Virgin Media Throttling

[Samad786]

Hey so my internet is usually fine 99% of the time and doesn't seem to be a problem. I get 200 mbps+ download speed regularly which is what I paid for and get speeds of 20 upload speed consistently aswell. The problem is, when I attempt to stream games on twitch.tv or discord, the stream pretty much crashes and my speed goes from 200+ mbps download to 5 and upload speeds of 20 down to 0.2 which is pretty unacceptable. You may think maybe the internet just can't handle these speeds but this isn't the issue. I tried with my 4g which has download speeds of 5mbps and upload speeds of 2 mbps and I'm able to stream games (not the best quality but its acceptable) which begs the question, whats going on with virgin? Why are they throttling my speeds whenever i try to stream? It wasn't like this a couple of years ago but I know its an issue now. As soon as I stop streaming a game, it returns back to normal so it seems pretty clear that this issue is an issue related to my ISP virgin media and does not seem like a hardware issue at all..

[Andrew-G]

VM don't throttle any normal uses at any time.  If it is reproduceable, then it isn't a connection fault, which leaves an internet routing problem.  To check this out, use a free VPN such as Proton VPN (for test purposes) to see if the problem occurs then.  If it doesn't occur with the VPN, but does with VM, then it's almost certain to be a  traffic routing issue, and there's a chance it can be investigated and sorted out by VM.

[Samad786]

I did try this out and the VPN did not make a difference, what I did notice while streaming today though is that
When I ran a speedtest on my laptop before streaming, I was getting internet speeds of 150 mbps / 15 mbps and upon streaming it went down to around 7/ 0.4
However, I ran the speedtests on my phone before and during and it seems as though the internet was exactly the same, that tells me that if the internet is being throttled or something in some way, its to my laptop only and not to everything while I stream..

what should i do now?

[Andrew-G]

Can you get another laptop t test this on?  Or get a friend round to try it on theirs?

[Samad786]

will try this now, i have an old laptop with a game, may have to download the streaming software but will try it and get back to you

[Samad786]

After attempting this on my other laptop, it works completely fine and i'm able to stream in amazing quality with no issues

It definitely seems that theres an issue regarding the connection with my laptop

Heres the specs:

Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 15IMH05

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10300H CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.50 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.87 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics card

The laptop this worked on was an old Dell windows 7, not sure which type of dell but

It has an Intel (R) Core (Tm ) i5 - 2520M CPU @2.50 Ghz - 2.50 Ghz / 8gb ram / 64 bit operating system

[Adduxi]

Try running the Lenovo in Safe Mode with Networking.  This will allow you to test if it's some software component on the Lenovo that may be slowing the laptop down.