Impact of Virgin Media P2P Upload Throttling
P2P throttling trial cuts upload speeds by as much as 50% during peak hours of the day.Virgin Media, an Internet service provider in the UK, recently completed a week-long test of its new upload bandwidth throttling policy that targets peer-to-peer traffic during peak usage times. Virgin plans to make the policy permanent if they deem the trial to be successful.
We find that this policy reduces users' upload bandwidth by as much as 50%, based on anonymized statistics contributed by P2P users inside the Virgin network.
On weekdays in the week before the throttling trial, users consistently used about 40% of their upload capacity. However, during the test (when P2P upload rates were throttled from 5PM to midnight), the maximum upload speeds we observed were significantly lower, sometimes only 20% of their capacity. The most significant reduction in speed occurs between 8PM and 10PM.
We also see that weekend upload rates were significantly reduced during the throttling period, from noon to midnight. Starting at about noon, our data shows a significant drop in upload speeds, from about 50% at 11AM to below 30% at 2PM. Later in the evening during throttling (at 10PM), upload rates fell to below 20% of capacity. In comparison, upload speeds before the trial averaged about 40% of capacity throughout the day.
(% of advertised)
Weekday upload speeds for Virgin Media customers in the week before ("No Throttling") and the week during the trial ("Throttling"). Shaded area shows the time when traffic management is enabled, from 5PM to midnight.
(% of advertised)
Weekend upload speeds for Virgin Media customers in the weekend before ("No Throttling") and the weekend during the trial ("Throttling"). Shaded area shows the time when traffic management is enabled, from noon to midnight.
