Virgin Media

we were with virgin and had nothing but chew on, several arsey phonecalls later we looked into switching to sky, rang them up and bitched about virgin for a bit and they said they could refund the cost of the BT line installation

Sky will do whatever they can to get you away from virgin because theyre the only real rival who does tv, interent and phonelines

In Sunderland?

Yeah.Do you have some witty sunderland banter as to why they didnt put it in?

Yer, one server will handle that load no bother!

Capping is just software and EU device handled - nowt to do with server output.

Erm, no Mackam dude - just Virgin (opr rather Telwest) didnt cable any of Sunderland, it was a combo of NTL and Cable & Wireless, both fucking useless!

Lol aye I had it through NTL when I lived at my mothers but when I moved this house we enquired about it and thay said they had no plans to expand the network in Sunderland

lol, i it looks like i'll be goin through a BT line, virgin says they can run my broadband through a BT line, however the hell thats done, sounds like another fuck about. Roll on friday

Fuck sake man, just had to submit my reply about 40 times here lol

unlimited 50meg? your own server? dream on!

Posted in Telecoms, 11th February 2009 12:00 GMT



Virgin Media's heaviest cable broadband users will be hit with tighter bandwidth throttling at peak times, as the firm tries to cope with increasing demand across its network.

A trial has begun in the Preston area that sees the period when downstream and upstream speeds are cut extended by several hours. Once customers breach daily data limits in either direction, bandwidth will be throttled for seven* rather than the current five hours during the week. At the weekend the heavy use will be punished with ten hours of throttling - double the current five hour continuous slowdown. *See statement below.

During the week Virgin Media's definition of evening peak time (4pm until 9pm downstream, 3pm until 8pm upstream) remain unchanged for the trial. At weekends however the current daytime throttling period (10am until 3pm) will be rolled together with the evening period, so data downloaded between 11am and 9pm will all count towards the same limit.

Customers in Preston will also trigger the restrictions more quickly at the weekend. For example, "M" customers, subscribed to a 2Mbit/s service, will be throttled once they have downloaded 1250MB betweeen 11am and 9pm on Saturday and Sunday. Currently, between 10am and 3pm the throttle isn't applied until 1000MB is downloaded. Between 4pm and 9pm "M" subscribers can currently download 500MB before triggering a slow down, so triallists' total data ration is being cut from 1500MB to 1250MB.

Virgin Media maintains on the trial information page that as its current national policy, only the heaviest five per cent of users will hit the data limits on a given day. The up and downstream speeds for those being throttled on each package will be the same as at present.

"The aim of this trial is to enhance the way we do this, limit the number of people who have their speeds moderated and ultimately improve the service we deliver to all our customers," the company wrote.

Virgin Media added that the details of the trial could change at any time as it measures their impact on the network. It gave no indication of when the tighter restrictions will be rolled out to other trial areas or nationally. The trials will run "over the coming months".

A Virgin Media spokesperson said:

Virgin Media operates an open and transparent traffic management policy designed to ensure that the majority of customers enjoy a high quality online experience and remain unaffected by a small minority of extremely heavy users.

We do not cut off any customers for heavy use, however if their activity impacts the service affecting other customers we will temporarily reduce their speeds during peak usage periods. As we do this automatically, this ensures all our customers are able to enjoy their broadband service without the worry of hitting undisclosed 'fair use' download limits.

We are currently trialling new approaches to our traffic management policy to help ensure only the heaviest users are managed in this way, by reducing the number of hours that a user might be managed. We are also trialling a new fixed cut-off point which now means that many heavy users may only be traffic managed for as little as two hours in a day.

The new trial profile means that heavy users are likely to be traffic managed for less time:

Old

Weekdays Morning 5 hours + Evening 5 hours = 10 hours

Weekends Morning 5 hours + Evening 5 hours = 10 hours

New Trial

Weekdays Evening Up to 7 hours (cut off at 11pm) = 7 hours or less

Weekends Daytime Up to 10 hours (cut off at 11pm) = 10 hours or less

Ive just foundout my new house does have a virgin connection, but this guy on the phone i got was certain i didnt, fuckin cowboys, almost canceld my contract & everything today. Why do people have to make our lifes difficult.

Anyone (who uses wireless router with vermin media) ever get in from work or get up in the morning to realise that none of ya torrents have been downloading cause theres "limited connectivity" on ya connection. So youve wasted electricity for fuck all. It could be a problem on my end but im sure its vermin fucking about

Am havin 2nd thoughts whether or not to stay with them lol after all my moaning. Just seems to be so many complaints about them these days.

Like I said, I'd try O2.

I've just realised my wireless box has been connected to a secondary telephone socket. Didn't realised the main one was upstairs in our house??

Just ran 3 tests about 5mins apart on the main socket







Dunno why it says I'm on Be Unlimited though

i'm can't see how virgin can remotely affect your router. it's not the matrix

mines never done that

Maybe they can. I'd be having problems with my router a few weeks back and O2 connected to mine down the phone line and changed the fequency channels on t etc...

Dunno how that's possible though?

was it their router they supplied?

mine i bought 3rd party, with my own passwords, MAC filtering and hidden SSID

its just an SNR change, its to do with the tiny frequency of noise sent down your line to stabilise your connection

Yeah, the deal I got was outstanding too.

I've actually been hitting about 1.5mb/s on rapidshare etc... for downloading sets and Beatport just gave me a 19mb track in 4 secs this afternoon.