Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Geekofbroadband on July 30, 2014, 12:14:30 AM
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I know Plusnet uses Openreachs network but people have said plusnets upto 76Mbs service is better than BT's upto 76Mbs they said it's something to do with plusnet only being in the UK and having better routing, is this true? I mean if it is then I might move to plusnet seeing as there cheaper, have a better help service and the router doesn't matter as I use the OR modem with a net gear r7000 and does anyone know if the plusnet unlimited fibre pro is truly unlimited like the bt option 2 (not p2p limits)
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I've had plusnet unlimited fibre since last november and haven't hit any limits yet despite really heavy use.
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The actual connection is exactly the same - theres no difference between the 2 when it comes to connection and sync speeds. Routing - theres not much in it... Plusnet uses much of the BTcore network but you will terminate on one of their gateways which are dotted over several london based regions. Depending on where you are routing to it can make a minute difference but not much and you can always gateway hop anyhow if one of the other gateways is nearer.
However Id say their Customer Support is better than BT in that it is UK based and they do tend to have more of a clue than BT CS.
Yes their unlimited pro is truly unlimited. There have been reports by a couple of customers of using several hundred GB.
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Warning OT :o
Would you say same for telephone service?
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Have a read through some of Dave's T's post on Plusnet's forum to see if the way the traffic is policed (shaped) suits your end user needs. :)
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,115770.msg1016233.html#msg1016233
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,126233.msg1107785.html#msg1107785
Edited reason -Cashback Offer expired
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I'm going to place an order with Plusnet in the coming week, I will post comparison!
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I'm going to place an order with Plusnet in the coming week, I will post comparison!
I was thinking of transferring from BT to Plusnet a few months ago to save a few pennys and found out that's all i'll save 45p per month on FTTC.
How often does one call there ISP if there is an issue not that often I hope ;)
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I'm going to place an order with Plusnet in the coming week, I will post comparison!
I was thinking of transferring from BT to Plusnet a few months ago to save a few pennys and found out that's all i'll save 45p per month on FTTC.
How often does one call there ISP if there is an issue not that often I hope ;)
im with BT.
trust me , its not the small saving.
id happily pay twice that and more if needed to transfer to plusnet.
in fact , if plusnet paid the remaining charge for ending my contract 6 months early i would go yesterday.
shocking , non existant overseas support is not worth it .
im pretty much tech savvy and having to explain to BT india what im on about and getting nowhere after an hour on the phone isnt worth it , even if its only once you have to call.
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I was thinking of transferring from BT to Plusnet a few months ago to save a few pennys and found out that's all i'll save 45p per month on FTTC.
How often does one call there ISP if there is an issue not that often I hope ;)
There are ways of further enhancing the saving, all the time someone you've referred to Plusnet is a customer you'll get a discount off your bill every month. In fact it's even possible that Plusnet could end up paying you money every month if you refer enough people. I currently get £4.50 in referral credits a month.
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There are ways of further enhancing the saving.
Yes was on the Plusnet Website last night and what looks great is its unlimited as at the moment with BT 40/10 it's a 40GB a month allowance though I only use 29GB max a month.
and the last time I called Plusnet they could not do the free evening and weekend calls but it looks like that has changed.
As I am out of the BT contract it's a rolling 1 month contract it's better to move away from BT like Car Insurance the longer you stay you miss out on new customer deals ;)
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From the PN Community Forum
community.plus.net/plusnet-residential-refresh-faq-june-2014/
Both Fibre products will be provisioned on 80/20 speeds, however, the Unlimited Fibre (Up to 38Mbps) package will be capped at 40/20 on our side.
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From the PN Community Forum
community.plus.net/plusnet-residential-refresh-faq-june-2014/
Both Fibre products will be provisioned on 80/20 speeds, however, the Unlimited Fibre (Up to 38Mbps) package will be capped at 40/20 on our side.
Thats ok Ren I only get a DS of 29 - 30 Mbps and US of 5.9 Mbps so i'll see no difference
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Just wondering, are the up and downstream rates somehow approximately mathematically related? My views of a few estimates of local numbers makes me think they could be.
