Virgin Media Traffic Shaping

all credit for the text below the — in this post goes to stuart at cable forum :

the jist of the post is a 50mb connection is shrunk to 5mb for four hours anytime you download more than 3gb between peak hours 4-12 any day of the week.
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# May 7, 12:30 AM by Stuart

Virgin have published details of their traffic shaping. It will be gradually rolled out with the 20 Meg upgrade. It does affect all tiers, and the shaping is applied for four hours.

Virgin Media have at last published details about how traffic shaping is being enforced.

Basically, it seems that shaping is being introduced to areas at the same time as the upgrade to 20 meg. It does apply to all broadband speeds.

Basically, if you download more than a certain amount between 4pm and midnight on any day, then your speed will go down for four hours. Note: If you reach the limit at 23:59, you’ll still get four slow hours. Details of the limits, and the slowdowns are below
Broadband: M

Anyone caught downloading more than 350 MB will have their connection slowed to 1 Mbps download and 128K upload.
Broadband L

Anyone caught downloading more than 750 MB will have their connection slowed to 2 Mbps and 192K upload.
Broadband XL

This tier is getting hit hardest, with the download speed quartered (to 5 Mbps) and the upload slowed to 256K, when the user downloads 3 gig or more in the peak hours.

More info is here , and we have a lively thread discussing it here