Virgin Media to Throttle BitTorrent Users
Written by Ernesto on December 16, 2008In contrast to the US, net neutrality does not seem to be an issue in the UK as one after the other, British ISPs start to throttle BitTorrent users. Most recently, Virgin Media announced that it will target BitTorrent, which will render their newly released 50Mbit/s plan unusable for the people who really need it.
In the US, Comcast has been ordered to stop slowing down BitTorrent users, because this violates Net Neutrality. Across the pond, this does not seem to be an issue, as several ISPs have installed hardware to slow down BitTorrent users.
There haven’t been many reports of British ISPs throttling BitTorrent traffic, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t. Pipex, one of the largest ISPs in the UK, is notorious for its anti-BitTorrent measures. They actively throttle BitTorrent traffic, especially during peak times, and also throttle all encrypted traffic. Other UK ISPs that throttle BitTorrent traffic are BT Broadband, Eclipse, Plusnet, Freedom2Surf and TalkTalk. Virgin Media has not (openly) targeted BitTorrent traffic, but they will now follow suit.
Virgin Media’s CEO Neil Berkett told The Register that the company will start limiting BitTorrent traffic for all its customers. To some this might not really come as a surprise, as earlier this year Berkett said “This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks.” Virgin’s BitTorrent throttling plans seem to back up this earlier statement. Which throttling methods Virgin will use has not been announced, but Berkett said that they will be implemented mid 2009.
ISPs have been messing with BitTorrent traffic for years, even when the traffic generated was just a tiny fraction of what it is today. When the first ISPs began throttling BitTorrent traffic, Azureus (now Vuze), BitComet and uTorrent introduced a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. This worked well initially, but soon after encryption was introduced, ISPs started to use hardware that could detect encrypted traffic.
The degree of traffic shaping varies a lot between different ISPs. Some only limit BitTorrent traffic during certain times of the day or throttle in specific regions, others take a more aggressive approach and prevent their customers from seeding or even downloading .torrent files. The most used argument to justify their actions, is that all the BitTorrent traffic on their network slows down other customers’ connections.
Whether this is indeed the case can be debated. Nevertheless, instead of investing in their own network to solve these potential congestion issues, ISPs prefer to slow down customers who just happen to use the ‘wrong’ protocol, claiming problems with capacity. Which is interesting, since Virgin started offering an unlimited 50Mbit/s package this week, up from their old limit of 20Mbit/s. Maybe BitTorrent throttling helps make room for this new service.
Previously: UK TV/Film Stars Urge ISPs to Stop Piracy
Next: Movie Studios Spied On ISP’s BitTorrent Users
66 Responses
lucky I just switched to using NZB’s then…..
Newzgroups FTMFW
why do they want to do this alot of companys now put there download on bittorrent because it much quciker then hosting it them selves like linux os and also game demos
vm you are beginning to ruin everything.
1 traffic managment
2 limit bittorrents
what next u gunna tell me when i can turn my pc on and off
what a joke
No point having 50mbit when you’re limited to 512k during peak hours. I’m with VM and they have been limiting my b/w during peak hours for months now. 300mb an hour is nothing!
“These customers will be limited, on a one-off basis, to a 512Kbit/s limit for the rest of the peak period for that day and we’ll do this after they’ve downloaded over 300Mb during a single one-hour period. Peak time is from 4pm to midnight during the week and 10am till midnight at the weekend.
For the small number of customers who constantly download excessive amounts of data (around 0.5% of our customers), our traffic management solution will temporarily set download speeds to no lower than 80Kbit/s. This limit is applied every day, between 4pm and midnight, for one week and outside peak time, the customer will have their full download speed back. We only apply this limit to customers who have downloaded more than 5Gb during the peak times of the week, and we don’t include downloads outside of the peak time in our total.”
Taken from http://www.virgin.net/allyours/faqs/trafficmanagement.shtml
Silly really, because its just a cat an mouse game… instead of investing in their infrastructure now they will have to counter whatever new measures the BT torrent throw at them… over and over again, while it might be WAYYY cheaper to do so, in the long run the money is going to pile up.
The UK have been making some really stupid and biased decisions lately, guess the MAFIAA have some real close corrupt pals there.
Pity Virgin is doing this… becuase they are not going to be a virgin for long after the BT community finish f*cking them.
http://www.eZee.se/funnies/
srsly who will buy 50MBit/s if not to use bittorrent ?
