Virgin Media to apply more throttling

Something to watch out if you are on Virgin Media

"UK Internet Service Provider (ISP) Virgin Media has announced that it
will begin throttling both P2P and Newsgroup traffic at "Peak" times it
has emerged.

The ISP which advertises itself as "The fastest in the UK" and offers
speeds of up to 100mb has said it needs to throttle file sharing traffic
to prevent slowness in other areas such as online multiplayer gaming."

http://www.unitethecows.com/content/...ns-throttling-
p2p-traffic.html

Fastest or not, don't think I would go near them with the FUP they have
in place. Although bit of a moot point as not available up here anyway!



--
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On 08 Mar 2011 14:23:25 GMT, FooAtari
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Something to watch out if you are on Virgin Media
>
>"UK Internet Service Provider (ISP) Virgin Media has announced that it
>will begin throttling both P2P and Newsgroup traffic at "Peak" times it
>has emerged.
>
>The ISP which advertises itself as "The fastest in the UK" and offers
>speeds of up to 100mb has said it needs to throttle file sharing traffic
>to prevent slowness in other areas such as online multiplayer gaming."
>
>http://www.unitethecows.com/content/...ns-throttling-
>p2p-traffic.html
>
>Fastest or not, don't think I would go near them with the FUP they have
>in place. Although bit of a moot point as not available up here anyway!

Glad I Sugared them (Virgin Media, you're fired').

"Scott" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On 08 Mar 2011 14:23:25 GMT, FooAtari
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>Something to watch out if you are on Virgin Media
>>
>>"UK Internet Service Provider (ISP) Virgin Media has announced
>>that it
>>will begin throttling both P2P and Newsgroup traffic at "Peak"
>>times it
>>has emerged.
>>
>>The ISP which advertises itself as "The fastest in the UK" and
>>offers
>>speeds of up to 100mb has said it needs to throttle file
>>sharing traffic
>>to prevent slowness in other areas such as online multiplayer
>>gaming."
>>
>>http://www.unitethecows.com/content/...ns-throttling-
>>p2p-traffic.html
>>
>>Fastest or not, don't think I would go near them with the FUP
>>they have
>>in place. Although bit of a moot point as not available up here
>>anyway!
>
> Glad I Sugared them (Virgin Media, you're fired').
>



Always amazes me that people read what they want to read.

Virgin have announced that they will be limiting <uploads> during
peak times. That is the new bit - they have been traffic shaping
downloads for ages. And again I suspect they have not explained
it all as reading between the lines I think the limits are being
put on large uploads to newsgroups which suggests binary groups.
I don't see how they could have problems with the odd few K of
ASCII such as we poor souls emit?


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 21:00:51 -0000, Woody wrote:

> Always amazes me that people read what they want to read.
>
> Virgin have announced that they will be limiting <uploads> during
> peak times. That is the new bit - they have been traffic shaping
> downloads for ages. And again I suspect they have not explained
> it all as reading between the lines I think the limits are being
> put on large uploads to newsgroups which suggests binary groups.
> I don't see how they could have problems with the odd few K of
> ASCII such as we poor souls emit?

Been with Virgin for 10 years and never had problems with text newsgroups.

Until this week !!! Big problems since Saturday !! *Very* slow and often
unable to connect - not good.

Unless it improves I will have to leave Virgin. I'm not paying £20 pm for
this nonsense :-(
--
Regards,

Hugh Jampton

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 21:00:51 -0000, "Woody" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:


<snip>
> And again I suspect they have not explained
>it all as reading between the lines I think the limits are being
>put on large uploads to newsgroups which suggests binary groups.
>I don't see how they could have problems with the odd few K of
>ASCII such as we poor souls emit?

I can assure you that at "peak" times it can take 5 to 15 seconds to download a
single text post on VM.


--
Geo

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Geo <hw9j-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> I can assure you that at "peak" times it can take 5 to 15 seconds to download a
> single text post on VM.

A typical text post is around 5KB (or less), so this would suggest
Virgin are rate-limiting it to 1KB/s. Even for them, that seems
somewhat excessive.

- river.

