Re: STM always enforced?
 

Clearly the OP doesn't both require any significant cloud backup/archiving from a NAS/media server and very probably not one that feels the necessity to test the aforementioned backup/archives at intervals either! ;)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Liar! Liar! Pants on fire! ;) :PP: :D

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Maybe he wants fast speed for when he wants to get something fast.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I'm on cable because my old phone line had a fault that Openreach failed to fix after 5 visits.

I stayed on cable after FTTC was launced because Openreach cba to turn up and do the install that was booked. They did offer another date 3 weeks later. I declined.

I'm still on cable now because after examining the alternatives and almost going with TalKTalk fibre I called retentions and they made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Get with the times dude, it's all about the 3D UHDTV these days. 16x Full HD at dual 120fps.

"Feels like you're really there"

---------- Post added at 14:15 ---------- Previous post was at 14:14 ----------

As above. 8K > 4K

---------- Post added at 14:16 ---------- Previous post was at 14:15 ----------

Shock horror!

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I've heard it's more realistic than real life!

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I love my beauty 120/12 but I hope one day VM will upgrade to 200/20 to boost VM a lift over BT challenge. (I hope it will be extra £5 a month for 200/20)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Try it and see for yourself! (Real life, or 3D UHDTV, depending on which you've had the luxury of trying already)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Still not being STM'd but i am getting pig sick of the emails telling me i'm using my connection too much. I hardly think 700GB a month ish is excessive especially considering most of that is from Netflix and other than perhaps a few nights a month the rest is auto-torrents done when we're asleep. Before we started using netflix we'd regularly use 2-3TB a month without getting any emails, now we get them every month even though we use much less than we used to.

I know the letters mean nothing but the tone strikes every time as though i'm doing something wrong by using my connection and pees me off.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Tested this the other day, I got managed but not until i'd downloaded about 15Gb (1PM on a saturday) checked on the VM site and weekends are the same, 5GB before you're capped, So I have no idea what sort of STM is going on in my area...

Re: STM always enforced?
 

It would also appear that STM is not working as much as they would like. They now appear to be having a further go at the peer to peer users as per their rather ambigous announcement below which has recently appeared on their forum.



"We're always striving to give you the fastest possible broadband speeds at peak times. To do this our traffic management policy is there to ensure that the small number of very heavy downloaders and uploaders at peak times on our network don't affect the online experience for everyone else.



As part of our policy, we've always slowed down Peer to Peer applications at peak times (from 4pm -12 midnight on Monday to Friday and 11am - 12 midnight at weekends). However due to the nature of Peer to Peer applications some traffic has been unaffected for the past few months, which has impacted other types of traffic at peak times.



So to solve this we're updating our management solution so it's more effective. We'll be rolling these updates out across certain areas of our network, starting this evening (2nd Oct) with Northampton."



We'll post further news on this here on the forum as the updates progress.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

We are getting STMd its been 1 day that we haven't had it (last friday)

Don't get any e-mails. Just use it.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Seems to be Freedom Friday - every friday STM does not seem to be on.. :)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Moving DPI from edge routers inwards seems to imply some areas have now core routing capacity issues caused by on-net P2P and not just off-net?
Interesting, although not entirely unpredictable development! ;)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I have noticed that there is a bit of congestion at the weekends in my area, coincidentally the STM now seems to be working at the weekends. Never seem to be STM'd during the week however ?

Re: STM always enforced?
 

That would seem quite contrary to previous claims that VM's core capacity is superb and "there is no congestion on the core network".

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Still randomly getting STM'd at random times, at random GB's, downloaded just over 20GB before getting STM'd earlier today

Re: STM always enforced?
 

the leics core network feed was congested according to the CEO office when I spoke to them in my final 12 months of service. Also I had a few occasions where I was seeing packetloss originate from inside the VM core network as well.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I've seen STM active again in the evenings. As I've mostly been away from home I haven't really tested when it is working and when it isn't. I'm not sure if my area counts as congested or not. Certainly my TBB chart looks a lot better than it did but a lot worse than many I've seem...
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2013/10/37.png
This was my September SamKnows downstream report. Considering these are averages across the whole day I'd say it's hardly brilliant...
46.97Mbps Average
17.83Mbps Min 8pm, Sun 22nd Sep
63.74Mbps Max 6am, Sat 14th Sep
http://www.digitalham.co.uk/wp-content/september.png

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I also can go just under 20GB before it kicks in that's non stop over 15-20 mins

Re: STM always enforced?
 

