Virgin Media - peering issues

EdwardB

thescouselander wrote: »

Virgin Media throttle P2P connections at peak times as a traffic management measure. If that doesnt meet your requirements that you'll need a different broadband service.

https://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-30Mb-or-higher.html

VIRGIN_MEDIA wrote: »

Our new policy is simple:

• We only restrict upload speed
• Your speed is only reduced while the upload threshold is exceeded. So the speed reduction could only last as little as an hour as long as you reduce your uploads

Minimum period of traffic management

60 minutes*

When traffic management happens

Monday to Friday: 4:00PM-11:00PM

Saturday and Sunday: 11:00AM-11:00PM
In addition to this, we also apply a temporary speed limit to all peer-to-peer and Newsgroup traffic during peak times to ensure that they do not slow the network down for everyone. For more information please see the tables below.


* If you reduce your usage below the threshold as soon as you enter traffic management, you can exit traffic management in 60 minutes. If you don’t, you may be in traffic management for 120 minutes or more and have further reductions in your speed. For more information, see the customer examples below.

How do I get out of Traffic Management?

First of all, don’t worry. It’s just temporary and you can carry on using your broadband during traffic management anyway. It doesn’t stop anything you’re doing, you may just notice that your upload speeds have slowed. To get back to full speed all you need to do is reduce your upload usage during peak hours.


This is important if you use peer-to-peer (P2P) networks a lot. P2P is software such as BitTorrent which allows you to download files that are stored on the hard drives of other users. Because you can also share content on your own hard drive, these applications usually require lots of uploads. This can happen in the background without you knowing but can mean you hit the usage thresholds during peak times.


Here are three examples of how a customer might be traffic managed:

Customer One uploads more than the threshold for their tier of service and is traffic managed for the following 60 minutes. They notice that their upload speed has dropped due to traffic management and reduce what they’re doing straight away. At the end of the 60 minutes, they exit traffic management and their upload speed returns to normal.

Customer Two uploads more than the threshold for their tier of service and is traffic managed for the next 60 minutes. They carry on using their upstream connection so heavily that their total usage triggers the 120 minute policy and a further cut in their upload speed. They then reduce what they are doing and 120 minutes after the second policy threshold was triggered they exit traffic management and their upload speed returns to normal.

Customer Three uploads more than the threshold for their tier of service and is traffic managed for the next 60 minutes. They carry on using their upstream connection so heavily that they trigger the 120 minute policy and a further cut in their upload speed. Unless they reduce what they’re doing this customer will trigger repetitions of the 120 minute policy until the end of peak hours, and will be traffic managed for up to a maximum of 120 minutes in the off peak period. Only then will they exit traffic management and their broadband speed return to normal.


While our upstream traffic management policy is designed to manage customers who upload an excessive volume of data, any customer uploading a large volume of data (whether the traffic management policy applies at that time or not) may impact their download speed. This is because the packet acknowledgements for the download may be delayed by upstream congestion, in turn meaning that the download server will have to wait for the acknowledgements to arrive before sending the next part of the file download. This will mean that the download is not able to make full use of your broadband service. To avoid this we suggest that you time your large uploads to happen when you are not trying to download large files or stream multiple pieces of HD content.

Wow! Really worth quoting that Virgin policy, they keep turning the screw if you do not cut your uploads.

So if you leave loads of files ready to upload then you will be punished, however, if you limit the upload within your peer software or just delete files that have been downloaded you will probably not trigger such a heavy penalty.

RumRat

I rarely P2P, but when I do I make sure it's outside of peak hours. I've only ever been traffic managed once (That's when I found the management policy )
I guess if someone wants to torrent all day long then it's not for them.:)

danthemoneysavingman

The came round and peered at my modem for ages, I thought the peering was quite good. The consistency of the connection, however... :-D

kwikbreaks

EdwardB wrote: »

Wow! Really worth quoting that Virgin policy, they keep turning the screw if you do not cut your uploads.

They don't do it on a whim. Upload has always been the bottleneck with cable systems.

With phone line based systems you have an uncontended path back to the point where fibre is the transport medium and you are looking at multigigabit pipes.

With cable the path to the optical node (where it hits fibre) is shared amongst all the users and the bandwidth available is desperately low compared to fibre - think maybe 8 or a dozen 50Mbps downstream channels and a 2 or maybe 4 of 18Mbps upstream channels although some segments may fare a bit better.

Large pipes are far less suscepitble to congestion problems. It's pretty obvious that somebody seeding torrents full whack is going to put a dent in that cable upstream. Add another doing the same and that will mess things up for everybody in the area.

digp

Yes, that's what I mean.

It's really awful. It's obvious but they deny it.

There's a few posts on their website forum but they're in denial about it.

digp

It's nothing to do with p2p.

I'll try to post some links here.

digp

Here we go:

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Community-Natter/International-Peering-amp-Virgin-Media/td-p/2794174

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Speed/Over-90-Speed-Throttling-on-International-Peering/td-p/3038398

virgin_media_blames_third_party_peering_network_for_buffering_woes

digp

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/11/virgin-media-failing-to-fix-peak-time-broadband-latency-and-peering-woes.html

And so on

It remains an issue
Basically virgin media is a glorified local intranet provider

RumRat

That last link is 5 years old......You've been holding onto that grudge a long time....;):D