BlueYonder Capping

[Ignition]

That got your attention.

Just noticing things like this:

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=beunlimited&Number=2201586

The lucky people using the service in his area aren't going to be too brilliantly off.

I also know and have seen other threads referencing people downloading in the TB range, and uploading 50+ GB/month on their connections.

I'm also seeing threads here and elsewhere regarding BY having network congestion on upstreams and downstreams.

Anyone still think that BY are great with their 'we must remain absolutely unlimited and not care regardless of how much people download even if they are clearly ripping the ****' attitude.

Or is it time to draw a line?

[Bill C]

That got your attention.

Just noticing things like this:

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=beunlimited&Number=2201586

The lucky people using the service in his area aren't going to be too brilliantly off.

I also know and have seen other threads referencing people downloading in the TB range, and uploading 50+ GB/month on their connections.

I'm also seeing threads here and elsewhere regarding BY having network congestion on upstreams and downstreams.

Anyone still think that BY are great with their 'we must remain absolutely unlimited and not care regardless of how much people download even if they are clearly ripping the ****' attitude.

Or is it time to draw a line?

You know my feelings on caps. Lets face it you have seen my traffic stat's :)

:Yikes:

[Ignition]

Interesting votes, distinct lack of interest on commenting mind.

---------- Post added at 22:45 ---------- Previous post was at 22:06 ----------

Check out the other threads in this forum sections dudes / dudettes. A lot of these problems would probably be eliminated if TW were to take option 2 in the poll.

That's about all I've to say on this issue :)

[Derek]

Interesting votes, distinct lack of interest on commenting mind.

I'll give my 2 cents then.

I predict that within this year the unlimited options will die out as more and more of the bandwidth leechers move onto unlimited ISP's and then cause them to give up the unlimited options or have horrendous issues and have to implement traffic shaping.

Option 2 is the fairest as it lets the amount of traffic used grow with increased options like video streaming while punishing the people who feel the need to download multiple Linux ISO's :rolleyes: every day.

[Stuart]

Voted.. Of course, I currently download 3.2 Terrabytes a day.. All linux distros.

[Rillington]

The internet should not be capped and ISPs should offer an ulimited service for residential customers.

[ian@huth]

The internet should not be capped and ISPs should offer an ulimited service for residential customers.You would have to pay the true cost of having such a service or suffer the consequences of traffic shaping and contention.

[Derek]

The internet should not be capped and ISPs should offer an ulimited service for residential customers.

And in a perfect world it wouldn't be capped.

Alas it is an imperfect universe and the way ISP's can afford to supply packages at the current prices is by sharing bandwidth.

If you lived on a street with 20 people constantly hammering their connection would you be happy your speed was far lower than it would be if they were gently reminded to calm things down?

If you want to research the costs of a dedicated 1:1 leased line compared to a residential service feel free.

EDIT:

Infact I'm bored right now so I'll do it :)

http://www.business.ntl.com/internet_products/dedicated_internet_access/index.php

2MB uncontended at a bargain £5500 a year. Slightly more than the £299.88 that a 2MB Ntl:Home connection costs for a year.

[Stuart]

The internet should not be capped and ISPs should offer an ulimited service for residential customers.

In a perfect world. However, in this imperfect world, it's not economically viable to do so.

[Ignition]

Voted.. Of course, I currently download 3.2 Terrabytes a day.. All linux distros.

Only 3.2? N00b! Learn 2 Leech!

Says the guy who does perhaps 5 - 10GB a month between 3 PCs now :angel:

Nothing worth downloading really.

Seems as though however the people who are interested prefer that TW stay absolutely unlimited, we'll see if they would be happy to live with the consequences.

One of them they already are living with, a 384k upstream on 10Mbit not the 512k that ntl are able to offer, and that without the congestion TW users are seeing on their upstreams.

---------- Post added at 16:16 ---------- Previous post was at 16:15 ----------

The internet should not be capped and ISPs should offer an ulimited service for residential customers.

