Internet Service Provider Throttling

iMrApex

I posted this is the Virgin Media section and also talked to a representative via live chat for an hour or so. The simplified response I repeatedly received was "Of course it's not our fault, it's every one else's fault [Steam's, Intel's, AMD's NVIDIA's, HEAnets, etc. servers]". This is obviously not a satisfactory response and any person possessing a brain can see through their answer.

Since switching to UPC, now Virgin Media, what I have noticed most is that downloading anything on Steam [Multiplayer gaming and social networking services with over 125 million active users] is not a pleasant experience to say the least.

Downloading a game from Steam [Using a server located in Ireland, presumably Dublin]:



Downloading a game from Steam [Using a server located in London]:



As you can see from the graphs, the download speed is extremely inconsistent and is not the service I expect to receive when I pay for 240Mb/s. The first download tops out at 11.7MB/s or 93.6Mb/s and the second tops out at 23.8MB/s or 190.4Mb/s.

A 10GB game should not take any longer than 6 minutes or so to download at 200Mb/s or 25MB/s, I pay for 240Mb/s or 30MB/s though obviously that can't be expected, when in reality it will easily take me in excess of 25 minutes.

This issue seems most prevalent with Steam though other sites can also not be entirely satisfactory:

Downloading a NVIDIA driver:



Downloading a file from a dedicated speed test website:



Downloading an Intel Graphics Driver:



The speeds here aren't especially satisfying. Apart from the actual dedicated speed test website which will be expected to perform quite well, the other two remained below 20MB/s or 160Mb/s.

Also, YouTube can be quite annoying. I can experience issues with buffering videos in 1080P never mind anything higher such as 1440P and so forth. It is not an issue with my browser or computer. I reformat my entire machine quite regularly installing the latest ISO of Windows 10 along with networking drivers, GPU drivers, general Windows updates, etc. I also regularly reset the router [Ubee EVW3226] and am connected via a CAT5E Ethernet cable.

Computer Specifications:
CPU: AMD FX-8320 @ 4.5GHz
GPU: MSI GTX 980
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0
Memory: Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2x4GB) - 1866MHz
SSD: x2 Sandisk Ultra Plus 124GB - RAID 0

I should be expected to set the automatic playback quality of YouTube videos be the highest, be it in 2160P, 1440P, etc., but I have to set it to 1080P and still experience issues now and again which is unacceptable. For example today at 9:30PM a variety of videos were continuously buffering and I simply had to leave YouTube.

Speedtest:


As a note, all tests were conducted after 2AM with only my PC and maybe two phones connected via Wi-Fi though not actively being used.

A representative of Virgin Media on boards linked me an ISO file to download from HEAnet [Ireland’s National Education and Research Network, providing internet connectivity and associated ICT services to education and research organisations throughout Ireland] in order to test my speed.

I wish for people with either Virgin Media or some fibre provider such as Eir to download this as to allow us to compare: http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.opensuse.org/opensuse/distribution/11.4/iso/openSUSE-11.4-DVD-i586.iso

Post the length of time it took to download and the speed of your package in order for me to determine the average download speed. For example, my result:

ISP: Virgin Media
Package: 360Mb/s
Time Taken: 4 Mintues / 240 Seconds

Meaning my average download speed was 17.5MB/s [4200/240] or 140Mb/s [17.5*8].

Alternatively, the link can be found on the first page of this thread if you are worried about clicking my link and would rather click "Virgin Media: Brian's": http://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057607008

bk

ISP: Virgin Media
Package: 240Mb/s
Time Taken: 2.5 minutes / 155 seconds

Average around 28Mb/s

Tested using a wired computer.

It is very important to make sure you do tests like these over wired ethernet, tests over wireless are completely pointless as your wifi is the bottleneck, rather then the VM connection.

VM is correct that they can't guarantee service from Steam, etc. It can depend on Steams servers, ISPs, etc. too, that is outside VM's control.

editorsean

iMrApex wrote: »

I should be expected to set the automatic playback quality of YouTube videos be the highest, be it in 2160P, 1440P, etc., but I have to set it to 1080P and still experience issues now and again which is unacceptable. For example today at 9:30PM a variety of videos were continuously buffering and I simply had to leave YouTube.

