1GB Cap Letter!!!!

[Frank]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

Also has anyone noticed that those who have received this letter seem for the most part to be really extreme users of bandwidth, example downloading 260+GB/day or downloading 8GB and uploading 2GB/day? How many people here object to those users being asked to moderate consumption somewhat?

Yes I have noticed this, and so it appears that ntl themselves are not following their own guidelines.

I think that if ntl were to set sensible limits, such as 100GB download a month, then there would many less problems. At the moment we have 1GB/day for 3 or more days in a 14 day period. How stupid does that sound? If they are going to have such a limit then they should define it in a clear way. i.e. 30GB/month.

IMHO, the problem is that ntl are not following their own guidelines, and are only sending letters to massive abusers of the service. They then report this on these forums, and everyone else starts worrying about going over 1GB/day for 3 or more days in a 14 day period, when this isn't what ntl are enforcing.

The first step to sort this ridiculous situation out would be to clearly define acceptable use at a reasonable level (imho different on each service level). Then they could enforce this and it would be clear what the limit was.

Only a stupid compnay would enforce a different limit than that in their guidelines, because surely they must realise that publicising a 1GB/day for 3 or more days in a 14 day period limit is only annoying their customers, not discouraging them from using, e.g. up to 100GB.

Madness.

[Ben]

Originally Posted by Keyser

Only a stupid compnay would enforce a different limit than that in their guidelines, because surely they must realise that 1GB/day for 3 or more days in a 14 day period is only annoying their customers, not discouraging them from using, e.g. up to 100GB.

Madness.

Really says it all don't it Stupid Cap - Stupid Company

[Klaus]

Totally agree Keyser. NTL should have put a lot more thought into this. 100Gb per month would be much more suitable. However, there are still people like me who want download more. So design a package for heavy users, not just force us to leave.

Some interesting and valid quotes regarding contention. Some of which I had not heard before. I am a heavy user and I know it. I also understand the model adopted by all the home user ISP's is not sustainable cost wise. Certainly not when users like myself exist.

After the caps were first announced last year, I expected other ISP's to follow suit. I was planning to move to a business ADSL line, as I understand I use my connection more than an average home user. However, I was doing this off my own back. NTL nor any other ISP afaik, talk about your usage of the line. If there really is an issue in maxing it out all month, you should be told this when you buy the product.

In the end NTL didn't enforce their caps, so I stayed where I was. Now they are enforcing them, I will leave. To my suprise very few other ISP's have introduced caps, perhaps the problem isn't as big as NTL make out? I still think the flat monthly fee model isn't sustainable. So ISP's will have to do something in the future.

For now I will go to another home user ADSL connection, having confirmed they have no plans of caps. However, I'm willing to pay business prices, but only when I'm forced to by the ISP's.

For those who are asking what us massive downloaders get, I'll tell you. I pay an extra subscription to two Usenet service providers. They have great bandwidth and can easily max out my connection. Once you are on a good Usenet server, you can easily download 10Gb a day. A complete guess, but I would say at least 100x that amount is added on an almost daily basis. And what you ask? Well DVD's and console games mainly. If it's there to get, why not get it?

Klaus

[Frank]

Originally Posted by Klaus

Totally agree Keyser. NTL should have put a lot more thought into this. 100Gb per month would be much more suitable. However, there are still people like me who want download more. So design a package for heavy users, not just force us to leave.

For sure, that was supposed to be what the "Power Users" group was for.

Unfortunately this turned out to be a publicity stunt to calm people down, rather than actually work constructively with their heavy users.

Of course if ntl would like to prove me wrong...but then we have a member of the Power User group above saying he's heard nothing

[Frank]

E-mail to Director of Internet:

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: bandwidth cap enforcing
From: "Keyser"
Date: Wed, February 18, 2004 11:38 am
To: Paul Rusby
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Paul,

I believe you are now the director of Internet, and as such responsible for the broadband Cap policy.

