Why is my internet speed drastically reduced?

Leodogger

My speed is back up today, this is how it is, one day it is worse than useless and the next back to normal, how can that be ? Someone must be downloading huge files or movies etc. What I want to know is why do the suppliers (Virgin, etc.), restrict usage to everyone when it is just a few culprits. I am probably paying more than some people overusing their capacity but am meant to suffer for them overusing their capacity!

They should find a way of making people who are taking more capacity than they should, pay a lot more for the service or have just THEIR service restricted and people like me who just email and shop should be given a consistent service ALL the time that we are paying for. That is only fair !

victor2

JWhite wrote: »

They should find a way of making people who are taking more capacity than they should, pay a lot more for the service or have just THEIR service restricted and people like me who just email and shop should be given a consistent service ALL the time that we are paying for. That is only fair !

Think of it like your water supply. If somebody else on your feed is using a huge amount of water, your pressure will drop. The supplier can see which individual is using a lot and throttle their supply, but with too many users (even restricted ones) on the same feed, everyone suffers.
You get what you pay for to a large extent. If you want better, look into business services with guarantees regarding contention etc. Of course you'll pay for it though!

Leodogger

victor2 wrote: »

Think of it like your water supply. If somebody else on your feed is using a huge amount of water, your pressure will drop. The supplier can see which individual is using a lot and throttle their supply, but with too many users (even restricted ones) on the same feed, everyone suffers.
You get what you pay for to a large extent. If you want better, look into business services with guarantees regarding contention etc. Of course you'll pay for it though!

I know what you mean but my point is I am paying over the odds for a speed Virgin promise me (30mb) but do not deliver, only intermittently. At least with water, you can try the tap before buying the house and to a certain extent can do things to make the flow faster, put in a larger cold water pipe etc., albeit at your own expense. I can get BB for as low as £6.50 month for 14mb download with TalkTalk (bigger speed than I was getting yesterday which was about 2mb) and i am paying £25, way over the odds for the intermittent service I am getting. :mad:

Leodogger

Just to update everyone, out of desperation I contacted the Technical help at Virgin. After explaining the intermittent slowing up of my laptop on alternate days, a technician "shadowed" my laptop and said the problem was being caused by Internet Explorer. When I asked why it was intermittent he could not explain why but he has downloaded Mozilla Firefox and it seems to have fixed the problem as my laptop is running quite fast now. He has made Firefox my default browser and Internet Explorer is not now working for me to try to export my Favourites to print them off. So my only problem is that my "Favourites" which he said I could not import otherwise it could import a glitch into the Firefox platform, I cannot print off. So I am stuck with trying to enter the whole list again, one by one. Can anyone tell me how I can print this off so at least I can work through the list without having to go back and forth into "My Computer" for each and every one to find it and save it to Mozilla Bookmarks?

macman

I can't imagine how importing your Favourites can import a 'glitch.' It's simply a stored list of website addresses. Much more likley to be caused by a browser add on or extension in IE.
Import them anyway and see how it runs. If it is does cause a glitch then you can remove them again, or uninstall and reinstall Firefox again.

Leodogger

macman wrote: »

I can't imagine how importing your Favourites can import a 'glitch.' It's simply a stored list of website addresses. Much more likley to be caused by a browser add on or extension in IE.
Import them anyway and see how it runs. If it is does cause a glitch then you can remove them again, or uninstall and reinstall Firefox again.

Well it seemed unlikely to me but as I am a technophobe, I thought perhaps I didn't understand the ins and outs of the technical side of it.

pickoftheday

If you think you are being traffic managed, which Virgin does to a lot of of its customers, the way to get around it is to turn your router off for at least 6 hours.

In other words, leave it completely off overnight.

In the morning, all should be fine. I used to work for VM Tech support.

Leodogger

pickoftheday wrote: »

If you think you are being traffic managed, which Virgin does to a lot of of its customers, the way to get around it is to turn your router off for at least 6 hours.

In other words, leave it completely off overnight.

In the morning, all should be fine. I used to work for VM Tech support.

Actually i switch off my router every night but as I said above, I think I have sorted this problem of speed but now are left with not being able to import my Favourites from IE, firstly the technician told me not to in case it caused conflict with Mozilla Firefox as he said it was IE that was causing my problems, but I have tried anyway and cannot import them as when I go through the process of importing the folder, Mozilla Firefox created the folder but there is nothing in there. Could it be that the file is not saved in "My Computer" as a bookmark.htm file ?

visidigi

pickoftheday wrote: »

If you think you are being traffic managed, which Virgin does to a lot of of its customers, the way to get around it is to turn your router off for at least 6 hours.

In other words, leave it completely off overnight.

In the morning, all should be fine. I used to work for VM Tech support.

And as a customer, that shouldnt be required.

Traffic shaping is made a big deal, but half of 60mb is still fast

DUTR

I'm on a 10mb doubled up to 20mb, so qualified for the super hub and now getting



I'm a regular on youtube and xhamster
Only once do I recall being affected by traffic management since 2004 and even then it was still very usable, I suspect the OP has other equipment issues.