#2
no, your isp cant tell you to turn your pc off but if you can’t use your internet for whatever you want limiting the amount of air you can breathe is just a step away
They don’t care if people download, thats what all their marketing hype is based upon, its upload bandwidth they don’t like being used. Virgin provide their own FREE usenet service that includes all the top binaries groups. If you are a VM customer and don’t already know how to download/upload with usenet, learn, and use it.
if they cared about what people where doing or using it for users would not need the 10mb lol
obz if u on a high package u gotta be downloading lol cos if ur not ur wastin money on summit for just browsing lol
unlimited bandwidth as long as you don’t actually use it
looks like im going back to netload downloads
wouldn’t be surprised if the same happens to their news servers 2 or 3 years from now
its unlimited unless u downlaod over 700mb that day and it will throttle ur internet access upto 75% for rest of the week
Again more people will use seed boxes… I am a Virgin Media customer.
@11 Dec 16, 2008 at 20:47
Well, then, would you think it be wise to get off of it? After all, it might do them harm for all its BitTorrent users to switch to another ISP.
Roze
all i can say is that there will be a big kick off with customers and i can see it going to ofcom and then they will probz tell them to remove the limit
just for what i seen in other countrys lol britian will always copy them lol
It’s common fact here in OZ that many ISP’s throttle P2P. I have recently changed ISP’s and my speed increased in utorrent by close to double.
mine can very between 125kbps or 1.9mbms lol
Don’t expect ISPs to spend lavish amounts of money to please 0.5% of their customers. Anyone with a modicum of business sense knows it’s far more profitable to show those customers the door.
Internet software really needs to be encrypted across the board. If everything is encrypted and they can’t tell what anything is, they won’t be able to target specific protocols. The sooner this happens, the better.
THOSE customers are the ones spending the money for the top tier packages. If they got rid of all THOSE customers they would be out of pocket to the tune of £11 million a year, and thats being conservative. If it was not for THOSE people you’d all still be on 512kbit because it is THOSE customers who drive the need for bandwidth and network upgrades.
The resources used by THOSE customers is all out of proportion to the price they pay relative to the other 99.5%, even at the “top tier.” If THOSE customers are profitable why is the ISP smacking them down? Anyone with a modicum of business sense knows you don’t chase away profitable customers.
They already “limit” speeds at peak periods as part of an acceptable usage policy. but this is ridiculous
@18 burris
If you would know any better, you would know that it is definitely not 0.5%. BitTorrent is more popular thank you think.
Roze
@ 23 see the Virgin TM FAQ linked @3
yay formula 1 with handbrakes on firmly
This excuse that lots of people using their net connections to it’s max potencial and as such slowing down everything is irevelant.
As i understand my contract betwen me and my ISP he (the isp) is boligated to alow me (in my case) 2Mbps/512 transfer speeds at all times. By throtoling the trafic they are breaking the contract. While they could include(or already have in some contracts) the fine print that you may not use bittorrent, or they could wave the copyright flag…. Throtoling encripted data (as there are loads of other things that are encripted), and sinc this is democracy I have the right to hide my personal information they can not throtle it. My knowlage of the law is limited but the basic princaple stands.
PS: Sorry for my bad english.
“Pipex, one of the largest ISPs in the UK” and also one the worst. BitTorrent speeds were usually <10kbs. Awful to deal with too. Moved to Tisacli, and found out too late they were the same company lol, with the same horrendous BT speeds. ahh well until, the contracts over :(
Read your contract, if it’s for residential service I can guarantee you it says they can throttle you if you use your service so much that it impacts other customers3
Honestly, the ISPs don’t care if you’re using BitTorrent or infringing on Copyright. They care if they’re losing money on you. The upshot is if you’re an outlier for high usage among their residential customers, they are either going to slow you down, perhaps to the point of cuting you off entirely, or charge you more money. There is no third outcome. Encryption cannot change that at all.
Virgin Media throttle Bitorrent traffic anyway, I ditched them cuz of it, they throttle any download traffic especially filesharing….nothing new there…
Yeah, there will never be any substitution effect to compensate for this. Warez will just shrivel and die overnight after decades of overcoming diversity. Hahaha, no.
I predict that in the end the following will occur:
-more obfuscation in the BT protocol to evade the packet shaping
-switching to things like newsgroup downloading or maybe even rapidshitting/megauploading.
-ad hoc tunneling like VPNs, etc
I’m on plusnet pro, which doesn’t have any throttling at all, although they do retain the right to I’ve never had them throttle my connection. I expect that most of the ISPs true reasons for throttling connections, they throttle their cheaper packages to get people to buy there premium packages.
i’m with VM and need to move somewhere else, anybody got any recomendations – i see be unlimited offer high speeds, any good?
If I can just say. Virgin Media is shit. 50Mbps per second download (if you are lucky) but only 1.5Mbps up ? Virgin Media is a joke. That is not internet that is suck it and see.
