Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 I've been with Telewest/NTL/Virgin for the best part of 13 years and never really had issues, up until now that is. The package I have should in theory give me up to 10mb downloads, I know a Which report rated them the best and said indicative speeds were around 8mb. The best I have seen has been circa 7mb, in the wee small hours and usually averaging 3 - 4 under normal conditions. However, in the last 3 - 4 weeks I have experienced what I belive they call "peak-time" traffic management. Theoretically between 4pm & 9pm my speed would be throttled back by 75%, giving a max available of 2.5mb or 1.75mb if I used my own best case of 7mb. This is supposidly aimed at the top 5% users and I can't for the life of me see that I would fit that category. Sadly, in my case, during these times I'm actually seeing an average download speed between 500kbps and 600kbps and in regard to Arma, it's becomming unplayable. I again bailed last night around 8.30, when the lag reached stupid levels & my TS made everyone sound like Norman Collier. Before I get on the blower to Virgin and point out they're all a bunch of c@#*s, I'd like to hear from others to see what experiences they are having as far as traffic management goes. And whether this is normal or do I have some weird shit, specifically happening to me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T_1 Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Tell them to sort it or they'll loose 100% of your business. I phoned them cause new customers were getting a better deal that I had, and I told them that I could get a similar deal from BT, do they want me to pay the same as new customers, or nothing. Funnily enough they gave me the same deal. It's always worth arguing, particularly in the current economic climate. As for the "peak time traffic management" I'd tell them to stick it. I pay for 10 Mb I expect 10 Mb. If you're taking 75% of the band width between 4 and 9 I want a 75% discount. I aint paying for someone else using the internet, I'm paying so I can use it. If you buy a car, would you accept it if the dealer only let you use 1 wheel during the rush hour. They should be wearing masks the robbing barstewards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adder360~SPARTA~ Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 i have also fallen victim to this traffic mangement but where ur speeds were reduced to 600kbs i had more like 3 or 4 kbs so the internet was totaly unuseable we had to stop watching videos and stuff via the internet during peak times, constaly gameing during peaktime didnt do it, is it just you useing ur intent or is ur conection shared with family or household? cos some one might be siting there watching youtube constantly that is wat did it for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PANiC Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 (edited) there is another issue other than traffic management there dood. virgin support can tell you there and then on the phone if you are being throttled or not, this is the only way you will find out what is happening. virgin support newsgroup ( virginmedia.support.broadband.cable ) is 1000x better for support than their phone line to asia, ask luggage or rizz for the info becasue ive forgotten that newgroup stuff. other than that sign up to the 50meg, you get put on a different network so oversubscribing wont be an issue and there is no traffic management at all /edit sry for the seemingly obvious question but this is cable right? not virgin adsl? it's just ive never seen anyone not get the advertised speed from cable. traffic management is a pain in the ass, but you have to play it right, it's crazy to give you a connection that you can reach their traffic limit in about 20 minutes, if you have xboxlive or stream high quality vids then you are pretty much screwed. i believe their total daily limit on the 10Mb is about 65GB, but that's impossible anyway with the traffic shaping haha. i still think you get a better deal than the majority of providers that give you crappy adsl and a low daily / monthly cap. Edited September 30, 2009 by PANiC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted October 1, 2009 Author Share Posted October 1, 2009 It is cable rather than adsl and it affects all aspects of internet interaction. Tuesday night I tried to watch the first episode of Flash Forward, on Demand 5. It was fine for around 5 minutes and then was constantly buffering, so I gave up. Panic, in all the time I've had broadband and been checking, with sites like Speed Test, I've never had the advertised performance. It's always been a little of the pace. Two weeks ago at 2am on a Saturday morning it read 7.6mb, that's the best I've ever seen. I'm still at my folks at the moment, so whilst I can maybe tweak it up from 10 to 20mb not sure if they'll be happer to fork out for the 50mb. When my girls are with me they occasionally view youtube along with general smurfing but I am having this problem every day, so it does not coincide with excessive use from other machines. About 2 months ago I called Virgin to complain that the service was poor, they checked online and said the service itself was okay, so sent out an engineer to check the hardware. He checked the router and modem, which were okay and then checked the cable. He shortened it as was pushing 10 feet in length with only 2 feet between the cable box and modem. He also commented on the filter thing that was on the end of the line. Not really sure what it does but at the "rating" it was (it was 20 somethings?) he said he was surprised I was getting any connection at all. He swapped it for a "10 somethings" version and I definately saw an improvement there and then but now I appear to have this throttling issues. I'll try the user group and rant at their support people tonight. Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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