Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

Just a quiet warning, Plusnet ADSL is traffic shaped, and the effects can be pretty noticeable even on the so called 'premier' package so I've been informed.

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=2314

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

We have Demon HomeOffice at our Office and it seems to be good if you like your ADSL hassle free...

(and with a static IP, so static it is printed on your subscription details card).

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

As with all PlusNet scares like this, all smoke, no fire ;)

No signs of anything remotely problematic here, and have been getting full rate on certain P2P apps, but to be frankly fair, no one really is going to be running P2P apps with the expectation of running flat out at 100% anyway. If on the other hand you were streaming broadband video and it slowed down due to traffic shaping, then there would be a lot to complain about, but that's not what's happening.

Of course the usual band of people will complain about how they want a 100% unlimited, uncapped, unshapped and contended at 1:1, because some bit of product literature once upon a time said "unlimited" and they aren't getting it. Well, here's the reality guys... those days are gone!

If anyone thinks other ISPs don't traffic shape or are not planning to, they are seriously kidding themselves. Most ISPs do, as do the numerous servers and routers that act as the hops around the net. The reality is the Internet has to be managed this way or else it grinds to a halt. More so as VoIP and VOD becomes popular.

The main problem with PlusNet is they are honest. Far too honest. They tell it how it is. Most ISPs do exactly what PlusNet do, just they don't tell anyone about it. Mind you, most ISPs don't go announcing one thing one week and change their mind the next ;) (so arguably this traffic shapping business will probably go away once they've had a barage of moans in adslguide forums, and then they'll do something else).

At the end of the day, PlusNet deliver the goods, and I get a fast 2Mbps service for bargain prices but with nice frills and pretty darn good customer service (more than I can be said for certain ISPs).

And you have to admit... how many ISPs will actually appologise for slow file sharing speeds? ;). Most will more likely react with a tone of dissaproval about file sharing anyway.

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

OK We'll pretend they weren't pretending it was nothing to do with them for a couple of weeks before they admitted to it then, and that they had an 18 minute long queue for the phones 11pm last night, and that they disconnect users overnight on a random basis to loadbalance their creaking pipes, and that they aren't running their BT Interconnects close to 100% both bandwidth and sessions wise :)

They're too cheap sadly :(

BTW Routers on the internet certainly do not traffic shape, it's in their interest to get as much data as possible so that they can charge for the usage of their bandwidth. Can't see transit providers traffic shaping so that their customers pay them less somehow.

Anyway here's a few less than satisfied people:

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...anded&sb=5&o=0

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...anded&sb=5&o=0

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...anded&sb=5&o=0

Along with their total utilisation, note the nice flat top as the bandwidth maxes out, and the spat at 11 o'clock where something was done with the traffic shaping that made a couple of hundred Mbps appear from nowhere.

http://www.plus.net/support/adsl/adsl_utilisation.shtm

Also note the jaggy bits where they disconnect users to try and balance their heaving BT interconnects.

Also I highly recommend PN's own customer forums at http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/index.php username guest password guest.

You get what you pay for sadly.

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

99% of their users will be unaware of this, but anyway.

18 minutes... pah, NTL had that beat at 40 minutes and that was on a regular daily basis not just a one off :p:


Well Cisco have a lot of money invested in QoS routers. Many are used by ISPs obviously, but if you traceroute a site on the net you are using numerous ISPs on the way and are only out on the "real" net for a short part of the journey. The rest can be traffic shaped at both ends by numerous routers on the way.

Traffic shaping is inevitable.

Interesting read regarding P2P on the net...

http://www.lightreading.com/document...435&print=true


Now read all the other forums on adslguide, just as vocal or more so about other ISPs;). Ever read the threads here about NTL, and also on the other similar sites and the old nthellworld? Hmm, Seem to recall a lot more voice on that one ;)

adslguide is full of the 0.1% who like to moan ever 2 seconds. Give them a week and they'll have forgotten about it when they realise it's a non-issue anyway.

