In reply to a post by kwikbreaks:

But what are you using it for?

I was using it just for general browsing (+ youtube, iplayer etc) not downloading or P2P. General browsing is bad enough let alone trying to download anything. I'm not using it now because it didn't help.

A few points:

A lot of people on this thread have mentioned STM, what is this?

Also, how do you contact the CEO?

Its also the same on sky broadband in the evenings, fine all night and throughout the day but once peak time hits (7pm-11pm most nights) speeds nose-dive.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

All that will fix it is hard limits

30 Meg, 100GB per month
60 Meg, 250GB per month
100/120 Meg, 600GB per month

No funny traffic management, just plain limits. That way people can't cheat with VPN's etc.

Alas the war with Sky and BT Retail, means it won't happen, until both of them also blink.

I'm afraid I disagree completely, Mr.S.

Hard monthly limits won't help anyone attempting to watch a YouTube video at the same time that a decent number of other users on the same 'node' are downloading their monthly quota. The primary problem as I understand it is peak-time congestion, not the total monthly volume of data.

(I usually download around 150GB a month on a 20Mb connection but close to 99% of it is done automatically from 1am until 7am.)

You contact the CEO office by emailing the CEO - neil.berkett at virginmedia.co.uk I've used that method to complain about the Superhub. My first email had no response in over a day so I complained about that to the same email address and got a response apologising that my first email had been missed. The sender claimed to really be Mr Berkett. I also got the wretched superhub swapped out for a modem.

A VPN cannot speed up a connection. What it can do is conceal your identity and conceal the traffic type. Concealing traffic type is just what users of torrents want so that their traffic can avoid shaping (selective slowing down of some protocols). Free VPNs are slow and put any login data you may send through them at risk as you've no idea at all who runs them and has access to the logs etc.

STM is Subscriber Traffic Management - hardware controlled speed throttling - if you exceed the traffic limit imposed for your connection over a given period it will be throttled back by a specified amount for a specified time - http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.contr...

In reply to a post by ceedee:

I'm afraid I disagree completely, Mr.S

In general he's right although the numbers proposed may be wildly wrong. Off peak (say midnight til 8am) could probably be a free for all.

Monthly caps limit the amount of time the connection is in use and simple random variations of when subscribers use their allocations will ensure congestion isn't excessive - so long as the limits are correctly set. Upstream limits would be needed too as anybody constantly seeding even at rates reduced by STM will have an adverse effect on their area.

In reply to a post by ceedee:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

All that will fix it is hard limits

30 Meg, 100GB per month
60 Meg, 250GB per month
100/120 Meg, 600GB per month

No funny traffic management, just plain limits. That way people can't cheat with VPN's etc.

Alas the war with Sky and BT Retail, means it won't happen, until both of them also blink.

I'm afraid I disagree completely, Mr.S.

Hard monthly limits won't help anyone attempting to watch a YouTube video at the same time that a decent number of other users on the same 'node' are downloading their monthly quota. The primary problem as I understand it is peak-time congestion, not the total monthly volume of data.

(I usually download around 150GB a month on a 20Mb connection but close to 99% of it is done automatically from 1am until 7am.)

yep but what you forget is monthly limits will also reduce sales meaning less users on the pipe.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

yep but what you forget is monthly limits will also reduce sales meaning less users on the pipe.

..and what everybody forgets is that if VM revenue falls they'll spend even less (if that's possible) upgrading the oversubscribed areas.

I stick by my original prediction - 10 years from now I doubt that this forum will have a cable section.

Following usual ISP practice those figures are download+upload

If the congestion gets worse, then VM may be faced with increased churn and premium users downgrading, affecting ARPU anyway.

Will be interesting to see how the 80/20 pans out on Sky

It might work but I'll lay odds that it will never be tried... VM is a marketing led company and they won't drop "unlimited" from their advertising lightly.