Virgin Media Throttling - Moving House and considering changing ISP

[spoon_]

Word of warning here, make sure you ask what happens with warranty after your contract expires and automatically gets renewed.

Sky told to me p** off and pay £70 each time the service was going wrong after the initial 12 months period, they didn't have issues auto renewing for further 12 months though but would not repair anything for free. In December 2009 when we have lots of snow I was told to wait for it to melt as a response to why I don't have any signal... [that's any Sky telly package]

Virgin can book a techie within two days period, no issues. Been with them for years now but never heard any BS that I'm out of warranty and they'll no fix.

50Mbps gets me to anything between 5-6MB/s in download on multiple files, singles ones, well that depends on what the other end is able to send. Microsoft is the best out of them lot but still not quite there, download of SP3 for Windows XP cannot rise above 3-4MB/s - I suppose their links are just bad hehe

Also don't forget that HTTP downloads will most likely have 1 to 3 sessions opened [unless you manually change this in IE] so cannot compare with P2P and 200+ seeds.

[watercooled]

Oh Virgin are far from the worst, but it's just so annoying how they claim to be better than everyone with their super download speeds. Well yeah it's great, if all you do is download HTTP all day long (sorry, night - you get throttled in the day). My mate has the 50Mbps and can't even host MW2 properly as they consider XBL as P2P so throttle the heck out of it. I think someone was told they don't support online gaming so live with it basically...

Ofcom should focus their attention on crap like this - VM are as bad or worse than the rest - you pay for 20Mbps, think you're getting it because of speed tests but the useful speed is less than 4Mbps...

[DrATty]

...Virgin can book a techie within two days period, no issues. Been with them for years now but never heard any BS that I'm out of warranty and they'll no fix...

I agree that the service I've had from Virgin has been good. I've had the service for years and a home visit has always been booked quickly, and the problem sorted out during that visit. Visits can be booked online.

[Apex]

I have had the basic Virgin package since the change from NTL. If I check the speed of my connection, it always says 10Mb/s now, the fastest I've had. However, streaming iPlayer, YouTube, and even Spotify content is problematic unless done in the early morning. Clearly, I don't get what the speed-check says I get. I had few problems when my speed was less a couple if years back so can only assume that throttling is the cause.

I've noticed this more and more during the evening.

[jetfire]

3 days ago i linked every one to my wireless, one pc one laptop and one tablet and have been throttled back every day so far.

only watching bbc iplayer you tube and just browsing the net and there still turning my speed down, on 20mb atm.

i want to up the package to 50 but don't want the super hub, is there any other modems i could use or what modem do there Business customers use.?

[watercooled]

Anything above 20Mbps, you have to use the not-so-Superhub. And as of yet there's no 'modem-only' mode so DMZing to another router is about the only thing to do. Also they will not allow unauthorised devices connect to their network, so no you can't choose your own modem.

[Kurshu]

We have a 50mb Virgin connection here.

Never get throttled even when constantly torrenting on 2 PCs in the house



This is at 9pm with someone still torrenting down stairs (though I don't know how fast), we have hit 50mb in the past and plan to upgrade to 100mb in the very near future.

[Dareos]

I have had the basic Virgin package since the change from NTL. If I check the speed of my connection, it always says 10Mb/s now, the fastest I've had. However, streaming iPlayer, YouTube, and even Spotify content is problematic unless done in the early morning. Clearly, I don't get what the speed-check says I get. I had few problems when my speed was less a couple if years back so can only assume that throttling is the cause.

Really not a clever comment, you can only assume that throttling is the cause, how about you log into the modem and check for t3 timeouts, run a couple of speed tests or download tests to see where its being capped at and give Tech Support a call to see if they can offer any advice, just assuming that you are being throttled is not clever.

To be throttled you have to download a fair amount in the daytime or evening and are only throttled for 5 hours, if you are having constant speed or buffering issues then the fault lies elsewhere

[Dareos]

Virgin can book a techie within two days period, no issues. Been with them for years now but never heard any BS that I'm out of warranty and they'll no fix.

Routers supplied by Virgin are subject to a 2 year warranty, modems and set top boxes etc are owned by Virgin and rented to you as part of the agreement, therefore if they go faulty its Virgins responsibility to repair them (not damaged ones obviously). Saying that, I replace old routers all the time, 5 and 6 years old at times, if they have the Wireless code on the account then its a simple warranty replacement, end of.

Of course i sometimes wind up belligerent customers who think they can demand it, and I once had a guy tell me he had thrown his router and modem in the bin as they were not working and he wanted new ones. I told him to get them out and hook them up so I could run some diagnostic checks, he said the bin men had been, i told him I wasn't replacing anything without a diagnostic and he wanted to cancel, passed him to relations where he was told he was still in contract

anyways, pretty sure he got sorted out, Virgin dont like losing customers, but play by the rules and I'll do anything I can to help, most agents I know are the same.

[Dareos]

Oh Virgin are far from the worst, but it's just so annoying how they claim to be better than everyone with their super download speeds. Well yeah it's great, if all you do is download HTTP all day long (sorry, night - you get throttled in the day). My mate has the 50Mbps and can't even host MW2 properly as they consider XBL as P2P so throttle the heck out of it. I think someone was told they don't support online gaming so live with it basically...