So why are you only on 1Mbit? ;)

If uncapped download amounts surely the speeds should be absolutely unlimited as well? :)

---------- Post added at 16:22 ---------- Previous post was at 16:16 ----------

I am actually hoping that someone who voted that it should be absolutely unlimited regardless of anything also posted complaining about speeds at some point, the two are kinda related :)

---------- Post added at 17:12 ---------- Previous post was at 16:22 ----------

Wonder if someone here can leech the maximum 3TB that it's possible to download on a 10Mbit connection in a month, or if there is anyone in the 1.5+TB range....

[Pø†øƒGøLÐ]

Still waiting on my upgrade (West Mids and we're at the bottom of the list :erm:) but would honestly prefer more upload than the additional download we keep being given.

I haven't noticed any speed issues - perhaps that's because we've not been upgraded yet, or mebbe the people in my immediate area don't abuse it :angel:

I have a problem with paying for a service then being told I can only use part of it - which to me is what capping is about. You don't buy a car and then get told you can only drive xx miles a day/month (then again, I have a serious problem with the proposals for road pricing - which is prolly on another topic somewhere).

There is only so much people will want to download, they will just get the information quicker.

[Derek]

There is only so much people will want to download, they will just get the information quicker.

But there are some people who will download everything just in case they want to watch/play/listen to it at some point.

I know someone with an external HDD filled with 200GB of music. He freely admits that he'll never listen to the majority of it but downloads all he can just in case.

Some people are like that with movies and games as well which are a lot bigger than a 50-60MB album download. With DVD-R's dropping in price it makes it possible to download and archive the full DVD then pop it into a folder in case its needed to be watched in the future.

And most offices have at least someone who will 'helpfully' provide colleagues with DVD's of the latest movies and TV shows. Thats easily a good few large downloads a day.
Where do you think these come from?

[ian@huth]

Still waiting on my upgrade (West Mids and we're at the bottom of the list :erm:) but would honestly prefer more upload than the additional download we keep being given.

I haven't noticed any speed issues - perhaps that's because we've not been upgraded yet, or mebbe the people in my immediate area don't abuse it :angel:

I have a problem with paying for a service then being told I can only use part of it - which to me is what capping is about. You don't buy a car and then get told you can only drive xx miles a day/month (then again, I have a serious problem with the proposals for road pricing - which is prolly on another topic somewhere).

There is only so much people will want to download, they will just get the information quicker.Blueyonder giving you more upload speed would create more problems for themselves and their customers unless they invest more in their network which they will not do with the merger being just around the corner.

You are paying for a service which has conditions applied to it in order to give it at the price you pay. There have to be restrictions on use to make the service profitable for the provider, they are a business after all and not a charity.

Some people download just for the sake of it because they can. I would bet that only a small fraction of what is downloaded by some people is actually used by them after it is downloaded.

[Pø†øƒGøLÐ]

Blueyonder giving you more upload speed would create more problems for themselves and their customers unless they invest more in their network which they will not do with the merger being just around the corner.

But NTL are able to give 512k upload?

You are paying for a service which has conditions applied to it in order to give it at the price you pay. There have to be restrictions on use to make the service profitable for the provider, they are a business after all and not a charity.

Sure... and the condition on the service is that there are no capping restrictions - that is what I signed up to and that is what I pay for.

Some people download just for the sake of it because they can. I would bet that only a small fraction of what is downloaded by some people is actually used by them after it is downloaded.

You will get that whatever service you offer - it's just as likely those people would "share" the downloading and then make copies for each other!!

[ian@huth]

But NTL are able to give 512k upload?Perhaps it's because NTL spent more money on the network than TW did and didn't just jump in to become the first to offer 10Mbps.

Sure... and the condition on the service is that there are no capping restrictions - that is what I signed up to and that is what I pay for.

AFAIK Blueyonder don't have any download restrictions unless you are downloading things which their T&C's prohibit. Giving an unlimited service will attract the really heavy bandwidth users with service levels suffering if the network cannot cope with their usage levels.

[Pø†øƒGøLÐ]

AFAIK Blueyonder don't have any download restrictions unless you are downloading things which their T&C's prohibit. Giving an unlimited service will attract the really heavy bandwidth users with service levels suffering if the network cannot cope with their usage levels.