The two best ISP’s in the UK at the moment are o2 and BE.
o2 = http://www.o2.co.uk/
BE = https://www.bethere.co.uk/
A good site for looking at download caps and network performance etc is here: http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/caps.htm
For those people living in Bournemouth and Dundee, there is a new fibre network being implemented over the next 2 years. Check that out here: http://www.fibrecity.eu/
Fortunately the 6 largest ISPs are in bed with the MAFIAA so in time the smaller ISPs who respect their customers privacy and freedom will see increase in their market share.
However due to their size they are unable to offer unlimited bandwidth with out making huge losses to people who use the internet to its full extent. Partly down to the shitty BT infrastructure from which most of the ISPs use.
There goes Virgin Media customers, wave bye-bye to them VM, you’ll never see them again.
In the context of virgin media, bandwidth isn’t their first concern. What they dislike about bittorrent is the availability of free content, which competes directly with their own offerings. Competition would sound like a free market, which is too much to bear for virgin.
Virgin really are the most duplicitous and revolting company on the face of the earth.
Why the fuck would anyone other than us want 50meg broadband? to check their fucking fakebook or emails?
FUCK off Virgin media I wouldnt have you in my home if you where the last ISP on earth I would make do with bean cans and string to communicate with others.
I fucking hate Virgin Media!
ISPs lie everywhere. In Russia (South Urals) “2Mbit/s unlimited internet” is throttled down to 64Kbit/s if you download more than 30Gb, and kind of traffic doesn’t matter… Damn it.
No Freedom. No Love. Screw em. Hey, to make some very Good Money Online, check out
www dot thespidersystem dot ws
If you’re in the UK sign up to Be (www.bethere.co.uk)
They offer up to 24 Mbit/s download, up to 1.2 Mbit/s upload for £17.50/month with NO restrictions and NO fair usage policy (and a static IP address too although they don’t tell you this is included in the cheaper deal)
I’ve been with them for over 2 years now, have connections in two houses each downloading gigabytes every day and seeding for most of the year
The actual speeds I get are something like a constant 6.4 Mbit/s in on location and 1.9 Mbit/s in the other but that’s pretty much the best that the phone lines can handle
i myself am from aus and with tpg and never had any bt throttling :) only over quota throtling (18gb) :(
Hell, am I glad I told VirginMedia where to stick it! Already changed to an ISP that doesn’t piss about with the connection, just gives me exactly what they advertised, no pansying about with any throttling bullsh!t. HINT: most normal people buy their broadband wanting the service at the speed advertised 100% of the time, hell it’s what we’re paying the hard earned cash for. Virgin’s marketing looks all pretty, amazing, promising all you’d need… but naturally it doesn’t tell you that as soon as you hit these draconian download limits (try browsing youtube for 30 mins, or watching a couple of shows in bbc iplayer) the connection speed suddenly contracts like a constipated ANUS. You gotta be a total fool to buy their 50Mbit line. I’m surprised the advertising watchdog hasn’t utterly spanked them for their misleading marketing campaigns.
#34 Darth_yoda is wise indeed
np go web based. Softarchive.net
Lovely Lovely, virii.
Then net is ban.
Result.
bigger pcture than torrent.
well we all hate virgin media dear!!!
Well they are simply retarded at virgin thats all I gotta say.
Bethere FTW
hi guys…i would love more support for my petition i set up last night against this.
PLEASE GO TO :
http://www.petitiononline.com/VM1/petition.html
and sign,
thanks!
You need to remind people this ONLY applys to non-cable customers.
Cable Virgin Media Customers are hardly throttled at all!
50meg is only for cable customers. See: http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/caps.htm
blah blah blah
“3 Dec 16, 2008 at 19:50 by anon
No point having 50mbit when you’re limited to 512k during peak hours. I’m with VM and they have been limiting my b/w during peak hours for months now. 300mb an hour is nothing!
“These customers will be limited, on a one-off basis, to a 512Kbit/s limit for the rest of the peak period for that day and we’ll do this after they’ve downloaded over 300Mb during a single one-hour period. Peak time is from 4pm to midnight during the week and 10am till midnight at the weekend.”
What does THIS say?
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
There exchanges are not concealed behind armoured fences,
If you want a better service make them pay, remember water and electricity does not mix….;0)
P2P will evolve to cope with ISP’s bull****.
(New p2p protocol) freak.com
I believe they know that!
Capping my bandwidth so they can afford the bandwidth to market 50mb or 20mb is one thing.
But filtering my traffic is another!
Shame on you Virgin Media!
Post 48 says this hardly applies to cable customers. Is that right? I am a vm cable customer but usually experience slow speeds at peak times although this has recently improved.
Is it right that this doesnt apply to cable customers? I am a vm cable customer and speeds usually slow down at peak times but this has recently improved.
