Re: giganews (usenet)
 

i have to agree ther vpn stup is pqin , but wen i used them i decided to go the openvpn route via my linux firewall meant everything leaving the network went thoruh teh vpn when i was using 20mb i got 20mb i have tried on 100mb conenction and got 98mb never tried on hgiher yet

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

just a quick question if i use my newsreader software with giganews with vpn i loose 13mb service if i run with vpn off it does not loose bandwidth any ideas im useing netgear router wnr2000 and a 50mb modem.
cheers

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

teh vpn provider is to able to provider full 50mb

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

If your guess WAS correct then you have answered your own question.

It's probably the same reason hit men don't advertise in the Yellow Pages.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Just banged SSL on Giganews port 563 and back up to full speeds

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Do you find the processing power of decoding the SSL impacts your d/l speed much?

I'm running News Leecher under Parallels 6 on a 2.6Ghx Mac Pro Quad and there is quite a speed drop when using SSL.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

It doesn't impact it at all for me on a Windows 7 box with a 2.4 GHz quad core and 3GB RAM. I enabled SSL on Giganews, but I was initially using port 563 which is still throttled, but I switched to port 443 and I'm back to hitting about 19.5 Mbps again, which is the same speed I used to get before the throttling came into effect and I wasn't using SSL.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

I'm running NewsLeecher under VMware Fusion 2 on a 2.4Ghz Black MacBook Core 2 Duo and and get full 20Mbit using SSL (at least before the current issues). Other operations on the laptop are slowed down though.

I just need to upgrade to 10.6 (I've had the box for over a year) so I can try Giganews' new Mimo client since it's a Mac application.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

I tried Mimo last week. I think it was about 5 minutes before I uttered the word CR4P and promptly removed it from my system. I found it lousy.

I got to know and love NL so anything else is going to have a hard time making me change. Having to boot up WIN7 in Parallels is worth it.


I think I have worked out why my speed it reduced when using SSL. I expect on a 20Mb/s connection it would have no impact on my machine either, maybe even 50.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

because they are slowly but surely realising, that it is not those of us that download and upload a fair bit, but is in fact the non-computer/internet literate generation they have irresponsibly released onto the internet with all their dam "on demand" services and time shifted tv !! that are sucking up hugeeeeee amounts of bandwidth by streaming HD material to their TV sets all night, and i think you'll also find that the 30 million trillion gaming machines all hooking up to play online is also placing a massive draw on resources everywhere,when lets face it, it was not exactly designed for that.

I too am seeing really really dismal speeds of VM newsgroup access at various times of the day, yet if i shift into my astraweb account, using SSL and port 563 instead of 119 (for theVM servers) i am seeing nearly double the speed at times. Trouble is my astra web account is for a pre-paid block of bandwidth, so don't want to hit it that much, once they stop doing free access via VM, and they will at some point, i'll shift to a full astraweb account with unlimited bandwidth, i have been very impressed with not only the speed and stability of their servers but also the massive retention period

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

No, it is you guys who download and upload a fair bit, just now the 'non-computer/internet literate generation' are actually using a few GB here and there they don't compensate as much as they used to by paying the same but using considerably less so average usage is higher :)

Previously Usenet whores were downloading DVDs and 'non-computer/internet literate generation' members were browsing a bit, now Usenet whores are downloading Blu Rays and the 'non-computer/internet literate generation' are rude enough to stream a bit here and there along with both playing games online and downloading the odd legitimately purchased one, along with this prices per Mbit have dropped too.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Thing is it's not just
It's a lot more than that, and more than here and there, as they are spending hours streaming high def material every day, downlaoders don't always sit there constantly downloading huge amounts !

Take me for example, i wouild be classed as a heavy downloader by some, however, i downloaded nothing today, and when i do download, it is usually done and dusted in 2 hours, max 3 ... and that is at the crippled speeds, whereas mr jones next door might stream one full movie and 2 tv shows at full speed ... wonder who's used more bandwidth there ?

