New New Traffic Management Policy

Could they have come up with a more complicated scheme?

I have some other scenarios if people can answer them as the Virgin examples are pretty vague.

If I download 2750 MB I will be speed limited for one hour. Provided I download less than 750 MB during that hour the limiter will expire and I can then download another 2750 MB before the limiter will be applied again?

If I download 2750 MB I will be speed limited for one hour. If I download more than 750 MB during that hour the limiter will be applied for two hours. Is that a fresh two hours or does it include the part hour from the first trigger?

The mechanism for retriggering the 2 hour limiter is not clear at all so I will just give a real world example:

I stream a 120 minute HD movie which comes in at a total of 4.5 GB. After that the connection is just used for regular browsing. How much am I limited by and for how long? What would I have to do trigger a further two hour extension?

In the movie example, my Sky Box doesn't actually stream as such it just downloads it, let's say the download only takes 75 minutes and therefore the connection is unused for at least 45 minutes. How does that change severity and scope of the limiter?

The 2750 MBytes in an hour is about 6 Mbits/s so if your kit downloads 4.5 GB flat out it is very likely to exceed the limit unless congestion prevents it.

If I download 2750 MB I will be speed limited for one hour. Provided I download less than 750 MB during that hour the limiter will expire and I can then download another 2750 MB before the limiter will be applied again?

Correct - in this scenario you can download more at line speed than with the old system.

If I download 2750 MB I will be speed limited for one hour. If I download more than 750 MB during that hour the limiter will be applied for two hours. Is that a fresh two hours or does it include the part hour from the first trigger?
Think it is a new two hour

I stream a 120 minute HD movie which comes in at a total of 4.5 GB. After that the connection is just used for regular browsing. How much am I limited by and for how long? What would I have to do trigger a further two hour extension?
Limited by 30% as you go past the 2.75GB figure by 40% for what is left of the hour and another two hours.

n the movie example, my Sky Box doesn't actually stream as such it just downloads it, let's say the download only takes 75 minutes and therefore the connection is unused for at least 45 minutes. How does that change severity and scope of the limiter?
Harder to say as right on the edge, but believe the first hour triggers, and you go just a few Meg over the 2 hour limit so that is triggered two. In reality a 4.5GB file should arrive faster than 60 minutes on the XL 30 services.

andrew you have the old data to put in same post?

Added a link http://www.thinkbroadband.com/images/news/5790-virgi...

Was already linked on the news, and grabbed it as an image so people have it for comparison

I find this bit at the bottom of http://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic... interesting...

Heavy users: Heavy users can cause peak traffic volumes to exceed the engineered maximum load. In practice this refers to a very small proportion of users of a network whose use is excessive to the extent that it impacts on other users.

It looks to me very much like an admission that their network flies so close to the wind that a single heavy user can have an impact on others around them. This is nothing new but it's the first time I've seen such an admission. On ADSL the far larger pipes in relation to sold speeds make it pretty much impossible for a single user to have a noticeable impact on others. Perhaps VM ought to stick to selling only what their network can support rather than keep coming up with ever more convoluted schemes which still won't guarantee that there are no heavily congested areas which stay that way for an age.

More like the M-way matrix signs slowing peolpe down to a reasonable speed that ALL can do but getting there just the same.

Interesting, but remove the bragging rights of the 120 Meg users and what makes their network something 4 million people will pay money to have broadband on?

Perhaps turn off a few more TV channels to bond for broadband more, and don't increase speeds. FTTC is not going to beat 120 Mbps for some time, so it might be a way to go.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Interesting, but remove the bragging rights of the 120 Meg users and what makes their network something 4 million people will pay money to have broadband on?

Nothing much I suspect although the bulk of users are on the low speed tiers and they are staying with VM for some reason or other - inertia and some waiting for FTTC rollout probably.

It suits me because I have a duff phone line that Openreach failed to fix in 5 visits. When I decided to risk FTTC Openreach decided not to bother to turn up and install it so I stuck with cable. In my area now the jitter is pretty high and the SamKnows monitor shows it down to an average over the day of 40Mbps quite often (I have the 60Mbps product) and I suspect that any 100Mbps users will be getting the same. Without doubt FTTC should give better performance here but I'm not going to risk it - better the devil I know.