May I request an official comment from ntl on the contents of this nthellworld thread:

http://forum.nthellworld.co.uk/showt...9&page=1&pp=15

As you can see, ntl needs to rethink their publicised limit, as enforcing something other than in the AUP does not appear to be working.

We look forward to hearing from ntl on this matter soon.

Regards,

Keyser

[kronas]

Originally Posted by chambece

Hmmm, intresting thing there and I don't know if you caught it......

Let me re-phrase....


We have no intentions to restrict bandwidth, however, please remember that we buy this service from Telefonica, and they're gonna get damn annoyed if our customers max out their connections, preventing their other customers getting a decent service

central point is a reseller, having said that i have seen the feedback and not 1 unsatisfied customer yetwith regards to speed , all have been prasing them.

Originally Posted by chambece

oh, and from the faqs.......

Are speeds guaranteed ?
As with all other ADSL providers speed cannot be guaranteed, however we are using Telefonica's network and they are one of the largest providers in Europe, the also provide services to other household name ISP's, so you are in good hands.

and ?

i dont think there is any ISP offering guaranteed speeds on a residential line......

[obvious]

Anyone who gets a letter claiming that "customers in your area have been experiencing deterioration in the service" should know that their first line of defense could be the 'traffic report' function of DocsDiag

Here's some example output for my UBR

UBR 172.27.47.254 at 2004 Feb 18, 11:15

Channel   Freq     Max  Usage  Users  Min  Ave  Max
           MHz    kbps   kbps          ms   ms   ms
Dnstr 0  402.75  30342     26      2   30   50   70
Dnstr 1  402.75? 30342  10518    880   10   56  411
Upstr 1   32.8    2560    213    146   20   51  250
Upstr 2   36.0    2560    432    119   20   56  380
Upstr 3   39.2    2560    829    122   10   69  300
Upstr 4   32.8    2560    142    169   20   50  230
Upstr 5   36.0    2560    684    163   20   49  411
Upstr 6   39.2    2560    663    163   20   61  291

which shows in my case that at the time of this snapshot only a third of the current capacity is being used.

[Klaus]

Nice mail Keyuser, I hope you get a reply.

obvious, I'll give that a go. However, as a heavy user, I think I would be one of the first to notice any dips in performance. I pay close attention to my bandwidth usage and it's been fine for the past 18 month, not including a few outages.

Can anyone who has experienced slow-down, say in what way it showed itself?

Thanks

Klaus

[Florence]

Originally Posted by Keyser

For sure, that was supposed to be what the "Power Users" group was for.

Unfortunately this turned out to be a publicity stunt to calm people down, rather than actually work constructively with their heavy users.

Of course if ntl would like to prove me wrong...but then we have a member of the Power User group above saying he's heard nothing

I can assure you the power users had nothing more than emails saying they was accepted to the poweruers and would be intouch. I had an email copy here including headers that asked us to fill in some questions, the OS and number of pcs connected to how many in the family.

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From: "powerusers" <powerusers@ntlworld.com>
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Dear Power User,=20



Thank you for joining this group of advanced Internet users. Over the =
coming weeks and months, we will be inviting you to give us feedback on =
potential products and services designed for power users. I am grateful =
to you for making the time to participate and I look forward to better =
understanding your needs and priorities.=20

As a first step to achieving this, I would appreciate it if you would =
complete an initial questionnaire whch we have developed to learn more =
about you and your Internet usage. The questionnaire can be found at =
http://www.ntlworld.com/power_users. The information you provide will be =
treated in strict confidence and will be used only for the development =
of new products and services and not for any other purposes.

Please note, we will only consider questionnaires that have been =
completed by registered members of the power user group. Would you =
therefore ensure that you enter in the space provided in the =
questionnaire the email address which you used to register (i.e. the =
address to which this email was sent). The power user group is only open =
to ntl customers.

