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Virgin throttling my download speed?

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Old 17 October 2008, 10:49 PM
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kingofturds
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Default Virgin throttling my download speed?

The last few days in the afternoon I seem to have dismall dl speeds from my 8 meg line



Yet when I surf the net before work at 5 in the morning I am running at nearly 9000 kb/s I have had no warnings about throttling my dl speed and have reset my router numerous times, so am at a loss to what's going on
(wep secured btw)
Old 17 October 2008, 11:06 PM
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Something else must be up as download speeds are always mint with virgin

I just done this on my laptop thru a wireless router,


Old 18 October 2008, 12:09 AM
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Originally Posted by kingofturds
The last few days in the afternoon I seem to have dismall dl speeds from my 8 meg line



Yet when I surf the net before work at 5 in the morning I am running at nearly 9000 kb/s I have had no warnings about throttling my dl speed and have reset my router numerous times, so am at a loss to what's going on
(wep secured btw)
Have you been on another planet for the last 2 years? Virgin adopt traffic shaping during peak times. They don't warn you about your bandwidth they just do it.
Old 18 October 2008, 12:56 AM
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I thought it was only throttled if you went over a certain download amount and then Virgin shape the entire connection not layer 7 protocols as most ISP's do(Pimmo would know the shaping amounts). Never take a speed test as gospel however that result is very slow.

Network may be getting very congested where you are at the moment or you are downloading too much in the day? I doubt though Virgin would throttle it as much as the test score would suggest though.

WEP wireless security is terrible BTW, look into using WPA/WPA2 with a long password. Is the connection that slow using a wired connection (just to rule it out)

Last edited by mike1210; 18 October 2008 at 01:05 AM.
Old 18 October 2008, 01:00 AM
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Edit:

Package FAQs - Help me - Virgin Media

Last edited by mike1210; 18 October 2008 at 02:38 PM.
Old 18 October 2008, 08:14 AM
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Originally Posted by bob269
Have you been on another planet for the last 2 years? Virgin adopt traffic shaping during peak times. They don't warn you about your bandwidth they just do it.
Surely they would not thottle it down to 70 kb/s though
Old 18 October 2008, 08:20 AM
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Originally Posted by mike1210
Virgin Media Broadband: Broadband connection speeds

Are you hitting those limits in the daytime?
I am at work usually until 6-7pm, I have changed my default password to my router in case next door has been using it.
Is there anyway of checking what websites have been accessed and when through my router?
Old 18 October 2008, 11:35 AM
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Originally Posted by kingofturds
Is there anyway of checking what websites have been accessed and when through my router?
Depends on the router but websites I'm guessing no. However, it may show you wireless devices that have been connected to it over the past few days.

As well as changing the default password. Change from WEP to WPA or WPA2 encryption for better security if the router supports it. Make a long passowrd here

Generate a Secure Password - kurtm.net
Old 18 October 2008, 02:19 PM
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If you on 8mb your ADSL .. so I cant help... sorry
Old 18 October 2008, 02:33 PM
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Ah yes my bad I assumed it was the cable service KOT was on.

My mate was with Virgin ASDL and the speed used to grind to halt also during peak times and wasn't much faster off peak. Put him onto Zen and service was 1000 times better

this was one of the comments on the broadband genie website on the reviews section

If you are the sort of person who enjoys bare legged walks through brambles and stinging nettles, or a swim in weaver and jelly fish infested waters then Virgin Media ADSL is for you. If you welcome the challenge of spending what seems like half your life on the phone to people whose 8th language is English and clearly know nothing about anything and paying through the nose for the privilege then VM ADSL is for you. In short - if you are an imbecile and need stress in your life then you know which ISP to sign up to. If on the other hand none of the above applies to you, well you know which ISP not to sign up with...

taken from

Virgin Media ADSL Broadband - Broadband Genie
Old 18 October 2008, 02:46 PM
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Virgin ADSL can be really slow, what virgin did is purchase another ISP and brand it as Virgin Media which I think was a big mistake. Virgin cable which we have is much better, and I allways seem to get 10mb through it which is what we pay for. A friend tried virgin ADSL and really struggled to get anywhere above 2mb for his 8mb connection.

Virgin do throttle the connection speeds, but not down as low as the OP is experiencing. Our 10mb connection is throttled down to 2mb when the bandwith is exceeded.
Old 20 October 2008, 12:04 PM
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"The last few days in the afternoon I seem to have dismall dl speeds from my 8 meg line"

Thats the joys of contended ADSL when the kids get home from school and start bit torrenting music and surfing for **** and using MSN.

