h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We've been having really horrible connection speeds with our ISP, which is via ADSL. I phoned our ISP (Virgin) to ask what was going on with our connection. It seems that because I dare to play World of Warcraft and use up more bandwidth than the average user (mostly down to the 25 man dungeon raids) I am a Bad Person. Virgin in their ultimate wisdom have therefore decided to throttle our connection to a speed of 80k. Yes, slightly better than dialup. As you can imagine I am not a happy bunny, especially as they didn't bother to tell us we were in breach of the fair usage policy, which makes them in breach of their own T&C's.

The sort of good news is if I am a Good Girl they will relinquish the throttling on Sunday night, but I'm hopping mad about this. I said that if we're using a lot of bandwidth why did nobody bother to contact us to tell us we were breaking the rules? Funnily enough the guy in (what the) Swansea had no reply to that. I phoned another ISP who are more accommodating (and are recommended for gamers) who have a fantastic reputation so Virgin can sod off. Only thing is, we're a couple of weeks shy of completing our 12 month contract but if they let us go without making us pay the £50 cancellation fee we won't report them for not honouring their contract

Oh, and the new ISP won't be pestering us with guff like Phorm either

Phorm?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/

Can't someone just answer a question anymore without just posting a link? I could have googled it myself!

The business model of Phorm is to work with ISP's and web-sites is such a way that they build up a profile of individual users and then use that profile to better target advertising. Virgin is one of a number of ISP's that had plans to sell data on their customers browsing habits to Phorm.

We live a loooong way from our exchange so our broadband speed is rubbish thanks to all those greedy sods between us and the exchange who spend all their time watching bbc iplayer things, and stuff on youtube, and gaming, meaning I struggle to get single pages of hootoo to load in a decent time This doesn't seem likely to change any time soon either, at least, not for the better.

Oh, and our broadband seems to be no longer broad - the computer drops out if I pick up the phone

I had that problem (at the end of the line thingy ) but when my geek friend called Yahoo they tested and changed something their end and my site got much quicker

Personally I blame BT and their bloody-mindedness. If they would pull their finger out, upgrade their copper wires and make it easier for ISPs to unbundle their services in the exchanges life would be so much better

Thanks for the phorm!

Kelli, has someone recently unplugged and replugged in the broadband stuff? I moved my pc a few years ago, and it started doing that to me. When I got my brother round to sort it out, I had the plug in the wrong hole.

I've no idea how to test my connection speed these days, but I know I don't bother with You Tube on weekend afternoons.

Let me try this again ,A while ago I had trouble both with the interference on my phone Lots of squawcky? sounds and a very slow /troubled computer connection , this would build up for about a week until I unplugged the computer from the electric mains ,waited a couple of minutes then reconnected and waited a bit before turning the computer on , it would all start clean but then slowly the same problems would repeat, after a week I would have to repeat the process . My geek friend thought it was time for me to change/update my Yahoo box on the wall, so he called Yahoo who automatically did a test on my line,part way through the test a man came on the line to say he would change things his end, it took a short while for him to do so but those problems for me have now gone away .

I guess you are not with Yahoo but I think the same set up /problems are the same all over the world. sorry if this does not help you but it may give you things to think about

Excellent - got my MAC code from Virgin today and I confirmed with them that the transfer to my new provider will be quick and painless. I won't get too excited for now but it's a result all the same

Ye gods, this new ISP doesn't hang around! We have our wireless kit already and are all set to go live on Tuesday

And you won't be chucked off for being a bandwidth STEALING CRAZY PERSON I assume?

Hopefully! The new ISP says that there's nothing wrong with playing WoW and having VoIP on at the same time and you'd have to have at least three PCs hooked up downloading off something like iPlayer 24/7 before they got concerned

That's good news! What's viop?

Virgin Is Obnoxious, Pal?

Voice Instead Of Pictures?

Variety In Our Practices?




As opposed to VOIP, Voice Over Internet Phone (or is it Protocol?... whichever).

Ah, the phone. I have an aversion to talking to people on the phone these days. Unless I want something of course.

Voice Over Internet Protocol thingy. We use a client called Ventrilo in my WoW guild y'see.

You actually talk to real people?