VM Download Speed ???

[skweezer]

ok i pay for my internet £17.99/month for 2Mb
i download alot from torrents now i have recently been paying alot of attention to my Download speed and and it seems that VM change my 2Mb connection to 1Mb in the evening. so i googled it an i came accoss "speed caps".

Virgin Media are introducing speed capping measures that for users who download large amounts from the Net during peak hours. Peak hours have been defined as 4pm to midnight which is much longer than for most other ISPs, who consider 6pm to 10pm to be the peak.
Virgin claim that only 5% of downloaders will be affected, but looking at the bands I’m not too sure:

• M tier users who download over 350MB will have their speed capped at 1Mbps during peak
• L tier users who download over 750MB will have their speed restricted to 2Mbps during peak
• XL users who download over 3GB in peak hours will have their speed restricted to 5Mbps

Once a user hits the download limit for their tier then their speed will be capped for four hours. The bands look pretty low to me so I’m sure that it will affect more than 5% of users. Also, the way the scheme appears to be setup will extend the period of capping e.g. if a XL user hits the 3GB limit at 11pm, then their speed will be capped for four hours until 3am.
Personally, I’m quite disappointed by this as I regularly download more than 3GB during ‘peak’ and I wouldn’t even classify my usage as heavy. I’ve also been a big champion of Cable’s unlimited policy in the past and this feels like a big let-down.
The Virgin Media FAQ tries to make out that many users will benefit from the upcoming 20Mbps upgrade (although looking at the timetable it looks like the dates have slipped already), but most users don’t need more speed - they want unlimited downloads.

Now im thinking WTF is going on here cause ive been with VM/NTL fir many years now and when i agreed to the contract it said nothing about capping. so is there anyway to bypass this ??
or do i stand a chance against VM if i ring them ???

[Bandit1.3]

Hi i used to have have there 20mbps and they capped that too plus when i contacted them they told me it was being capped during peak hours so i dropped down to there 4mb service .

[skweezer]

Originally Posted by Bandit1.3

Hi i used to have have there 20mbps and they capped that too plus when i contacted them they told me it was being capped during peak hours so i dropped down to there 4mb service .

and there peak times are 4 till 12 pm whuch is talking the ****,, thats most of the day for me

[madrat]

they are getting very bad review at the moment, there ADSL service is one of the worsted and the cable service seams to be following it.

[skweezer]

Originally Posted by madrat

they are getting very bad review at the moment, there ADSL service is one of the worsted and the cable service seams to be following it.

so is there any bypass for a subbed modem ??
i know that it is possible on a hacked modem. but i got a subbed one ?

[Technosteve]

Virgin are using a piece of hardware called Sandvine first noticed by those on Comcast network, This uses the TCPFLAG RST to drop existing packet and initiate a delay, this is what causes the slowdown in traffic. This will not change your Upload Download Speeds but will stop the slowdown when you hit the traffic shaping Limit.

for windows users they can do the following to overcome this if you are not using a router.

The first thing you are going to have to do is install a real firewall, like the Windows port of FreeBSD's IPFW. Download wipfw-0.2.8.zip from sourceforge. Unzip the contents into a location where the files can live, like C:\Program Files\wipfw\.


Run the install-deny.cmd.

Now, you are ready to configure your new firewall. In the folder where you have WIPFW living, you will see a file called wipfw.conf. Open this in your favorite text editor or notepad, if you don't have a favorite. Replace the contents of this file with the following, substituting 6883 with your BitTorrent port:

# First flush the firewall rules
-f flush

# Allow all internal (loopback) network communications.
add 100 allow all from any to any via lo*

# Prevent any traffic to 127.0.0.1, common in localhost spoofing
add 110 deny log all from any to 127.0.0.0/8 in
add 110 deny log all from 127.0.0.0/8 to any in

# Drop incoming packets with RST flag on BitTorrent port
# This is what thwarts Sandvine.
add drop tcp from any to me 6883 tcpflags rst

# Setup stateful filtering
add check-state
add pass all from me to any out keep-state
add count log ip from any to any

# Allow new incoming BitTorrent connections
add allow tcp from any to me 6883
add allow udp from any to me 6883

Open the command prompt and enter net stop ipfw then net start ipfw Your computer will now be ignoring Sandvine's methods.

NOTE: In this configuration, WIPFW drops all other incoming connections and allows all outgoing connections.

hope this helps your users.

if your are using router and can get to command line interface then you can use this.
add drop tcp any to 192.168.1.0 6883 tcpflags rst

replace 192.168.1.0 with your routers web login address but last figure must be 0 (zero) this is the same as Any PC on that network. And change 6883 to your Bittorrent p2p client port if you need a range of ports just add 6883-6884 instead.

Below are sample global TCP flag variables:

urg: tcpFlags = 0b100000! -> `Urgent Pointer field significant'
ack: tcpFlags = 0b010000! -> `Acknowledgment field significant'
psh: tcpFlags = 0b001000! -> `Push Function'
rst: tcpFlags = 0b000100! -> `Reset the connection'
syn: tcpFlags = 0b000010! -> `Synchronize sequence numbers'
fin: tcpFlags = 0b000001! -> `No more data from sender'

as you can see from the variables they equate to a binary number from 0 to 32.
0b indicates its a binary number.

[Technosteve]

Virgin are using a piece of hardware called Sandvine first noticed by those on Comcast network, This uses the TCPFLAG RST to drop existing packet and initiate a delay, this is what causes the slowdown in traffic.

IT Will not change the Speeds outside of your purchased Upload/download Speed i.e 20Mb/512Kb/s this will help with the traffic shaping slowdown that initiates as slowdown for 4 hours when the limit is reached.

for linux users they can do the following to overcome this if you are not using a router.

If you are tired of Sandvine screwing with your BitTorrent and a user of GNU/Linux, then this is for you. I will tell you how to take your bandwidth back.


If you are using a Red Hat Linux derivative, such as Fedora Core or CentOS, then you will want to edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables. First, make a backup of this file. Next, open this file in your favorite text editor. Replace the current contents with this, substituting 6883 with your BitTorrent port number:

*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
#Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround
-A INPUT -p tcp --dport 6883 --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
-A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
#BitTorrent
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 6883 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport 6883 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
COMMIT

Reload your iptables firewall with service iptables restart. You should now see a great improvement in your seeding.


If you are using Ubuntu or another non-Red Hat Linux derivative, then place the following in a file and execute that file as root.

#!/bin/sh
#Replace 6883 with you BT port
BT_PORT=6883

#Flush the filters
iptables -F

#Apply new filters
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
#Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
#BitTorrent
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited

Your firewall is now configured and you should have great upload speed now. You will have to run this script every boot, by the way. One easy way is to call the script at the end of /etc/rc.local.


This configuration is a stripped down version of my own, which contains a lot more rules. I left out the rule to let through established connections, -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT.

I've further simplified the configuration by removing the custom RH-Firewall-1-INPUT chain and removing the rule that allows ICMP packets to be accepted.

[skweezer]

thanks for the info
shame i dont use linux and i have a router

[Technosteve]

I have done one for windows but for some reason the post said it required ok of a modorator first so do check back later.

[skweezer]

Originally Posted by Technosteve

I have done one for windows but for some reason the post said it required ok of a modorator first so do check back later.

but will it work if i use a router ?