To Virgin Media: We “The Customers” don’t like traffic jams either

Posted on 05 April 2008 by Stuart

Virgin Media’s Traffic Management Policy advertised as “We don’t like traffic jams” is rendering normal Internet use in 2008 for customers virtually unusable between the hours of 4PM to 9PM. Being a Virgin Media customer myself i thought it was about time we covered Virgin’s Traffic Management Policy and showed exactly why the imposed limits are unrealistically low for a major percentage of their customer base.

Virgin Media Introduced it’s Traffic Management policy back in May 2007 and at the time of writing still have no reference to this part of your Virgin Contract on their website purchase broadband package details page. Instead Virgin prefer to hide this information deep within the Virgin Media Website, this is something P2PViNE has actually complained to the Advertising Standards Agency about earlier this year and eventually got a very disappointing reply from the ASA.

Firstly just in case you have been living in a bubble for a year or so, below is a short explanation taken from their website of how Virgin Media throttle and limit customer connections between the hours of 4pm and 9pm.

When someone is downloading and/or uploading a particularly large amount of information over a long period of time, it can slow down the Internet speed for other users who might just be checking their email or browsing online. So to make sure our service is fair for everybody, we sometimes moderate the speeds during peak times (4pm till 9pm) for customers who are downloading and/or uploading an unusually large amount at these times.

Your speed won’t be moderated unless you’re in the top 3% of users (up-loaders and down-loaders). Our boffins ran a trial to see how much our service was being affected.

Package	Allowance	Maximum Speed	Capped Speed
Broadband M	Download 300 MB / Upload 150MB	2 Mbps (download) 256 Kbps (upload)	1 Mbps (download) 128 Kbps (upload)
Broadband L	Download 800 MB / Upload 325MB	4 Mbps (download) 384 Kbps (upload)	1 Mbps (download) 128 Kbps (upload)
Broadband XL	Download 3GB / Upload 1.25GB	20 Mbps (download) 768 Kbps (upload)	5 Mbps (download) 192 Kbps (upload)

There are some crucial inaccuracies in virgins own description of their traffic management policy.

Virgin state “Your speed won’t be moderated unless you’re in the top 3% of users (up-loaders and down-loaders)“.
Thia is a completely untrue and misleading quote as feedback on the web from customers suggests that virgin limit all customers who hit their transfer limit during the hours of 4PM till 9PM and not just the top 3% as stated. Our testing over a two week period would seem to confirm these reports of limiting being applied to everyone across the board an not just the top 3% of excessive use customers.

How We Tested

Connection Used: Broadband L 4MB Download / 384kb Upload
Software: Bandwidth Monitor v3.1

We decided to download two episodes of the popular Diggnation.com podcast with a combined size of 970.6MB from iTunes as a test. This download behaviour in our opinion classes general Internet usage in 2008 and therefore shouldn’t be considered excessive downloads. As an added precaution we never used our Virgin Broadband connection except for general browsing up until the point of commencing download of Diggnation from iTunes.

Diggnation.com was chosen from iTunes for the fact it’s something i download every week along with thousand’s of other Internet users, also the combined file size of 970MB surely couldn’t place us in the top 3% – 5% of people downloading over virgins network between 4PM and 9PM on a Saturday night, or would it?

Lets fire up iTunes and find out.

The first image below is when we just started the download from iTunes around 19:20 hours.

As you can see from the image all is going well downloading at a speed of 4MB’s as would be expected.

This image is around 800MB later and guess what, the throttle has kicked in and we have now been limited to 1MB?

This isnt a complete surprise although it does show that the details given on the Virgin Media website that only the top 3% of down-loaders/up-loaders get throttling applied to their account are completely inaccurate. We were clearly throttled after downloading approx 800MB of content which is all we had downloaded between 4PM and 9PM, not excessive and certainly not enough to place us in the top 3% of virgin customers?

We also tested digital DVD distribution with www.lovefilm.com earlier this week by purchasing a download copy of Micheal Clayton costing £19.99, once again we were throttled by Virgin immediately after downloading around 800MB.

Conclusion

Unrealistic Throttling Limits imposed by virgin are out of tune with modern Internet usage and also very misleading in their description, for 4MB we pay £25 per month yet we cannot use that service as advertised. Clearly Virgin are oversubscribing their services as they cannot deliver the service consumers are paying for.

We hear lots of arguments about illegal down-loaders ruining the media industry’s of music and movies, in my opinion the ISP’s are damaging the legal media content industry like ilovefilm.com etc more that illegal file sharing ever could. Consumers who are willing to pay to download movies are having their connections throttled so intensely that the media on demand revolution is being killed off or at best looking very unattractive.

