One Way Internet
 

Every now and then i find info and blogs on the Internet that just makes me sit up and think. This is one of those blogs.

http://onewayinternet.blogspot.com/

Re: One Way Internet
 

There is only one thing i can say about that article...

":clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:"

He's nailed it. 26:1 is a pathetic upload ratio and Virgin Media have to sort it out, seriously. Like someone said on this forum a few times, VM have the worst download to upload ratio in the UK...

Re: One Way Internet
 

I'd still rather be in an area with cable than without. Do you think sometimes that the speed issue is just a little too flogged? Whilst everyone is watching how fast they are getting what they want, they may be missing the very thing that they subscribed to in the first place - a connection to the World's knowledge and community.

Re: One Way Internet
 

I have started to upload a lot of large photo's at the moment and i have to admit that the slow upload is making that a very hard and slow task :(.

Re: One Way Internet
 

I have been doing the same as you Sirius. For the last 6 months I have spent tens of hours uploading my family's photo archive to a site that we can all access and, in the future when I have it fully set up, everyone will be able to add to it.

Well that was the theory, in practice the process has been tortuously slow.

That blog says it all. :clap:

Re: One Way Internet
 

that would be me ;)

dont you just hate blogs posting about "One Way Internet" that wont let you comment in return without signing up first... anyway heres what i would have postered there.

if you think that current worst uk bb virgin media 26:1 ratio is bad, rest assured the vm executives in the US taking your money for their bonuses and pulling more and more out of the reinvestment pot % for your new cable plant use are looking to beat even their own official worst broadband ratio in the whole uk.

when they roll out the current trials of 50Mbit to the consumer this year they have confirmed and argued that they intend selling you a brand new 34.33/1 ratio sevice in their 50Mbit/1.5Mbit upload package.

do the math after overheads of tcp:ip ack on your return path of generic ethernet ,not even adding in the extra cable packets and its clear YOU WILL NEVER ATTAIN A FULL 50Mbit compressed binary download with that upload rate EVER.

they are/will in effect falsely charging for a sevice speed they knowingly will never allow you to attain, all due to that worst uk ratio EVER that cant supply the contracted download speed due entirely to that upload speed being set far to low.

something like 1.87Mbit AT THE VERY LEAST is required to attain that 50Mbit download speed at least sometimes outside STM hours.
time to send in the lawyers and get your county courts involved if the govt bodys will not act ,will you ?

Re: One Way Internet
 

Has 1.5 mb been confirmed anywhere by VM, In other words can anyone please point me in the direction of a statement that says "when we release 50 meg it will be 50 meg down 1.5 meg up". ?????

Don't get me wrong i am not defending VM here however i seem to feel there has been NO such admission yet. So we are just going by the normal rumour mill postings.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Those who have seen the configs already up will know its 50/1.5

Those who are now on the pilots (huddersfield, kent) will know its 1.5

Remember the trial has ended and now in pilot/launch phase.

VM wont release the upload speed until official product launch, but you aint gonna be seeing any higher than 1.5.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Think the blog kinda dealt with this. It's not commenting on the download speeds just the upload ones and the big differences between them.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Popper, your maths appear to make many assumptions.

For a start, who says that all your applications are using an acknowledged protocol (TCP)? Some could be using an unacknowledged one (UDP) where no return path is needed.

Also, for TCP the maximum packet size is 1500 bytes whilst the minimum is 40 - a ratio of 37.5 to 1. This is more than the 33.3 to 1 of the mooted service but TCP has an ace up its sleeve. To improve bandwidth, it supports a scheme called 'windowing'. This allows the sender to transmit several packets to the receiver before it has to wait for an acknowledgment. At this point, provided it has received them all correctly, the receiver can then send one ack to cover the lot. So the upload speed does not have to be faster than 1/37.5 of the download speed after all. That is not to say that all implementations will be this efficient!

In a previous existence (before traveling through a brief wormhole) I was an architect for an implementation of the OSI link and transport layers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmi...ntrol_Protocol

Re: One Way Internet
 

I wasn't aware that Windowing and ACK frequency were related on the standard TCP/IP stacks that ship with Windows et al. You can't ACK an entire receive window without extensive static tuning on client and server side, isn't the RWIN just the amount of data that can be on the wire before the server must see ACKs? RWIN is related to congestion/flow control, not ACK reduction, at least not on a standard TCP stack.

By default a Windows XP and Vista machine will ACK every second packet, as per the setting stored in the Windows registry in \\HKLM\system\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Par ameters\Interfaces\

Re: One Way Internet
 

Did you notice the posters name .Ignition I wonder if its the same one :)

Re: One Way Internet
 

Currently I'm on a 14:1 ratio and would like that to be better. A tech yesterday said that he himself would stick with that instead of the 20:1 faster speed..