That might be because it's measured in 15minute intervals.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Which was already common knowledge but thanks for the clarification :)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

AFAIK this is only common knowledge as the "default sample interval" on Cisco CMTS and is in fact configurable on each chassis(or even linecard) between 1 and 30minutes.

Additionally there are many more configurable parameters including "average sampling rate frequency", "default sliding window period of 6hrs" and a default "Penalty Period" that defaults to 7 days!

Remember that STMv1.3 also has a 40 enforcement rule limitation and you require 1 rule for upstream with each service tier QOS and again for downstream, with potentially different QOS for residential & business classes and throw in various legacy tiers for mixed mode DOCSIS 1.x and DOCSIS 3 CM's then it's quite possible the combinations could exceed the available 40 rule limit!

While it makes administrative sense to apply a common configuration I've not yet seen any authoritative NTL/VM statement in last decade+ that actually stipulates what IOS version(and thus STM version - because STMv1.2 only had a 20 enforcement rule limit), linecard type, or specific chassis configuration is in use across all the areas?

Furthermore in some tests I performed sporadically attempting to saturate both down/upstream on occasions over a couple of previous years with some discussion with Igni I raised two hypotheses that basically potentially predicted that VM may well disable rule enforcement on mac domain basis just prior,during and immediately after major re-segmentation in order to load-balance prior to re-instating STM!
I'm still awaiting a conclusive answer or plausible counter to those theories so would welcome any alternative explanations via this thread?

In the unlikely event anyone else is at all interested in the methodology involved then here's an example Cisco reference > Subscriber Traffic Management for the Cisco CMTS Routers

As a minor aside, along with copious DOCSIS tutorials I found this Cisco paper (a tad aged and USA DOCSIS centric and thus not euroDOCSIS) which is really good foundation document (IMHO) >
CAPACITY PLANNING AND DOCSIS TRAFFIC ENGINEERING

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Just to clarify, a few VM people have confirmed that it's measured in 15min intervals.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Yes every 15 mins and then when your in STM it's like once every 4 hours - i did 6.3GB and I was in STM for just over 4 hours. That can't be right.

Sooner they totally turn this crud off the better.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

When was that? There was an issue a few months back but as far as I could tell it was largely resolved. It should now be measured every 15mins and at most last 2 hours (unless you continue downloading).

Re: STM always enforced?
 

lastnight. I was hit for 4 hours + Went on at 4:37PM was on till just after 9

honestly. I expect and accept 1-2 hrs but 4 is a bit naughty!

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I just wish they would give us the ability to check how much we have used in real time :mad:

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I've had to get a 20GB file down for tomorrow so I have micro managed it doing 4.5GB per 2 hours and I don't think I have hit it tonight.

I agree, it cant be that hard to impliment?

---------- Post added at 22:41 ---------- Previous post was at 22:19 ----------

So what happens if you start a download at say 10:50? Will it check at 11pm or not check and just go off?

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I do not know if it checks at 11 or not, but I suspect it would. Then again, I don't know if the STM goes on beyond 11 or if it's all disabled then. Be worth a test!

Re: STM always enforced?
 

On the 20GB download - I'd just kick it off and let it take its chances if I wanted it quickly or schedule it out of peak times. I really CBA to spend time and effort worrying about and pandering to the STM.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Agreed. If your objective is to get a file as quickly as possible, it's faster to download it at max speed, through STM and keep going until it's finished. Avoiding STM means dropping your average speed to below that of STM anyway.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Ill test it tonight but I believe it goes on after 11.

Ill make sure I hit 6.1GB before 10:30/10:45 so it can kick in.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Going to start downloading now.

---------- Post added at 22:10 ---------- Previous post was at 22:04 ----------

I've done enough to,judging by previous times, to be stm'd for 4 hours(ish).. will let you know what happens..

Sorry Kush unable to complete the test, because STM appears to be off. Or its on but hasn't seen the 20GB i've done over the past 25 mins (so it should have checked anyhoo?).

someone said to me the other day STM was off because my IP hadn't been flagged? I had a billing change earlier and a reboot. But surely it's not done on which IP's download the most? Because all I see is people saying they have no STM but have downloaded the internet. It's so random this on and off it's should be one or the other and stick to it (preferably off tho!)

