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[lcl00]

As the regulars are probably aware, I've recently signed up for Plusnet FTTC broadband (I think Fibre Extra or something like that - 80/20 anyway!).  This was the only option available to me on that particular line due to it being in contract on ADSL and with it really being more of an experiment than anything else I didn't want to pay any more than I had to.  Assuming it connects faster than the other one, and all goes well, I'll probably have to stick with it for the contract duration.  That is unless it connects slower than the estimates (very likely - they're daft), and I'll be able to duck out easily given there's a cooling off period of 14 days - yay!

Anyway!  Does anyone have any recent reports on what they're like now?  I'd heard a bit of bad talk regarding them a few months back, something to do with congestion, back haul not up to scratch and other stuff like that but then heard that it had been mostly resolved.

Any other nasty business I need to be aware of before I cancel my Zen line?

I'm fully aware of their questionable customer service and the abhorrent wait times, but once you get the name of somebody who knows what they're talking about, I've found that I can work with it - mostly.  With the price that they're offering, I can't really whine too loudly (I'm sure they'd disagree if they listened to my phone calls though! ).

[kitz]

something to do with congestion, back haul not up to scratch and other stuff like that but then heard that it had been mostly resolved.

I was one of those affected last year by the slow peak time performance.   
Turns out it was the BTw shared MSILs..  at the time there was only Plusnet users and AAISP who noticed it, but other ISPs are likely to have been affected too.    I think Zen users are also currently experiencing it.    It all depends on which MSIL you get connected via.

Plusnet are moving their users off the BTw shared MSILs and using their own dedicated MSILs .  Im on the new network and getting full speeds..   but saying that Ive been getting full speeds for a few months now as I think BTw may have fixed their Preston MSILs (which I went through).

[Chrysalis]

To be honest if they were open about their new network when it was clear it was in the planning stage, I would not have left plusnet.

This new network has made it clear they have accepted the problems (even tho they still claim its not related to the rollout of the new network), so its only a matter of time I expect now for any remaining issues to go away.  I am interested to see if new customers always go on the new network straight away.

[adrianw]

I am happy with Plusnet.

They gave me good support (via tickets) the couple of times I needed it.

FTTC speeds are good, though I do have to hop gateways every few months when I end up on a poor one (high latency, sometimes massive packet loss). Roll on my move to the new network.

They do seem to be much more secretive than they were.

[tommy45]

  Assuming it connects faster than the other one, and all goes well, I'll probably have to stick with it for the contract duration.  That is unless it connects slower than the estimates (very likely - they're daft), and I'll be able to duck out easily given there's a cooling off period of 14 days - yay!

Anyway!  Does anyone have any recent reports on what they're like now?  I'd heard a bit of bad talk regarding them a few months back, something to do with congestion, back haul not up to scratch and other stuff like that but then heard that it had been mostly resolved.

Any other nasty business I need to be aware of before I cancel my Zen line?

I'm fully aware of their questionable customer service and the abhorrent wait times, but once you get the name of somebody who knows what they're talking about, I've found that I can work with it - mostly.  With the price that they're offering, I can't really whine too loudly (I'm sure they'd disagree if they listened to my phone calls though! ).

The 14 day cooling off period commences from the day you place the order and not from the day the service is activated,  and as it can often take 10+ days for the service to go live, 
It's not going to be a free trial period,  But if the actual speeds differ a lot from the estimated speeds  in the downwards direction , and BT OR are unable to improve things then you may be able to walk away  without penalty

Then there is their traffic prioritization /management  and their secondary IP profile that is always set to a lower value than BTW's  and it also  frequently fails to update  if your sync changes ,

Then there is their crappy peering  and routing to a lot of destinations around the www, they have a heavy reliance on Level 3 , probably because it's  the cheapest

And there was also the frequent dropping of the PPPOE session  remotely by them , usually after you had  hopped onto a good gateway

[door_bell]

To be honest if they were open about their new network when it was clear it was in the planning stage, I would not have left plusnet.

At the risk of letting the cat amongst the pigeons, why should they?

They are a business who have a strategy, plans and are probably more than aware of what is right/wrong internally. Some things they can share, others they simply don't want to. It seems like because we have Twitter, Facebook and forums that people seem to think they have the right to what might/can be commercially sensitive stuff for everyone these days.

The Plusnet forums are rife with it, you only need to look at the new network thread and the same people coming back asking for rollout plans, dates, times and then coming back asking for updates!!! It's crackers.

In answer to the original question though, I'm with Plusnet and I've had a great run with it since I joined.

I left Virgin media as I work from home a lot and had years of issues with VOIP, VPN and just general slowdowns. You'd call, get a couple of quid credit and same again the next night.