Re: One Way Internet
 

Possibly. Both are London based comms engineers.

Back to the point of the thread.

I have to admit, I do not understand why upload is so low on the 50 meg (assuming both TraxData2 and Ignition are correct, and I have no reason to believe they aren't). I can understand that when the broadband hardware was originally installed, upload wasn't as important as download, so the cable cos considered high download as a higher priority than high upload, and to some extent, this has meant that the uploads are limited (at least on the lower tiers) by old hardware. Upload was not as important (then) as most people hardly (if ever) uploaded anything.

Trouble is, that since then, we have had all manner of services spring up that will happily use a lot of upload. Things like file sharing systems, video sharing sites (such as Youtube) and Photo sharing sites (such as flickr). Combine that with the fact that a lot of people are emailing their own media (such as digital photos) to family and friends, playing/hosting online games or hosting their own websites, all of which take a lot of upload bandwidth.

VM have the excuse that when the hardware for the lower tarrifs (maybe not so much the 20 meg) was installed, people didn't do that stuff. 50 meg, however, is different. They are installing the hardware now, so people would have been doing that stuff when they planned the installation. They should have taken it into account.

The trouble is, I don't think VM actually want people to use their connections. They just want a lot of people to sign up to 50 meg, then just use it to check the odd email.

Re: One Way Internet
 

I simply sought to demonstrate the fact that, with windowing, you don't actually need an ack packet for each data packet. The protocol allows you to acknowledge more than one at a time. I'll readily admit that the decision about when to send an ack is non-trivial and can be the subject of some tuning - manual or automatic.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Heh one debate is over anyway:

Altis, noted, I was just a bit confused by the relating of windowing to Ack Frequency. I'm also going blind sifting through 100MB TCPDumps right now which makes one a touch touchy - my apologies.

---------- Post added at 13:40 ---------- Previous post was at 11:41 ----------

The man is busy for sure...

Re: One Way Internet
 

Yes it does, you're quite right sorry. I seldom spend more than a few seconds scan reading blogs. Bad habit but short on time :erm:.

Re: One Way Internet
 

I was talking to my mate about this thread earlier and we came to the conclusion that instead of having 20meg download speed you should have 20meg of bandwidth and be able to configure it however you like, so if you want 10 up and 10 down you could do it. Wonder how much they'd charge for that eh?

Re: One Way Internet
 

The drama that's kicked off on that blog is fantastic, I guess it got under someone's skin :D

Re: One Way Internet
 

The network architecture being put in place for 50Mb/s only allows for a single QAM16 Upstream Port to serve the DoCSIS 3.0 Bonded Group. This is because of a lack of upstream channel availability (this could be improved with access network maintenance/upgrade)
Therefore there will only be around 8.5Mb/s useable bandwidth available to all 50Mb/s & 20Mb/s customers located on the bonded group.
If much higher upstream speeds where provided it would likely lead to upstream congestion..

In my opinion they would be able to support 2-2.5Mb/s upstream with the proposed implementation.

It is my understanding that contrary to what Traxdata2 says VM have not yet entered the 'Product Trial & Pilot' phases yet.

In my view they will look at the trial and pilot data with regards to upstream channel utilisation with a view to tweaking the upstream and going forward they will be looking at ways to improve upstream speeds (QAM32/64, 6.4Mhz Channels, SCDMA on <20Mhz spectrum, channel bonding etc)
It is not beyond the wit of VM to blow the competition out of the water with respect to upstream speed.. It just has not been in their focus over the past few years.

I have it on good authority that this is about to change:)

Re: One Way Internet
 

Does whoever spoke to Ignition know this Bug?

You appear to have just contradicted what they said by saying that the network needs upgrade and maintenance.

Re: One Way Internet
 

I see that blog is getting interesting to say the least :shocked:

Re: One Way Internet
 

It is pretty entertaining. It's like a soap opera.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Well i bloody well hope so :)

Re: One Way Internet
 

Would be nice.. But HFC Networks aint built that way.. They are very much Downstream heavy in nature, due to them being primarily built for TV.

So unless you want to pay for the overbuild :)

Re: One Way Internet
 

I thought us on the top tier of service were already paying for some sort of overbuild rather than pay for advertising?.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Evidently Virgin don't want to looking at the amounts spent on overbuild recently.