---------- Post added at 23:08 ---------- Previous post was at 22:10 ----------

Scrub that!

I have been STM'd at some point since my last post. it's still on after 11PM - so there's your answer!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2013/10/28.png

Re: STM always enforced?
 

The absolute latest you could be managed is 00:59

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I will see. I bet it will b more tho! Been getting 4 hours lately when doing more than say 6.5GB I did 20 so eek!.

---------- Post added at 00:46 ---------- Previous post was at 00:04 ----------

Yes it's come off.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

we really need a better way of monitoring our data usage. Sadly, I get the feeling Virgin is putting this off as they're not monitoring it correctly themselves!

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Someone might want to consider my mathematical hypothesis but lets say that in my segment/node, all I can get at peak time is 20 meg (which happened yesterday) and I'm defo not STM'd.

Doesn't that mean that everyone else on 120 meg can't get more than 20 meg at the same time whether or not STM's?

In that case, if STM was lifted, they'd still be limited to 20 meg due to the saturation?

Anything wrong with that?

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I guess the only thing wrong with that is assuming there's an even distribution of bandwidth and that everyone can only get 20meg. I'm not really sure how the load balancing works, but if you're only getting 20meg, does that definitely mean everyone else is getting only 20meg, or are some getting more than that?
I really do wish we had more data on how effective STM is under heavy congestion.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

My point, Kush, is that STM ion a saturated environment makes no speed difference to what the user would otherwise receive. The CMTS just punts stuff out; it can theoretically dynamically change one or more downstream channels according to configuration settings but I've never seen that in normal circumstances in any of the event logs published on the forums. Indeed it would be pointless because peak time on 8 channels would be peak time on the other 8 channels in a service group.

So is my hypothesis wrong?

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Indeed, VM have always been useless at this, with BT being better but not by a whole lot. The mobile networks are really the ones to beat, as they all provide near-realtime data usage counters (some more accurate than others :rolleyes:)

Doing it on the user's router would be the most accurate mechanism but can be very resource intensive depending on the level of detail you require, and doing it on the ISP's edge router would require considerably more network integration than they seem bothered to achieve :erm: Then again STM by definition requires per subscriber data counters so if they already have that then it's just pulling the data off in the right way and sending it on to appropriate display systems that's needed. Then then again, they did get lazy with the STM turning it down to now polling only once every 15 minutes instead of realtime; not sure what their reasons were but I have a few suspicions...

---------- Post added at 14:50 ---------- Previous post was at 14:47 ----------

Not necessarily. Again it'd depend on how well their load balancing is set up and the specific metrics used. STM'd customers may be deprioritized (that's what I'd do if I had to STM people...) but then again if business customers paying double don't get prioritized I doubt they'll be doing that. It's also possible (and sometimes feels like) they run a complete free-for-all without per service-flow quotas or balancing, so if someone just happened to have more torrent seeds than you they may get more speed.

---------- Post added at 14:53 ---------- Previous post was at 14:50 ----------

When supposedly configured in a static, non-adaptive fashion across the whole country regardless of congestion levels it can't be very effective at all IMO. The only real effective way is the Comcast way and they seem to have deliberately abandoned that.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

It cannot be that hard to introduce a means to monitor our own bandwidth usage :mad:

We used to be able to use snmp to monitor the modems but they blocked that pretty dam quickly

Re: STM always enforced?
 

If they set everything up the lazy way, with no traffic prioritization, load balancing, or capacity management then yes, that's what would happen. But they have plenty of options at their disposal to change that, whether they use any of them I don't know.

Not necessarily, that would require there be an equal distribution of user(s) and/or bandwidth demand across all channels, the same number of modems on all channels, and the same user demographic. It's easy enough to have a street full of businesses that shut up shop at 5pm, along the next road on the same node a pile of students, unemployed and other internet scrounging no-lifers, then an estate full of retirees, residential homes, and council housing bottom-feeders who can afford weed and gambling but no broadband.

Since you're implying VM aren't dynamically load balancing across all available capacity, then it follows that they aren't able to dynamically balance peak load either, and left to chance peak load is not likely to statistically normalize itself across all channels unless they're very very fat channels.

