Hello all,

Anyone got the 50mb Virgin Media broadband service? If so, do you know if there is any throttling on the line during peak hours?

Their site is a bit confusing, this page states:

Customers with Broadband size: XXL (50Mb) – your downstream usage excluding file sharing traffic (see below) remains unaffected and we’ll soon be increasing your upload speeds from 1.5Mb to 5Mb. However during peak times we’ll need to slow you back to 1.75Mb if your upload usage is particularly high.

But, this page has a chart on it stating the traffic shaping is not applicable to 50Mb customers.

They also claim that their shaping only affects peer 2 peer and Usenet, leaving normal web browsing, iPlayer, online gaming etc unaffected, which I’m abit sceptical of.

Moving house tomorrow and BT are wanting £130 to put a phone line in and to be honest I don’t want to hand the money grubbing ******* are more cash.

Looks like they’re just going to throttle the upstream if you do too much p2p stuff

I have their 20meg package and it’s always been steady without any noticeable throttling

They’re pretty good at giving you the bandwidth they say they are, tbh.

You can always run tests at various times and see what the results are?

I think the traffic shaping mostly refers to download speeds, not upload anyway?

I think the traffic shaping mostly refers to download speeds, not upload anyway?

Usually, yes.

Looks like they’re just going to throttle the upstream if you do too much p2p stuff

+1

I also typically find Virgin good for delivering on what they say.

I can’t offer any help in deciphering what they’re on about on thoe pages, but I can confirm what wwaswas says, above, about them being good at giving the bandwidth they claim.

Indeed, when an article came out recently stating that people in the UK were only getting a tiny percentage of the speed they were paying for, I checked mine (and have done since) and am always right near the top of the limit.

Some of the lads I play online gaming with use Virgin, they often complain about the throttling kicking in and effect their pings and downloads speeds.

same here – everytime i run a speed test, it’s always a nats whisker or two away from what they claim it should be – web is always reliable & appears to be quick. They are v.good for web if you’ve got the cable in your street.

I know they’re good at delivering actual speeds, just concerned that I won’t actually be able to download at those sspeeds all tthe time. I download a lot of media (legally I might add) which puts me off. I can see myself getting very annoyed at paying for 50Mb and only receiving 2Mb due to throttling.

Some of the lads I play online gaming with use Virgin, they often complain about the throttling kicking in and effect their pings and downloads speeds.

This concerns me.

I’m on Virgin, I pay for 10mb, and I speed check it sometimes. Occasionally it goes over 10mb, but right now it’s 9.87mb, which is about the lowest I’ve seen, TBH 🙂

Where you may have an issue is how many other 50Mb users are on the same node?
AFAIK Virgin have been upping the speeds over recent years without upgrading the infrastructure, particularly the CMTS boxes [EDIT: sorry, that’s the bit of kit that joins all the users to Virgin’s pipe to the outside world]

It’s not caused me or anyone else I know an issue yet but it may well do if you live surrounded by gamers and p2p users

The gaming issue is not download speed, rather a network latency issue (i.e. delay in your button press getting to the server).