What a lot of non tech broadband consumers might not realize is that services such as BBC iPlayer. A Streaming Video Service launched by the BBC where you can watch and download repeats of TV shows on your PC use bandwidth, for instance an iPlayer episode of The Apprentice weighs in at around 600MB.

The bottom package customer at Virgin cannot watch 1/2 of this show between the hours of 4PM and 9PM. Middle package users could manage around one and a third episodes before limiting kicks in.

A pretty grim reality for all in the UK at the moment considering broadband is like the American Wild West when it comes to regulations and consumer protection. And for all who thought you could throw away your trusty television sets because the media on demand revolution had arrived, have a rethink.

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Tags | bandwidth, isp, Throttling, traffic management, virgin media

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10 Comments For This Post

Pages: [1] 2 3 » Show All

Shamus McFartfinger Said on:
April 6th, 2008 at 10:26 am

I don’t see what you’re complaining about. Things are worse in other parts of the world. Let’s do a couple of quick comparisons against what I pay in Australia.

You: £25 per month (around $54 AUD)
Me: $130 AUD per month (around £60)

You: Top speed – 4MB/sec
Me: Top speed – (limited by distance from the local exchange)750k/sec

Things can always be worse. Be happy with what you have. I know I am.

Regards from Brisbane, Australia.
Quartz Said on:
April 6th, 2008 at 11:19 am

Nicely written article Stewart.

Whilst many folks often believe they are being throttled the true number is often hard to come by and any empirical tests as you have undertaken above are more than welcome to help guage the true figure, I concur with the idea of root cause being over-subscribing of the service.
Stuart Said on:
April 6th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

Hi Shamus,

First off great name

I agree that the connection we tested on was by no way the worst or most expensive in the world compared to prices on other continents. You are obviously using ADSL and our tests were carried out over a cable network although Virgin also do ADSL, those users suffer the exact same problem with distance from the exchange and speeds, some customers reportedly receiving as little as 3kb/s max during peak times without being throttled.

The main aim of the article above is to show that Virgin do not limit only the top 3% of their customers as claimed, if you download your limit during peak times you will be throttled whether you are in the top 3% or not.

Before th entertainment industry can consider digital distribution as a serious alternative ISP’s must provide consumers with the bandwidth to use these services. At the moment that’s being stifled by bandwidth throttling. We also need better regualtions on advertising in the UK so that ISP must declare all parts of their service and make it easy visible from the purchase/advertising page, at the moment Virgns advertising, statments are very misleading bordering on complete bulls**t.
Tony W Said on:
April 6th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

i compleatly agree with you i am a virgin customer amnd i a on 4 meg broadband my web is cut bk severley at 4pm till 9 pm i run a web room and at between those times find it imposable to hold the room were my net is reduced. but im still expected to pay for the full 4 meg and im not in the so called top 3%.
and the other thing with virgin i do not agree with is the £5 penilty for not paying by direct debit and anoth £5 for a late payment charge there excuse for the £5 penility for paying through a pay point is handling charge were and wot are thay handling it gets payed straight into there aqccount the same way as a DD so why the £5 charge , totaly unacseptable behaviour.
John Doe Said on:
April 7th, 2008 at 8:10 am

You must have a very short attention span, I suggest you go back to that webpage you quoted and actually finish reading it

I suggest reading the part where it states what triggers the throttling (downloading more than the spacified amount for the package bewteen those hours) and what speed the connection is throttled to during that time. It then goes on to state that the throttle of the specified amount will be applied for a period of 5 hours, beginning from when you go over the specified amount.

I suggest you apply for a job with the mainstream media, your research skills are about as bad as any major newspaper.

For the 4Mbit package: (from that web page you quoted)

“During peak times, the top 3% of downloaders on the Size: L package download at least 800MB of traffic each, with the top 3% of uploaders uploading at least 325MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till 9pm) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 1Mb, with their upload speed set to 128Kb. This will last for 5 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.”
and what you observed was? you downloaded 800MB, and then had your speed throttled to 1Mbit? amazing…
Cisco boy Said on:
April 7th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

You don’t seem to get the % bit do you!

The 3% is not dynamic.. It is a threshold that VM have calculated based upon historic record gathering..
i.e. Gather the per MAC Address data for all of the customer base for a period of time (week, month etc) then order it by percentile, so top 1% average xMB over the 1600-2100 period, 1-2% do yMB, 2-3% do zMB etc.

