Virgin media have been given a slap on the wrist by the Advertising Standards Authority because they overstated broadband speeds in adverts.

I understand when it comes to advertising there has to be small print saying people won’t always receive the top speed mentioned depending on time of day, quality of line, etc. but I’m not sure why it isn’t followed through to fair trading after you sign up.

There is a larger issue here altogether meaning that ISPs are misselling broadband entirely. If I get a 8Mb/sec line I expect to get close to that stated speed at some point in the day. If it never gets above 2Mb/sec surely I should be charged the cost of a 2Mb/sec line? OK there are various factors that effect this especially line quality when it comes to ADSL. However I believe that when you are setting up a new broadband connection the ISP should do a line test and provide you with a cost, a maximum speed and a minimum speed. This way it is totally transparent to the customer and if there are problems they have a point where they can complain they are not receiving an adequate service.

I’ve experienced speeds of 256Kb/sec on a 8Mb/sec connection, only 3% of the speed sold, and been told by BT nothing is wrong. Clearly they were under-performing here but I had no way of complaining as there was no technical fault to speak of. Does this sound right to you?

Yes there are many variable factors when providing broadband but these could be taken into account and the contract amended accordingly.

In addition this also brings up the subject of net neutrality - should broadband providers be able to limit bandwidth according to agreements they have with content providers? No! If I pay for 8Mb/sec I pay for 8Mb/sec to every location on the net I choose! Underinvestment in your infrastructure is not a reason to try and screw over your customers to try avoid needed upgrades.

It’s about time the whole issue of selling broadband should be tightened up.

I’ve posted a few times about ISPs kicking up a fuss about the amount of bandwidth new applications are using some even suggesting if the content providers don’t help out with costs they’ll be put into the Internet bus lane!

ISPs breaking net neutrality is a really dangerous course to take, effectively allowing companies to disadvantage their competitors over the web. Where does it stop? Only allowing customer access to one website with exclusive access rights for that sector? It’s as bad as standing outside a competitor’s shop and refusing to let customers go in.

Customers pay for bandwidth and expect to have free and unrestricted access to whatever they want on the web - bandwidth throttling goes against this and I think most customers if they were aware of this practices would complain to their ISP or even jump ship.

Now there is a report that Google is working on tools to detect if ISPs are bandwidth throttling - in my opinion this can only be good. If people are aware of the situation they can take action. In the long term this could mean ISPs would have to abandon this approach altogether for fear of losing customers.

IPv4 has been around since 1981 and at the time who could have expected the online revolution that would follow? It’s been known for some time now that the range of unique internet addresses isn’t going to last forever. The number of people coming online is still growing and those that are already online are adding more and more Internet able devices. So the future is going to require a system with the capacity for many devices for every person.

The current estimate states that the IPv4 addresses will run out in 2011. That’s just 3 years from now. There is a possible intermediate step of using NAT - this effectively allows sub-networks running off a single IP address. However everyone agrees this is only a short term extension and in the long term IPv6 is the only solution.

IPv6 will effectively give enough addresses for billions of devices per person - they certainly aren’t taking any chances here (nanotechnology maybe might stretch this eventually but that’s a different post)! However with only 3 years to go there doesn’t seem to be the urgency to switch to 6 as maybe there should be.

Some ISPs do provide IPv6 but it seems that they aren’t pushing this as much as they could. The other issue is that at least for home routers IPv6 capabilities are in the minority - my favourite brand Netgear don’t seem to offer IPv6 support at all or at least I can find absolutely no mention on the website!

Some of the bigger players are trying to nudge along the others, for example Google has launched search for IPv6 - just a bit of a gimmick to raise the profile maybe but Google have a habit of making people notice. 

My real concern is that the general underinvestment in networking in this country is going to lead to providers leaving the move to IPv6 as late as possible. The lack of affordable home kit is also a concern and I hope this isn’t a move by hardware companies to make a killing in the years to come when new purchases and upgrades alike will increase.

I don’t think IP addresses will actually run out but I do have a nasty feeling a last minute panic might ensue which is only going to cause problems for the man on the street. Just the person who won’t have a clue how to solve the issues. Cue ISP complaints to hit record numbers!

It’s quite possible for IPv4 and IPv6 to live happily alongside each other so ISPs should be making all new customers sign up for IPv6 now rather than upgrade later. This gradual transition should actually make things easier for the companies themselves as well.

Further to my earlier post about Virgin Media putting services into the “Internet bus lane” unless a premium is paid there are some people coming up with more interesting ways of rebelling against this.

A lot of people are showing understandable shock about Virgin Media’s stance and it isn’t exactly a good plan to sell their service generally - I’d personally prefer an ISP that will provide me access to everything I want at the fastest possible rate not just what they are being paid for.

There is a lot of mentioning of a certain Mr Richard Branson’s name and how he could be involved with this kind of thing? I seem to remember however (and I’m happy to be corrected) Virgin wasn’t the largest component when they merged with NTL. NTL had a awful reputation for customer service and of course the Virgin brand was very strong so merging and taking the Virgin Media name made a lot of sense. Not for Virgin unfortunately it would seem as I think this has been incredibly damaging to the Virgin brand as a whole. Not Mr Branson’s finest hour.