1 normal upstream channel for the wondrous new product and 20Mbit customers is a joke and just highlights the attitude of doing it for as little as possible while giving maximum PR impact and bragging rights rather than doing it right even if it's not as visible or cool. :(

Re: One Way Internet
 

I dont upload so I'm not really bothered about what ratio I am getting. As long as it works I'm happy :D

Re: One Way Internet
 

Bet you do :)

EDIT: Your entry to the CF Photo Of The Month for example had to get their somehow, and if you have any online photo albums... ;)

Re: One Way Internet
 

Actually, as I understand it, VM take a loss on the highest tier, and use profits from the lower tiers to subsidise it.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Wow if thats so then that statement about virgins optical being so much faster is a joke as its there own network surely its cheaper for vm, than compared to the adsl2 providers who provide a better service atm for half the cost and have to pay bt?
Really cant belive that people paying £37 or £42 by non dd for 20mb bb are getting subsidised by lower tiers with all the traffic shaping and other gadgetrey going on.

Does anyone know what budget VM is spending on network upgrades and repairs this year, and what there advertising budget was for this year too, last year it was quite appauling and i bet this year its just as bad if not worse, so its not as if virgin havent got the cash to spend its just there throwing money down an advertising pit which dosent help the end user in one bit.

Re: One Way Internet
 

BT do not currently provide ADSL 2 services. Any ISP using ADSL 2 *is* using it's own infrastructure apart from the phone line from the exchange to the customer premises. Even then, very few of them (apart from Sky and Carphone warehouse who are able to subsidise the costs from other areas of their business) provide services to anywhere near the amount of people Virgin do.

It's not a case of whether you believe me or not, according to Virgin's own figures, 5% of users use 95% of the bandwidth. Thus, the costs of those users are being subsidised by the other 95%. People with 20 meg connections are likely to be using a lot more of that bandwidth than someone on 4 or 10 meg.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Stuart, that's a load of rubbish. The 5% using 95% of the bandwidth lie has been touted over and over, but most studies show for an average ISP it's more like the top 5% using 40-50% of the bandwidth. Unless VM are extra special...

Now, let's look at VM's figures. 5% of 3.6m subscribers is 180,000 users. Not exactly a "tiny minority" as they claim.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not having a go at you personally, I'm just saying that VM's claims don't stand up.

I think the problem here is the standard British lack of vision and aversion to risk. In Japan, you can get a network DVR, meaning you can record programs at home and watch them anywhere you have a network connection. You need a good upload speed but 100/100 fibre is cheap and widely available. UK companies arn't interested in pushing stuff like that in case the consumer doesn't like it, so instead they just sit back and try to stay just slightly ahead of the competition while spending the minimum amount possible on upgrades.

VM's userbase hasn't grown that much and we have had 20 meg for years now, yet the traffic shaping is getting worse and eating up more hours of the day, not less. That doesn't sound like they are spending much on upgrading their network, does it?

Re: One Way Internet
 

i just found this cable fibre framing PDF paper,DS3 in this case isnt docsis3 OC but it is related...the framing/bps stuffing being very interesting
(193 bits/frame x 8,000 frame/sec = 1.544 Mbps)
http://www.teracomm.com/appnotes/whi...ndamentals.pdf

---------- Post added at 00:23 ---------- Previous post was yesterday at 23:39 ----------

cook1984, OC you do know were the Virgin Media executive are getting all these rubbish PR idea's from.

from the likes of their US mates in Time Warner Cable, Chief Operating Officer Landel Hobbs

apparently they think it's better to use PR to compete that actually really compete, never mind trying to set a real hardware based standard upload speed ratio that your customers want to actually pay for and that other vendors can hope to follow.

and again, they will miss the really good idea's such as collaberate with others and buy some UK wireless spectrum for a Wimax rollout like the US Cable are doing today in the US.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/09/11...ly-to-compete/
TWC to up marketing, use DOCSIS 3.0 "surgically" to compete

by Darren Murph, posted Sep 11th 2008 at 10:03AM


http://www.dailywireless.org/2008/05/07/7738/
It’s Official: Sprint, Cable & Google Building WiMAX Network
" 6 Mbit/s downstream and up to 3 Mbit/s upstream in vehicles traveling at 60 miles per hour. "

a potential 2/1 ratio in trials while mobile at 60MPH doesnt seem so bad right now ;) and you can buy as many broadband connections as you like from them, theres no one BB connection per customer rule there....

but even forgetting that real innovation that VM will more than likely ignore until they can rent some wireless space from the likes of SKY (if sky see fit to buy and get one over several companys long term)cheap.

it would at least be a start for vm to let VM customers actually have and pay for more than a single CM per account officially, perhaps even a reduced broadband price 3 for 2 type deal, id consider that right here, the existing STB internal CM thats already powered and pluged into the UBRs can do 4Mbit just fine here, my mates dad still uses it in his VM tv/BB subscription so it doesnt even cost anything to VM as its already here and usable right NOW.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Could be improved and was set to be improved, i'm sure you are quite aware that money was going to be pumped for said upgrades to allow 5+Mbit/s upload speeds on the 50Mbit tier as per the original trials.

