Speed Increases 1st June - 2meg to 4meg

[Paul K]

Well I can honestly say that if they are going to leave the 1Mb people till the last possible second for upgrades then I may well have to look at Tiscali etc for other options now that we are back on a BT line again.
NTL need to set and agree to follow a plan instead of changing their minds every other month about what they are doing. How many "announcements" have they made about the speed increases so far??

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by unlimited

Is it the first of April all ready

bah spoil the fun

[dcclanuk]

Originally Posted by Paul

Well I can honestly say that if they are going to leave the 1Mb people till the last possible second for upgrades then I may well have to look at Tiscali etc for other options now that we are back on a BT line again.
NTL need to set and agree to follow a plan instead of changing their minds every other month about what they are doing. How many "announcements" have they made about the speed increases so far??

DONT EVEN BOTHER... dial up will be better instead!

tiscali cant do anything right, apart from connecting u...after ur connected crap speeds, and fair usage warnings for excessive use of ur 100k connection which is meant to be 2mb, and then when u leave there are billing errors and call the debt agency on u............ not a good place to even THINK about going to...

[Druchii]

Originally Posted by dcclanuk

DONT EVEN BOTHER... dial up will be better instead! tiscali cant do anything right, apart from connecting u...after ur connected crap speeds, and fair usage warnings for excessive use of ur 100k connection which is meant to be 2mb, and then when u leave there are billing errors and call the debt agency on u............ not a good place to even THINK about going to...

Yet with Tiscali i always got my full 1Mb... Always overcharged and they never did get off my old phone line... That was after 3months, i don't think they support migration which is saddening really.

[mcmanic]

goods news, i was a 10meg user but downgraded to 2meg due to the cap they had imposed on the 10meg teir and 2 meg was unlimited and cheaper, now with the plan to move 2meg users to 4meg and still unlimited i will be looking forward to the upgrade. To me the 3meg was the best teir they ever did and now i'll be getting 4meg and it'll be even cheaper and faster than what the 3meg teir was. BTW i must of been one of the lucky few to to be hit by degrading service as my speeds on whatever teir have always been spot on.

Roll on June!

[joggerspark]

this is great news... if all packages are uncapped then it gives 10Mb users an option to downgrade...

[zeus9876]

Originally Posted by joggerspark

this is great news... if all packages are uncapped then it gives 10Mb users an option to downgrade...

I am on the 10meg service and why would i want to downgrade when i am paying £17.50 for it for life ?

[akane1984]

what is traffic shaping?

[jtwn]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

bah spoil the fun

For some, the fun will be a reality though pretty soon.......

[Hans Gruber]

Originally Posted by zeus9876

I am on the 10meg service and why would i want to downgrade when i am paying £17.50 for it for life ?

How'd you get for life? They only gave me 3 months

[mcmanic]

will be interesting to see if and when they introduce traffic shaping what the actual effect will be, we all know how traffic shaping has effected other isp's and has lead to a mass eviction of users looking for new isp's who have had sufffered slower speeds than dialup when traffic shaping was brought in on there service.

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by mcmanic

will be interesting to see if and when they introduce traffic shaping what the actual effect will be, we all know how traffic shaping has effected other isp's and has lead to a mass eviction of users looking for new isp's who have had sufffered slower speeds than dialup when traffic shaping was brought in on there service.

Which were replaced by far more profitable customers who didn't want to cane it or use P2P (see Plusnet's user figures for an example) and customers who used a little but had issues with previous ISPs thanks to them being uncapped and unshaped and getting their bandwidth hammered by P2P.

As ntl have stated that it will only affect upstream I'd say the only people who are liable to have issues are those who have ratios they really want to keep up. No, encrypting torrents using the current software won't help, the current versions of uTorrent, Azureus et al that offer encryption are already detectable and shapeable. No it doesn't cost ISPs any more, the software updates will be covered by the support contracts. Will ntl be sorry to see torrent monsters go? Nope.

Seems like relatively mild and not uncommon shaping to be honest, most cable ISPs shape upstream only as it's their 'weak link'.

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by akane1984

what is traffic shaping?

the ISP filters traffic so that some data gets priority over other data - e.g. a voice over IP phone call is more important to reach its destination as a priority over someone at the same time downloading a unix distro or browsing home banking. following on from this downloading a uniz distro takes lower priority over browsing.

the ISP sets the priorities and can do it by the ports used or if being really smart by looking at the physical packet data going through their systems. all data transfered over the net is sent in 'packets' and via 'ports' - browsing usually uses port 80, person to person sending/sharing movies and other files usually uses other typical port numbers - so usually you can work out your priorities as an ISP by setting it up by port.

this is all sensible stuff on a reasonably funded network - ie. at peak times you need to protect against massive peaks so voip calls dont get buggered up between say 6pm and midnight. just as the power companies have to handle peak use during the break when corry is on and we all boil the kettle!

but traffic shaping is also another way to prop up an underfunded network instead of increasing capacity.

---------- Post added at 11:00 ---------- Previous post was at 10:57 ----------

and another abuse of traffic shapping is to priorise your own ISP's voip calls but voip calls from other independent providers - e.g. skype you could prioritise as the lowest priority - a covert way of putting skype and others out of business while promoting your own voip service.

[mcmanic]

well i don't use P2P and seeing Newsgroups is something you pay for they better not traffic shape them to much - for example at the moment i'm downloading at 250 kb/sec and my upload is only about 5 to 6 kb/sec which is nothing compared to the likes of emule and torrents that require full upload,

same goes for xbox Live also, downloads from them just lately have been awful to say the least, traffic shaping on something like this will kill XBL totally, just look at all the NTL problems over at xbox forums

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by Hans Gruber

How'd you get for life? They only gave me 3 months

They shouldn't be doing it for anyone for any length of time. If they can afford to offer the product at that price then that should be the price it is for everyone.