---------- Post added at 15:05 ---------- Previous post was at 15:04 ----------

The system is already there, they just have to create and link it into another system that allows you to see it.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Ah yes. That's it. The ALLOT system deprioritises STM'd traffic. So congestion must be really bad if my un-STM'd speed tests frommy nearest VM host only manage 20 meg ofr much of the mid-evening.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Another reason to take the modem mode/own router option.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Remember when a data usage monitoring widget appeared in the MY VM area? I bet one is 'coming soon', in the queue of all of the other things VM have coming 'soon'.

The heat death of the universe is soon, too. :rolleyes:

Re: STM always enforced?
 

"soon" by VM's standards.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Is about the same as "soon" in astronomical terms

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Was it a widget for testers? I never saw it.

Yes 200mb was coming soon for the olympics after all.. :D

Re: STM always enforced?
 

No it wasn't resolved. VM completely ignored our questions about 4 hour STM in that thread as I told you at the time. Now do you believe me?

The only thing they fixed at the time was a profile misconfiguration that caused some people in some areas to get STM'd at ~48Mb.


From our tests at the time, as far as I recall, we all triggered 4 hour STM by downloading as little as 6.1GB.

STM is measured every 15 mins, but can take a further 15 minutes to kick-in ; probably because one system (monitoring) has to communicate to another (limiting) and both are on a 15 minute timer. I found something about that at the time in some Docsis documentation on STM.

Anyway I've been on no STM since just after the Cat C Seg so haven't performed any STM tests since then. No point. :)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

tomato firmware is the best usage monitoring I have seen.

on the shibby build (and I think is same on other variants) you can see live traffic graph of the connection, but that isnt that amazing however what is you can then view a live graph per device on your network, you can also view per interface on the router. On top of that it tallies up internet usage, overall, per device. It can store this data persistently so isnt lost across reboots, power cuts etc. Break down per day or per month. The asuswrt-merlin firmware imported this feature as well although its not quite as good but still much better than average on merlin. To me isp supplied firmware's are miles behind whats possible on a router.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Yes Tomato firmware was a favourite of mine. I also found the QoS both easy to use and effective. Unfortunately my current router isn't supported and the usage tracking on it is pretty poor :(

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Well did a 7GB download and been STM'd now for over 3 hours, done nothing since.

So the 2 hour thing seems to be as and when it feels like it - dont forget the other night I did 20GB and it lasted 2 hours even past 11.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Ive done 352mb since I posted that and I am STILL in STM.

What is it at weekends? 12 hours!?

Finally come off (21:10), some have nothing but mine seem to be getting longer and loooooooooonger!

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Are you sure that it isn't congestion? Are you hitting your STM speed spot on?

Re: STM always enforced?
 

yes its the STM speed. about 68mbps through the speedtests 70.2 on the meter I have

Re: STM always enforced?
 

To be sure run Shaperprobe next time and post the results:
http://www.measurementlab.net/tools/shaperprobe

Re: STM always enforced?
 

68 meg isn't bad. Faster than 96% of the country or something.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

It's more than double the UK government's definition of Super-fast broadband! So Super-Super-fast broadband. ;)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

But I have no gripe with the speed, you guys always seem to jump on that bandwagon without need. What I am saying is is the STM really that long on a weekend for what I downloaded?

And thanks. I will run it and post the results if I get STM for longer than 2 hours when I do 7GB

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Even if 68meg is good, that length of STM is far too long.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Thank you , someone who sees what I am trying to get at.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Well Just wanted to update you. I believe it IS STM based on the download speeds at both stages (smack on the website page anyway) but that program you told me to try say nothing, nada, and then I thought isn;t shaping and throttling different? SO would this pick up throttling?

Anyhoo..

What I call Stage 1 STM

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2013/10/15.png

Connected to server 217.163.1.87.

Estimating capacity:
Upstream: 11826 Kbps.
Downstream: 98085 Kbps.

The measurement will take upto 2.5 minutes. Please wait.

Checking for traffic shapers:

Upstream: No shaper detected.
Median received rate: 11573 Kbps.

Downstream: No shaper detected.
Median received rate: 79893 Kbps.

And stage 2.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2013/10/16.png

Connected to server 83.212.4.11.

Estimating capacity:
Upstream: 11651 Kbps.
Downstream: 82587 Kbps.

The measurement will take upto 2.5 minutes. Please wait.