When YouTube starts giving buffering issues, right-click the picture and click 'Stats for nerds'.

On my workplace VDSL connection (Eir 30Mbps), I don't recall YouTube ever giving a buffering issue since VDSL was installed last year.

The following shows the stats for nerds on my Workplace connection after letting it play a 1080p video for a few minutes:



The speed figure shown here is the throughput YouTube is receiving and not the video bitrate.

If there is a dash before the 4 last characters of the stream host, then it's streaming from a cache server, such as one within Virgin Media's network. In this above example, it was streaming directly from Google's servers.

ED E

The critical understanding here is you are paying for 240Mbps to Virgins border router, no further.

What happens after you leave their network is not, and will never be, guaranteed or anyway backed up.







PS: Your HDD may be thrashing causing all your steam issues.

iMrApex

bk wrote: »

ISP: Virgin Media
Package: 240Mb/s
Time Taken: 2.5 minutes / 155 seconds

Average around 28Mb/s

Tested using a wired computer.

It is very important to make sure you do tests like these over wired ethernet, tests over wireless are completely pointless as your wifi is the bottleneck, rather then the VM connection.

VM is correct that they can't guarantee service from Steam, etc. It can depend on Steams servers, ISPs, etc. too, that is outside VM's control.

I find it boggling how our result differs so much. I tested it once more, a matter of minutes ago, and my result was:

Time Taken: 280 Seconds
Average Roughly: 15Mb/s

The download may begin and peak at 27MB/s or so but it will then proceed to dip to as low as 6MB/s or so and continue to fluctuate up and down which is what results in the slow average speed.

By the way, I am connected directly to my Ubee EVW3226 via a CAT5E Ethernet cable and an ASUS M5A99FX Pro motherboard with a Realtek 8111F Gigabit LAN Controller. Tests were carried out at 2AM with virtually no other activity on my connection with me being the exception.

I do not understand why ours can differ so much?

iMrApex

ED E wrote: »

The critical understanding here is you are paying for 240Mbps to Virgins border router, no further.

What happens after you leave their network is not, and will never be, guaranteed or anyway backed up.







PS: Your HDD may be thrashing causing all your steam issues.

As you can see from the images, your download appears far more stable than mine does. Mine can peak quite high but the problem is fluctuation. It can actually stop for a small period of time before working up again, working back down, working back up, etc. The same happens when I download that 4.2GB ISO from HEAnet.

I have two SSDs in RAID 0 which get consecutive write speeds of over 200MB/s.

ED E

What part of the country are you in? Could be a congested access area but that would be abnormal with Virgins modern network.


Also, no need to quote the pics, or post images 1920 wide. And if you're only getting 200MB/s on that you've got a really really ****ty raid controller or some old ass SSDs, a single 830 will almost saturate a 6Gbps port :pac:

iMrApex

ED E wrote: »

What part of the country are you in? Could be a congested access area but that would be abnormal with Virgins modern network.


Also, no need to quote the pics, or post images 1920 wide. And if you're only getting 200MB/s on that you've got a really really ****ty raid controller or some old ass SSDs, a single 830 will almost saturate a 6Gbps port :pac:

It's always been the case with my SanDisk Ultra Plus SSDs: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-Internal-Desktop-SDSSDHP-064G-G26/dp/B00AYCRCKA

I looked into it with no success though it doesn't bother me any more. Personally, the most important thing for me is my 600MB/s + read speeds.

I live in Shannon, Clare.

bk

iMrApex wrote: »

I do not understand why ours can differ so much?

Probably down to different levels of congestion and contention on the local node.

Virgin Media was only newly wired into my apartment building about 3 to 4 years ago. They put a brand new local node in beside the apartment building that I assume only services the apartments and which is feed by fiber. So I suspect it has relatively low levels of contention.

A node in another area might have far more people connected to it and thus greater contention.

That is why it is super difficult for two different people in two different areas to compare their results, the network differs in different areas.

When I signed up for 360Mb back in January, I was getting 370/37 during the day and early mornings, but it would go down as low as 70/20 during peak hours. So I definitely think that the node was congested.