But as per usual within VM, opt for the cheap and nasty, screw what the customers want.

2.2Mbit to be exact and was seen as not viable, not set to change.

Your understanding is wrong then, you seem to be wrong quite abit zenith as per your postings on digitalspy.

3 New areas were enabled to move onto pilot phase just over 3 weeks ago, working along the team with alex you of all people should know this.

They are not looking at ways to improve the upload/upstream speeds as "alex" believes customers do not want nor need it and as most people who are with VM are not close enough to an exchange to get high upload speeds from ADSL2 they dont see a point until competition can force them.

Funnily, no one in the network planning department thinks this, so one has to wonder where your info is coming from?

Alex also has no idea about this and he is head of the department :rolleyes:

Re: One Way Internet
 

This thread is delivering.

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

Re: One Way Internet
 

:LOL:

I see someone is more interested in your spelling of the words than answering with something useful



:rolleyes:

Re: One Way Internet
 

Mr.Carl...i believe ;)

Re: One Way Internet
 

Just decided to catch up on proceedings there and have noticed comments from what i can only surmise are members of staff from VM. I might post something myself to balance things a bit. :)

Re: One Way Internet
 

The current proposed upload speeds for 50 meg are a joke. If you sit down and work it out, they are just enough to sustain the ACKs required for one full 50 meg download using one TCP connection. Since you are pretty unlikely to get 50 meg on one connection the amount of data that needs to be uploaded to max it out is way beyond your upload limit, and thus in practice 50 meg will most likely be unattainable.

The idea that the whole family can use the connection at once, as was suggested on the BBC's Click, is an even bigger joke. They showed someone uploading photos while others watched streaming video, downloaded and played games. Considering the limited upload speeds and the fact that VM routers have no traffic prioritisation at all that simply isn't going to happen. More like the uploading and downloading will slow to a crawl as they compete with each other, while the video stutters and freezes and the game is kicked off for having a ridiculous ping time.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Oh well, we will see won't we:)

Re: One Way Internet
 

Didn't think you'd have a constructive reply to that :D

Re: One Way Internet
 

It's not actually rubbish. I got that figure from someone who (at that point) was working within VM on the network side of things.

However, regardless of whether the 95% figure is actually right if the top 5% of users are using even 40 or 50% of the bandwidth, the people who aren't using that bandwidth are still subsidising them, so my argument stands.

It's also worth noting that I don't think the upload is enough (for the reasons I outlined elsewhere)

In an article (which was written by someone who used to work at Psion, so is admittedly biased) I read, they said the problem is that the City demands a quick return on any investment made in new tech. The team that worked at Psion went on to develop a *lot* of successful devices (not least what became the iPod), but because the netbook and DAB failed, the city didn't fund Psion.

Any large speed increase in Broadband will not generate a quick return purely because it costs a *lot* of money to perform the upgrades needed and the market won't take the kind of prices consumers would need to pay to generate a return quickly.

This is, as I understand it, the reason that (apart from Japan) a lot of the countries with ultra high speed access (100 meg up) have networks that even if the government didn't finance them, they are at least heavily involved (such as Sweden changing the law to enable easy fibre installation and establish a non-profit wholesaler ISP).

Our government tends to let big business invest the money and seems to be frightened to get involved.

I am not saying that our government, the city, or Virgin are right. They aren't.

The government needs to at least look at the Swedish example (at least in large towns/cities), even if they don't want to finance a fibre network.
The City needs to be a little more ready to take a chance on new technology and not demand a return quickly (a large broadband network may take decades to provide a return).
Finally, Virgin need to look at what people are actually doing on their network and plan for it.

Re: One Way Internet
 

It is rubbish, to really see how things are, you need live stats and monthly stats.

With that you'll note 10-20% of people get STM'd at any one time rather than the 5% VM shout about.

It has been as high as 40-70% in a few select oversubscribed areas *coughbaguelycough*.

If it was only 5% of the whole customer database at any said time, do you really believe people would see such a hugh speed increase in their connection as soon as STM was rolled out?