I know they don't - I was responding to the request for BY customers to comment rather than just vote.

[Chris]

Sure... and the condition on the service is that there are no capping restrictions - that is what I signed up to and that is what I pay for.

It's also a condition of the service that Telewest can change the conditions at any time ... :spin: ;)

Personally I'm happy to see ISPs employ soft caps as this has the same effect as 'no cap but p*ss takers will dealt with under the fair use clause' except that everyone knows where the line in the sand is.

[Ignition]

Looks as though Telewest really is unlimited, I've spoken to a chap who downloaded over 2TB the month after his 10Mbit upgrade :p:

Not bad going at all. Think he's trying to get as close as possible to 3TB this month if he can.

[Pø†øƒGøLÐ]

AFAIK it's always been unlimited.

I think a "very large" cap would be acceptable (2tb is rather excessive... even tho I would "just" have space for that I'd be hard pushed to actually use the pc and would have to clear everything except the o/s to make room :dozey:).

I have absolutely no idea what would be considered "reasonable" by the "we don't have a cap" BY customers (myself included)... but once the door is opened to capping there never appears to be an acceptable level.

Personally I think I've d/l around 500gig over a 3-4 year period (not entirely sure but thinking of how much h/d space I have and how much is used, and I don't remember deleting much except the odd picture...) but that doesn't include up/downloading to my website (can't see that being huge cos it's still relatively new with mainly words rather than pictures)... don't have a clue how much I've uploaded tho :confused:

[Chrysalis]

Looks as though Telewest really is unlimited, I've spoken to a chap who downloaded over 2TB the month after his 10Mbit upgrade :p:

Not bad going at all. Think he's trying to get as close as possible to 3TB this month if he can.

That is crazy, I wonder how plusnet would react considering they think 50gig is massive and 10gig is high.

[jtwn]

I think they should quietly give the middle finger to those going over...say 250gb / month, its not going to hurt their brand, the people who download that kind are the troll like, afraid of natural light people who will just move to the next alternative.

[toom]

Perhaps it's because NTL spent more money on the network than TW did and didn't just jump in to become the first to offer 10Mbps.

AFAIK Blueyonder don't have any download restrictions unless you are downloading things which their T&C's prohibit. Giving an unlimited service will attract the really heavy bandwidth users with service levels suffering if the network cannot cope with their usage levels.
BB should stay unlimited, if it's not broke dont't fix it. Im happy with the way things are at the moment, the last thing I want is some geek suggesting that unlimited should be capped just so he can try and sound important. Don't forget, people would not want to download constantly anyway because it interferes with their navigation.

Im on 4 meg and when I DL a bigish file, I can't wait for the sucker to finish so I can browse with joy again.

It's just a faze some people will go through, they will dl and dl until they finally decide that it is boring and they don't want half the stuff they get.

[Derek]

BB should stay unlimited, if it's not broke dont't fix it.

The problem is that right now it is broke and needs fixing.

There are plenty of TW and Ntl customers getting poor speeds as people in their area decide they want to download every TV show ever made just in case there is an episode of the simpsons they haven't seen yet.

[toom]

The problem is that right now it is broke and needs fixing.

There are plenty of TW and Ntl customers getting poor speeds as people in their area decide they want to download every TV show ever made just in case there is an episode of the simpsons they haven't seen yet.
If they want caps, they should sign up to a lesser ISP such as coff ' tiscalli ' coff ' lmao ' coff coff what a load of ***** 'coff coff! Leave telewest to the REAL users.

[Derek]

If they want caps, they should sign up to a lesser ISP such as coff ' tiscalli ' coff ' lmao ' coff coff what a load of ***** 'coff coff! Leave telewest to the REAL users.

So you'd be happy if Telewest put their prices up to be a 'premium' ISP then would you?

Somehow I don't think so.

Ntl and Telewest are mass-market ISP's and thats something that won't change anytime soon.

[toom]

So you'd be happy if Telewest put their prices up to be a 'premium' ISP then would you?


Why would they?

---------- Post added at 22:10 ---------- Previous post was at 20:32 ----------

Voted.. Of course, I currently download 3.2 Terrabytes a day.. All linux distros.
What the ****s a terrabyte?