And yes, i will agree with you, there will be a small percentage (although i suspect it is smaller than people think) that are grabbing the BluRay stuff, the rest of us know it's not worth downloading stuff that size that much.
But, at crippled speeds they are going to be downloading less per hour than streaming media family, just now with the speed restrictions targeting users specifically (like they promised not to !) said download whore is now going to be downloading longer, perpetuating said problem !


The overall increase in non-computer related traffic as you put it has risen tenfold (and that's a conservative guestimate) compared to those that you could categorise as download whores


But it doesnt give them the right to assume that anyone using said type of programs are immediately bad, some of us just want the dam speed we paid for, without some corporate a*shat saying "oh that's bad can't have you using that"

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Whereas I agree with you about the rise in "normal" usage now causing problems, I have to disagree about the "download/upload" you are referring to as yourself and others doing the same. (and I'm not blameless!).

I have and still do download on occasion something that is not avaiable elsewhere. It has never, to my knowledge, been available even if I'm prepared to pay for it (and believe me, I've searched!) and looks like it never will be.

However, copyright is copyright, I'm willing to take the risk but the "powers that be" are under so much preassure from the "powers that have" that eventually all ISP's will be restricting it or banning it completely.

Like it or not it will happen. Then and only then will we see if there is 1-5% of users ruining it for the rest of their customers or if indeed the ISP's have critically underestimated what internet usage will be with all the streaming etc.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

History suggests on your latter point its isp's underestimating.

O2 traffic shape very heavily and then capped their unlimited product at 30gig and they still extremely congested.
Plusnet also had no noticeable relief when they started shaping it is only when they added capacity afterwards things started getting back under control for them.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

I presume you mean O2's non-LLU product? Since that runs over BT's network (and is basically rebranded BT broadband) I'm not surprised. The LLU product has much higher caps, very little to no shaping and is still uncongested.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Average utilisation is still pretty low. If these people were spending hours streaming they wouldn't be paying for TV and wouldn't be able to grab that stuff at full speed anyway as they'd have the STM hammer brought down on them.

Most people still run on 10Mbps services, you just can't stream HD for hours on end on that service.

Virgin know the types and amounts of traffic traversing their network. People smacking Usenet for 300GB/month are still by a mile heavier users than Joe Average with their XBox who does 30GB/month.

The capacity crunch is because more people are using more, sure, but people downloading heavily are still big time outliers. 100 people using 10GB/month more is the same 1TB increase as 1 person using 1TB/month more, yes, however they are paying up to 100 times more for the pleasure.

So long as people are paying for what they are using or costs are coming down sufficiently that people are paying for their increased video usage it's a non-issue. Outlying users do not and have never paid appropriate rates for their usage.

We could go to pay per GB though if you think that would be fairer?

---------- Post added at 09:45 ---------- Previous post was at 09:37 ----------

Plusnet themselves quite strongly disagree with your second comment. It should be remembered that Plusnet started shaping in 2005, at that time P2P was a much larger proportion of traffic than now. No You Tube, no XBox Live HD streaming, no iPlayer, much less streaming, no question.

Your first applies to O2 Access only, shaping isn't even switched on on O2's LLU network which covers the overwhelming majority of their customers.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

O2 access is correct nevertherless?

incidently O2 LLU is now shaped for new customers, and some people are reporting congestion on it.

Regarding plusnet as I recall they turned on shaping, the complaints kept coming and coming until BT brought the company and added new BT centrals, only then did the complaints stop (or slow down).

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

O2 Access is absolutely correct however this is a small subset of O2's customers and you didn't specify that you just said 'O2' which is disingenuous. It's like referring to Virgin Media's off-net operation with the label 'Virgin Media' without any qualification, there are quite different policies on-net and off-net on both.

As I said O2's LLU network hasn't had its shaping turned on.

There have been a few isolated reports of congestion, yes, these have, thus far, been addressed swiftly and capacity upgrades are ongoing - see O2 / Be's planned works list, those are hardware upgrades.