If they are, what's the point of 40/20 anyhow?
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No, there's no fixed relationship between upstream and downstream speeds. Ignoring capping and other deliberate interventions, connection speeds are determined by the bitloading on the different tones, and the bitloading is dependent on the level of noise on each tone. That's an over simplification of course.
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If they are, what's the point of 40/20 anyhow?
As eric has already mentioned it depends entirely on the frequency bands.
The advantage of an 80/20 product being capped at 40/20... is that because the upstream tones are in the lower frequencies.. it may be possible that some lines whilst not able to take advantage of tones in the D3 band, they may well be able to make use of some of the tones in U2 to give more upload speed.
The U2 band isnt heavily shaped by PSD masks - unlike U0 and U1 to a certain extent. So although 40/20 isnt an official wholesale product, Plusnet offering this could actually open up more upstream speeds for longer lines rather than being on the fixed 40/10 product.... even if the line is too long to make use of tones >2750
The band plans are laid down in the dsl standard annexes.. so if someone can make use of U2 even if the line is reasonably long... then why not. I cant actually see any downside to this.
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One difference between Plusnet and other BTW based ISP's is that plusnet use an additional internal IP profile they apparently need this for their traffic shaping DPI systems that are used to (as they call it in their sales blurb) prioritize traffic , this however results in a slower throughput level for plusnet customers of around 2-3mbps (FTTC 80/20)when compared to other isp's even when my plusnet IP profile is set to the max of 78mbps my throughput is still 1- 1.5mbps shy of what other customers on the same products syncing at the max rate with a max BTW IP profile of 77.42 or 77.44mbps achieve when performing speedtests or downloading files my throughput will peak initially at around 74.5-75.2mbps then back off down to around 73.5 ish So IMO it's being restricted so matter how they want to dress it up their playing with traffic results in a lower throughput
Routing / peering That seems to be one of BT and Plusnets weakest links in particular when it comes to peering to the USA or certain parts of it canada being higher latency than some other ISP's offer, they plusnet seem to be over reliant on using level 3 peering which in the past has been found to offer cack handed routing like routing around several European countries before returning to the uk before transiting to the usa whilst plusnet may not have direct control & BT are paymaster it would seem
even some of their peering in the uk does suffer peak time latency humps such as to steampowered.com
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Interesting
Source of your info; links?
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BT own Plusnet therefore hold the purse strings hence why Plusnet have no real choice in the matter RE peering
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Hmmm. I'm not so sure it's to do with traffic shaping.
The traffic shaping and PN profiles are independent. Removal of PN profile used to be called the magic button and removal of any traffic shaping is god profile.
However there is an element of truth in that the PN profile limits the max throughput of 80/20, but I suspect it's more to do with tcpip overheads. I've mentioned this subject on here a couple of times but it's something I really don't have time to do for the sake of a tiny bit more speed.
But if you want the basics it's to do with say if your ip profile is 4000, then you bras atm bit rate profile set at the RAS would be 4096. This was something I was aware of back in the days of max dsl which affected anyone syncing at 8128... So PN could hit 'the magic button' and you'd get an 8128 pn profile. James would do this for anyone who asked. I'm not sure what happened with adsl2+ but I'm not aware of similar for top rate adsl2+ .. And obviously similar with vdsl.
I can fully understand why PN have the PN profile - again I stress this is independant from any traffic shaping profile. It's used to stop surplus traffic passing through the MSILs in the same way that bt say the ip profiles stops traffic being dropped at the exchange. However it would be far better if it related to the line rate rather than ip profile.
Agree with you re L3. It didn't used to be like that.
However I think you may mean transit rather than peering. They do sort their own peering.. It's in their interests to peer with any reasonable request. In fact I think PN users of this forum will have seen this actioned in less than a week of a request being submitted.