[Chrysalis]

capping doesnt garantuee improvements tho, eg. a isp could cap and simply buy less bandwidth because they cap and leave saturation in place, in that case the capping just provides extra profits. A good isp would provide enough bandwidth to avoid problems and use any caps to ensure it stays that way, ntl's capping so far has just served to annoy people since because they didnt enforce it they have people raping their cable just the same as telewest and have saturation although according to ignition its on a lesser scale.

I think capping does need to be in place but it should be peak time only or greatly reduced at peak time and when exceeded reduce speeds to a small but useable level say 256/64 kbit, the key making upload really low.

[Bob]

Not a big fan of Blueyonder - the connection is incredible unreliable. My 4Mb connection was going 500k yesterday. Sometimes and its rare it achieves 4Mb but its usually a lot worse. I have reported this to Telewest and they told me that I should expect it at certain times of the da.

It'll be all these other damn students downloading constantly. Suppose that'll teach me for living where I do... :D

And people say Telewest is so much better than NTL...

Back in Teesside my 2MB is a much more stable 1.92-1.98Mb

[Ignition]

Read the below if you want details. Summarised here:

1) Various parts of Telewest's network are badly oversubscribed, they admit this.
2) Some areas have been congested for months, Telewest admit they do not have the money to resolve these issues.
3) Telewest appear to have sent letters to users with high upstream usage.
4) Telewest's AUP explicitly mentions high upstream usage as a reason for restriction and/or disconnection.

The long version........

Newcastle is a bad, bad, bad area for Telewest at the moment.

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=blueyonder&PHPSESSID=

A few extracts from threads there:

They've admitted to me it's a serious UBR contention issue. They also admitted it needs upgrading asap, however they don't have the available finances for it. Basically been told to lump it or leave it.
Advised what many of you have already said, need a new UBR or something. Says it could be done this summer.
I concur. Pretty much what I have been told.

And then there's Digital Spy, specifically a lucky chap from Doncaster:

http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=76

Anyone ever complained to Watchdog about Blueyonder?
I think i will be after i get the number when its next on. Paying for 4mbit connection (£35) and all afternoon today and this evening i cant get over 512k - 756k. why? they say because of high utilisation in the area.

Originally Posted by skiddie2003
You could phone up Telewest.


Ive been doing this for the last five months. Its to do with high utilisation in the area ive been told plenty of times. The outage teams knows about the problem but nothing has been done for 5 months its crazy. This all started the day after the upgrades were announced

More to the point..

http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=340643

Telewest appear to be writing to people with high upstream usage.

Better late than never.

[Bob]

Cheers for the info Ignition. Suppose it'll have to play the waiting game. Wonder if their lowest tier is more reliable?

[Chrysalis]

I think the difference here is telewest appear to be allowing this to be admitted to in public.

NTL are not the white knight and my ubr has been oversubscribed for months on end as well, along with my proxies been overloaded.

Doesnt make the situation any better tho considering they admit to have no cash to resolve the issue :(

[keithwalton]

Why would they?

---------- Post added at 22:10 ---------- Previous post was at 20:32 ----------


What the ****s a terrabyte?

Current isp pricing schemes are unsustainable they are there to draw in customers away from other providers and get there business.
As for downloads killing the ability to browse, dont push d/l so hard. We have 2mbit adsl in this house shared between 4 people we have a traffic shaping routing and everything gets its fair share of the b/w.

A terrabyte (TB) is 1000 Gigabytes, which is 1000Megabytes ...
If a 10mbit connection was working at 80% efficency constantly (1meg/s download) it would take a million seconds to download a TB. Which is 277.777 hours or roughly speaking 11 1/2 days.


If however you were on the university network and had a device that was able to read/write the data fast enough it would take 1000 seconds (Uni backbone is 10Gbit/s)

[Ignition]

I think the difference here is telewest appear to be allowing this to be admitted to in public.

NTL are not the white knight and my ubr has been oversubscribed for months on end as well, along with my proxies been overloaded.

