virgin fixing speedtest results?

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

recently with the speedtest site update i have been doing speed tests on every pc i sit at and have started to notice a trend and it only seems to happen with virgin media.

right now being 10pm my speeds are being capped to 2mb.

but running spedtests on viritually every speed test site i can think of will result in stuttered results starting off by showing that my speed is being capped, then some kind of delimter kicks in on the virgin side ('ip address =speedtest= derestrict speed') showing the same final result. 10mb.

is this so virgin can claim that they ARE providing the service they claim to be? decieving customers?

anyone else want to try shed some light on this?

starting speed 'correct capped speed as its a peak time'
http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv318/I3R0K3N7FEET/Untitled1-2.jpg


final graph showing constant peaks and drops in connection speed

http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv318/I3R0K3N7FEET/Untitled2-3.jpg

similar behaviour is observed in other speed tests but no visualisation available.

ps< yes the screens are from 2 different runs but the result was the same <<

[Blighter]

http://d.pr/oSaX

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

awrh? :/

[Blighter]

Hmm... I'm sure I put a message on that :p

That's the screenshot I get from speedtest.net. Doesn't seem to be any spikes on my VM fibre service :)

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

ah right lol. what service you on? appparently 50mb+ isnt 'traffic managed' although in certain cases i know people get inconsistent speeds with VM 50mb+

[k3vst3r]

seem's ok for me

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1269951287.png

[Blighter]

I'm not sure as only rent a room here, I think it's the 10Mb service.

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

hmm maybe it is just virgin being pants in southampton :P

[Marv]

Seems to b fine for me. Jumps to around 18mb/s then rises to nearly 20mb/s by the end.

[Zaim]

All fine here:

http://i54.tinypic.com/2v2tdee.jpg

[therjw]

Ive had simular results as you where Im just having a game online or downloading where the connections suddenly drops to next to nothing normally in peak times however it is unpredictable and tends to mostly happen for a few seconds to a minute at a time but it can be extremerly annoying, esp when playing a game of sc2/bc2. When downloading the connection tended to sometimes drop from 1mb/s to 200kb/s (expected at peak times) then abit later to 50kb/s or less if I was lucky for minutes to 1/2 an hour at a time like they were throttling my throttle :eek:

I complained to virgin once and was told that as I was a long time cutomer (I dont pay the bills for it otherwise Id switched ages ago we been with them since it was cable and wireless) they may be throtteling my connection every so often when their a huge amount of people connecting/downloading at the same time they give extra bandwith in preference to the new customers at the expence of long term customers (they dont want them new unpredictable customers to leave now do they compaired to us predictable oldies :mad:).

I Managed to get a new free wireless N router out of it from complaining so much about it though :thumb:

[BurningFeetMan]

hmm maybe it is just virgin being pants in southampton :P

Will check my 30mb connection when I'm at home, see if I get similar results/behavior as I'm also in southampton. :)

[FunkY]

Virgin are known to use a "feature" called traffic management/bandwidth shaping. Basically at peak times they limit high bandwidth users to lower speeds under the guise of making sure it's accessible to everyone (the same lame excuse used by all the ISPs that perform this nefarious limitation of the service you pay for).

They like to pretend that all ISPs do it, and in fairness most do.

However Be and O2 ISPs (and probably at least a few others) never limit your speeds, or the amount you can download. They've also been the most reliable ISP I've ever been with. Unfortunately they don't have a fibre package out yet, everything is still ADSL2+, so they're limited to up to 24Mb connections (up to 40Mb with line bonding but that's expensive).

Traffic Management (http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.html)