Checking for traffic shapers:

Upstream: No shaper detected.
Median received rate: 11424 Kbps.

Downstream: No shaper detected.
Median received rate: 67722 Kbps.

I'll leave what the hell this all means to you boys :) But the full stage 2 kicked in same minute as that speed test. So I will see how long it lasts for this time.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Everyday has done a meticulous piece of confirmation of the practical effect of the STM policy. ShaperProbe reported nothing. That doesn't surprise me having read the learned paper on how ShapeProbe works and the extent of the field studies performed.

The studies were performed in the USA and AFAIK (and I've done searches), none of the ISPs concerned use the same system that is deployed at VM; ALLOT Communications traffic shaper.

The ALLOT system works by de-prioritising user packets whose rate exceeds a threshold (the STM limits). This occurs if the server's buffers are full and the packet is delayed until there higher priority packets have been cleared. I don't think the strategy has changed only the application policy.

I'm not the expert here so others might add better value. But unless ShaperProbe can capture this method, it will return a negative report.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

It's just come off - and I hope I helped in some small way!

After reading http://www.allot.com/ let's hope they keep their STM on 4G to the USA only!

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I've got unlimited data on Three and a Cat-4 LTE capable phone. When LTE eventually rolls out here, there's a very dangerous chance that it might actually perform better than my Virgin connection under STM.

Lucky for Virgin, they've likely got a couple of years to sort it out first.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I too am on Three with their One Plan, last night when my congestion issues got so bad I started tethering from my HTC One and was getting speeds of 17Mbps compared with the barely 10Mbps my 120Mbps VM line was delivering! If I wasn't such a big gamer I would ditch VM.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Same here, One plan for me with a Galaxy S4 so here's hoping I get some 4G yummyness in the next few years!

And I might do that after my contract is up. I used to have an Iphone but I didn't like tethering it cause it messed up the battery but if the battery is removable well..

I did 170GB once when I was in hospital (lots of netflix and stuff) and 3 never cared. Brill value for £31 a month is the one plan.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Well from what I have read cat 4 maxes out at 150mbps. It's cat 8 you want with it's 3gbps of yummyness!

I am unlikely to see cat 3 LTE max out at 100 anytime before my next upgrade, well I have 2 phones ones due in 10 months so who knows.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Only around one year if networks' plans are to be believed. Still, the upload will be miles better from the outset - **** poor upload was one of the main reasons for me leaving VM a while back, and as I keep repeating, there's only been 0.5 years out of the last 10 during which I've *not* had a faster upload speed on my phone than the fastest available VM "fibre optic"

Re: STM always enforced?
 

When I tried 4G I got about 23 up so was good.

Just naff allowances. if 3 can hold that up we will be flying and i will dump cable. maybe as Kush says depends what they are doing at the time.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

It'll probably take 3 at least 10 months to properly roll out their LTE. Fingers crossed it's CAT-4 or better, I did ask on twitter and they said CAT-4 will be "supported" - whatever that means.

It's that part about believing the networks that I struggle with. Everyone seems to be aiming for 98% by 2015 - I'm not sure anyone has 98% on 2G/3G so we'll have to see, but that 800Mhz spectrum should go far.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Everyone has had over 99% on 2G for a decade or more, and that was pre-mergers. EE currently claims 99.8% And again EE are planning to upgrade "all" 2G sites to 4G by the end of 2014. EE and 3 also claim 98% on 3G, not sure about the others.

3 will not take long at all to do their rollout. Not only are they're sharing infrastructure with EE, but in fact, most EE 4G signals actually come from 3's 3G transmitters. Since most EE 4G transmitters actually belong to 3 (well, originally belonged to 3 but are now shared under the MBNL agreement) and are existing 3G sites with upgraded radios bolted on the side, most of the work has already been done.

Since 3 and EE are largely sharing the same physical infrastructure and equipment, it'll be Cat 4 and above from the outset, EE intend to introduce LTE-Advanced in short order, AFAIK all the shared sites are running multimode, multiband software defined radios anyway. EE have the spectrum to introduce (and will be trialling) up to 450Mbps by the end of the year, 3 won't, even on the same spectrum. The problem with 3 is they have the least capacity of everyone but O2, and as I've said before, cheap tariffs, unlimited usage, and low capacity are not a good combination.