Its likely to be down to local network overload, if your in a densely populated residential area this is quite common.

When the telco's got into unbundling the exchanges they worked out that they could stick way more people onto a connection than BT ever did so its not uncommon for you to be contended with 70 connections (with BT it was 50). In simple terms this means the capacity out of the exchange and onto the web is spread very thinly and when lots of people hook up it will slow down.
Old 20 October 2008, 06:54 PM
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I have the same problem, except i'm on cable and use this test
Virgin Media UK Broadband Speed Test

last 4 tests
speed: 72kbs / 114kbs / 108kbs / 58kbs

typical speeds are around 2meg and I should be on 10meg. I am also a business customer! Everytime I ring I get the run around, do this, reset this, reset that and an engineer comes out, but this is usually first thing in the morning (when I normally dont have a problem) and he prods the modem, makes a few phone calls, critisises my £200 router then leaves with a decent download speed. Within a week its back to normal!

I dont fileshare, I dont bit torrent but I do do a lot of surfing, email and I have a development server at my house.

Plus I have no choice, its virgin or nothing as there is no BT.
Old 20 October 2008, 07:10 PM
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Old 20 October 2008, 09:03 PM
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Their customer service makes BT's look professional Thanks for the replies I am reali sing these clowns are a bigger bunch of shi ts than my last provider
Old 21 October 2008, 05:09 PM
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Got to say that sucks
Considering im in the middle of nowhere, mine (best one) was this, not bad for about 2.5 miles from the exchange on 8mb broadband

http://www.speedtest.net/result/342534620.png

Also remember that it will vary due to the ammount of users that are on the dslam card too.

Tony

Last edited by TonyBurns; 21 October 2008 at 05:13 PM.
Old 21 October 2008, 08:52 PM
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Are you actually experiencing slow downloads from other websites or is it just when you use Speedtest.net. I say this because I've just tried it and it gives a really slow result, but when I download through Usenet my connection is maxxed.
Old 27 October 2008, 07:15 AM
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No problems with download speed here!!

Old 27 October 2008, 11:39 AM
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Originally Posted by JackClark
No problems with download speed here!!

Is that work or home

Tony
Old 28 October 2008, 09:58 AM
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Originally Posted by TonyBurns
Is that work or home

Tony
That's a standard connection here in Sapporo.
Old 28 October 2008, 10:13 AM
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I'm on Virgins cheapest home broadband, just done a speedtest and go this:



Is that good / bad or average?

And why does it think I'm less than 50 miles from london when I'm 250 miles away?
Old 28 October 2008, 07:59 PM
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Heres mine from sunny devon @ 7PM

8MB ADSL line

Old 28 October 2008, 08:01 PM
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I think that SteveBT lives on TVTE next to Teleworst's old office. I get about 19Mbit of my 20Mbit. Can't really complain.
Old 28 October 2008, 08:14 PM
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mines storming ahead this evening





Been like this since Sunday. Spoke to tech support and they agreed there is a problem and are sending me another modem. Which will make 6!
Old 28 October 2008, 08:24 PM
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The download speeds I have on virgin are usually OK,

But my ping responses on virgin have been awful as of recent months; lost packets and slow/timed out responses. Along with signal drop outs on my upstream link. So I'm getting some latency issues, annoying to say the least.

Seems the test to the Maidenhead server is a bit slow today



Having said that, testing via the London server shows the pings seem ok:

Old 28 October 2008, 09:16 PM
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I'm with BE and their not too good at the moment either.



I'm thinking of switching to Virgin 20mb cable, anybody got anything good to say about them?
Old 28 October 2008, 09:28 PM
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Virgin do throttle the connection speeds during peak times once you have exceeded X limit
Old 28 October 2008, 09:42 PM
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Originally Posted by BOB'5
Virgin do throttle the connection speeds during peak times once you have exceeded X limit
I've been on holiday for 2 weeks out of this month, so that limit must be set real low!

Gonna see what happends with the new modem and if no change, i'm gonna bite the bullet and get a bt line in. As its business broadband its supposed to be better then the home account, and its definately not! I was okay on Sunday morning at 3am but I dont work normally at 3am.
Old 28 October 2008, 09:46 PM
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Virgin Media Broadband: Broadband Speed
Old 28 October 2008, 09:47 PM
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Has all the info on there ^^


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