbp/s upload...sort of what it says on the tin really...

However....I've run the same test for the past 3 nights and the speeds have dropped massively!! From what's stated above to less than 800kb/s download and 280 upload!!

What the hell is going on? Has anyone else experienced problems? What's tyhe point in upgrading the speed if this happens? I am angry....I feel like I am paying for a service which is on a par with bloomin dial-up!

Not a happy man ....

I am located in South East Wales and was pinging a server in Maidenhead in the tests.

[Skeet]

Hi All,

A couple of months back I upgraded my BB speed from a 1mb to a 4mb connection. After the upgrade I ran the speedtest.net application which measures BB upload, download and latency. One a week (ish) I'd run this and it was always returning speeds of around 4300kb/s download and 384kbp/s upload...sort of what it says on the tin really...

However....I've run the same test for the past 3 nights and the speeds have dropped massively!! From what's stated above to less than 800kb/s download and 280 upload!!

What the hell is going on? Has anyone else experienced problems? What's tyhe point in upgrading the speed if this happens? I am angry....I feel like I am paying for a service which is on a par with bloomin dial-up!

Not a happy man ....

I am located in South East Wales and was pinging a server in Maidenhead in the tests.

You say Virgin Media, but Virgin supply Broadband over BT lines (ADSL) as well as Cable lines.

Is yours Cable or BT line based?

It sounds like your line has reverted to 1Mb connection (they made a cock up) or, you have upset them by downloading too much and they have capped you.

[Mullet]

Cheers Skeet,

I download next to nothing but do game a fair bit....surely that wouldn't cause em to cap me?

I am on a DSL/cable connection.

[Skeet]

Cheers Skeet,

I am on a DSL/cable connection.

So which are you on?

Cable (NTL, TELEWEST etc) is not ADSL or any other form of DSL!

If you are on a cable connection, then they either work or dont. So it wont be a fault...most likely they have graded your line to 1Mb or, they have capped you for some other reason.

[Mullet]

I am on NTL cable bud....might be worth getting in touch with them to find out what the crack is...

[BUFF]

have you checked the network status page to see if there is a known problem or ongoing work in your area?

As for traffic shaping http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...t/traffic.html

[Mullet]

How much traffic would I cause through my gaming habits...as i mentioned before I rarely download files so that can't be the issue here.

[fat jez]

How much traffic would I cause through my gaming habits...as i mentioned before I rarely download files so that can't be the issue here.

Not much, I can't see you doing more than maybe 60MB an hour, probably a lot less than I would use surfing and downloading email.

Cheers,
Stephen

[jimborae]

Welcome to Virgin Media's new improved network.

Since the 20mb upgrade the whole network has gone to sh!t, with many areas over subscribed and unable to cope, hence the appalling speeds. Bandwidth throttling is only supposed to kick in between 4pm-12pm after you've gone over your limit but in many areas people are reporting that it's being implemented regardless.

Go here to find out more and join your fellow victims - http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/

Virgin Media is a big steaming pile a poo atm, sod 20mb, give me back my nice stable 10meg line.

[Robert]

Or try downloading from http://gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk

...........speedtest.net is highly unreliable.

[Steve B]

i would never trust speedtest fully either. those Blueyonder files should max out your connection no bother, so you can see how fast it really is.

Have you got the silver ntl:home modem?
if so, go to 192.168.100.1 in your browser, and check operation configuration to see downstream and upstream speeds.

[Mullet]

Nah...I'm using the blue/black modem....could this be causing me issues?

[Versionconflict]

hmm, yep, since the upgrade my connections been distinctly flakey. I occaisionally get up to 1400kb/s on newsgroups - but the rest of the time my supposed 20mb connection seems to run at about 6 or 7mb - whereas before the upgrade it ran at a nice stable 9.5 to 10mb

Was getting some odd torrent behaviour this morning on normally good responding ration sites (uknova, hdbits) - but I guess that needs more investigation before it's conclusive - but it was running at about 2mb!!

[Carlh]

My connection was similar and only peaking around 1400 kb/s on the newsgroup provider I use.

This morning I changed the server to the european server speed instantly increased from 1400kb/s to 2200 kb/s

Fingers crossed that they have sorted the issues they were having with the network

[Jay]

also seems they take a long time on maintance and have a time machine

[vc54321]

I find speedtest.net highly unaccurate. When I used to run it, it wud say I would get about 6000kb/s and I am on 10mb. But my download rates would max out at the full 10mb