I think the issue most have is the way VM advertises and promises so much.

You sell on speed, and many people getting the highest speed a lot of the time, then it will attract those who want to use the speed, rather than just check their web mail and shop on Amazon.

Watching night after night of TV via lovefilm and netflix mean you don't have to be a bandwidth junkie to use a lot of data these days.

It was never 50 people sharing 0.5 Meg. It would have been more like 200 sharing 2 Meg, or a few thousand sharing 34 Mbps in the early days.

The differences in how contention ratios behave between cable and DSL has been a debate that has never ended since DSL was rolled out and not just in the UK.

I said that it is correct throttle users who simply want to download the internet. There are not many of these heavy users who are not downloading illegal content.

So what is the point of having 100mb over 20mb ?

Do you honestly think your broadband connection will be faster browsing web pages or video streaming ?

Video streaming uses a small buffer over udp ports as a result of no error correction so having a higher bandwidth connection will benefit you for about 10-30 seconds before you stream, so it is negligible once again whatever virgin media package you have regardless of what they advertise.

Your defeating the object of having 100mbit or 60 mbit or 30 mbit if you think that downloading content off the internet should be throttled.

for example you download bf3 from steam on your 120mbit connection but then get throttled 1/3 of the way through and then get upset as you have to wait even longer to play with your friends. That is the exact reason why I left virgin media in the first place because when you want to download content of a substantial size you will have to play by their rules.

You prolonged attitude concerning throttling of downstream / upstream is the exact reason why many of us rather stay on 21cn adsl2+ then move over to virgin media. but remember this does not discount the current problems in many areas of the country concerning contention rather than throttling.

How do you know if you are being throttled or if it s a contention issue?. How do you differentiate between the two when you ring up technical support based india?. If it does get resolved how long do you have wait ?.

Another reason why I stay away from virgin media.

I really don't understand why you are getting so het up.

No customer has to take into account the problems of a supplier. It really is that simple.

Virgin sell one service and then supply one that is inferior.

It is not my (or your) responsibility to take into account customers who 'download the internet' it is theirs.

Neither of us has a contract with the downloaders, we have one with Virgin. I only have the contract with them to supply internet services. Your contract (or contracts) may be for internet supply or other areas of Law including employment.

Customers rely on the expertise of their supplier, it would be totally unreasonable to expect customers to be experts in the internet. In fact if Virgin make that assumption, why haven't I ever been given a test to qualify me as a customer?

I do object to your attempting to categorise anyone who disagrees with your somewhat biased viewpoint as either un educated (even stupid) or a cheapskate.

You see, I don't have to be an internet expert or a spendthrift to be a Virgin customer they happily take my money every month. I might even say that they cater for the stupid customer with their script based Indian call centres and questionable description of product capability.

I pay full whack for a service that has only worked properly since I signed up for a Sam Knows box and expect to get what I pay for.

I really do wish you had been one of my customers when I ran a business, life would have been so much simpler and more profitable - the only problem being my own business ethics, I didn't lie to, cheat or steal from customers.

Please calm down, you are almost convincing me you are a Virgin employee paid by results. There is really no need for things to get out of hand. We agree about the problem but not about responsibility and cause that is all.

Be happy,

Jon

Is the contention ratio applied at the exchange on DSL?

It used to be contended at the ISP (and congested at the exchange) but since BT did away with the old technology and moved on to digital networks they are contended at the node I believe.

There used to be a lot of discussion in the entanet forum about lack of bandwidth and they even had a page where you could check how much was being used.

This meant some ISPs used to have "bad boy pipes" where all the heavy users were connected and had to fight it out amongst themselves

Edited by deleted (Tue 02-Apr-13 18:56:04)

I don't think users downloading content should be throttled. There are people who spend their days just downloading anything and everything they can off torrent and Usenet sites. One person I know half the time does not even get round to watching everything they have downloaded. These are the type of users who should be throttled in my opinion.

At the end of the day even while throttled my connection is exceedingly faster than yours so your example of downloading bf3 is flawed to say the least.

Some people are just never happy unless they are moaning or complaining. In 10 years Ive had to phone them on two occasions and you say I am the one with too much time on my hands.

That is a great idea.

Im not getting het up I just think its unreasonable to pay peanuts and expect a leased line level of service.

THIS IS SHOUTING.

I uppercased the term "UPTO".

As you didn't specify "unlimited" I was under the assumption you were on about the max speed that VM advertise then don't give due to their oversubcribed network.

They don't have an upper limit so are therefore unlimited. They have an artificial limit due to TM, but even Sky have a limit. Max speed 24x7 per month has a limit.