The questionaire will be available for the next week (until Wednesday =
12th March 2003) and I look forward to your feedback.=20

Thank you again for taking the time to complete this questionnaire and I =
will be inviting your views on more specific product developments =
shortly.

Yours sincerely,



Stephen Holford.=20

Manager, Power User Forum

That was the end of the powerusers as the emails I sent after this never was replied to,

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Keyser

Yes I have noticed this, and so it appears that ntl themselves are not following their own guidelines.

I think that if ntl were to set sensible limits, such as 100GB download a month, then there would many less problems. At the moment we have 1GB/day for 3 or more days in a 14 day period. How stupid does that sound? If they are going to have such a limit then they should define it in a clear way. i.e. 30GB/month.

IMHO, the problem is that ntl are not following their own guidelines, and are only sending letters to massive abusers of the service. They then report this on these forums, and everyone else starts worrying about going over 1GB/day for 3 or more days in a 14 day period, when this isn't what ntl are enforcing.

The first step to sort this ridiculous situation out would be to clearly define acceptable use at a reasonable level (imho different on each service level). Then they could enforce this and it would be clear what the limit was.

Only a stupid compnay would enforce a different limit than that in their guidelines, because surely they must realise that publicising a 1GB/day for 3 or more days in a 14 day period limit is only annoying their customers, not discouraging them from using, e.g. up to 100GB.

Madness.

I think that we have to look at the reason why NTL sought fit to introduce a cap, that being to avoid service being affected by users who were taking more than their fair share of the bandwidth available. Not every user who exceeds the guidelines set out in the AUP is affecting the service of others so why go after them?

The problem with having a "per month" limit on downloads such as the 100Gb that you suggest is sensible is that this 100Gb could be taken at any time during the month and could seriously affect other users dependant on the time that it was taken. Some users who are not using anything like 100Gb a month may increase their usage to make sure that they are getting the full 100Gb that they are "paying for".

[obvious]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

Don't think for a second that docsdiag is accurate - it isn't, especially with pure DOCSIS areas (ex-c+w) as it doesn't detect STBs.

A Docsdiag report is no defense at all, the only people who can see exactly what's on an upstream usage wise are ntl.

I'd recommend DocsDiag as a useful tool in any case. ntl could hardly claim that 66% capacity was being used by STB users.

[chambece]

Originally Posted by kronas

<Regarding no guaranteed speed>

and ?

i dont think there is any ISP offering guaranteed speeds on a residential line......

No 'and' really - there are places offering 512K connections that max out at 50K according to adsl guide - it's all well and good if it actually is that fast, all the time.

There a good point at http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...&Number=809256 feel free to remove the link if innapropriate

[kronas]

[QUOTE=chambece]No 'and' really - there are places offering 512K connections that max out at 50K according to adsl guide - it's all well and good if it actually is that fast, all the time.

if it isn't then i can leave at the end of the 3 month contract, thats what its there for!!!

Originally Posted by chambece

There a good point at http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...&Number=809256 feel free to remove the link if innapropriate

i dont see the point in posting that link, i choose the company because it seemed a profesional outfit with a good reputation for speed quality, im not going to wait for NTL to provide 2mbit, i have waited long enough, its now not 'economically viable' for me to continue my 1mbit service with NTL, because i can get something around the same price but faster...

as long as i get between 210-250kb/s im not complaining.

and i will start a thread about it as soon as i get it.

[Florence]

Originally Posted by obvious

I'd recommend DocsDiag as a useful tool in any case. ntl could hardly claim that 66% capacity was being used by STB users.

This is impossible to do if you have a SACM in the Ex C&W area as we can't be trusted to have the access. Security issues.

[obvious]

I'd hazard a guess that 9 times out of 10, the statement "customers in your area have been experiencing deterioration in the service" is a lie plain and simple.

Mind you that's assuming that they're only talking about contention issues rather than email/newsgroups/customer service/ etc etc