Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I thought it worked by reading the packet's header to see if it was p2p or not. If they shape all data what's the point in selling something as 10mbit (or whatever speed)?

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

assuming it's simply shaped by port and that voip has a high priority then (if) you could reassign your P2P or whatever to the same port as used by VOIP, you might get round it.

but if you look at plusnet (I think) they also shape by limiting you to a certain amount of gb per month during peak hours, after which for the rest of the month your speed is lowered massively. perhaps that's what NTL plan.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Hopefully it will just be some sort of load balancing at peak times. ie. give p2p traffic low priority when the network is at it's busiest

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I did more than that between 6 and 8 last night :)

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I can see the press release now...

"generally the majority of NTL customers will not notice traffic shapping is in operation and therefore this wont be an issue"

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

with ADSL suppliers they have to buy bandwidth from BT as the main carrier and then charge their customers to cover that as well as make a profit. So something like Plusnet's usage allowance is going to pop up alot on what tend to be the smaller ADSL suppliers. NTL have their own network so are not under the same constraints. I hope that traffic shaping will be done, if it is done, sensibly. If my download drops to 1mb or 1.5mb between 6 and 12 then fine (well, not really) but any lower and that's just taking the mickey. I am not a 24/7 max bandwidth downloader.

Also, what happens when people start wanting to watch programs, legally, via the net? Most people work 9-5 and will settle in front of the PC between 6 and 10 (this is how it would work in my house) - traffic shaping these connections would result in choppy video. People who don't understand what is going on will not realise that it is traffic shaping and think that their NTL connection is crud. They may leave in their droves to other providers whilst the heavy downloaders on the network just leave their PCs on 24/7 and suffer all of 42hrs out of 168 where their connection drops speed. Not much of a business plan, that.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I don't see the problem myself. The more you use it, the slower it gets. Sounds utterly fair.

Unlimited, uncapped and unshaped would obviously be preferable, but this only works if everyone is reasonable. We already know that not everyone is.

In reality, for everyone except the leechers, your connection will be faster. This is because the DVD downloaders in your neighbourhood will have switched to another ISP within a couple of months. If you download a DVD every now and then it will download at full speed. If you exceed a usage allowance then your speed gets throttled, and you get an email to tell you about this, and why it's happened.

I'd only be happy with this if the throttling is gradual, i.e. 10Mbps > 9 > 8 etc, not 10Mbps > 100Kbps. As long as the lowest throttled speed will still be suitable for browsing, shopping etc then that's fine.

EDIT: broadband TV is still a problem, as grubbymitts says. NTL would need a big infrastructure upgrade within a year or two if they're gonna keep up, either with or without shaping.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I can't see NTL worrying about people trying to watch TV over the internet, it would be taking customers away from their service.

I mean worry if people are struggling to do it, they would be worried if people cancelled the NTL TV service for an alternative internet based service.

(I'm sure that makes no sense :p)

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

generally I'd expect you to download to a pvr type of setup where the program is mostly buffered before you watch it.

http://www.tvmax.co.uk

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Its possible they may shape by inspecting headers and not just blanket across ports but then if people start encrypting their p2p they would probably just shape anything above 1024 as p2p and a few hundred ports below 1024 as well. People in congested areas like myself may actually benefit from shaping in terms of browsing and as other stuff such as ftp is slow anyway the shaping may or may not be worse.

Those of you in areas which dont have much contention will probably be affected more by shaping.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

If we really are talking about throttling, it most likely is going to be targetting Bittorrent considering how much of ntl's network it takes up.

Just like Rogers and just like how people are getting round it.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

You mean stuff like this

http://d.sankey.ca/blog/1902/rogers-...erally-sucking :(

http://www.rbua.org/board/viewthread.php?TID=5571&FID=1 :(

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Yeah nice one NTL...A very tight approach NTL at temporarily improving network congestion problems by spending the least amount of money possbile. All this will do is cover up how bad their network is for a little while. Fear not though.. When on demand TV via the net comes about NTL will get a swift kick up it's bum!... Just shocking really... that theres still no word on major hardware updates that are so needed for NTL's network.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Why?