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:33:04 +0000 (GMT), River Tarnell <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
>Geo <hw9j-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> I can assure you that at "peak" times it can take 5 to 15 seconds to download a
>> single text post on VM.
>
>A typical text post is around 5KB (or less), so this would suggest
>Virgin are rate-limiting it to 1KB/s. Even for them, that seems
>somewhat excessive.

I think they pick a fixed total bandwidth for P2P + USENET so as more people
(try) to use it each individual receives less.
And yes - it is way down on dial-up speeds.

--
Geo

On 10/03/2011 14:40, Geo wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:33:04 +0000 (GMT), River Tarnell <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
>> Geo <hw9j-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>> I can assure you that at "peak" times it can take 5 to 15 seconds to download a
>>> single text post on VM.
>>
>> A typical text post is around 5KB (or less), so this would suggest
>> Virgin are rate-limiting it to 1KB/s. Even for them, that seems
>> somewhat excessive.
>
> I think they pick a fixed total bandwidth for P2P + USENET so as more people
> (try) to use it each individual receives less.
> And yes - it is way down on dial-up speeds.
>

That doesn't sound right to me.

Are you sure they aren't throttling by delaying connections rather than
limiting bandwidth.

Geo wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:33:04 +0000 (GMT), River Tarnell <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
>> Geo <hw9j-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>> I can assure you that at "peak" times it can take 5 to 15 seconds to download a
>>> single text post on VM.
>> A typical text post is around 5KB (or less), so this would suggest
>> Virgin are rate-limiting it to 1KB/s. Even for them, that seems
>> somewhat excessive.
>
> I think they pick a fixed total bandwidth for P2P + USENET so as more people
> (try) to use it each individual receives less.
> And yes - it is way down on dial-up speeds.
>
yes.

The simple way to do this is to shunt packets with NNTP headers into a
queue, and trickle them out one at a time.


Eventually the sending machines will not be receiving ACKS, and will
stop sending. Until an ack gets through. The net effect is to apply
total throttling to the entire NNTP/P2P traffic.


Its the same way you prioritise VOIP traffic, by always putting it at
the head of the queue. You can arrange to simply leave NNTP in the queue
till you have spare bandwidth.

its a vile way of delivering a substandard service when you have
congested links, by making sure that the least reputable (in your eyes)
and smallest consumer base gets pissed whilst most of your porn
surfing/gaming customers get what they think they have paid for.

The reality is that it dispalyes a real financial problem in the ISP
itself. To put it bluntly, the are either not charging enough to deliver
a quality service and pay for enough bandwidth, or else they are money
grabbing bastards who just don't care.

I dont have up to date figures, but my guess is that a reasonable cost
of ADSL is about £7.50 a month plus about £1 for every gigabyte thereafter.

Basically to pay 'haulage charges'

And furthermore, if you want decent evening and weekend performance for
e.g. gaming and usenet, go with a more 'business' oriented supplier.
They clag up during the day, and have loads of weekend capacity. In fact
to them, domestic customers are an additional source of revenue that
costs little extra to add on, and uses spare capacity up nicely.

Nick wrote:
> On 10/03/2011 14:40, Geo wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:33:04 +0000 (GMT), River Tarnell <(E-Mail Removed)>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
>>> Geo <hw9j-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>>> I can assure you that at "peak" times it can take 5 to 15 seconds to download a
>>>> single text post on VM.
>>> A typical text post is around 5KB (or less), so this would suggest
>>> Virgin are rate-limiting it to 1KB/s. Even for them, that seems
>>> somewhat excessive.
>> I think they pick a fixed total bandwidth for P2P + USENET so as more people
>> (try) to use it each individual receives less.
>> And yes - it is way down on dial-up speeds.
>>
>
> That doesn't sound right to me.
>
> Are you sure they aren't throttling by delaying connections rather than
> limiting bandwidth.

It amounts to the same thing. The only difference being if you delay the
SYN packets or all the packets with NNTP port addresses.

Delay = throttling in TCP/IP land. Speed is (TCP window size over
delay). When operating below the raw speed capacity of any given link.

That's how TCP adjusts to slow links: the data is buffered into the
link, and emerges delayed..after a bit, the lack of response from the
far end causes the sending machines to stall, buffer and wait..

Throttling introduces selective buffering and delay to particular packet
types.