One Way Internet

[Bonglet]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

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

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.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Bonglet

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.

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.

[cook1984]

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?

[popper]

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

optical fiber and DS3 circuits

---------- 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.

[Fatec]

Originally Posted by broadbandbug

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..

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

[Ignitionnet]

This thread is delivering.

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

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

This thread is delivering.

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

Anonymous said...

It is "asymmetry / asymmetrical", 'm' twice, 't' once.

See Google "define:asymmetrical"

14 September 2008 11:25

[Fatec]

Originally Posted by Sirius

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

Mr.Carl...i believe

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by TraxData2

Mr.Carl...i believe

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.

[cook1984]

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.

[broadbandbug]

Originally Posted by TraxData2

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

Oh well, we will see won't we

[Fatec]

Originally Posted by broadbandbug

Oh well, we will see won't we

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

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by cook1984

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...

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)

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?

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.

[Fatec]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

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.

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?

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.

Understandable.

[broadbandbug]

Originally Posted by TraxData2

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

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.