Virgin Media to target BitTorrent users

I am happy I left when I did. Just in time to avoid Phorm, and now this. Below will be another comment for my response to be being capped at 0.5mbps 4-12am over christmas

When the internet started, it was wonderful, no cookies to track you down, nothing. You just go and surf. Now try to go anywhere? Some passing through sites visited will fill your browser with media marketing watch that measures your every move. We all became a big marketing experiment.

Restrictions like this can only lose them customers or cause more clever techies to come up with ways of bypassing the blocks. I'm looking forward to someone giving Virgin some real competition offering BT phoneline-less broadband - having the monopoly is obviously going to their heads.

Boycott Virgin Media! Shame on them for not realizing the next wave of the future.
Go ahead, take those sites down and two more will take their place.
Its too late, the cat is out of the bag. Either learn how to change with the times or us internet users will create our own content, which is already being done, and there will be no use for any big media companies anymore. Big media is already dying because of the homogenization nature that they have all turned into. The only true free press left is the internet and we will fight to keep it free!
Current is ahead of the curve and the future of all new world media!

Why can't they just leave us pirates alone?

One word: Lame.

I am an IT personnel and I managed my own internet server for about 6 Years. Lot of work and maintenance plus bad sleeping nights. At the server level an IT can see many things going thru. The question here it is to identify and separate good packages from the bad ones and intercept packages that represent a malicious attack on the server. Let me tell you, there are plenty. Spammers are the biggest hackers of all because they always try to find a way to use a server to "relay" their spam messages. Then comes those that want to infiltrate and mess with your configuration. Then there is ARPA that is constantly testing if you up to snuff. Then...

Everybody always connects bittorrent to illegal file transfer.
Take the totally legal ProjectReality Mod for BF2 for example: Everytime its rlsed, USA residents start bitching about how the http mirros suck. Then, the euorpean users say "so y dont u use bittorrent?" and the americans reply "cant, big companies have anal sex with our net neutrality" and then the europeans laugh there asses off and start playing the new rls WIHTOUT the americans.

I am sure they will find a way around it pretty quickly.

Yeah Virgin is going to have to find some sort of regulation for Internet rush hour, so to speak. People aren't going to use their products if Virgin limits the bandwidth when people really need it.

Online Gaming, particularly in the times of HD content can consume and process a lot of data.

It wasn't that long ago that Virgin customers where having their lines throttled during Call of Duty sessions and p*ssing off a lot of gamers.

There are things like DNA that use bitTorrent to multicast web content it works great

@freelancesamurai (nice nic btw!)

Actually, Skype only uses about 30-50 Kbps (4-6 KBps) of network traffic in each direction, which on a 1.5Mbps (1536 Kbps, 192 KBps) or higher connection is a drop in the bucket:
http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2005/121205-skype-test.html
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=32510

You're definitely putting more load on your connection with online gaming, but that won't necessarily get you throttled back unless your ISP is getting overloaded.

EDIT: I'm sorry, freelancesamurai, I just realized you said "skype (with video)". You are probably putting a good dent in your available bandwidth, then, but still (probably) not anywhere near your maximum. Skype with video will use anywhere from 40Kbps (5KBps) up to 450Kbps (56KBps), which maxes out at just under one-third of a 1.5Mbps link.

glad I'm not a customer.

I use skype (with video) for about 7 hours a day. I'm pretty sure that has some load.

also from my experience playing online games (in my case secondlife) I can download as much as 7gb a day.

I would soooo be on that list, and I'm not even torrenting.

Soon all networks will have "deep packet inspection" (DPI) equipment to monitor and manage the protocols running over their networks, this wont prevent torrent sharing either!

I have always wondered why my internet can be so slow.... stupid Virgin!

I don't think torrent sites will be throttled out of the UK. Instead I think customers might be throttled out of Virgin media (including me).