Doesnt make the situation any better tho considering they admit to have no cash to resolve the issue :(

I wouldn't call customer service people saying this as 'appearing to allow this to be admitted to in public'.

If they were to make a statement confessing their sins then I'd agree. Their normal comms channels are conspicuous by their silence on this issue.

ntl have tacitly admitted to having network issues at least, even if it was somewhat reluctantly tacked on after blaming user equipment.

---------- Post added at 19:38 ---------- Previous post was at 19:37 ----------

Current isp pricing schemes are unsustainable they are there to draw in customers away from other providers and get there business.
As for downloads killing the ability to browse, dont push d/l so hard. We have 2mbit adsl in this house shared between 4 people we have a traffic shaping routing and everything gets its fair share of the b/w.

A terrabyte (TB) is 1000 Gigabytes, which is 1000Megabytes ...
If a 10mbit connection was working at 80% efficency constantly (1meg/s download) it would take a million seconds to download a TB. Which is 277.777 hours or roughly speaking 11 1/2 days.


If however you were on the university network and had a device that was able to read/write the data fast enough it would take 1000 seconds (Uni backbone is 10Gbit/s)

Soton get upgraded? Last JANET map I saw it was on a gig fed from the 10 gig ring at Reading?

EDIT: Looks as though it's now fed on a sub-ring through Cosham. Unless UKERNA have been eating more of my tax money than normal though should still be on either a gig or STM-16 tops.

If Soton gets 10Gbps I'll have to consider sulking :p:

[keithwalton]

Get sulking! SuperJanet 5 is being rolled out, and with it brings ooodles of b/w. 100mbit lan connections can be saturated if enough fast mirrors are found. The uplink to LENSE (local bit of the janet) has been running at 2.5GBit for the past few years. I was meaning across the fastest bit of the backbone in my calculation! no one computer can go that fast. it takes thousands giving it some stick!

[Chrysalis]

how is janet funded government cash?

[Ignition]

how is janet funded government cash?

Of course.

http://www.ja.net/about/ukerna/ukerna.html

---------- Post added at 10:48 ---------- Previous post was at 10:46 ----------

Unless UKERNA have been eating more of my tax money than normal though should still be on either a gig or STM-16 tops.

If Soton gets 10Gbps I'll have to consider sulking :p:

I'll refrain from sulking while Soton is still on STM-16 :) It's when the non-core sites get STM-64 that I'll be scared, SJ 5 is the STM-256 40Gbit core.

[Bob]

Got an e-mail this morning from Telewest informing me of maintainence works in my area for aroubd 20 hours - wonder is that'll make any difference?

[Chrysalis]

Why not use janet as a backbone for broadband as well then, it seems our .edu network has a bigger backbone then commercial broadband isps.

[toom]

Got an e-mail this morning from Telewest informing me of maintainence works in my area for aroubd 20 hours - wonder is that'll make any difference?
lol it means you won't be online for 20 hrs. At least you get a warning though, I never got one when they were doing maintenance.

[b.c]

No wonder blueyonder have a problem when many of it's customers think bandwidth should be 100% unlimited no matter what. I always had a feeling that it's pledge to be the leechers best friend would end in tears.

I'm lucky that my blueyonder speeds are still quite good, but I'd happily accept a harsher fair usage policy or caps (especially if they allow a degree of flexibility and take into account off-peak usage), to ensure a decent level of service.

Blueyonder should stop pandering to the small minority of cry baby customers who kick up a fuss when they're asked to stop abusing their connection. When UKOnline first introduce their 8Mb ADSL for £30/month and the blueyonder newsgroups were full of zealots arguing that the blueyonder's 4Mb £50/month service was better because it didn't have the 500GB/month cap. :rolleyes:

[Cawker]

More to the point..

http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=340643

Telewest appear to be writing to people with high upstream usage.

Better late than never.


The letter is only sent out to people who have a trojan or a lot of spyware. And the trojan and spyware is sending alot of info out

[Ignition]

The letter is only sent out to people who have a trojan or a lot of spyware. And the trojan and spyware is sending alot of info out

Quite a few people have said that they checked their machines and they were clean.

At very least it shows TW are taking an interest in upstream utilisation.