I've got the TV, 76/20 package and use my own router - I don't recall a single day of downtime the in over 2 years personally. I recently called up to renew my package and get a discount again and was through in about 5 minutes, which looks to be unusual.

No experience of the fault process, as I've not had one. The only thing I'd not enjoy is if I had a line fault and got the same Kelly engineer who done my install.

Never used ZEN, so can't comment on how they compare.

[Chrysalis]

Nothing crackers, in the good old days this sort of thing was normal.

They didnt have to provide full 100% uncensored details, but they said nothing, other than we looking into it with our suppliers.  They could have said more then that, something like "we have identified the cause of the problem to be a specific part of the network that is used by the current arrangement we have with our supplier (bt wholesale). " As this is now identified we are already working on the resolution which is to utilise a different product from our supplier that will not suffer from this problem.

Something like that 75% chance I stay.
If compensation offered until fixed, 100% chance stay.

This is even worse when you consider its plusnet a previously known isp to be open about their network.

It seems tho BT group have decided its better to come across as incompetant (unable to identify problem) than to admit there was a problem and its been fixed.  As even after the new network was been discussed I asked a rep about it and even then they decided to comment that this change was absolutely nothing to do with the reported problems and as far as they are concerned those problems were never verified as valid. (a different story to what they told others in private).

[kitz]

To be honest if they were open about their new network when it was clear it was in the planning stage, I would not have left plusnet.

I agree they were pretty vague about it and could have said more publicly than they did.   IMHO it would have calmed quite a few on the forums.
 
Also I think a lot of people on the forums got even more annoyed by the response of AN-other basically saying there was nothing wrong, when some of us could clearly see that there was.  That should have been stamped out too because that provoked even more anger and it also drowned out what I was saying about the BTw MSILs.  I think I made a post at the time saying that it was being investigated and they were taking it seriously -  which totally got overlooked, because by now the thread had become a bit of a battleground and certain people were inflamed thinking it was being ignored.

I suspect (and I must stress that the following is my conjecture), that PN didnt say too much is probably down to the fact they are BTowned.   They are hardly likely to say in public that some of the BTw shared MSILs couldnt cope.  You know that I said from early on it was likely the MSILs and if it were, then it would equally affect ALL other ISPs that used shared WBMC.   I reckon if that news got out then lots of other people would start kicking off.     This problem was only being picked up by the more technical users, because if you went and did a multi-threaded speedtest at the likes of speedtest.net, then it would tell you that your speed was mostly ok.

Although the issue was at BTw, I suspect the cause was with Plusnet - they grew quite fast at one point to become much larger than what shared WBMC was originally designed for.   Plusnet had heavily invested in their existing network with equipment costing £millions, so it would be no mean feat for them to say - oh hey weve got £x million pounds worth of Juniper kit & host links, lets just put all that on one side and invest mega £millions on a different way of providing bandwidth.   

Plusnet are the only ISP who were in this position of rapid growth to the point where they became too big for shared WBMC.
iirc the leadtime for changing is 90 (working) days.   So that may give some small indication of timescale from when they decided to convert.   

[door_bell]

I wonder what the reps are told (if anything). I've spent a large chunk of life working in multinationals (interacting with multiple call centres - one in Sheffield, ironically) and the rumour mill never ceases to amaze me. It's entirely possible that they just repeated what they were told or just gathered from others (Chinese whispers). Obviously I don't know who said or what was said, so just drawing from experience.

I've seen the adverts and I'm aware of the history, but perhaps that was when they were smaller and had the ability to communicate better - not unlike AAISP do now. As their operation got bigger (and their network, staff, needs, structure), it becomes much harder to share details without causing 10x more questions and churn for themselves.

It looks like Bob and the others non-help desk people man the forums to help out, not because they have too. When they answer stuff, they get 10x more questions and people asking for details. I'd guess they just want to strike a balance between being helpful and actually getting the job done.

Everyone can learn from their customers and you have a valid point. Maybe they just didn't know what the problem was or didn't want to set false expectation for the fix - if it's circuits/back haul/equipment changes or other big changes, it might have been part of a bigger plan that couldn't be rushed.

Who knows!

[kitz]

The 14 day cooling off period commences from the day you place the order and not from the day the service is activated,  and as it can often take 10+ days for the service to go live, 
It's not going to be a free trial period,  But if the actual speeds differ a lot from the estimated speeds  in the downwards direction , and BT OR are unable to improve things then you may be able to walk away  without penalty

Then there is their traffic prioritization /management  and their secondary IP profile that is always set to a lower value than BTW's  and it also  frequently fails to update  if your sync changes ,

Then there is their crappy peering  and routing to a lot of destinations around the www, they have a heavy reliance on Level 3 , probably because it's  the cheapest

And there was also the frequent dropping of the PPPOE session  remotely by them , usually after you had  hopped onto a good gateway

To be fair:-
I personally cant ever recall seeing any detrimental effect of their traffic management.   Its only to prioritise the likes of VOIP over other traffic and I have no objection to that.

