My 350Mb connection is throttled to 10Mb

[ProTofik]

Hi,

I have been Virgin Media (and NTL) customer for the past 12 years. Starting with 2Mb/s connection, I went through multiple upgrades, currently at 350Mb/s.

In the past weeks or maybe months, I have noticed that as soon as I turn torrenting on any computer or server in my house on, the WAN download connection drops to 10Mb/s flat on every device in the house (total). On top of that, I experience massive, 25% packet drops (tested by ping -t 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8). Turn torrent off, and bam, problem solved.

My SuperHub 3 is setup in modem mode. My edge firewall is virtualized pfSense 2.4.4 and VLAN routing is done on Cisco 3560CX. Pretty basic setup that works fine.

Has Virgin Media introduced some sort of policy recently that throttles customer's connection down to make it feel like 2007 again for torrenting, or is my SuperHub 3 modem acting up?

Paying over £50 for 10Mb connection does not seem like a good deal for me any more. There are unthrottled 70/20 options out there for half the price.

[SwampdogMash]

So.... My phone call involved explaining this issue... and the chap I was speaking too from engineering said "I shouldn't tell you this but there are known issues with the Superhub 3 and customers tell us that tey get this issue only when using a superhub 3 or 4". I'll take that as an unofficial confirmation, however it would be great of Virgin Media could officially publish some guidance on this.

From what the chap said it sounds like this is a known issue, but an undocumented one (to the third line helpdesk engineers anyway).He explicitly stated that there is no internal documentation on the problem (again, not visible to third line), mainly as so "few" people use modem mode and thus it is not a priority to sort out I assume. As we already know, there is no public documentation of the issue or a resolution and it sounds very much like VM is happy to let the minority of users who potentially have this problem resolve it only by a workaround.

[Moogera]

Swampdogmash

Why do you think no one from VM has come onto this long running topic?

Because it's about Torrents so I'm surprised they've even spoken to you on the phone about it

[Pinchattr]

Just to clarify, I'm pretty sure nordvpn also uses Wireguard, they just gave it a catchy name - Nordlynx.

[Moogera]

I trialled Nord never had a download above 1mb speed,I know a few that have had the same result

They actually blamed the Virgin hub

They didn't have the wireshark protocol then 

[SwampdogMash]

@moogera

I didn't make it about torrents.I ignored the fact that this thread has focussed on torrents. This thread is really about an issue where a large number of connections, common for torrents but also common for other distributed systems such as smart home devices communicating via mqtt, multiple api calls, and multiple devices browsing also has the same impact. In my specific case I have a large number of connections from those sorts of devices to the internet, and connections coming into the property fro other locations. The thread caught my attention as I want to upgrade to 350MB to take advantage of the higher upload speeds, but not if a high number of connections causes issues. Not all torrent are illegal, particularly ones for linux distros and development processes. Nor is it unusual in enterprise environments, or development or learning environments for those enterprise environments, to see large numbers of connections.

Years in IT have taught me that it not always the best thing to do to focus on a specific element of an issue, but to understand what is the cause and find the right situation to discuss, rather than focussing on something that noone wants to listen to. At least there is some element of confirmation there and that does mean that I would suspect a SH5 may not have the issue, as I am sure Virgin are less than happy with the SH3 and SH4 AND intel now!

[MikeRobbo]

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@Topbloke wrote:

Apologies for my mass posting, virgin media forums still dont have a quote button and quick reply is not tagging the member or quote in properly, can't even edit or delete post on here either.

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No actual button but there is a quote facility.

[Anonymous]

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@SwampdogMash wrote:

@moogera

I didn't make it about torrents.I ignored the fact that this thread has focussed on torrents. This thread is really about an issue where a large number of connections, common for torrents but also common for other distributed systems such as smart home devices communicating via mqtt, multiple api calls, and multiple devices browsing also has the same impact. In my specific case I have a large number of connections from those sorts of devices to the internet, and connections coming into the property fro other locations. The thread caught my attention as I want to upgrade to 350MB to take advantage of the higher upload speeds, but not if a high number of connections causes issues. Not all torrent are illegal, particularly ones for linux distros and development processes. Nor is it unusual in enterprise environments, or development or learning environments for those enterprise environments, to see large numbers of connections.

Years in IT have taught me that it not always the best thing to do to focus on a specific element of an issue, but to understand what is the cause and find the right situation to discuss, rather than focussing on something that noone wants to listen to. At least there is some element of confirmation there and that does mean that I would suspect a SH5 may not have the issue, as I am sure Virgin are less than happy with the SH3 and SH4 AND intel now!

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Try disabling DHT on the client application.

[jhuk]

On topic of Torrent and DHT, many member sites will ban you if this is not disabled (they give you some time when you join to get set up) as it seem as a form of cheating your ratio.

[Topbloke]

Yup that is basically what the issue is a high amount of connections on the Virgin hub causing it to basically have multiple heart attacks.

I am very surprised a Virgin engineer has unofficially said the problem exist, clearly lots of customers are aware of it and experience it and this thread is evidence the fault exist within the hub3/4 series especially.

The hub 2.0 and ac version also has the same issues however it's not as bad or has that choking effect so for example if I cue up legal mp3 20-30 torrents and have them downloading all at once using multiple high connections it can download more smooth without the connection dieing randomly.

What ever you do DO not allow the virgin engineer to remove or touch your existing hub 2.0, I made it clear to the engineer I booked only for a new cable box upgrade and figured the engineer was just swamping out my old cable box he nipped out to the car since he said he forgot the power cable and got a hub 3 instead and replaced it without my knowledge and drove off and no way to go back if you lose the hub2.0 which is pure gold. Virgin customer service won't understand or admit there's a fault officially as you have found out.

There are wild theories out there, faulty hub 3/4 chipset, pumaghost or puma chipset not fully fixed just a temp software workaround fix, openvpn throttling or torrent throttling or high connection throttling etc etc

No one I have met can explain why Wireguard protocol for VPN seems to improve the issue, its also using UDP packets like openvpn after all. But the kernel of Wireguard is perhaps better optimized making the difference or it really is some unofficially openvpn protocol throttling which it should not be.

Anyhow, Wireguard VPN protocol may help, using alternative torrent options like cloud torrent to replace direct torrenting from virgin or move BT where this issue don't exist maybe other options.

[Moogera]

My VPN software has today been updated including updating open VPN to the most recent version 

Sadly using UDP the speed is very slow still