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Well Late last year latency to Ubisoft master servers that their games use to authenticate as well as for game data went from a respectable 90ms to 120ms later this reduced to 105-110ms due to a peering change by AS6453.net Other ISP's like Zen don't use level 3 peering to ubisoft , they peer directly with Tinet the only other peering provider used by ubisoft , Plusnet tried to route via tinet by changing the preference with Level 3
but because they don't have direct peering with tinet it had to go via level 3, who routed traffic in a cack handed way going via Paris adding to the base latency so that it made little difference, their only other alternative was to route traffic via BT , which going by several tracerts from their customer base would result have resulted in a even higher latency due to the way traffic is bounced around lots of internal hops prior to it actually reaching the internet, The same situation exists today, they changed nothing IMO one of the reasons that plusnet don't peer directly with Tinet ect is probably cost, and another is BT saying no,
But compared to some other isp's their peering is weak , easynet when i was with ukonline, had the best peering routing by far, the best I've experienced in the past 7-8yrs of having a broadband service , Be Unlimited peering and their laggy wholesale service via entanet sucked too
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I used to be on tinet and they took me on a grand tour of Europe for every connection.
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Peering quality will be dependant on what the ISP is prepared to pay for, such things like the amount of bandwidth as well as route preference will always play a part, tinet via zen offers a lower latency than the likes of BT and and Plusnet to ubisoft Because they don't have a peering agreement with tinet they have to go via Level 3 who have some of the most backward routing preferences known
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eke @ Ubisoft/Tinet/L3. I do recall something about that a few months ago.. although I cant remember exactly what it was now. Wasnt it the Ubisoft /Tinet peering that was borked?
Edit to add
.. found this (http://community.plus.net/forum/?topic=120077.msg1083947)... still dont know what the issue was, but also just found a post on TBB (http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/bt/4311676-bt-in-denial-over-ubisoft-issues.html?fpart=all) too, which you were involved in, so you will likely know far more about it than me. :)
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Basically yes (1st link) But it wasn't tinet peering to blame, it was down to plusnet's peering agreements or lack of, Because they have to peer via level 3 this increased the latency due to level 3's indirect somewhat questionable routing, Which in turn will biol down to cost, Latency used to be a lot lower to ubisoft , and was never above 95ms for me regardless of ISP for months now it has been 110ms or higher,
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So in Plusnet Unlimited Fibre 80/20 truly unlimited as in P2P is complelty unlimited as it's not throttled like BT Infinity 2? Would my friend see any difference if he went from BT Inifnity 2 to plus net unlimited fibre 80/20,
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One difference between Plusnet and other BTW based ISP's is that plusnet use an additional internal IP profile they apparently need this for their traffic shaping DPI systems that are used to (as they call it in their sales blurb) prioritize traffic , this however results in a slower throughput level for plusnet customers of around 2-3mbps (FTTC 80/20)when compared to other isp's even when my plusnet IP profile is set to the max of 78mbps my throughput is still 1- 1.5mbps shy of what other customers on the same products syncing at the max rate with a max BTW IP profile of 77.42 or 77.44mbps achieve when performing speedtests or downloading files my throughput will peak initially at around 74.5-75.2mbps then back off down to around 73.5 ish So IMO it's being restricted so matter how they want to dress it up their playing with traffic results in a lower throughput
Routing / peering That seems to be one of BT and Plusnets weakest links in particular when it comes to peering to the USA or certain parts of it canada being higher latency than some other ISP's offer, they plusnet seem to be over reliant on using level 3 peering which in the past has been found to offer cack handed routing like routing around several European countries before returning to the uk before transiting to the usa whilst plusnet may not have direct control & BT are paymaster it would seem
even some of their peering in the uk does suffer peak time latency humps such as to steampowered.com
Interesting. Are you a gamer?
Who, currently, has the lowest latency into Europe / Sweden etc, in your opinion? Or anyone elses opinion on here :)
My only experience so far is Sky FTTC which appears to be OK and a native BT FTTC install which I will ignore because it was interleaved from day one and I didn't play any games on it anyway :D I don't play on any US servers though, typically UK and 'Europe' which usually appears to be Germany.
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So in Plusnet Unlimited Fibre 80/20 truly unlimited as in P2P is complelty unlimited as it's not throttled like BT Infinity 2? Would I see any difference if I went from BT Inifnity 2 to plus net unlimited fibre 80/20,
IIRC traffic is prioritised, not throttled. P2P will get a lower priority than most other stuff. I don't think theres a hard cap on how much bandwidth it can use.