Regarding Plusnet you recall quite incorrectly. BT have never run Plusnet's capacity planning nor did they add capacity to Plusnet's network, this is managed by ex-Plusnet staff. Plusnet had teething troubles with their shaping but once this was complete they had the most advanced application management in the UK.

There was a brief period when Plusnet saw issues with higher priority traffic and this was addressed both through adjustments to their management platform and addition of capacity.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Some good/fair points made to my comments above, time, as pip says will prove one way or another, but i can guarantee you something, they will never back down off the "heavy downloaders are evil" soap box, just wont happen, regardless of the results.
But for the record, and i don't think ISP's are solely to blame for this, there has been a major underestimation on the loadings being placed by every man and his dog trying to stream stuff, remember downloaders can run their file grabbing in quiet hours, we all have for a long time now, but the internet has no "quiet period" as such, just as streaming stuff is always going to be tied to regular sort of hours, with the evenings getting hammered compared to say 2am through 5am GMT

Ignitionnet, heavy users will always be heavy users i agree, but as you said the general usage is up hugely, and it's not down to increased activity from heavy users or increased copyright infringement
(i am getting a little p****d off with the constant banging on about that - they need to go after those downloading, duplicating and selling said material, thats where the loss of money is coming from !.... although i can see why, couple of years ago, i could buy 2 pretty new films at the bootsale for about 5 or 6 quid, if they didnt work you took em back and they swapped them no questions asked, no replies like "oh sorry sir you bought that over a week ago, and you don't have your receipt so we cant help you" :mad: that you get from shops that charge you 5 times as much !)

Anyway.... as you will i am sure agree, the heavier users, yes i would fall into that group i guess, are also those paying the considerably higher premiums for the higher speeds and bandwidth, i know i have been since i switched up to cable broadband directly from dial-up to 10meg ! which if i remember correctly was the fastest at the time available to me, i then went to the 20, and subsequently the 50 ... and will probably go to the 100 if and when it's available subject to a couple of concerns.

..... so i don't want to hear about a bunch of freeloaders on heavily subsidised tariffs banging on about equality of service, or people preaching that the service for said groups is being affected by the heavier users.... if the heavier users didnt pay the inflated prices for the top tier services, the lower tiers would not be half as cheap! and if they were not as cheap there would not be as many users in total and the congestion would be reduced :rolleyes: .... you get (or should get) what you pay for !

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Actually it's completely the other way round. People on higher tariffs pay considerably less proportionally for their bandwidth, heavier users pay far less per unit bandwidth used, and it's the bottom tariffs that are the cash cows. People on 10mb pay a massive premium for the amount they use and subsidize the higher tariffs. Without the majority of users on 10mb using bugger all subsidizing the higher tariffs, we wouldn't have 50mb or 100mb for <£40 a month.

30mb users get 3x the bandwidth, 3.3x more download allowance under STM yet only pay 1/3rd more compared to 10mb. 50mb costs 22% more again, but you get 67% more speed and no DS throttling.

You think you're paying a premium for 50mb? If you were paying the same amount for your bandwidth as the 10mb, you should be paying at least £105 a month. You're the one on the heavily subsidized tariff.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

hmm.

Thats an assumption 10mbit is full of light users. ;)

3 people in my family alone are on 10mbit and use way more then I do, on 30mbit I am using under 30 gig month, and they using over 100 gig easily on 10mbit with torrents. One of them also has kids so they will be using bandwidth as well.

10mbit is quite capable and is still double the speed of the average adsl connection, even using it half the time will push 1.5tb.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Whilst it might have come down in price lately, when i switched to the highest available, each time the cost was considerably MORE than any of their competitors, for what is now sub standard service, and pretty much on a par with the slower offerings from other suppliers.... plus i would not have to deal with thick f*****s in the off shore "tech support" !!

If early adopters are prepaired to pay the premiums for that faster service, don't cut your own throats by forcing them elsewhere.

As for the cheaper tariffs being the cash cows, i don't see it, they are not paying more per mb or whatever, because on their reduced speed service they can't shift that sort of volume, it is the sheer number of those users that makes the difference, and for what they are paying, it barely covers the install/kit/maintenance costs.

