[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by MovedGoalPosts

If that's the case, it's not very clear watching thier propaganda channels on Digital whcih usually blatantly plug prices from £17.99. I don't know if they've stopped now but they were even utterring "High Speed" when those sort of logos were on screen. Very iffy to me.

While I agree it is not high speed.

For a dial up upgrader who is probably getting about 50k compressed on dial up, its a 3x speed increase. A 20 second web page now loading in 7 seconds, 7 seconds (the boredom threshold apparently) loading in 2 and a bit.

That plus no beep beep beep squeel before you can see anything, its certainly a benefit, from NTLs point of view it then leads to upgrade creep in the same way they manage with the TV product. Install the basic and let people upgrade themselves when they want more channels.

Originally Posted by DVS

I agree and disagree

Whilst I agree 1 user cannot create > 1 users worth of congestion a light user will most likely not create a full 1 users worth of congestion.

Heavy user will likely be maxxed out on bandwidth.

Light user is most likely web browsing or checking email etc which uses bandwidth in a very 'peaky' manner. They aren't maxxed out during their net usage.

To keep with the traffic analogy, its like replacing articulated lorrys or Humeers with minis, more will fit on the same road, but congestion is likely to be the same.

Originally Posted by erol

<snipped the bits i'm not commenting on>
It is true that I was treating a user as either being online or not during peak periods, and if they are tonline hey are dling whilst online. I did this to simplfy the issue.

If we go into this 'extra' detail of kinds of usage during peak periods then some points come to mind.

First off during peak times it's not possible to 'max out' your connection. As it becomes more congested then your dl speed reduces and the amount of congestion you can cause reduces, as your connection speed does.

Also I would take some issue with the idea that 'light users' do not max out their connection in those periods when they do use the internet (generally peak periods).

She also runs a small website, heavy on large uncompressed graphics files and intersperces he online chatting with intense uploads, all from 7pm till 11pm when she has to be in bed.

Mum meanwhile is wondering why the 5 emails from cousin Jenny in Australia, each containing an uncompressed 1.5MB didgtal photo of cousin Jenny's sick cat, are taking so long to download. She wonders if it is being caused by all these 'heavy users' and wishes NTL would just kick them off.

In the senario above the total congestion caused by such a household, entierly in peak periods, is likely to be as significant as the lazy heavy downloader that has not turned off their P2P app in peak periods. It will be much greater than the non lazy heavy downloader that _does_ restrict their usage in peak periods. However it is hard to villfy this fictional family, compared with the ease with which the non lazy heavy user is villifed.

Sister Clare is unlikely to be hosting her website on the home PC, but in reality will be uploading this to the NTL (or another) web space. This is more likely to be one time bandwith useage, than nightly congestion.

Mums cat pictures as an XP / OSX user are also likely to be a one off. First time one of her Ozzy dial up recipients gets one of these they are going to send a polite response asking her to send a smaller piccy next time. Even the microsoft apps now offer compression saving options, (save in format for e-mail) on PhotoEditor, iPhoto or most apps.

Your post does point out why Debsy is concerned with the cap though, expand this scenario to a half term week with 3 PCs in the house, an online gamer, a chatter and general browsing and there goes the Gb.