Of course loads of armchair complainers like to presume their crappy speed test results are as a direct result of the ISP's actions without any real evidence ;)

Not sure what you're looking at there, but looks like a pretty average utilisation graph to me. Nothing at 100% there, though it doesn't specify what the pipe limits are anyway and it's a very simplistic graph that doesn't show the full picture. Would love to see NTL's utilisation graphs :D

A minor blip at 6am. NTL take people offline for longer periods than that when balancing their network, and often leave them off resulting in frustrated calls, engineers out and it turns out they just needed their modems rebooting ;)

Yep, great quality service that works :tu:. I've recommended it to dozens of people and they're all happy (and I'm even more happy as I get a discount from their referrals :D... and it they were unhappy I'd stop getting the discounts as they'd have quit ;)).

Paid twice as much with NTL, total crap all the time as you well know ;).

Guess you've got a beef with Plus though, just as I had with NTL :p:

I keep getting the "please come back" begging letters from NTL... I'm tempted to send them back with a "when hell freezes over" response :D

Yours, looking forward to 8Mbps (which is quite possible given my distance from the exchange, 4Mbps definite) :p:

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

Trust me they don't go that close to max for most of the day, and if I could show you I would, cable modem network running at less than 40% capacity, core less than 25% at peak times. A bit of a contrast to Plusnet you could say, who are effectively maxing, especially when you consider that they aren't going to get the 2480Mbps on the graph from their BT Interconnects, and these interconnects are deployed in 74Mbps chunks. Wonder how many of these are full :s

No we don't, network balancing from ntl uses a command which doesn't disconnect customers modems at all.

Looks like it's sponsored by Ellacoya, and is hopelessly out of date. P2P is shaped by consumer ISPs if at all, isn't touched while traversing core networks in between them, so to say it's shaped all along the internet isn't really the case, some ISPs do it, far from all, and it'll almost certainly only be done at one point, core network bandwidth is very cheap.

Be interesting to see how badly they start shaping on the 4/8M services, especially considering how much they are struggling with the current 2Mbit service pricing. If you think cable won't keep up or go faster you're quite wrong :)

Interesting how these same people were fine before hand and Plusnet by their own admission have made some mistakes with the shaping. Also interesting how in at least one of those threads a guy was complaining of slow speeds on all applications, when he logged on through the BT test, eliminating PN entirely from the equation, speeds were fine, strange that.

You're confusing traffic shaping of this kind, application level shaping, with MPLS based traffic / route tagging. The two are quite different things.

Interesting how few people are happy with them blocking legitimate traffic through poorly implemented port blocking, traffic shaping after advertising the service as shaping free, messing up their traffic shaping.

If you're happy with this fair play to you. Though when was the last time you had anyone complain of ntl being congested? :) There's basically zero congestion anywhere now. More than can be said for certain companies that have underpriced to the point where they have to both artificilaly contend customers (BT's 50:1 product is actually delivered at 25:1 or better usually, though PN are enforcing 30:1 through shaping, and customers on the 20:1 product which PN alledge has 15:1 are seeing the same issues as resi custs, because when a pipe's full it's full whatever you're paying) and restrict applications.

Still look on the bright side, your 4/8Mbps definite will be great when they take another 5% off some apps, then another 5%.... :)

Nah, I've a beef with lying scrote ISPs who lie to their customers about major things, sell them products then change the terms, and unlike ntl and the previous cap issues refuse to let customers out of their contracts despite this blatant change to T+Cs.

Add that to their various methods to cut down usage, the 'Bad Boy Pipe' stuffing all the heavy users onto a single network segment so they can contend (not actually a bad idea!), the Fair Use Policy that came then went, etc, etc.

Sympathy with them that it's BT prices that cause them to be in this situation, zero sympathy that they are charging a cut price for a *******ised service in an attempt to gain customers, and their quality of service is suffering as a result, both technically and from the support point of view.

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

NTL did cut me off quite often during their attempts to mess about with the network. The number of times I found my modem in a poor state and then looked up the online status page (when it was working), and I'd find they'd been playing about in my area about the exact time the modem went down :(. I also remember it would often reboot at midnight.

From what I understood, 3Mbps was a struggle with concern whether the network would cope, needed to roll out new equipment, and certain management would have rather not offered such high speeds to "bandwidth hoggers" anyway ;)

However when forward thinking Telewest come on board, things may change.

Can NTL's cable network really can cope with 8Mbps across the board for all customers without a major level of investment?. Sure the modems (some of them) can go to 30Mbps, but the same issues apply in regards to distance and fibre/coax is quite susceptible to noise and interference (certainly in my experience).