The early adopters of the top tier packages are the ones that get little or no discounts half the time, whereas the lower tarifs are discounted up the ying-yang to remain competitive with the other ISP's in the mass market speed sections.


EDIT:
LoL Chrysalis just said what i was trying to, in less words and it came across better, hahaha

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Still the wrong way round.

Don't think 10mb are paying more per mb?

10mb = £21 = £2.10 per mb
30mb = £28.5 = £1.28 per mb
50mb = £35 = £0.70 per mb
100mb = £45 = £0.45 per mb.

10mb customers are paying three times more per mb than you are.

Early adopters may pay more for higher services but those higher services still cost far less per unit service than the existing slower services. Even when 50mb came out it was only £45, yet when compared to 10mb it should be over £100. 50mb has droppped a third off it's price whereas 10mb has had a price rise. Discounted up to the ying-yang my ass.

The vast majority of users are still on 10mb and the vast majority of them download less than 45GB a month, probably less than 10 on average. If 50mb was priced fairly you should be downloading no more than a 16GB a month download allowance on 50mb.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

One way I gauge the resource commands of the bottom tier is to realise how congested legacy is in my area compared to overlay, completely overloaded by 10mbit customers.

Of course raw price per mbit is indeed better value on the higher tiers, but these prices take into account usage doesnt increase in proportion of the burst speed, so 50mbit users arent using 5x the average of 10mbit.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Err Chrys how exactly can you guage the resource demands of the bottom tier when you don't know how many modems are connected to the port?

It might be more congested because people are hammering it, or it might be because there's far too many modems there - you don't know.

---------- Post added at 12:39 ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 ----------

What he said. The comments about the discounted packages don't hold true either given the amount of people on 20, 30 or 50Mb who apparently have discounted packages and negotiated free upgrades.

Granny who pays her bill on time each month and checks her email every so often is still paying the bills for Mr News Freak to download his hundreds of GB a month and pay not much more.

Again, if you feel you are being robbed and your subscription is subsidising others perhaps going to a pay per GB system would be better? Only pay for what you use, no more.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

ignition I mean the demand on the infrastructure from 10mbit tier customers as a whole, if the port these customers are on is overwhelmed then its evident that the demand is more than VM are able/willing to spend on. So in the case of this argument its ultimately irrelevant how many customers are on the port. I would say its a case of VM in my area of underestimating the costs of supplying a 10mbit service.

I expect the average usage per customer on 50mbit tier is nowhere near 5 times the average usage of a 10mbit customer.

Another thing that is hardly ever taken into account on these discussions in profit margin.

Lets take an example.

ISP has baseline costs of £10 month whatever the speed, then a nomimal increase in costs depending on service supplied.

So lets say.

10mbit sold for £12 month with £10 base cost= £2 profit month per customer.
20mbit sold for £17 a month with £10 base cost and extra £1 cost, so £6 on average profit per customer.
30mbit sold for £25 month with £10 base cost and extra £2 cost, £13 profit per customer.

I see this argument with adsl providers also, people who claim automatically that low users on bottom packages are more profiteable than premium services, but forgetting the margins are very low on base packages. The saving grace for the lower tier's is the customer volume, I have no doubt per customer VM make less profit than on the top tiers.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Chrys it's very relevant how many customers are on the port - that's what decides what most of the costs per customer are on a cable network as most of the costs are fixed infrastructure costs which have to be spread between a cohort of customers.

Spend 10k on a line card and optics for 200 customers you've rather higher 'fixed' costs per customer than spreading it between 500 - this is what the economics are based on as far as node sizes and service groups go.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

I know that, but its logical to assume a highly utilised port means the resource cost for those using it is high as they using it a lot. So in terms of cost I am simply looking at port utilisation.

If VM stick 100 or 400 users on a port, it still costs the same to run that port. So VM in my area have seemingly capped costs for 10mbit users by over contending the port (hence the service only barely useable).

My main point been is tho, there is an assumption that if someone is on a higher tier they are probably a heavier user, when that wont always be the case.