Understandable.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Don't have the time or the inclination to argue the point.. I know what I know and you have your sources.. So only time will tell.;)

Re: One Way Internet
 

But you fail to mention you are only a contractor for VM working in a specific area, to which you have nothing to do with anything else, so one has to wonder how you get the info ;):p:

You know its funny, alex still says you dont work for him or VM ;)

Re: One Way Internet
 

All fine by me:D

Re: One Way Internet
 

hehe :D

Ah you know i like winding you up but it's your own fault ;)

Re: One Way Internet
 

Fired this link off to Neil himself the other day (5 days ago)
http://onewayinternet.blogspot.com/2...-way-only.html

I have a reply from him now. Let's just say it sounds positive. XD

Re: One Way Internet
 

Any chance of a quote or 3

Re: One Way Internet
 

Not sure i should be posting that, basically getting a heads up when something goes down, that should be pretty soon with the sounds of it.

Re: One Way Internet
 

PM.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Replied.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Thanks for the reply.

He is talking about upstream bonding trials that are being rolled and to be rolled out late 09/early 2010.

I mentioned this a few months ago i believe, though i cant remember which thread.

Re: One Way Internet
 

PM me :)

Re: One Way Internet
 

Couple of posts on that blog that have been quite interesting, about how UPC have made Ireland better than UK with higher uploads and even Sky One :(

Also some stuff on Comcast's traffic management, and about UPC's new tiers in Europe.

http://onewayinternet.blogspot.com/2...n-be-cool.html
http://onewayinternet.blogspot.com/2...eal-shame.html
http://onewayinternet.blogspot.com/2...-show-way.html

Re: One Way Internet
 

Every time I try to visit the blog, or in fact any blogspot.com URL, I get the following error message:

Re: One Way Internet
 

I'm having no trouble accessing the links..should I be worried? :erm:

Re: One Way Internet
 

Google's systems send that notice out if they detect excessive traffic from an IP or a range of IPs.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Your blog is very informative. :tu:

Re: One Way Internet
 

Got it now.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Newest update on that blog is all uber techy. Made my head spin a bit. :confused:

Re: One Way Internet
 

And mine but its a good read

Re: One Way Internet
 

It's a shame they have been allowed to lie about having fibre optic internet. If they really did, they could offer a proper two way service.

Re: One Way Internet
 

On the other hand cable can do some quite nice stuff if the operator can be bothered.

Those packages are the result of infrastructure competition, that thing the Ed 'when I grow up I want to be Stephen Carter' Richards and the rest of Ofcom along with Stephen 'When I grow up I want to be Peter Mandelson' Carter think we don't need.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Still not changed

Re: One Way Internet
 

I recommend http://vimeo.com/mdda/videos/sort:date as a place to watch some goodness. Dirk van der Woude and James Enck are both quite interesting speakers.

Re: One Way Internet
 

I would pay £60/month for 100/100. That's 3x the price in other countries but it would be worth it.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Well it's not really 3x the price of many other countries but I appreciate there's a very few where you can get 100/100 for that kind of price. I would pay it for 50/50 gladly. Heck I'd pay it for 30/30. I am in the minority there though.

Re: One Way Internet
 

Thread necromancy.

I note that BT have changed their plans for their VDSL / FTTC network. They will now offer a standard package of 40/2 and for an extra 25p/month (for the ISP!) this will be upgraded to 40/10. It was previously 40/5.

In addition BT are increasing their rollout of fibre to the premises meaning that between FTTP and FTTC BT will be covering approximately 11 million premises with services of upstream of 10Mbps.

Tick-tock tick-tock VM and the 10Mbps upstream trials :devsmoke:

Re: One Way Internet
 

Rise :D

Re: One Way Internet
 

Sounds too good to be true...

I wonder how much of an admin fee that 25p will incur when passed on to customers though? :P

Re: One Way Internet
 

Well there's the 25p Openreach fee then whatever else the company want on top for their costs, however given that usage on networks is largely more downstream centric still I wouldn't expect it to have a significant capacity impact.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the cost increment were similar to that which O2 / Be charge at the moment for their 'Pro' pack over their standard one, in the case of Be 4 quid more a month.

I would happily pay 4 pounds a month more for a move from 40/2 to 40/10.

No doubt some operators will extract the urine and describe it as a 'business' tariff and smack a stupid amount of extra cash on it but c'est la vie.

Re: One Way Internet
 

I think the only realistic chance of getting a decent connection is for one of the smaller fibre companies to come to your area, or simply move into one of their areas.

I wish a community fibre co-op was possible, but I think the only places likely to be able to support that are rural areas with plenty of rich people who want to work away from London. Ironic really.