And we all know that all turned out on VM... At least VM has some control of node sizes...

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Crossing my fingers we don't get that problem on Three. Didn't go for the 4G version of the phone as the 3G on Three is good enough but worried that could change.

A speedtest on my non-4g phone, it's piddling down with rain and I am inside a newly built building:

http://s21.postimg.org/6uwpy3s6v/Scr2.png

Peaked at 20Mbs download and 15Mbps upload, more than enough for a mobile phone. Who needs 4G? Those wanting to get rid of their home broadband connection, which are going to be the ones putting the strain on the network. If it's an option, why not use it though.

What people need to remember is there will be traffic management on mobile networks. P2P slowed down based on time of day or how busy the network is and things like that.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I get a bit suspicious about the results from the new speedtest app, especially given maximum theoretical upload speed is 5.76Mbps.

Though I have seen "Up to 42Mbps" DC-HSDPA go up to 36Mbps just yesterday, anything over 20 is rare IMO.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

.. and of course as we all know our VM connection is unlimited :erm:

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Unlimited frustration... :D

Re: STM always enforced?
 

It means upto 150mbps down - There are 8 cat's from what I can see and cat 3 is LTE and 4-8 are LTE advanced.

I hope they don't go to cat 4 and leave out cat 3! or my S4 will be useless! My phone can do 100 down and 50 up but thats all I would ever need from a mobile!

Going back to STM I do wonder how many, if any people have gone from VM to FTTC and if this has freed up the network enough to get rid of it.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Yeah sorry, I know what the different Categories are, what I meant by that was that Three said CAT-4 would be "supported", but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get 150Mbit speeds (even potentially). What they COULD mean is that they'll roll out Cat-3 but cat-4 devices will still work on it.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Using the old speedtest app in the trafford centre a few weeks ago...

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/at...6-13-12-21.jpg

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/at...1&d=1381933105

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I think you've misunderstoood how the categories work.

Cat 4-8 are NOT LTE Advanced. Only 6-8 are. 1-5 are all standard LTE (3GPP Rel 8). All UK networks are already Cat 4 capable and support all category devices. "Leaving out cat 3" is not a concept that exists. However, only Vodafone and EE will ever be able to exploit the full capabilities of a Cat 4 device. Cat 4 devices will work just fine on 3 and O2 but they will never achieve full speed.

LTE Advanced is fully backwards compatible and will support all previous LTE devices. A phone that does not support LTE-A does not become "useless" once the network upgrades arrive.

As with all broadband services, competition breeds progress, and just as we've seen in the LTE market VM are moving forward too. Unfortunately, one of the places I'm looking into moving to won't have FTTC for another 6 months if ever, though FTTPoD is also going to be available "soon" (it's on a FTTPoD trial exchange) so I may end up back on paltry VM service for a short period :(

Re: STM always enforced?
 

O2's 4G auction results do look bad but I believe they will be using the BT capacity as well (BT brought some 4G).

Still 4G will be a niche thing for at least a few years.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

BT will be using EE's network and O2 deny having anything to do with them.

As for niche, over a million customers in less than a year isn't that niche. Took the mobile networks nearly 15 years to get that many customers the first time round. Plus, how many customers do VM have? Chances are 4G will overtake that by the middle of next year.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Not at all, I merely read what the operators have said, the people who are meant to know how their own industry works. As it's not my place botheration or interest to understand them it's their problem, not mine. I merely use my phone and that is all.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

People who are meant to know how the industry works said your s4 will become "useless" if they run their network at full speed? LOL.

Great move. Make nearly every current generation handset useless, including the iPhone 5s

Re: STM always enforced?
 

My condolences! FTTPoD will cheer you up after though :)

Re: STM always enforced?
 

No, but their explanation of the categorys of 4G seem to be wrong apparently.

I know my phone will work on many networks around the world but according to the box the S4 I have is only cat 3. Or maybe it's got cat 4 too (as some websites suggest) but it's not mentioned?

In any case 100 down and 50 up on a mobile is as fast as I will ever want to go.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

approx 3-4% then.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

It uses a Snapdragon 600, which is CAT3. The 800 is CAT4 and Samsung specifically hailed the Note 3 as being one of the first CAT4 phones, so I very much doubt the S4 will ever have CAT4 capabilities, unless they roll out an upgraded version (which isn't too unthinkable, they did that with the S3 I think).

