Virgin Bl**dy Broadband - Capped!

[Matt-75]

If you use constant large volume amounts of bandwidth between 5pm and midnight, they seem to get a bit anal about it, and cap you to 128k/sec.

I have had no probs with them so far.

As for phorm you can eliminate the problem with web proxies.

As for p2p, well i dont use bittorrent anymore (they really heavily cap bittorrent users to the point where the connection no longer responds). If this is the scene you are into, look at usenet over SSL. Something like Giganews would be ideal, and you can get unlimited bandwidth packages for a tenner. You will still get capped during peak times, but who cares. Downloading at your max speed for 17 hours of the day is good enough.

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Matt-75

As for phorm you can eliminate the problem with web proxies.

How does a proxy help when the first server you hit belongs to your ISP running phorm?

[macstinator]

I found this for stopping Phorm.

Dephormation Firefox 2 Add On - Stop Phorm / Block Webwise

has an annoying dialogue box that pops up when you opens a Firefox Window, but looks solid otherwise.

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by macstinator

I found this for stopping Phorm.

Dephormation Firefox 2 Add On - Stop Phorm / Block Webwise

has an annoying dialogue box that pops up when you opens a Firefox Window, but looks solid otherwise.

I'm still confused as to how you prevent you own ISP from knowing what sites you visit.

[aclivity]

Originally Posted by Matt-75

If you use constant large volume amounts of bandwidth between 5pm and midnight, they seem to get a bit anal about it, and cap you to 128k/sec.

err... no, you may get throttled (NOT capped) at the following speeds:

Broadband size M (2Mbps) throttled to 1Mbps
Broadband size L (10Mbps) throttled to 2.5 Mbps
Broadband size XL (20Mbps) throttle to 5Mbps

This will all change when the XXL (50Mbps) is rolled out as the same issues with contention will not exist.

Compare this with ADSL, where everyone slows down when the torrenters and binary newsgroup users are busy - everyone suffers a slow down! At least by throttling just those who download huge amounts casual users should suffer less in the way of service drops.

As for Phorm ... cookie blocking is worthwhile at the moment as there is nothing at ISP side that is tracking activity yet.

[big_si]

Originally Posted by aclivity

the XXL (50Mbps)

WOWZERS!!!!!!!

[Matt-75]

Originally Posted by Adrian Kelland

I'm still confused as to how you prevent you own ISP from knowing what sites you visit.

If you open an encrypted tunnel between server A and B, your ISP may see the connection going to server B, but they havent got a bloody clue what that connection is for since its encrypted. Thats the simplistic view. There is a more complicated explanation, but you would find it easier to google tor or guardster than me explain it.

But beyond that you send requests via your encrypted tunnel to server B that then gets your webpage and sends it back to you via the tunnel. All the ISP sees is unreadable garbage assuming they care to do packet analysis on it.

So as far as the ISP is concerned i connected to some IP address on some port. The port isnt related to web browsing, in fact it isnt even listed as a service port for anything.

If it all goes through im leaving Virgin anyway, i've decided i should get myself a fully uncapped bandwidth, unthrottled, internet connection. So im looking at two Business Broadband packages that Demon provide.

On the 50Mb connection, who would need that. That is definelty a connection aimed at p2p. Even streaming HD doesnt need anything that fast.

[Guffnuts]

Originally Posted by big_si

Is that ADSL or Cable?

If it's ADSL could it be that as the connection speed will be dictated by everyone in your area connecting down the same line. When everyone gets home from work / school at 1600 that 8MB is then shared between a gazillion people?

(I've not noticed such slow downs on Cable... Dunno if it happens or not?)

Was with Virgin ADSL for about 5 months last year. The "no contract" was a pile o' shite, where they charge 50 squids if you cancel within the first 12 months. I was getting these "dial-up" speeds after 4pm everyday and thought 50 quid would be worth it to get rid of the service. I cancelled and they charged me 60p (couldn't even get that right!)

I am now with ADSL24 (an Entanet reseller) and the difference is night and day. No slow downs at peak times and a solid 3Mbit connection. Obviously line contention was not an issue. Virgin just can't provide a decent ADSL service.

[aclivity]

Originally Posted by Guffnuts

Was with Virgin ADSL for about 5 months last year. The "no contract" was a pile o' shite, where they charge 50 squids if you cancel within the first 12 months. I was getting these "dial-up" speeds after 4pm everyday and thought 50 quid would be worth it to get rid of the service. I cancelled and they charged me 60p (couldn't even get that right!)

I am now with ADSL24 (an Entanet reseller) and the difference is night and day. No slow downs at peak times and a solid 3Mbit connection. Obviously line contention was not an issue. Virgin just can't provide a decent ADSL service.

so you weren't held to a contract or made to pay a £50 disconnection fee then? I had Virgin.net ADSL ages ago and cancelled when I moved house, similarly I wasn't held to a contract or charged a disconnection fee.

As for your second point, you have misunderstood where the contention comes in. The contention is in the equipment at the exchange, not on the line between the exchange and your connection point. Virgin.net is (or rather was, mostly) a BT broadband reseller rather than using an LLU service. So everyone on the Virgin.net service in an exchange is using a shared service, and is therefore contending - usually at a contention ratio of around 50 to 1. Entanet is a layer 2 tunnelling protocol (L2tp) seller, essentially meaning that they have equipment in the local exchanges; they can control the contention separately.

Virgin.net is investing in some local loop equipment, so the situation is changing.

[Guffnuts]

Originally Posted by aclivity

so you weren't held to a contract or made to pay a £50 disconnection fee then?

I was meant to, but I wasn't going to question their cock-up and was quite happy to pay 60p rather than £50 as stated in the terms and conditions at the time.

As for your second point

As Virgin is a massive company they should have at least some decent equipment in the exchanges that can handle the amount of people using the service. They didn't, so I went with someone who did.
As for LLU, AKAIK it is relatively stable and delivers decent speeds, but to cancel would mean a disconnection/reconnection fee instead of the ISP handing over the MAC for free.