Ofcom should focus their attention on crap like this - VM are as bad or worse than the rest - you pay for 20Mbps, think you're getting it because of speed tests but the useful speed is less than 4Mbps...

This is just not true mate, XBL is not considered P2P and never has been, and I have the 50 meg and host games all the time in MW2, BOps, and just about every other multiplayer game. Only certain MMO's use P2P style packets and get throttled by the network software, which is always a work in progress

Saying that, I had major lag issues at one point in MW2, was hosting every game and noone could connect, turns out my router was up the creek, but noone forces you to use a Dlink or Netgear router, only supply you with it.

[Dareos]

We have a 50mb Virgin connection here.

Never get throttled even when constantly torrenting on 2 PCs in the house



This is at 9pm with someone still torrenting down stairs (though I don't know how fast), we have hit 50mb in the past and plan to upgrade to 100mb in the very near future.

There is still a clause in the contract, regardless of which service you are on which basically says that if your usage of the network is considered to be detrimental, then Virgin will warn you and then cut you off. If that happens, the property is blacklisted and services cannot be restored, regardless of who takes out the contract.

Had one the other day, first I have ever seen, guy had 12 folks in his house, renting rooms or some such, claimed they were all using skype to talk to folks back home, doesn't really account for the 236Gb his modem had UPloaded that month, and bearing in mind that upload speeds are generally 10% of the download speeds and they were on a 20 Meg service.....

Still, its only happens to 0.05% of users

[Dareos]

3 days ago i linked every one to my wireless, one pc one laptop and one tablet and have been throttled back every day so far.

only watching bbc iplayer you tube and just browsing the net and there still turning my speed down, on 20mb atm.

i want to up the package to 50 but don't want the super hub, is there any other modems i could use or what modem do there Business customers use.?

Absolutely no reason this should happen, PM me your mac address and I will have a look at it mate, might be some network issues or some power level problems

[watercooled]

Sounds like you're working for VM so not entirely impartial TBH. And I can show that XBL traffic is throttled and/or speedtests and HTTP traffic is given priority (for me anyway), probably to mislead customers into thinking they are getting the advertised speed for everything. Use Google, I'm far from the only one to have observed this but of course it's not something a novice would be able to measure. If the graph I posted on this thread isn't enough I can do some more for you, but it will be more of the same really. If you prove me wrong (issue in my area for instance), I'll happily edit these posts but as it stands what I say is entirely true.

I will say I haven't done any tests on my mate's 50Mbps connection like I've done on mine (it does seem 50Mbps is less harshly throttled) but it's quite pathetic that he couldn't host a game properly and I concluded it was speed limiting because smaller games worked fine.

I was reading a thread over at the VM forums a while ago when I was searching for information regarding this, someone found the same as me, a VM employee admitted it and said something along the lines of 'we do not support online gaming on our network so there's nothing we can do about it'. The thread seems to have been removed but I'll see if I can find it in the archives or whatever.

Oh and Hexus have also reported on it: http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=30147

[jetfire]

Absolutely no reason this should happen, PM me your mac address and I will have a look at it mate, might be some network issues or some power level problems

the person using the laptop was trying to upload gigs of bloody YouTube vids in the day time that has done it, gave them the and its sorted now.

[Stephen C]

Sounds like you're working for VM so not entirely impartial TBH. And I can show that XBL traffic is throttled and/or speedtests and HTTP traffic is given priority (for me anyway), probably to mislead customers into thinking they are getting the advertised speed for everything. Use Google, I'm far from the only one to have observed this but of course it's not something a novice would be able to measure. If the graph I posted on this thread isn't enough I can do some more for you, but it will be more of the same really. If you prove me wrong (issue in my area for instance), I'll happily edit these posts but as it stands what I say is entirely true.

I will say I haven't done any tests on my mate's 50Mbps connection like I've done on mine (it does seem 50Mbps is less harshly throttled) but it's quite pathetic that he couldn't host a game properly and I concluded it was speed limiting because smaller games worked fine.

I was reading a thread over at the VM forums a while ago when I was searching for information regarding this, someone found the same as me, a VM employee admitted it and said something along the lines of 'we do not support online gaming on our network so there's nothing we can do about it'. The thread seems to have been removed but I'll see if I can find it in the archives or whatever.

Oh and Hexus have also reported on it: http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=30147

That would be me ^^ I wrote the article too (In a rush mind you).

Virgin Media stated to me, by phone "We do not support any type of gaming related service so I'm afraid it's tough luck".

They clearly know what the problem is, I was one of five people that carried out a large ammount of testing for VM in which the P2P management system was turned off, the problems ceased and we all gave clear information on this which VM then chose to ignore.

I actually haven't touched online gaming on my Xbox since this so I can't say if anything's been resolved or not but my best guess from everyone I know with an Xbox on Virgin Media is that it's far from fixed.

[watercooled]

I assumed it was P2P related as it explains a lot of the problems, but maybe it's not - it does seem it's given too low a priority though. It's just annoying that VM seem to focus purely on headline speeds over QoS so for lots of people the connection becomes less usable than a 2Mbps ADSL connection.

I will admit however that, once you've managed to get hold of someone who can understand you, the support is excellent and the techs are always very helpful.