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Peaking and settling lower does sound like it's being policed. It could be argued the very essence of prioritisation is to shape/police/taildrop lower priority stuff?
TCP will resend anyway but RTP streams and gaming traffic don't have this luxury nor would it work if they did, I suppose :)
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What I'm trying to say is, they're not saying P2P can have nKB/s of bandwidth and no more (throttling). They're saying that P2P can use the bandwidth that's available, BUT it will have to defer to more important streams (prioritisation). if nothing else needs the bandwidth then the P2P can have it, but if someone starts streaming a video or playing an online game or making a skype call, the P2P will have to wait its turn. Kind of like waiting in a queue, the more important people or the people who have paid more get to queue jump. P2P is always economy class.
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Does anyone know how to set the NETGEAR R7000 up with Plusnet I take it you will have to put in and user name and password?
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Its just a question of changing your user name / password -It helps PN being part of BT :)
mybthomehub@btbroadband.com
becomes something like
Geekofbroadband@plusdsl.net
Then enter your password ( created as part of sign up)
& Jobs a Good'n as they say.
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thank you :P
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I have to write the things down these days ....The joys of senior moments :-[ :)
Have you switched ?
PN also offer a useful static IP option for a one off fiver.
Also if you want all your traffic Titanium {0xa0} and Gold {0x80 or 0x60} then PN offer the Pro add-on for £5 per month. Its a no tie in add on , so you can add or remove the option in the member centre .
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/products/pro-Add-On-faq.shtml#whatIs
Should point out , the Plusnet network team say its not really worth it , for 80/20 service.;)
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I have to write the things down these days ....The joys of senior moments :-[ :)
Have you switched ?
PN also offer a useful static IP option for a one off fiver.
Also if you want all your traffic Titanium {0xa0} and Gold {0x80 or 0x60} then PN offer the Pro add-on for £5 per month. Its a no tie in add on , so you can add or remove the option in the member centre .
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/products/pro-Add-On-faq.shtml#whatIs
Should point out , the Plusnet network team say its not really worth it , for 80/20 service.;)
He has not switched yet but I think he will in a month when his virgin contract ends, and go with the Plusnet 80/20 someone from Plusnet also told me he could switch Plusnet prioritisation off for an extra £5 a month so it would just be like Infinity 2
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BT has more diversity on its external transit.
However BT also has odd internal routing issues which on my line created permanent jitter as was some kind of load balancing going on between different routers of different latency.
Plusnet almost exclusively seems to only use level3 for transit (where is no peering links in use). Level3 sometimes routes oddly, like going to EU for UK traffic.
I have got 2 guesses why plusnet are rolling out 40/20
1 - On the BTw contracts and openreach contracts if you change the product a new min 12 month term starts, but if the isp only has one product the 80/20 then they dont need to initiate a new min term with the wholesale and ultimately this increases profits. (note this may no longer apply if the new ofcom rules for 1 month migrations are in effect).
2 - Extra burst speed (dispite many people been in denial) costs money, it adds to peak time demand load. So plusnet can offer on the budget packages double upload speed over other budget packages that other isp's have as a selling point, but because they keep the download at 40 there is no extra costs on backhaul capacity. This is also to keep a reason paying for the extra product.
In terms of congestion, I dont think I have noticed anything significant that is confirmed plusnet side.
Mainstream services such as youtube and netflix work as good on plusnet as they do on infinity.
Plusnet has superior tech support to BT in it has uk agents who are better trained, but they do have support response time issues, a way to bypass the slow response time is use their forums if its office hours.
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Would you have it off or on?
Off, :) As most of the standard/popluar use taffic is classed Titanium or Gold.
BT Retail also has shapped traffic. Just not as well published as plusnet's.
Have a read of Section 2: Traffic management to optimise network utilisation.
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/47278/~/traffic-management
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Regarding pro I currently have it on, when I first signed up I was seeing packet loss on ssh traffic (not on port 22 but on other ports), and turning on pro fixed it so I left it on. Whether or not that issue ever got fixed no idea as I am not particularly bothered about paying the extra fiver anyway.