Ive not seen any level 3 in my routing for quite a while - its mostly BT or ntt that I see these days.

Although about a year ago there was some PPP drops from the BNGs, that has been fixed and my connection stays up for months.  Its usually me that initiates a new session due to swapping out routers etc.

I agree though, that I would like to see an end to their profile and have it based on line speed rather than the IPprofile.

[tommy45]

Yes their profile  robbed me of around 2mbps throughput , They should offer the customers a choice of disabling their management  as those like me never needed it,  no benefit to me at all, Try  a tracert to 216.98.48.56 that  always used Level3 and AS6453.net (TATA ) and there was a lot of variance in the latency , and the route it took sometimes  was really dumb
Nearly forgot about their web blocking,(pandering to the media companies  ect, ) not to mention so called legit web sites randomly being un accessible  to pn customers at times,  Does that bug still exist were a web site will fail to load  on the first attempt to connect?

[kitz]

Yes their profile  robbed me of around 2mbps throughput , They should offer the customers a choice of disabling their management  as those like me never needed it,  no benefit to me at all,

It doesnt benefit any of the customers.  It benefits them.    iirc they are supposed to do some sort of profile.   Just wish they could do it on sync.   They gave a reason why they used ip-profile something to do with the delta reports from BTw..  but other isps such as AAISP can do so.

Try  a tracert to 216.98.48.56 that  always used Level3 and AS6453.net (TATA ) and there was a lot of variance in the latency , and the route it took sometimes  was really dumb.

Bear in mind,  Im on their new network, so no LTP2 which would normally hide the RAS hops.

Code: [Select]

Tracing route to lb-lsg-prod.ubisoft.com [216.98.48.56]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     5 ms     5 ms     4 ms  172.17.8.77
  5    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  172.17.12.2
  6    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  be2.pcn-ir01.plus.net [195.166.129.164]
  7    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  195.99.125.136
  8    12 ms    11 ms    12 ms  peer6-hu0-1-0-1.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [195.99.127.25]
  9    12 ms    11 ms    11 ms  t2c3-et-3-1-0-0.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.211.236]
 10    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  166-49-211-38.eu.bt.net [166.49.211.38]
 11    97 ms    97 ms    97 ms  xe-9-0-0.mtl10.ip4.gtt.net [141.136.105.162]
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Nearly forgot about their web blocking,(pandering to the media companies  ect, ) not to mention so called legit web sites randomly being un accessible  to pn customers at times,  Does that bug still exist were a web site will fail to load  on the first attempt to connect?

Ummm...  not aware of any of this.   Not experienced it here that I know of.
I use google DNS rather than Plusnet's DNS servers, if that makes any difference.
I had a problem last year accessing vodafone, but that was down to vodafone stuffing up - it wasnt restricted to just PN.  It also affected BT and Virgin.

[kitz]

I am interested to see if new customers always go on the new network straight away.

They are IMHO being wise about the rollout.    Enta went wrong by moving all their customers over at the same time, which didnt give them chance to gauge how much bandwidth they need at various locations around the UK.   
AIUI its more to do with your geographic location and if they are live there yet.  iirc there was a post on their forums which said 'volunteers' could opt to go on the new PoPs first. 
I didnt bother and just rode with the tide as one of their bulk migrations as I wanted to see if they were still sending out the automated mails.
They didnt.....  I just lost connection one night at about 10 mins past midnight. Think I was down for about 4-5 mins.     

[Chrysalis]

Regarding the profile they say there has to be a buffer between line speed and the profile for downstream QoS to work, my opinion is they are correct in this.  But of course some people are not happy this is enforced and think it should be an optional part of the service.

The BTw agreement does require (or at least request) CPs apply a profile of their own to mirror the ip profile, but that profile doesnt need to be below the ip profile.

The second issue with the plusnet profile's (and this seems unique to plusnet, never heard of another isp have the issue) is that there is lag for the profile to update, like the horrible old days of the BT profile needing time to update.  e.g. on BT retail, any ip profiles in play update instantly when PPP is established.

[aesmith]

Just from my own experience it looks like the Plusnet profile cost me less than 100K, comparing speedtest results from Plusnet and A&A.  That's with the 100% profile on A&A just for the sake of trying, I'll probably drop it to their recommended percentage which will probably turn out the same as PN.   

What's annoying (or was annoying) about Plusnet's profile was that you had to drop and reconnect to bring it into effect, so if you've had a speed change you have to wait until they've updated their profile, then to a soft reconnection.   Furthermore their page showing your profile is now not accessible from the account menus, they've chosen to remove the link so unless you have a note of the URL you can't check to see if it's updated yet.