Re: STM always enforced?
 

3-4% of what? It's already accounting for 40% of new sales, and that's before prices were dropped by nearly 75% over the last 6 months.

---------- Post added at 17:30 ---------- Previous post was at 17:27 ----------

The Snapdragon 800 is actually a LTE-Advanced ("true 4G") chipset and an upgraded version of the Galaxy S4 with it already exists. Originally released as Korea-only a leaked UK EE firmware for an international model has surfaced, suggesting it will be coming over here too.

---------- Post added at 17:31 ---------- Previous post was at 17:30 ----------

The S4 LTE (GT-i9505) is category 3, yes. And yes, it can readily do those speeds - both of which are faster than BT FTTC and the upload alone is ten times faster than what VM can give me even without STM :rolleyes:

Then there's the S4 3G (GT-i9500) and S4 LTE-Advanced (GT-i9506) and the S4 active, S4 mini, and so on...

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Well 100 down and 50 up will do me until the next upgrade :D

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Back on the original topic - I've just exceeded double the threshold and suffered no slowdown. I did think I'd seen STM over the weekend but it may just have been congestion as my SamKnows reports show that there is plenty of that but using multiple streams still allows downloads using a download manager or TBB speedtests to hit the headline rate.

I can't figure out what they are doing as it seems they deny any knowledge of STM being absent anywhere.

===

No I was wrong. STM has now kicked in but about 30 minutes after the downloads completed. That's quite a joke really if speeds are restricted way after the time when it actually matters.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I thought you said that only Cat6-8 were LTE-A? The Snapdragon 800 is only CAT-4, so is there more to it than that?

This is true, but how much bandwidth is there to go around, really? DC-HSDPA+ is meant to be 42Mbit but I rarely ever see it break double digits. Not only are you dealing with the perils of a wireless technology, you're also competing with sometimes hundreds of other people. I would like to know how much capacity the various spectrum blocks can truly have.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

Cat6-8 are LTE-A only, support for them requires a device to be LTE-A. LTE-A did not remove the previous categories though so an LTE-A device does not have to be cat 6/7/8, it can also be cat 4. In this case we have a device that supports LTE-A capabilities (i.e. carrier aggregation) but not the increased speeds it brings, and only supports previously existing LTE speeds. The main benefit at the moment is to allow carrier aggregation so operators that do not have fully contiguous allocations of the maximum available spectrum to achieve standard LTE speeds by combining multiple, smaller blocks. For example 3, which has allocations of 2x15Mhz and 2x5Mhz can combine the two into a single 2x20Mhz to achieve 150Mbps with LTE-A, while with LTE (standard) they could never achieve full Cat 4 speed. It doesn't benefit anyone else really, since EE and Vodafone already have multiple contiguous blocks of maximum size, which is a very rare asset globally.


That depends on your cell size and how well you manage/optimize your network. Things change quickly - the average I get from DC-HSPA now is 11Mbps, compared to 2Mbps a year ago - though O2 still does 12Mbps without DC-HSPA in my neck of the woods. Plus, dual-cell is implemented really really badly in the UK by all networks IMO. And then there's the fact the app most people use (Speedtest.net) being next to useless for anything above 10Mbps on mobile.

For LTE(A) EE and Sodafone both have 3-4x the allocated spectrum than they had for 3G, and with LTE MIMO is basically universal thereby doubling capacity again under certain conditions. That's why EE advertise "average" speeds on LTE as around 5x that of 3G, which they conservatively put as 10-15Mbps vs. 2-3Mbps

Well then you're looking into matters of cell density and spectral efficiency, but take a typical example of a 3-sector macrosite in a city, which would deliver a max of 3x150Mbps (450Mbps) usable capacity using a single 20Mhz carrier, EE and Vodafone both have enough spectrum for three of these, putting them at a total capacity of 1350Mbps per site. Cell density can be dozens to hundreds per square mile in cities, and total 15,000+ across the UK per network. To be fair capacity will more likely be limited by the gigabit backhauls VM are putting in for these sites, if not by poor signal or interference than total spectrum capacity.

