I been offered 8mb broadband by orange for 14 pounds a month

I live in the Portsmouth

I am currently with BT and getting 6.5 mb download - so it 25?+11.50 line rental

is it worth swapping or go with a total different company all together? - I was thinking of virgin media - also I share the connection with 3 others and we all like your on line games

Mark

I have had no problems on the BB front with VM. I play a bit of CS:S and BF2 online whilst my wife surfs downastairs and I have experianced no hassles. Though if there are going to be three people playing online games at the same time IIRC your upload speed is going to be the critical factor. So having a big chunky DL speed is not the be all and end all. But I may be wrong

I have been told to cut back my broadband usage between 9am and 9pm as this is VM peak period. So they are capping half the day. Add in the fact that the cable modem crashes at random times and does not download then you could lose the rest of the day while you sleep.

you sure thats a coincidence and not another attempt to traffic shape?

Traffic shaping does not shut your modem down until it is reset. If it is done by VM it a naughty. Many people leave machines running for online back ups. If these are stopped by VM Traffic shaping then the customer is at risk of losing data.

sorry should have said 'traffic shape' . I didn't mean traditional traffic shaping but another underhanded attempt to disrupt heavy usage?

Is there any useable logs spat out by the modem? it would be interesting to see what caused the drop, wether it is a genuinely iffy modem or if the line was dropped etc.

Well a quick reset usually solves the problem. You just have to notice the modem is no longer downloading. It could just be a iffy modem. It sometimes takes two or three times to get it restarted.

Our Virgin modem is solid as a rock.

The Netgear router on the other hand is bloody useless.

Wel my modem has been running well this week. Apart from a couple of crashes on Monday night, at 2 am and 7 am it has been fine. The 12 hour peak period where by you get capped is the biggest problem now.

sorry people for got I posted the question

Had cable now for a few months now and working very well getting 9.75ish

Even thinking of going to 20MB download - the house mates have preorded BFBC2

only twice it go screwy and a rest first time and an area line fault the second times was to blame - BT went down for a bit longer

I am happy with the service and speed

Mark

Can I ask what triggered the cap? Is there a set download limit for the month? On BT we kept nudging the 100Gb/month limit, so switched to Sky which so far seems to be genuinely unlimited, but no better in terms of speed than BT was. So, it's crossed my mind to put VM in, though obviously not if they cap you for half the day just for making good use of the superfast broadband you pay a premium for...

Cheers, Pete

It's all here in black and white (and red):

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/in ... affic.html

Thanks for that. So no traffic management on the most expensive option then...

Cheers, Pete.

I will have to consider upgrading to the top service. Though I suspect that the acceptable use policy might catch me, Or inconveniencing other internet users.

I love the "top 5% rule". If the top 5% get fed up of being capped and move, then it's the next 5% that become the heaviest users and so on until only light users are left.

At least Virgin do have a range of products to suit even the heaviest downloaders. I wish I could get it here!