Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

DHCPs split allocation by service delivery type, not tier (STB or SACM). There are thus only two pools max per area (although each pool can have >1 actual IP range). It's technically possible to limit ranges to particular service types, but it involves changing the entire DHCP config (think how you'd differentiate between a customer PC on 3Mb and 2Mb/1Mb/750k/1.5Mb/etc.). Additionally, given the number of 3Mb customers you'd waste an awful lot of IPs. In any case, I don't think the symptoms are 3Mb related, I can't see why 3Mb wouldn't work but 2Mb would be fine.

For big downloads I'd recommend using a non-HTTP protocol anyway.

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

I'm on 2mb and I don't get full speeds.

And with all due respect non-HTTP protocols are not always availiable and having to use them would kind of defeat the point of a having a fast connection.
It's becoming more and more normal to have a http and bittorrent for many file hosting sites and I think the ISP will dread the day customers get a better speed on a bittorrent swarm than a normal download ;) .

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

When I had 1.5 meg I could only ever get about 150k out of the Poplar Proxies, I just thought it was good enough then, but now I have 3 meg it's nowhere near good enough.

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

I don't think BBKing was referring to Bittorrent (or any file sharing system). I think he was referring to "ftp://" links. Proxies will not affect these.

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

Indeed, I understood that, I was merely pointing out that FTP is being used less and less.

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

Yeah I know its not 3mbit related but what I think we are saying is that on the old 1.5mbit tier 150kB max speed would have been ok its only a little below the rated max speed, but if you are providing a 3mbit product which is sold as a fast web browsing package then having proxies hindering it at 150kB is not good enough its less then 50% of the rated max.

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

Are they fixed? I'm getting 203KB through manc-12

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

No, in fact Poplar is even slower than usual today :(

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

It would be helpful if ppl could give a little more detail when posting results as many so far are not at all clear. Also it seems as if ppl are under the impression that if they do not specify a proxy then they have a "regular proxy" when this is not the case.
I'm sure there used to be a sticky thread explaining how all this works but it looks as if it has become unstuck. :(

In brief, when you don't specify a proxy, the routers or switches load-balance web requests based on the URL over all of ntl's local proxies - the end result is that the same URL always goes to the same proxy (unless it's overloaded or down).

Therefore the concept of having a "regular proxy" when not actually specifying one is completely false.
Using one of the proxy checker web sites that displays the web headers e.g. http://www.all-nettools.com/toolbox will only tell you which proxy is being used for that particular URL, unless you are manually specifying a single proxy.

Also using your own local proxy server will not bypass the ntl proxies because of this upstream redirection mechanism. If you get faster results using your own local proxy server it's prolly because the object is already cached or else your proxy server is better than your PC at utilising the network connection. ;)

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

Sorry for my misunderstanding. At least this explains why my download speeds are all over the place, some of the manchester proxies must be faster than others or otherwise the file is cached.

Just curious. How much does it cache? For instance would a 50 meg file be cached?
__________________

Actually this also solves the mystery of why I only get full speeds when downloading from my webspace at homepage.ntlworld.com

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

I guess unless ntl have restricted it, that it could cache any size of object - proxies tend to have quite a few GBs of storage space. Of course after a while when the cache gets full, older objects get aged out of the cache and are replaced by newer ones.

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

files that are common maybe stuff like realplayer might well be cached. But most probably wont be cached.

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

It seems I'm always routed through a Poplar Proxy, it just varies which one of the farm I get, here are some results.

Easynews - Trace on their site shows that I'm coming from various Poplar Proxies, *all* of them are only reaching a max of 150k, switching to swansea or Colchester Proxies reach 376k *always*

Fileplanet - max of 150k normally, Swansea and Colchester give 350k.

This pattern is repeated on almost all non UK sites I visit, for some reason UK sites seem to almost always give full speed regardless of the proxy used, but USA sites are somehow capped using the default Poplar Proxies.

cheers

Ian

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

I just had a thought, I wonder if the TCP setting or equivalent is set wrong on the Poplar Proxies (and others that only give slow speeds) ?

Would that explain the good results with UK based sites and bad ones with USA sites ?

Prolly not, but thought I'd mention it in case an NTL techy is reading this.

cheers

Re: Poplar Proxies don't reach 3 meg speed
 

It certainly could if that is indeed the commonly seen symptom i.e. download speeds are always slower on remote sites.

The TCP Receive Window limit (see info about RWIN on http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks) can reduce peak download throughput from sites that have higher latency. A trace on a download will quickly show what the negotiated window size is and if it is too small for the connection, and I would have thought that support could do this quite easily.

It seems strange though that some proxies (or sections of networks) are slower than others, since I would have thought the TCP Window would be uniformly configured on all proxies. Poor perf could also be due to a dodgy switch cable or misconfigured port that's dropping a few packets, although that would be more likely to affect all sites, although retransmits will take longer (and hurt perf) on higher latency connections.