You then set the STM Thresholds to impact the required %, so if for instance the average of the top 3% on L Tier is 800MB, then that is the limit that is set.

Then anyone who breaches the limit gets STM’d.. They then continue to monitor the % of people caught and increase or decrease the thresholds to stay within their published rate.

That is how the Cisco STM Feature works that is being used by VM
Duncan Said on:
April 7th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

John Doe, are you a virgin employee or a fanboi? I read the traffic managemnet page linked from the article i have to aggree with Stuart that that for a normal non tech internet user it just does not make sense and is badly worded and not advertised or easily accessable.

Cisco Boy Great explanation of some background of how the system works and much more constuctive thatn the idiot before you that posted.

Virgin throttling suckz and is clearly over subscription of services which should be tackled by OFCOM, we do need better advertising and regulation of the internet sector, plus you cannot complain to virgin for anything without having to write a lenghty letter on paper (Circa 1970’s style) and send to head office who never reply, thats from personal experience.
Cisco boy Said on:
April 8th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

Duncan, Happy to provide info on the technology..

Whether it is a matter of dealing with over subscription or not is a matter of opinion.. If as an ISP Virgin Media feel that the top 3% of downloaders use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth compared to the other 97% then they have the right to manage that 3%. However I do feel that they need to consider historical usage and use a system that is more dynamic or intelligent.

i.e. Due to to the fact that STM limits are set using Historical Usage Data they do not discriminate between the habitual downloader doing multiple Terrabytes per month and the occasional heavy downloader that does a few large multi GB downloads per month.

In my view if they introduced something based upon the Packet Cable Multimedia Standards they would be able to track usage of each user and apply management on an individual basis and if they wanted apply increasing pressure to those habitual ‘abusers’ whilst using historic records to see that someone that is currently downloading a large file doesn’t do this all the time and therefore let them go ahead and complete at full speed.

VM do need to do something as if they are in the position of most ISPs in the UK the top 5% of downloaders are using upwards of 40% of the available bandwidth, such that if they were to actually tell those 5% to ‘go take their business elsewhere’ they would probably not have to upgrade their network for some time and still offer top speeds.
Dan Said on:
April 10th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

Well, I’m all behind that what says that it’s not only the top percentage that get capped. I get capped daily and sometimes I don’t download until 8pm and I’m capped within 20 minutes.

I’m not going to complain, regardless on whether I should or not. I simply don’t like it and I will change provider.
s4vva Said on:
April 11th, 2008 at 8:50 am

The problem is 800MB is tiny by todays standards. Also why throttle all traffic? Why not just throttle certain protocols i.e. p2p?

Are all ISP’s going down this road, or are any left that give you the service offered?

Pages: [1] 2 3 » Show All

Shamus McFartfinger Said on:
April 6th, 2008 at 10:26 am

I don’t see what you’re complaining about. Things are worse in other parts of the world. Let’s do a couple of quick comparisons against what I pay in Australia.

You: £25 per month (around $54 AUD)
Me: $130 AUD per month (around £60)

You: Top speed – 4MB/sec
Me: Top speed – (limited by distance from the local exchange)750k/sec

Things can always be worse. Be happy with what you have. I know I am.

Regards from Brisbane, Australia.

Quartz Said on:
April 6th, 2008 at 11:19 am

Nicely written article Stewart.

Whilst many folks often believe they are being throttled the true number is often hard to come by and any empirical tests as you have undertaken above are more than welcome to help guage the true figure, I concur with the idea of root cause being over-subscribing of the service.

Stuart Said on:
April 6th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

Hi Shamus,

First off great name

I agree that the connection we tested on was by no way the worst or most expensive in the world compared to prices on other continents. You are obviously using ADSL and our tests were carried out over a cable network although Virgin also do ADSL, those users suffer the exact same problem with distance from the exchange and speeds, some customers reportedly receiving as little as 3kb/s max during peak times without being throttled.

The main aim of the article above is to show that Virgin do not limit only the top 3% of their customers as claimed, if you download your limit during peak times you will be throttled whether you are in the top 3% or not.

Before th entertainment industry can consider digital distribution as a serious alternative ISP’s must provide consumers with the bandwidth to use these services. At the moment that’s being stifled by bandwidth throttling. We also need better regualtions on advertising in the UK so that ISP must declare all parts of their service and make it easy visible from the purchase/advertising page, at the moment Virgns advertising, statments are very misleading bordering on complete bulls**t.