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

*Sigh* :rolleyes:

So have any of the ADSL providers introduced capping or traffic shaping? How about other ISP's in other parts of the world?

At the end of the day you cannot expect Ntl or Telewest to throw huge amounts of money at their networks to ensure everyone can download vast amounts of data, chat for hours on Voip calls and stream enough video to make you go blind.

Like it or not Ntl/Telewest are NOT specialist ISP's who will provide a clean, uniterrupted internet feed. They are mass-market providers and they will react to what they feel the majority wants. If that involves shaping traffic to reduce P2P to a trickle then thats what they will do.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Yes other providers do it and they admit to it. So have NTL admitted to any of this or will they admit to any of this. At the end of the day i pay at the moment to NTL £24.99 for a unlimited connection "check here for ntl advert on there website" No where does it say Unlimited connection but we traffic shape. How can a traffic shaped service designed to limit you download capability be a unlimited service ? or am i missing some great NTL logic here ?

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Personally speaking I almost always get upwards of 7.5/8.5 Mbps at all times of day and night so I'm quite happy. I don't see any affects of slowdown, congestion or shaping.

*If* Ntl are bringing in traffic shaping I'm sure they will announce it when it affects the majority of customers.

Right now I'd probably guess they are testing any hardware etc. before rolling it out across the whole network.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

No sighing please :D.

NTL knows that since the 10meg upgrades their network can't deliver. This is not even local congestion aswell, but going right up to their routers that direct traffic to peering companies. Ive never before seen such fluctuating speeds with an ISP before. Sure they don't promise it to be 100% stable all of the time, its not a leased line we have by any means!.. But I expect it to perform in a certain margin most of the time... im sure others do too.

My experience with ADSL when it comes to congestion is its got the finger on the pulse. With keeping an eye on network performance and installing new DSLAMs when needed... Id like to know what hardware changes/upgrades NTL are doing instead of the cheap and nasty route of rolling out software to shape traffic.

Boo hiss at cutting corner methods... but I guess we can't have it all, especially with these fast (when they want to be!) speeds.

:p:

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Well as long as your happy that's ok. Meanwhile those that have on off connections, On off proxy's, Less that 3 meg on so called 10 meg connections. They can at least sleep well in the knowledge you are happy.

Meanwhile NTL go ahead with buying up other companies and giving bonus's to one half of there company and because of that there is no money to fix there network. So what have we the paying customer got from NTL a service going down the pan.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I'm glad you see it my way. :)

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Actually BT do traffic shape, and people have slammed them for not being proactive enough about their capacity upgrades.

They traffic shape around their DSLAMs to ensure that if/when they congest it gives a smoother experience and bandwidth is shared more evenly.

Check the status on http://www.samknows.com for more information on BT and their incredible never congested networks.

Then wait and see what happens when the MaxDSL starts ramping up ;)

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Ahh didnt know that, my area was only in the 'red' for congestion for couple of months until it got upgraded.. even when it was on red I didnt see any probs, oddly enuff!

I was.. well still am with Nildram @2meg. lol have two net connections.. hmm need to cancel nildram can't afford both, but im scared to just have NTL :D and nuffin to fall back on! Never noticed any shaping of traffic with nildram, a very solid service puts NTL to shame in alot of respects. But my need for speed drove me away from them ;).

Im grateful for NTL going unlimited (Has it been confirmed yet!?) but I guess this is the price we pay in return.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I believe ntl doesnt have to pay BT £20 per mbit for bt central traffic as it owns its own network, the adsl isps that are doing shaping have much higher proportional costs per customer and it isnt a fair comparison.

Also 50kB of a server which at same time can do 800kB to a friend's telewest connection sorry is a poor broadband service.

---------- Post added at 17:52 ---------- Previous post was at 17:49 ----------

applauds

new defenition of fluctuation.