I think it would be daft to say I am less profitable to VM than my 2 sisters as I am on a higher tier package paying more money and use less bandwidth. Even worse both my sisters only tend to use their broadband at peak, so whatever they are using is 90% in peak hours when capacity is most stressed.

One thing I am happy about with VM is they still charge a premium for burst speed and thats how it should be, not the farce thats in the adsl market.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

that i think is the point, you are rightly or wrongly assuming that the higher teir users are always downloading/using that bandwidth, when in reality many are not, and are paying for the convenience of having the speed when they want it..... only to be capped, shapped and generally crippled,

as for the discounts, i would put money on that there are likely more people on 10mb connections that have a huge discount based on tv and phone joint packages (i am actually fed up with the constant phone calls regarding tv packages, so much so that i phoned the uk complaints team and told them if they didn't stop bugging me, i'd take both phones and the multiple packages on those and the BB Internet elsewhere, seems to have done the trick) ... i would hazard there are more people on the higher tiers that only have BB with them.

BT are about to hit the same problem... they are force feeding us infinity adverts right now, touting how great the 3 times speed increase is (very cleverly not actually giving you any idea of the speed you will get, just estimated 3x increase on current...... well 3x crap is still crap lol) ..... and pushing the wonderful HD content you can watch through your new connection....... I'LL GIVE IT 6 MONTHS BEFORE THEY HIT A PROBLEM, if they don't start shaping and capping from the word go !

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Indeed, however you are spreading that cost between 100 or 400 sources of income - you've contradicted yourself a bit between the two paragraphs there.

Not always, I would hope that's very obvious, but mostly. There will be the odd leecher who pays as little as possible and downloads half the Internet but for the most part impatience gets the better of people or STM or a similar policy annoys them pushing them to higher speeds.

Regardless it's peak usage that matters - ask VM for their figures across their tiers if you still have questions they should answer them. There will, of course, be exceptions.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

They already are hitting problems ;) people getting sub 20mbit during peak on FTTC is not unusual. Also not too surprising given its using BT wholesale (which is very high cost for bandwidth) , they are also traffic shaping on infinity although I dont know the exact specifics other than the FUP is higher so throttling for heavy use kicks in later but p2p etc. will be throttled at peak like their adsl.

---------- Post added at 10:40 ---------- Previous post was at 10:38 ----------

I am never good at wording things :) but I meant a resource cost, ie the true demand per customer on unrestricted resources, is why I didnt say actual cost as I am aware VM can and do control costs by capping capacity. Ultimately 10mbit on VM is poorer value for money especially when considering its also contended higher on legacy (based on figures you provided before in an old thread).

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

Being contended higher means less bandwidth per customer proportionately being provided, so not only don't they get their fair share of resource compared with the other tiers they actually get less.

Someone has to pay the bills - let's hear it for granny paying full price and using single figures GB a month.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

I know this thread is old, but why is this argument even here?

The issue isn't with who is downloading and what is being downloaded its simple case of infrastructure and virgin top the bill as far as their backbone is concerned. Virgin, BT and others aren't investing any where near what the should be in their infrastructure to allow for the increase in download speeds. It is a simple fact, if people are willing to pay a substantial price for an Internet connection with a set speed then they should be entitled to use that speed for what ever they want providing its legal. Virgin and other companies are in competition for the speed that they can offer.

Virgin are currently testing 200 meg connections and have rolled out 100 meg to the majority of its users however their backbone realistically cannot support this upgrade, financially virgin probably cant afford the speed they are offering, as this would mean what they pay for their tier 1 connectivity would be too great, so they throttle, block or restrict connections to networks that can provide a source of illegal content, thus preventing them for being charged excessive amounts for their own traffic.

So rather blaming each other why not look at the companies that are providing internet services, BT is often mistaken for being a tier 1 provider and last time I checked they use sprint, global crossing and level 3 as their tier 1 providers, so even BT havent got the connectivity and have to pay for internet access, hence their throtteling techniques.

Re: giganews (usenet)
 

They stopped doing that in April and are into 1.5Ghz tests now.