VPN and Virgin Media

[Quade]

Virgin has been throttling Usenet lately and I asked a user who uses Giganews whether the VyperVPN made any difference. He didn't know what the VPN did so, he hadn't tried it. Neither Dex nor I are on Virgin so we have no way to test this either. This is basically how the VPN works, for those who don't know. Imagine your PC and your connection to the internet. The VPN make a brand new interface on your PC that encrypts all the data you want to send to the internet and sends this encrypted data through the old connection to giganews. Giganews decrypts it, sends it to the net, then sends the reply back to you. The connection is bi-directional so, data is flowing and and out of the VPN.

Normal setup.
[PC]-->[Ethernet]-->[Router]-->[ISP]->[Internet]

PC with VPN
[PC]-->[VPN Interface]-->[Ethernet]-->[Router]-->[ISP]-->[Internet]-->[Giganews]-->[VPN Exit]-->[Internet]

So, the data that goes through the [VPN Interface] to [VPN Exit] is encrypted. Then the Exit sends it to the Internet (and back) and to their servers. Basically, when you use the VPN all of your data is encrypted before it's sent off your PC so, nobody at your ISP or anything up to the [VPN exit], can tell what you're sending to the Internet. When you visit a website say, it looks like the data is coming from Giganews and not from your PC. This is basically what a VPN does, encrypts your data and hides what kind of data you're sending out.

I'd like to know if using the VPN has any impact on Virgin's throttling. If you have Diamond tier with Giganews, you get the VPN for free so, it might be worth trying.