4am 10mbit
9am 10mbit
midday 8mbit
2pm 5mbit
4pm 2mbit
7pm 0.5mbit
9pm 1.5mbit
midnight 3mbit
2am 8mbit
3am 10mbit

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Now I like that idea for a new thread, seriously, it could go along the lines of area ( in a sub thread )/ date / time and speed with which speed test used, its waaaaaay past me to even try and set up a thread like this, but if a passing mod / admin thinks it could work, for reference sakes, maybe a sticky to boot, it could prove usefull for some and a comparison for others.

suggestions / ideas on a post card, but no OT posts, just the facts :tu:

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

i am no expert in traffic shaping, essentially it involves your ISP identifying and blocking traffic from popular p2p applications (Bit Torrent/Emule/etc). While there are not that many isps that do this right now, expect more and more ISPs to implement traffic shaping (as new CISCO hardware has P2P throttling built in standard) It has been widely reported that most ISPs in Italy have implemented traffic shaping, and a major service provider in Canada uses a particularly brutal brand. Often there is no alternative service providers to turn to because of monopolisation of the market.

How will this work when p2p software can encrypt information now for example if you use the edonkey network (kad overnet emule etc).

check out
http://forum.emule-project.net/index...howtopic=90121
http://forum.emule-project.net/index...howtopic=99208

here is some info on the protolcol from the guy who wrote it

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

You've never dealt with Plusnet, Wanadoo or Bulldog then?

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

hehe, in fact 99% of LLU ISPs and even BT themselves.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Not sure encryption will be very handy. Either only a few people will have each key, which will reduce the number of downloads available (thus slowing the download speed), or lots of P2P users will have the same key, and the ISPs may well spot a pattern, and just slow down any packets conforming to that pattern.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Heh 'not many' o rly ;)

You've been able to do P2P throttling with Ciscos for a while using the NBAR features. Nothing brand new there. Most people prefer to use the Ellacoya / Packeteer / Sandvine / Allot / PCube gear though for more granularity of control and because it takes its' toll on the routers asking them to look deep into packets.

The big 3 cable operators in Canada all shape, Plusnet here shape immensely, Pipex do a bit of shaping, as do BT.

No doubt there are others that we don't know about because they're more subtle :)

---------- Post added at 12:38 ---------- Previous post was at 12:37 ----------

Suggest you check out Diffie-Hellman key exchange, TKIP, and asymettrical cryptography :)

The only way to stop a reasonably implemented encryption scheme is to use session / connection based throttling. There aren't exactly many applications that open as many connections as quickly as a P2P program :)

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I don't have time to check those out now (but may well do later), but if enough people exchanged keys, surely you still run the risk of the ISP picking that up?

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

If its that easily defeated ?, Why would they spend the sort of money that this stuff costs. Unless its not that easy to defeat. ?


My opinion on this is it's NOT that easy to defeat.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Was that aimed at me? If it was, I was talking about the encryption being offered by P2P clients and how ISPs might detect that. Unless I am much mistaken, the various P2P authors probably don't spend that much money..

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

No :LOL:

Just me suggesting a point of view ;)

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I know the bulldog rep has came out on adslguide and stated they dont do shaping. Plusnet are been mostly open about it. NTL appear to be shutting up shop with communication.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Sorry but in my eye's bulldog are no better than NTL. Its a history thing.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

No, I was wise :p:.. starting to think not so wise going along with ntl but ah :D

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

i will try all of the above times if i can ,i work afternoons .am curious about the results.mine doesn`t seem to be that bad ,some of yours speeds are pitiful as you probably know ,will start sun/mon .did you use the sites own speed test?

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

good god ntl do something I am getting 1 20th of my max speed gone 1am.

