Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

Here's your NTL Ferrari, you can do 200mph. (bandwidth)

Here's your £1 of petrol. (cap)

Enjoy.

NTL.

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

If you look at the BT, Wanadoo and tiscali bandwidth limits and compare with ntl's - ntl still comes out on top.

However when ntl start introducing bandwidth caps, they should be peak-time caps, so that your usage is limited during the day/evening but is unlimited at night. As that is the true purpose of the limits.

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

Aye, unlimited usage at evening time would be better and cap it (1gb) during the day between say 7am and 10pm. Most people download the bigger files overnight as they hate waiting.

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

"Here's your NTL Ferrari, you can do 200mph (bandwidth).
Here's your Hightway with speed limit 200mph.
Please don't drive any farther than 1 mile per day (no cap just a guide).
If you do and you keep doing it AND your excessive use of highway stops others using the NTL Ferrari we will have to ask you not to use so much."

That's more like it.

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

Well, to continue with the ridiculous car analogy, it actually works out that you can do about 160 miles.

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

the reason the car analogy doesn't work, is because it is not possible to allow the car to continue while the driver is absent.

With broadband you can set up your downloads & walk away & leave it running.

What might work is a train analogy - i.e. with a 'dead man' switch - as soon as you leave your pc it shuts off :p: :D

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

:tu: :D

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

All i can say is get a mini and £1.00 goes a lot further....

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

could always stick a brick on the accelerator and jump out? :P

Getting a mini using this car analogy is like dropping to the slower package to make the cap last longer. However, the 1Mb connection has a 3Gb cap per month which is worse... like having 20p worth of petrol in the mini ;)

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

Just pondering another solution for the congestion problem. I'm not sure how techically possible this is, but is it possible to make one users traffic 'low priority' traffic. In other words their packets would only get delivered if no non-low priority packets are being delivered.

If so, then after a given user has used their limit for the day, they don't get their speed reduced, but they get put onto the low-priority list for the remainder of that day.

That way if there's no congestion they will still get their 3MB, but if the pipe fills up it will be the heavy users that will get degraded service first. Only if the pipe is totally filled by non low-priority customers will they see any degradation (which should be rather rare). And if that does happen the heavy users will basically be shut out of the net altogether (til it quietens down a bit)

A more advanced solution would be to allow a user that's gone over the daily limit a small amount of normal priority traffic (say 56K worth), with the balance being low-priority traffic. That would be harder to do, but would be nicer on the heavy users, allowing them to do normal email/browsing even at peak-time congested periods.

Is this feasible at all. Would anyone go for it?

--Rakhal

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

Could it be done? Probably if the hardware has QoS parameters that could be easily changed, realistically it would be difficult.

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

How would they enforce this? It seems a difficult solution to a problem they have already found their own preferred fix for (a "usage policy"). They'd need the UBRs (or connected devices) to monitor each connection and then sort out priorities. Would be easier to force a slower connection and I think they'd go for that in the long run.

I think so anyway...

Re: 1GB Cap Letter!!!!
 

Well, monitoring they'll have to do anyway, if they want to introduce a 'hard' cap. Something must know when you've hit the limit in real-time so your connection can be cut/slowed down in a timely manner. All that would change is that instead of cutting/slowing your connection, your connection is made 'low priority' instead. The only question is, does the UBR hardware support the concept of traffic priority?

The reason I sort of like this is that it will actually reduce peak-time congestion. Heavy users will automatically get shunted as the bandwidth required increases and the normal users should only rarely see a degradation on their service. Especially since peak-time tends to be in the evening, when the heavy users have likely already used their gig for the day.
Also if for some reason 'off peak' periods become congested as well, the same effect will automatically apply, so you don't get the problem of a free-for-all period making the network unusable for light users.
On the plus side foe heavy users, if the network is NOT congested they can blast away as much as they like (may have to add a small external transfer charge if the amount they transfer incurs unreasonable charges to NTL due to this)