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Would you have it off or on?
Off for me too. The vast majority of my bandwidth is streaming and I don't do p2p so it wouldn't make sense for me to purchase Pro.
However I do use a quite a bit of external FTP - which is one of the areas likely to have been quite heavily shaped on some of the old Plusnet accounts and one of the protocols normally targeted for shaping after p2p.
Im on Unlimited 80/20 and Ive yet to see any sign of any traffic shaping on my FTP transfers, even during peak hours.
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Oh right I see! Sorry I was getting confused. So If I was to buy the Unlimited Fibre Extra normally I would be on the normal Current Residential Products and if I wanted the Pro add-on which makes all of them Titanium and Gold I would have to go on my account and add it on. So what is BT Infinity 2 equivalent to, the Current Residential Products or the Pro add-on? :lol:
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>> So what is BT Infinity 2 equivalent to,
Not sure? BT do a similar type of shaping to PN anyhow- just not quite as open about it. Since Infinity 2 relates to the 'up to' speed and Im not aware that they do a Pro addon.. then Id say Plusnet Unlimited 80/20 without Pro add-on.
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BT the new true unlimited I am pretty sure has no management at all not even prioritisation.
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It does say this but im nt sure if its for BT Infintiy 2.
Prioritised: This outcome is achieved by the deployment of technologies that increase the priority given to certain traffic types (for example, time-critical traffic such as video). This outcome can also be achieved as a consequence of slowing down other selected traffic which reduces the overall data flow on the network.
I think that might be for when its under load, http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/47278/~/traffic-management
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Think I seem to remember that all users will get a fair share of the BroadBand Bandwidth be it on ADSl ADSL2+ and VDSL2 can't remember the exact term but it's at the exchange and the ISP's have no control over it, the basic function was to limit the max bandwidth the user could access to try and balance out a user who has less broadband bandwidth.
Think it's called Bandwidth Management Control at the Exchange :-\
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In the early days of adsl bt used to us contention ratios, but the did away with this years ago.
Bandwidth is allocated per virtual paths (VPs). On some of the old Dslams the VPs could be quite small. On 20cn exchanges all maxDSL users are usually put on an MSAN which has superVPs. A maxdsl premium aCcount will be on a different vp to normal maxdsl as these are allocated slightly more bandwidth. Even so contention and congestion can still be an issue if bt get caught out and don't upgrade the VPs quick enough.
For adsl2+ and 21cn exchanges, they still use VPs but congestion is much rarer due to the structure of the backhaul. There's info on the main site about this.
No preferences are given for sync speeds, just natural congestion and preferences for some protocols. If by any chance congestion kicks in, then the higher rate lines will notice first.
For example if the vp is busy, then a 24Mb line would notice first and this could slow the line down to say 12mbps. A line on the same VP syncing at 16mbps would also be slowed to 12mbps Yet a line syncing at 10mbps or less, wouldn't even be aware there was an issue.
Think of it this way, I'd you have a busy motorway and heavy traffic slows down speeds to 60 mph, then all cars are slowed down to the same speed regardless of what speed the car is capable of doing. The Sunday driver on the inside lane doing 50 mph may think its busy if he looks out of his window, but he's still free to tootle along at 50 and isn't affected.
With vdsl its natural congestion again but there's a couple of places local congestion could occur. 1. Dslam to exchange and would affect all users on that dslam. 2. On or near the OLT which could affect all vdsl users at the exchange due to insufficient capacity on the backhaul for the vdsl VP (btw based fttc) or SP backhaul capacity in the case of TT/sky.
Gea fibre providers such as sky and TT also have a 3rd possible location and that's on the GEA fibre link between the OLT and the ISP backhaul. This is the link between BTs equipment and their own.. So they must also ensure that they purchase a big enough link, otherwise it will slow down all their fttc users on that exchange.
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Damnit I'd typed a long post but the ipad lost it :(. It sometimes does this with long posts as it attempts to do a full page refresh. I've tried to type most of it again, but because it's taken so long and I don't want to risk another preview... I've not proof read so apologies for typos etc
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