Virgin media new traffic management policy - interpret please

usignuolo

Virgin Media have issued a new traffic management policy but I do not really understand it. I currently have a 60mb cable feed.

Apparently this means that weekdays from 4-11pm I have a 1 hour threshold of 3600mb and a 2 hour threshold of 4500mb. At weekend this applies from 11am-11pm.

How does this relate to streaming? For example if I watch 2 hours of a live sports feed or 2 hours of iplayer or netflicks?

Only last night I was watching a live feed from the US (weather channel) and the speed on our line went down from 60mb to 24mbs. I thought live streams were around 5mb per hour not 30. If they are 30mb must make a very limited market for netflicks and iplayer.

Can anyone explain to me. Here is the link http://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-thresholds.html

mattyprice4004

A live stream (even in HD) should be no more than 5-8Mbps.

lenny1986

For iplayer I found the following?


Typical file sizes for a 1hr programme are:

Streaming (PC, PS3)
Low bandwidth streaming (480Kbps) = 190-210MB
Standard quality streaming (800Kbps) = 320-340MB
High quality streaming (1500Kbps) = 600-640MB
High definition streaming (2800Kbps) = 1.10-1.20GB

kwikbreaks

24Mbps is well down on the headline speed for a traffic managed 60Mbps - even 40% reduction if you breached the 2 hour threshold would leave you at 36Mbps.

How did you measure your speed?

If the measurement is accurate then blame congestion rather than traffic management.

IMO you should simply ignore traffic management - there should be plenty of oomph left over for streaming on 60Mbps when managed and if you are doing some massive downloads you'll get them quicker by ignoring any limits and leaving it to run as fast as it can than by voluntarily limiting your speed to stay within the thresholds.

Sadly VM appear to invest far more in their marketing and advertising than they do in their network. I've been a customer for years but still get regular junk mail from them to boost my recycling bin.

usignuolo

I checked the line speed using the UK broadband line speed checker at Uswitch. Right now it is back to 59mb. But then I have not been doing any streaming since last night. Could it be just congestion?

chanz4

they cant be relied on, it depends on their servers speed and load

kwikbreaks

usignuolo wrote: »

Could it be just congestion?

Well it's more of a drop than the published traffic management speed reduction...

A couple of normally reliable speedtesters -

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

Most of these servers are OK - if you see less than you'd hope for select a different server and try that...

http://www.speedtest.net/index.php

I have 60Mbps cable and run a SamKnows monitor. I often see average speeds well down on 60Mbps from that. For the last week it's averaged under 50Mbps and that wasn't traffic management as half of that time nobody was home and the rest has only been very light usage. Cable is very susceptible to local congestion. Some areas are brilliant and some are a nightmare. Mine's probably down on the average but not into nightmare territory yet. Swapping to Infinity would cost me more so I'm sticking with VM for now unless it gets worse.

=== My SamKnows average speeds for May ===

Note that these are average speeds over the whole day - some peak times are going to be quite dismal.

Average (Mbps)
2013-05-19 43.27
2013-05-18 43.15
2013-05-17 42.32
2013-05-16 42.32
2013-05-15 41.05
2013-05-14 46.07
2013-05-13 48.49
2013-05-12 53.56
2013-05-11 62.85
2013-05-10 53.32
2013-05-09 44.61
2013-05-08 52.46
2013-05-07 49.17
2013-05-06 45.70
2013-05-05 51.32
2013-05-04 62.63
2013-05-03 63.08
2013-05-02 48.16
2013-05-01 59.25