Tony W Said on:
April 6th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

i compleatly agree with you i am a virgin customer amnd i a on 4 meg broadband my web is cut bk severley at 4pm till 9 pm i run a web room and at between those times find it imposable to hold the room were my net is reduced. but im still expected to pay for the full 4 meg and im not in the so called top 3%.
and the other thing with virgin i do not agree with is the £5 penilty for not paying by direct debit and anoth £5 for a late payment charge there excuse for the £5 penility for paying through a pay point is handling charge were and wot are thay handling it gets payed straight into there aqccount the same way as a DD so why the £5 charge , totaly unacseptable behaviour.

John Doe Said on:
April 7th, 2008 at 8:10 am

You must have a very short attention span, I suggest you go back to that webpage you quoted and actually finish reading it

I suggest reading the part where it states what triggers the throttling (downloading more than the spacified amount for the package bewteen those hours) and what speed the connection is throttled to during that time. It then goes on to state that the throttle of the specified amount will be applied for a period of 5 hours, beginning from when you go over the specified amount.

I suggest you apply for a job with the mainstream media, your research skills are about as bad as any major newspaper.

For the 4Mbit package: (from that web page you quoted)

“During peak times, the top 3% of downloaders on the Size: L package download at least 800MB of traffic each, with the top 3% of uploaders uploading at least 325MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till 9pm) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 1Mb, with their upload speed set to 128Kb. This will last for 5 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.”
and what you observed was? you downloaded 800MB, and then had your speed throttled to 1Mbit? amazing…

Cisco boy Said on:
April 7th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

You don’t seem to get the % bit do you!

The 3% is not dynamic.. It is a threshold that VM have calculated based upon historic record gathering..
i.e. Gather the per MAC Address data for all of the customer base for a period of time (week, month etc) then order it by percentile, so top 1% average xMB over the 1600-2100 period, 1-2% do yMB, 2-3% do zMB etc.

You then set the STM Thresholds to impact the required %, so if for instance the average of the top 3% on L Tier is 800MB, then that is the limit that is set.

Then anyone who breaches the limit gets STM’d.. They then continue to monitor the % of people caught and increase or decrease the thresholds to stay within their published rate.

That is how the Cisco STM Feature works that is being used by VM

Duncan Said on:
April 7th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

John Doe, are you a virgin employee or a fanboi? I read the traffic managemnet page linked from the article i have to aggree with Stuart that that for a normal non tech internet user it just does not make sense and is badly worded and not advertised or easily accessable.

Cisco Boy Great explanation of some background of how the system works and much more constuctive thatn the idiot before you that posted.

Virgin throttling suckz and is clearly over subscription of services which should be tackled by OFCOM, we do need better advertising and regulation of the internet sector, plus you cannot complain to virgin for anything without having to write a lenghty letter on paper (Circa 1970’s style) and send to head office who never reply, thats from personal experience.

Cisco boy Said on:
April 8th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

Duncan, Happy to provide info on the technology..

Whether it is a matter of dealing with over subscription or not is a matter of opinion.. If as an ISP Virgin Media feel that the top 3% of downloaders use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth compared to the other 97% then they have the right to manage that 3%. However I do feel that they need to consider historical usage and use a system that is more dynamic or intelligent.

i.e. Due to to the fact that STM limits are set using Historical Usage Data they do not discriminate between the habitual downloader doing multiple Terrabytes per month and the occasional heavy downloader that does a few large multi GB downloads per month.

In my view if they introduced something based upon the Packet Cable Multimedia Standards they would be able to track usage of each user and apply management on an individual basis and if they wanted apply increasing pressure to those habitual ‘abusers’ whilst using historic records to see that someone that is currently downloading a large file doesn’t do this all the time and therefore let them go ahead and complete at full speed.

VM do need to do something as if they are in the position of most ISPs in the UK the top 5% of downloaders are using upwards of 40% of the available bandwidth, such that if they were to actually tell those 5% to ‘go take their business elsewhere’ they would probably not have to upgrade their network for some time and still offer top speeds.

Dan Said on:
April 10th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

Well, I’m all behind that what says that it’s not only the top percentage that get capped. I get capped daily and sometimes I don’t download until 8pm and I’m capped within 20 minutes.

I’m not going to complain, regardless on whether I should or not. I simply don’t like it and I will change provider.

s4vva Said on:
April 11th, 2008 at 8:50 am

The problem is 800MB is tiny by todays standards. Also why throttle all traffic? Why not just throttle certain protocols i.e. p2p?

Are all ISP’s going down this road, or are any left that give you the service offered?

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