Virgin Media offically "Throttling" users.

Today, May 3rd 2007, Virgin Media announced to users that new "Traffic Management", (or "throttling" as it's called in the real World), will be enforced for "heavy" users of their Broadband Internet service.

Virgin Media said on their website

"We don't like traffic jams
Here at Virgin Media, we want all our customers to get the best service possible from their broadband. That means speedy downloads for all users – not just a few.

When someone is downloading a particularly large amount of information over a long period of time, it can slow down the internet speed for other users who might just be checking their email or browsing online. So to make sure our service is fair for everybody, we sometimes moderate the speeds during peak times (4pm till midnight) for customers who are downloading an unusually large amount at these times.

This ensures that the service doesn't get blocked up with people using more than their fair share – which means a lot fewer traffic jams on the information superhighway."

View: Traffic Shaping - Virgin Media

Broadband Size: M - 2mb
During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: M package download at least 350MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 1Mb, with their upload speed set to 128Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Broadband Size: L (4mb)
During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: L package download at least 750MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 2Mb, with their upload speed set to 192Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Broadband Size: XL (20mb - old 10mb)
During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: XL package download at least 3GB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 5Mb, with their upload speed set to 256Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Source: Virgin Media