To put it in perspective, the amount spectrum each of the larger networks have dedicated to 4G is roughly equivalent to the amount VM have dedicated to "fibre broadband" - except with equal down and up spectrum. So instead of 16 down, 4 up, you've got the equivalent of something that's more like 15 down, 7.5 up on mobile (7.5 down x2-way MIMO)

---------- Post added at 22:22 ---------- Previous post was at 22:21 ----------

That does sound distinctly like congestion. I usually use a UDP speedtest to rule that out as that completely eliminates the effect of "multiple streams".

Joke? VM? Blasphemy! :rolleyes:

Re: STM always enforced?
 

of EE's 27million users ;)

most people dont buy a £500+ phone every year :)

4G will be mainstream when low end phones that cost circa £100 come with it, I guess in a gen or 2 that will be the case so either 2014 or 2015.

The barrier just isnt EE's extorniote prices but the phone prices as well.

Also the S5 is coming out earlier than scheduled since the S4 has had poor sales.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

It's not extortionate anymore when it starts at £18.99 a month, Tesco Mobile are doing 4G for £12.50 a month SIM-only or £17.50 a month with a free handset.

Not sure where you get the £100 price point from, but over 50% of phone sales have been smartphones for several years, and the average person spends over £36 a month on their mobile bill, which incidentally also equates to an overspend of £195 per year from being on the wrong contract. At the £36 a month price point, just about everything short of the £550 iPhone 5s is free on contract so to be honest most people should be getting a free £500+ phone with their contract. Or by switching to a more appropriate contract the average person could save enough money each year to pay for a second 4G contract *and* a new 4G phone.

Incidentally, UK's weighted average puts things 62% cheaper than Germany and 45% cheaper than the USA for heavy mobile users when all costs (contract + handset) are included.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

I've always wondered about that statistic of being on the "wrong" contract. My contract with Three gives me 600mins, unlimited texts and unlimited data - I probably use less than 10mins a month and maybe only about 100 texts as everything is done via the data these days - so would I qualify as being on the "wrong" contract? Part of the reason I'm on said contract is the unlimited data and the phone that comes with it (Right now, a shiny new Galaxy Note 3 - hence why I'm particularly interested in the capabilities of CAT-4 LTE/LTE-A). At the Sim-free price of the phone and the equivalent SIM-only tariff, I end up paying nearly the same anyway over the 2 years.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

In germany I can get a S4 mini for £100 cheaper than uk.
S3 LTE £150 cheaper.

£36 a month may be the average I take your word for it, but thats a LOT of cash to spend on a phone service. I pay O2 under £14 for 800 mins + unlimited landline calls. I suspect your £17 option is a package that is barely useable with minimum minutes and data usage.

Where is the £17 month option, I picked s4 mini on tesco mobile and the lowest is £23 month. which is the cheapest listed on this page.

http://shop.tescomobile.com/anytime-upgrade

£17 a month for 2 years is £408 for the phone, not cheap.

Yes people are buying 4G, but remember there is 10s of millions of people who dont have that spending power, some people cant even afford contracts at all and just have payg phones. Thats why I said the true barrier is the cost of the phone, eventually £100 phones will have 4G and when they do is when we start seeing mainstream adoption of 4G.

I have noticed lately tho my mobile signal is weak in my area, and some googling shows news stories about mobile networks supposedbly turning down 3g/2g signals to get people to sign up to 4g.

But I dont care about 4G adoption, not sure why we debating it either on a STM thread :) The main thing is 4G availability is increasing and competition is increasing which is a good thing, I think thats more the point you want to make.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

If the average is that high, must mean that people are getting lower tariffs then building the bill up with charges. I got the Three one plan + a 'free' Galaxy S3 a year ago, which gives unlimited data, text and 2.5k minutes or something, all for £29. Still paying that same price a year later and it's only been a couple of 0845 numbers on a couple of occasions that have pushed it over. Find it crazy that £36 is the average bill.

Re: STM always enforced?
 

indeed.

Phones arent free either, they included in the package. Basically its a way to get the phone on credit with low/no interest rates, sometimes the phone is even subsidised.

One of my sister's upgrades her phone every 2-3 years on contract, but the phone she is getting this time is the iphone4s not the iphone5. Her boyfriend who incidently is the only person I know personally with a 4g phone has the s4.

I would have got the s4 mini or s3 mini but they both overpriced in this country, the s4 at the time I got my phone was a extremely high price so i got the s3, plus I need a fm radio on my phone which is removed on the s4.