It does apply to cable customers as im sure the vast amount of VM users are, it is to be implemented next year, when they’ll try to throttle piracy. B*stards
The Sky MAX package is also unlimited and has no FUP
Virgin Media = The epitomy of the WORST company in (formerly Great, now bankrupt) Britain. Ex 13 years Comcast, ntl: then Virgin Media Customer. A family of baboons would be preferrable to their “customer service” call centre. I just wish it was them going to the wall instead of Woollies.
Don’t expect any change – I’m sure Nu Labour are fully in bed with them and trousering some palm greasers as we speak.
Branson is a charlatan.
Good news!
Now all you n00bs on Virgin leave!!!
AOL UK throttle torrent traffic as well as tv streaming sites. They will not admit that openly but an inside source says they are using equipment known as SANDVINE.
Virgin Media on the other hand is a complete waste of space anyway, all they did was take over the old NTL cable service which also was a waste of space. If virgin actually started throttling connectings I doubt many people would even notice. Maybe othere areas are better but here where I live they along with aol are about the worst.
This happens everywhere in society. They will sell you a car that goes at 200 mph , then limit you to max. 70 mph and fine you if you go more than 73mph. They like to give us the capability but restrict us to the point of never using it.
There are not many other things you can get on the internet which require super fast connections, movies and media etc is about it really. An 8meg connection is not at all needed if all you are going to do is read emails and do your shopping. But its not just torrent traffic that gets throttled. Knapster, itunes, Last fm and many other legal services also get restricted. They call it a fair usage policy which translated means:
*We (isp) will let you download all you want at superfast speeds until we have got you to sign at least a 1 Year Contract (18 months even better), once we have you in our grips then we are then free to f+[k you around as much as we deem fit because our fair usage policy is completely down to OUR discretion and extremely vague to say the absolute least(might be 0.5 gigs per day for one person and 2.5 gigs for somebody else).
*We the isp will take the money you give us on a monthly basis and will NOT at all spend the money on improved services but instead we will spend a fortune on technology that restricts you usage so we can then freely breech the contract we have made with you (The Client)but make it impossible for you to complain by simply putting the customer call centre somewhere on the other side of the world leaving our Head Office free to do whatever it likes
I’m so glad I convinced my friend in London to choose BE over a year ago. There was no issue with them since at all. Wooping 8Mega down/3Mega up+ telephone, all 17 Quid(pounds). Virgin was always a pain in the a…
#58
Aol we had b4 and it was terrible(expensive and slow+ their browser and emailsystem is auful).
Also it was almost impossible to cancel their service(they kept saying “Ok, wait a few days..”,
we had to take them to court !
How could Virgin possibly impose any more restraint on their customers? Their “Trafffic Management” policy is already complete bull shit, and now they want to futher the already-massive number of complaints they are getting from slow speeds?
I have a 10Mb connection with VM, and I can tell you that I RARELY ever get my full bandwidth. When downloading, I have NEVER been able to break the barrier of a 1Mb connection. Its PATHETIC that a paying 10Mb customer is reduced 10x of their actual speed.
I’m stuck with this arsehole of a company and I will be forced to until about mid 2009, which is when I’ll be leaving them for good. Not to mention their maniac of a CEO who cares nothing for his customers but the dow that is stolen from their very pockets. Fuck You.
Ask yourself the question would you purchase 50mb BB for just surfing the internet?
The obvious answer is no so that leaves 3 types of customers
The Downloader who is being throttled
The Gamer & those who do both
Only Gamers will benefit from 50MB BB
Virgin have no clue if they are going to throttle any of its downloaders as they will just move onto another ISP
UK Online are a fantastic ISP with no throttling of its customers
Go get it
Sky Broadband is fantastic. Cheap, fast and they really do not give a shit as all their money is for the telly service.
Bandwidth my arse, They have been advertising that they have super fast fibre optic cables and say they don't have enough bandwidth. For example I have 20mb internet from VM and I am the only person in my street with a computer connected to the internet and they are saying that if I download whatever i'm downloading I'm hurting these people with no internet anyway …
There are a few issues with this posting.
First of all, it should be noted that US ISP's are in the stoneage compared to the UK and the rest of europe (particularly sweden). It's common in the UK to have a 24mbit connection, in the US you don't often get above six.
Also, Eclipse, Freedom2Surf and TalkTalk are all owned by Pipex (Freedom2Surf used to be a reputable ISP before the takeover).
It is, however, true that some ISP's throttle traffic. But then, only stupid people become customers of these ISP's. If my ISP throttles my traffic, I move.
Right now, i'm with BeThere.co.uk, i get 24mbit speeds and no traffic shaping or traffic limits.
What this all boils down to: The average net user in the USA will have an inferior bittorrent experience than those in the UK. And, comcast are STILL throttling traffic, regardless of the ruling.
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