[Ignition]

Originally Posted by DeadKenny

There's an article on it here...

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showflat...1425869&page=0

Of particular note...
"If you look at Plusnet's Bandwidth Utilisation graphs, this shows that they are not exceeding available capacity. To put it into perspective, although it may look a little bit "full", there is over 150Mbps of spare bandwidth at peak times; this is more than some ISPs run their whole business on! "

The important thing is that it's a BT problem and could effect any ISP, it's just that PlusNet's success has meant they have hit it first, but as they have far more investment they have the capacity to cope.

Sorry, Plus buy their capacity from BT, BT deliver what Plus ask for. Plus are running their network to the extent where loss of a single BT link will cause congestion. BT's balancing issues not withstanding I was referring to how little overhead Plus have and how marginal they are running their network.

So far with a month on the service I've not seen any problems and I've had 100% reliability (never seen that on NTL), and vastly better ping times with no packet loss (haven't had the luxury zero packet loss on NTL for ages). Just browsing web sites is amazingly fast compared to NTL. I put it down to the zero packet loss, low pings, no transparent proxies and better backbone connectivity (or generally better infrastructure).

LOLOL @ better infrastructure. ntl have the best core IP network infrastructure in the UK bar none. Wonder how many feet of their own fibre Plus own. Last I checked ntl owned about 7,500km of the stuff and managed a further 2,500km.

Sorry I'm really quite amused, comparing ntl's infrastructure to Plus.net's is like comparing Dell to your local PC shop.

I used an ntl modem in Southampton a week ago and was astonished at how fast and responsive the browsing and pings were. Both the browsing blew my 2Mbit ADSL away (this was 1Mbit cable) and the pings were nearly 10ms faster than mine.

150Mbps of spare capacity is great I guess, considering it's considerably under 10% of utilisation. The loss of ONE fibre link and ONE central pipe and the majority of their customer base will experience congestion. Their service is running really close to max, regardless of how many ISPs run with 155Mbit not many run their capacity that close either. >90% is really really close to the mark, most ISPs would consider their network oversubscribed running that close to max.

I did mention in private that the issues that caused your substandard performance had been resolved and were a fault. As you've kinda brought this into the open I'll say again they are fixed. 99.99% of users see no packet loss and pings unmatched by an ADSL ISP without living next door to their datacentre. Plus give you the sub-10ms pings to LINX I used to see from Hampshire?

I'm not so convinced "very few" users see congestion. NTL seem to need to do resegmentation on a frequent basis and there are many UBRs which seem to struggle.

I have reports of uBR ports showing congestion, though you obviously seem to know better than me perhaps mine are wrong and you have the correct version.

Remembering that congestion is a little different with cable. It's less of an issue at the fat-pipe end and far more at the UBR end, especially in the upstream channels which is where there are major problems.

No there aren't major problems. Upgrades to 3.2MHz wide upstreams along with the massive uplift prep resegmentation program have all but eliminated these issues. I could count the number of ports classed as badly congested on my fingers and toes NATIONWIDE.

I really really really wish I could stick the report on a website just to show you how little fact there is in what you are saying, sadly I can't for confidentiality purposes. Either way a lot of people have worked long hours and damn hard to get the network into the condition it is in at the moment and are still banging capacity in to keep it good and prepare for the extra speeds coming soon.

By the way, while you are comparing ntl and Plus.net, most of ntl's Points of Presence could carry Plus's entire network traffic with room to spare to collect a couple of other medium size ADSL ISPs up while they are at it. Be fair and compare ntl and BT, the only other ISP in the UK with a network comparible.

I'm not saying Plus are pants, I am saying they run their network to the wire, that would make me a little concerned about using them.

Ah to be able to just order more capacity from BT and let them worry about it rather than having to worry about an IP network, an RF network that can require tens of thousands to upgrade a few hundred homes.