Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

In an interesting approach to users using unsustainable amounts of bandwidth Plus.net have taken their top 0.3% and are going to place them into bandwidth which they will only share with each other, removing the affect of their usage from the rest of the userbase.

Seems as though these guys were really nailing it, one guy who received the letter had downloaded 156GB since 26/10 apparently.

More on an ADSLGuide thread http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...anded&sb=5&o=0

Along with a few of the lucky recipients of this letter being asked to moderate their usage or go onto this seperate BT Central.

The scary part is you'll have about 300 users whose total download ability is 600Mbps contending a pipe of 150Mbps. 4:1 contention and this won't be nearly enough for these guys most of the time. These guys will see severe performance issues at peak and probably a lot of offpeak times, they will however be moved back to the standard bandwidth if their usage moderates somewhat.

Personally I think it's a brilliant idea and wish it were possible on cable, let them enjoy degraded performance amongst themselves rather than affecting everyone else, heck of a price to pay though, and entire 180k a year 155Mbps pipe.

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

much the same happened to me when i was on plusnet dialup, they don't tell you what the cap was but got kicked off for breaking it.
claim you have an unlimited service then whine as some people make best use of it.
plusnet are gits in my eyes.

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

Hmmm-that sounds familiar.....:scratch: :angel:

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

At the end of the day the networks in this country are not good enough for idiots to download 156GB in 3 weeks!

Caps will happen everywhere eventually, Bandwidth hogs will move from ISP to ISP, each one realising these muppets arent sustainable and service levels will quickly become unacceptable.

We should a minority spoil Broadband for the majority, the ISPs arent to blame for capping, its the idiots who constantly max thier connection so they can make DVDs to sell in the pub.

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

OMG I actually agree with themelon for once. :Yikes: ;)

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

LOL had to happen one day ;) :D

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

:ghugs: for all ;)

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

Actually I think this is a good approach, they aren't getting kicked off or capped, but being segregated to their own bandwidth at an extremely good contention ratio (about 4:1) at a cost of £316,20 0 a year.

Of course that 4:1 isn't going to be nearly enough for them, but hey, networks are necessarily contended and with pricing changes to BT wholesale products ISPs are working on a 'metered' model, ISPs have always had to pay per GB for transit, and ADSL ISPs are paying on a similar model now for BT bandwidth.

The alternatives really are capping or paying per GB (Plusnet pay BT about £1.50 per GB not including transit costs, support costs, etc, etc, etc) so would you rather say £1.75 per GB, which in the case of the chap above means a bill for over £300 by the end of the month?

Until we see massive changes in how the internet operates, where there's no scarcity in bandwidth and it's a plentiful enough commodity that its' impossible for it to be run uneconomically that's how it's got to be.

Or I'll put it another way. At peak times Plus use nearly 2.5Gbit/s, this 300 users use 10% of their resources. 300 users using (going to midway between minimal and maximal usage) 200Mbit/s between them, or about 665kbps each. When you consider that each user is provisioned about 25kbps it might put things into more context. This 300 were hitting plus for 200Mbit/s in peak times, when going by the boring averages they would have been using 1/4th of that.

These 300 users cost plusnet over 16k a month in extra BT Centrals costs that are required to try and alleviate congestion which would not otherwise be there.

300 users costing their ISP 16k a month, and causing peak time congestion for a userbase of over 77,000 other people. (I'm working on peak time to avoid all the rubbish about how congestion isn't caused by heavy users, running a network as closely to the wire as Plus are REQUIRED to by both their costs and prices charged it makes all the difference.

Chop that 200Mbps for this 0.3% of users off the graph at bottom of this post, then tell me it doesn't make a difference to the other 99.7%.

Worst of all they can't complain, their service stays unlimited, so apologies if my post title was confusing, they just get to enjoy congestion even though the product is operating WELL within the 50:1 contention they have been sold. As I said I guesstimate them to be under about 6:1. The money they are paying won't even get close to touching plusnet's BT costs for doing this, let alone all the other costs associated, it will however remove the congestion that the other users are suffering.

In my opinion a very fair way to go, no-one's package has been changed, no-one's contract voided, and the only possible reason to sulk is that the 2Mbit/s may not be reachable 24x7 anymore. That's contention being supplied at a premium business quality ratio costing 100s normally.

Absolutely no sympathy, and big thumbs up to plus for taking this innovative approach rather than blanket capping, traffic shaping or the other alternatives.

As I said I wish this could be done on cable networks, would have saved those who aren't taking the michael some cash and some cap!

http://www.plus.net/support/adsl/adsl_utilisation.shtml

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

The report on ADSLGuide suggests that these 0.3% of users causing the problems (not that I see any problems) are using an average of...

140Gb per month!! :shocked:


People can argue whatever they like about capped and uncapped, but 140Gb is excessive!

I've got no problem with them limiting these users. If those 0.3% really want that level of movie pirating they may as well buy a dedicated line for all the profits they probably make ;)

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

No Kenny, the lightest user in this group used an average of 140 ;)

Bit more, from Plus:

The simple answer to this is that there is not a specific value set. I will say that out of the customers affected the average usage over three months ranged from the 'lightest' user of those affected with ~140GB a month or data used to the 'heaviest' use of those affected with well over 500GB of data transferred every month.

What should not be read into these figures is that they are some sort of limit we are now sticking to - they are not.

We based the customers affected by this exercise purely on the top 10% of bandwidth use. This particular method of dealing with heavy users will either

* Work - and we will be able to move forwards using a purely educational approach to capacity management. If this is the case then the quoted figures are not relevant because this specific action will not be taken again. Or ...
* Not work at all - and we will need to look at other ways to address the problem, and again this will make the figures irrelevant as the same action will not be taken again (as we will already know that it doesn't work).

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

the point is their is a cap on their unlimited service by taking this action they a proving it.

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

Actually not really, this is a one off thing, if it doesn't work then they may cap, however as apart from contention which will still be within the limits of the product they aren't limiting these people it remains unlimited.

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

That's even worse then !

Even if they did, I don't think people can really complain at high usage levels like that. I mean, NTL people here moan about caps but I suspect if they were offered a 140gb cap or even higher, they wouldn't be complaining. Of course as pointed out, Plus aren't doing a cap anyway.

I think it's a very fair solution.

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

500Gb a month? What do they do with all that data? :shocked:

Although I do agree 140Gb is somewhat excessive, I think BT are all to blame for this, for forcing ISPs onto capacity based charging and user based charging. As the picture from a BT powerpoint presentation found on the UKIF site below shows, it costs the ISP a lot more unless they go for the "capped" option.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/at...achmentid=3817

I get the impression BT want to screw every last penny out of us for what is obsolete technology. There is aleady (soon to be) uncapped Telewest 4Mb broadband available.

Re: Plusnet - Unlimited No More
 

You may want to talk to OfCom, BT want to charge lower prices, at the moment OfCom won't let them.