As I understand it NTL are looking to ADSL technology (maybe ADSL2+) over their copper phone lines instead to deliver the goods as they know cable can't cut it ;). Actually I'd be quite interested in that as NTL can put equipment quite close to the customer which means high speeds are quite achievable and cheap to provide. Just a shame I cannot put up with their customer service (again maybe Telewest will help there).


Speed tests on Plus for me, including using their own tester, shows I've been getting pretty much bang on what's expected for 2Mbps all during this (non)"event".

I believe it was NTL themselves who wrote letters to customers who were maxing out the network to the detriment of other customers ;)


They may as well remove this clause from the UP then...

"Customers who use the services more heavily than a normal home user will reduce the performance of the network for other customers."

;)

To quote PN...

"PlusNet network contention and the BT contention ratio are different, but both apply to your connection. PlusNet network contention is the maximum contention you will experience on our broadband network, which helps you choose the most appropriate product. The BT contention ratio describes how many other broadband users you share with at your local telephone exchange."

BT's exchange contention is one you'll never really experience anyway. PlusNet's is the same as all other ISPs in existance in that there are always going to be a finite number of customers contended for a limited resource (the pipe). They've just put a number on it and used QoS to split between two packages instead of using a cap.

What it is not is PN applying 30:1 on a 50:1 contented product. It doesn't work like that. 50:1 is the exchange contention, 30:1 is the pipe contention. Totally different.

Anyway, I've never experienced congestion issues with PlusNet myself, even when using P2P. Most "complaints" with PlusNets are all based on announcements and not experience. At the end of the day the service still runs at a quality level of service for the vast majority.


They normally let people out of their contract. They'll probably change their mind here anyway ;)

I can take constantly changing T&Cs, so long as at the end of the day my broadband works, I get about the speed I'm paying for and I can still do everything I could before. All this, for me, is absolutely true of PlusNet who have delivered everything I want :D

NTL on the other hand couldn't deliver a stable connection despite years of pestering them in the hope it would change. Can't deliver... customer leaves.

Interestingly, NTL is still a dirty word in the office I work ;)

All came out in the wash though. As I say their fault is in being honest about what they're planning and announcing things without thinking. At least they listen to their customers ;)

I strongly dissagree with you over their customer service. I've been nothing short of extremely impressed with it. Can't say that at all about NTL who's customer service you well know I viewed as the worst of the worst in the world (where's my compensation for all those days they never turned up and screwed up making me take time off work? :rolleyes: ).

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

A fair bit of what you say, especially about ntl, network capabilities, etc, isn't really accurate.

They should be alright so long as you don't download too much though, looks as though they've answered my questions about the 4 / 8Mbit, adding hard capping to the traffic shaping:

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...Number=1957549

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

And I wonder what NTL would do if lots of people were downloading 248Gb a month? ;)... ah but they can't :D

Zen will do the same as the likes of PlusNet though ultimately (and Plus aren't the first). No ISP can ultimately provide a truly unlimited service free for P2Pers to download at max capacity and also promise a near to 1:1 experience like most the heavy "downloaders" seem to expect for a consumer broadband product (even at NTL's prices).

I don't really see the problem really. These issues only affect a very small minority who really are expecting a level of service from a consumer product more akin to a business level product.

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

ADSL Seams expensive.. :(

how would i go about networking these up.. as i am loooking for a router kinda thing.. atm im on ntl, and use LAN, i got 3 PC's connected, and i have to always have one computer on, so the other computers get the internet...

with a router, does this stop??

Thanks :),
oh and also, i've never had BT phone line, only NTL, i think.. ( im 100% sure of it tho )

Thanks for helping :)

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

You can get a Router that would connect to your Cable Modem/Set top Box and as long as the router is on all PCs connected would receive an internet connection. I read that you want to move over to ADSL on another thread, if this is so, you really need to make your mind up before buying a router as an ADSL router will not work on NTL and a Cable Router (for NTL) will not work on ADSL without a special (expensive) modem.

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

Im only going to get a router, if and when i change over ISP's,

thanks for your help fella

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

sorry i know its :notopic: but meh, I just rolled over 1500 posts, go me:D

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

oo Weldone, im on 9 now :D
whats your connection? 2mb or 2mbit?? how fast is that?

Re: Want ADSL?-Read on....
 

2MBit, same as you, downloads at a good, solid 230kb/s normally.