Sat, 1 Apr 2006 00:15:52 UTC (hour slow)

1st 512K took 4531 ms = 113 KB/sec, approx 931 Kbps, 0.91 Mbps
2nd 512K took 5766 ms = 88.8 KB/sec, approx 732 Kbps, 0.71 Mbps
3rd 512K took 5047 ms = 101.4 KB/sec, approx 836 Kbps, 0.82 Mbps
4th 512K took 7093 ms = 72.2 KB/sec, approx 595 Kbps, 0.58 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 774 Kbps, 0.76 Mbps

ftp crawling along here.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Sat, 1 Apr 2006 00:19:18 UTC
1st 128K took 109 ms = 1202495 Bytes/sec = approx 10005 kbits/sec
2nd 128K took 110 ms = 1191564 Bytes/sec = approx 9914 kbits/sec
3rd 128K took 109 ms = 1202495 Bytes/sec = approx 10005 kbits/sec
4th 128K took 109 ms = 1202495 Bytes/sec = approx 10005 kbits/sec


/pats ntl modem

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 86.13.36.1

Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=237ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=255
Request timed out.
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=258ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=248ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=224ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=235ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=228ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=48ms TTL=255

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

Looks like you need traffic shaping, from across the network I get better

Pinging 86.13.36.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=248
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=248
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=248
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248

Ping statistics for 86.13.36.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 14ms, Maximum = 20ms, Average = 16ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>tracert 86.13.36.1

Tracing route to cpc3-leic8-0-0-gw.leic.cable.ntl.com [86.13.36.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 9 ms 7 ms 7 ms 10.153.175.254
3 58 ms 10 ms 10 ms nott-t2cam1-a-v129.inet.ntl.com [80.4.47.165]
4 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms nott-t2core-a-ge-wan72.inet.ntl.com [80.1.79.61]

5 27 ms 47 ms 11 ms lee-bb-a-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.33]
6 24 ms 20 ms 14 ms leic-t2core-a-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.
109]
7 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms leic-t2cam1-a-ge-wan31.inet.ntl.com [82.3.33.5]

8 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms cpc3-leic8-0-0-gw.leic.cable.ntl.com [86.13.36.1
]

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

1st 512K took 516 ms = 992.2 KB/sec, approx 8176 Kbps, 7.98 Mbps
2nd 512K took 703 ms = 728.3 KB/sec, approx 6001 Kbps, 5.86 Mbps
3rd 512K took 515 ms = 994.2 KB/sec, approx 8192 Kbps, 8 Mbps
4th 512K took 625 ms = 819.2 KB/sec, approx 6750 Kbps, 6.59 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 7280 Kbps, 7.11 Mbps


01 35 gmt

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

jtwn yeah, seriously its never been this bad before, at 1am I am usually hovering around 3-5mbit by 1am and friday nights are usually the best night of the week so would be higher. I got a sudden drop on an already below par connection and flipped.

---------- Post added at 01:55 ---------- Previous post was at 01:53 ----------

Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=255
Reply from 86.13.36.1: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=255

Sat, 1 Apr 2006 00:55:05 UTC

1st 512K took 1141 ms = 448.7 KB/sec, approx 3697 Kbps, 3.61 Mbps
2nd 512K took 906 ms = 565.1 KB/sec, approx 4656 Kbps, 4.55 Mbps
3rd 512K took 735 ms = 696.6 KB/sec, approx 5740 Kbps, 5.61 Mbps
4th 512K took 578 ms = 885.8 KB/sec, approx 7299 Kbps, 7.13 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 5348 Kbps, 5.23 Mbps

now its better

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

well if my last 24hrs are anything to go by looks like I just had another hit in performance its as if they just moved some more customers to my ubr.

a download from 2am to 6am failed to hit max speed at all and it appears their was some sort of contention throughout. I also did a speedtest at just after midday today and was under 3mbit.

So it now may be possible that if this level stays I will have no bursting to 10mbit at all and have more then half the day below 3mbit. That must be quite some overselling or a bad unoticed fault.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I'd like to suggest you ring technical support but I'd suspect that to be pointless.

Re: 10 meg unlimited?
 

I last spoke to them yesterday and yes you right it would be pointless, things are happening in april and everyone I have spoken to who has given me useful information is either unoffical contact or from retentions. Customer services and tech support have both fodged me off.