Game Downloader

[petrow]

Has anyone used Game's digital downloader?

I bought The Witcher 2 and I have downloaded the game before however now need to download it again. The first 13% ran at a nice and fast 1200kb/s then it drops down to 200kb/s which happened when I downloaded it first time too. Is this because of the downloader having a lot of traffic or is it more likely Virgin Media don't like it?

Any experiences?

Either way, 1200kb/s would take about 3 hours, at this speed it will take 7+.

 

[Rakk]

The first 13% ran at a nice and fast 1200kb/s then it drops down to 200kb/s which happened when I downloaded it first time too. Is this because of the downloader having a lot of traffic or is it more likely Virgin Media don't like it?
.

I notice a speed drop like that when downloading stuff from Steam (doesn't happen every time, but most times), I'm on Virgin media too, starts at 1.2M speed, drops to about 200-300k.
So I think we can spot the culprit here

 

[DeadEyeDuk]

My Steam downloads at a pretty constant 200-300kb/s. I would love 13% at 1.2mb/s!

 

[Gorman]

Virgin will cap you after the first gb or so to roughly a 3rd of your speed.

i hate them for this.

 

[SrgColman]

I miss being on my universities network where I would get a constant of ~8000kb/s. Back at home on Virign now, and I experiance the same speed drop

 

[Al.Neri]

Virgin will cap you after the first gb or so to roughly a 3rd of your speed.

i hate them for this.

how long does the cap remain? I am with VM and I wasn't aware of that.

 

[Gorman]

it carries onto the next change, so if you cap during peak it reset at non peak etc

http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.html

 

[Gishank]

I only experience the cap after about 3/4GB, and that's when peak times begin...

Anyway, as for the digital download service - It's provided by Metaboli/Gamesplanet. Personally I've never had an issue when I've downloaded from them. You could always head over to their forums and ask for support. ;0

 

[Gorman]

depends on package, its all here

http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html

 

[petrow]

Yup Virgin Media is the culprit. Just got off the phone to them and they said they have traffic managed my account from 1400-2100 and then it should go back to normal. Madness really, so much for "unlimited" downloads. Even the person from their support team said it was a stupid policy. It has taken The Wicther 2 over 6 hours to download now and I'm not even half way through. A 75% reduction is a hell of a lot, 25% or even 50% I could swallow but 75% is mad.

I assume that once you finish your period of traffic management, any downloading during it won't cause it to limit again?

 

[Gorman]

each time you trigger it in the time section you are on, daytime or evening it will shape the traffic for 5 hours or until the time section changes, whichever comes first.

 

[SrgColman]

depends on package, its all here

http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html

That is very interesting because according to that page I should not be getting my traffic managed apart from a small period of upstream managment. I will certainly be on the phone with Virgin the next time I see this happening.

+Rep for bringing to my attention

 

[petrow]

I have just got off the phone to VM as my speed didn't go up after 9pm like they said it will a reboot of my modem/router apparently was needed (still no real changes though). Apparently, their 50MB & their new 100MB services are NEVER traffic managed, so I may have to look at seeing how much that is to upgrade. I currently have their VM TV, phone & broadband package (10mb).