In reply to a post by adslmax:

Virgin Media is the biggest liars! They still using traffic management on download but will not telling you (their secret) to avoid ASA complaints even thought they say the traffic management is no longer on download. They still using it in secret.

Virgin Media don't use Traffic Management on Download any more, However they have told me that in the worst situations (very bad over-utilization areas) they do use a Traffic management profile between 4pm and Midnight so that everyone can get some sort of connection.

I know this because I'm currently affected by very bad congestion in Crawley area and traffic management has been used to keep people connected and browsing (at least) then when midnight hits and traffic management drops off the connections end up at a standstill.

Information from Virgin Media Technicians & Engineers.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Virgin Media don't use Traffic Management on Download any more, However they have told me that in the worst situations (very bad over-utilization areas) they do use a Traffic management profile between 4pm and Midnight so that everyone can get some sort of connection.

I know this because I'm currently affected by very bad congestion in Crawley area and traffic management has been used to keep people connected and browsing (at least) then when midnight hits and traffic management drops off the connections end up at a standstill.

Information from Virgin Media Technicians & Engineers.

Will forward that ASA. Still lied from virgin media!

Edited by adslmax (Fri 21-Nov-14 00:30:17)

Yes, I believe this to be the case MrSaffron.... Thank you for your feedback MrSaffron...

I think the guy at virgin's call centre may have given the game away when I first called them about this 4 weeks ago.
He said that they had recently installed a new 4G mobile mast near my location, and he was wondering if that may have had an effect & causing some kind of congestion. When he asked me when my issue first happened and when I told him about a week ago, he said that the new 4G mast went live around the same time. So now I think about more, unless this is just a complete coincidence, I believe this to be the problem.

Thanks again MrSaffron...

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by mrmarktigger:

"You will get some websites over 3G internet that you won't get on virgin cable internet. Just like you won't get Sky movies on freeview televison!" I was dumbfounded & almost speechless that he said that.

Classic. Made my day

Yes indeed Andrue. It makes me chuckle every time I think about him saying that hehehe

In reply to a post by ian72:

Sounds like congestion and would guess that VM prioritise Ookla over their network.

I believe this to be the case too ian72. Thanks for your feedback.

I tried OOKLA again the this morning. My first test gave 6.2 Mbps d/l and 11Mbps upload.
So I clicked retest after and got 128Mbps d/l on same VM server. Almost like it went oops! better show him a good one since he's a customer of ours! hehehe

In reply to a post by glasspath:

Setting up a Broadband Quality Monitor from this site on your IP address is a good way to see if you are experiencing congestion. I can see from mine that the network gets busier between 4pm and 10pm as ping times are longer and this also coincides with a reduction in download speed from the nominal 100Mbit/s (also on Virgin). Upload, though slower at 6Mbit/s, seems to be less affected. That said, I have never seen the type of drastic reduction you are getting and the sudden onset is also surprising. The technician's comments are laughable but he may only be qualified to diagnose/setup your local connection and may be unaware of a fault or overload deeper in the network. I would try to escalate this fault again and also try the Virgin forums as has been suggested. Also Ookla speed test results seem to give similar results to thinkbroadband for me.

Thank you for your feedback glasspath. I will try Setting up a Broadband Quality Monitor from this site and see what happens.

what I am getting does not seem like traffic management though. It's exactly the same 24/7 I tried downloads & updates in the middle of the night at 3am for example and it's exactly the same.
itunes updates & sony android updates never finish. Dozens of uk websites (freeview.co.uk, parcel2go just to mention 2) are totally unavailable 24/7.

I have never experienced any kind of traffic management before & never seen any kind of slowdown in the 6 years total i've been with VM . I had 60Meg with them for 5 years before this 120Meg, which has been over a year. It's never missed a beat until 5 weeks ago, and has now gone from all, to almost nothing. A 56k modem would be better.

Thanks once again for your feedback, I will give it a go.

I see no reason why a new 4G mast locally should affect you on a cable broadband service.

The masts use their own dedicated backhaul and do not use the Virgin Media cable network, and Virgin Media make big noise about how their service is not affected by distance and noise like the telephone based services.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Will forward that ASA. Still lied from virgin media!

Well I would much rather a slowed down connection than none at all!!

Bearing in mind I said in the worst situation, you are implying they enforce traffic management in the best situations too (which is incorrect, Trust me I would know the amount of traffic I throw through the Virgin Network on average)

Also I don't think my case would be looked at as traffic management as it is manually enforced on all connections after 4PM where traffic management is enforced once users hit a set limit. "Repeatedly"

Mine is more of a bandwidth limitation with prioritisation so more of a QOS profile than Traffic Management.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

I see no reason why a new 4G mast locally should affect you on a cable broadband service.

The masts use their own dedicated backhaul and do not use the Virgin Media cable network, and Virgin Media make big noise about how their service is not affected by distance and noise like the telephone based services.

Thank you for your feedback MrSaffon.
Maybe it's a coincidence. But it did flag up when he entered my account number. I forget his exact wording but it did sound like that it was somehow connected and not a dedicated connection from the mast.
I guess I'll never know for sure

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

I see no reason why a new 4G mast locally should affect you on a cable broadband service.

The masts use their own dedicated backhaul and do not use the Virgin Media cable network, and Virgin Media make big noise about how their service is not affected by distance and noise like the telephone based services.

P.S. Just to clarify, he seemed indicate the the broadband from the mast was not a dedicated service and somehow connected. Not that the mast it's self or any kind of radio / telephony was interfering.