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Author Topic: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!  (Read 2332 times)

mofa2020

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AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« on: September 05, 2020, 07:41:58 PM »

To keep things short, technically they are specifying the term Download so does that mean upload is unlimited completely? and by upload I mean:

  • Upload that is consumed while downloading something.
  • Upload that is used while actually uploading something to the internet or streaming, etc..

Also who counts the data consumption and throttle the speed AA (as I believe) or OR? and the reason I am asking is that in my country the current ISP I am with is counting the used upload "all upload" in the included monthly quota (no monthly download as AA) so as for the 1st upload type I stated before it is unfair to include it in the quota, while another ISP users saying that the upload used (all upload) is not counted in the quota but this ISP is not saying *monthly download* like AA.

Sorry if the topic is messy and not organized enough but I wanted to understand how things go in a similar situation like AA.
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DaveC

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2020, 08:14:09 PM »

A&A's quota is download only, and is managed completely by A&A, nothing to do with Openreach.

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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2020, 09:41:35 PM »

the reason I am asking is that in my country the current ISP I am with is counting the used upload "all upload" in the included monthly quota (no monthly download as AA) so as for the 1st upload type I stated before it is unfair to include it in the quota

Its not about what's fair, if your ISP counts upload in the quota it has to be all upload, as it would be completely impractical to waste resources trying to distinguish between upload data and upload ACKs.  Monitoring how much traffic has passed over a users session is an order of magnitude easier than monitoring what kind of traffic it was, as the former are statistics that will pretty much automatically be monitored whereas the latter requires specific hardware and configuration (and CPU resources).
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Chrysalis

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2020, 07:25:38 AM »

AA count your bandwidth usage directly, they dont use percentile (which is good for customer).
The quota is for download traffic only.

Also I think currently everyone is effectively unlimited, those on the new products get automated topups, and those on legacy staff will apply a topup for free.

https://www.aa.net.uk/etc/news/covid-19-and-usage-quotas/
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mofa2020

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2020, 11:35:46 AM »

Its not about what's fair, if your ISP counts upload in the quota it has to be all upload, as it would be completely impractical to waste resources trying to distinguish between upload data and upload ACKs.  Monitoring how much traffic has passed over a users session is an order of magnitude easier than monitoring what kind of traffic it was, as the former are statistics that will pretty much automatically be monitored whereas the latter requires specific hardware and configuration (and CPU resources).

Yup, that is what I were thinking but did forgot to write "it is all upload or non of it".

Thank you all for answers  :thumbs:
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Weaver

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #5 on: September 07, 2020, 01:34:01 AM »

AA’s quota will be measured by the sum of for all downstream IP packets regardless of what they are for or what type they are, and all upstream is free on fixed lines. (So using the terms download and upload doesn’t help you here, but it’s a fair question.) For 3G/4G both downstream and upstream is charged so I believe.

So when you are doing a download, if using eg TCP then the upstream TCP ACKs will be free. If you are doing a TCP upload then the downstream ACKs will be chargeable (as there is a small amount of downstream traffic in the reverse direction when doing a TCP upload).

What’s the ratio of forward traffic (that with payload) byte count to reverse ACK byte count in TCP ? Let’s assume hypothetically that a payload IP packet is 1500 bytes including IP headers. A IPv4 TCP ACK is what, 40 bytes ? Or an IPv6 TCP ACK is 60 bytes? Sanity-check please. And an ACK is sent for the nth payload tx, where n= what? =2.
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niemand

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #6 on: October 02, 2020, 05:35:24 PM »

AA count your bandwidth usage directly, they dont use percentile (which is good for customer).
The quota is for download traffic only.

Also I think currently everyone is effectively unlimited, those on the new products get automated topups, and those on legacy staff will apply a topup for free.

https://www.aa.net.uk/etc/news/covid-19-and-usage-quotas/

If they could do this during lockdown while preserving their network performance that implies bad things about value and profiteering.
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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #7 on: October 03, 2020, 12:17:19 AM »

If they could do this during lockdown while preserving their network performance that implies bad things about value and profiteering.

Perhaps, although having the cap does keep the number of heavy users on their network to a minimum so I can see how in the short term their network may cope perfectly fine but to remove the cap long-term would require considerably more investment to keep up.

This may also be related to them using two different POP to get from backhaul providers to their core network and we saw that if one goes down that DID cause performance issues.  So clearly the idea is for them to have just enough redundancy to not severely cripple the network if one goes down.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2020, 12:20:25 AM by Alex Atkin UK »
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Chrysalis

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #8 on: October 03, 2020, 11:14:34 AM »

I didnt see performance issues with one down, also didnt see anyone report it on IRC either.  The issue was downtime rather than performance.
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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #9 on: October 03, 2020, 07:25:29 PM »

I didnt see performance issues with one down, also didnt see anyone report it on IRC either.  The issue was downtime rather than performance.

When I said performance issues I didn't mean necessarily mean speed, I meant that the network didn't perform correctly.

I wouldn't expect speed issues as they inherently discourage heavy users on their network.  But my point still stands that it may be designed to have twice the capacity they need but without a monthly cap that could be much harder to manage.

I don't see how them having way more capacity than they need is a negative if it makes their network (usually) far more resilient to failure.
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Chrysalis

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Re: AA's *MONTHLY DOWNLOAD*?!
« Reply #10 on: November 30, 2020, 01:06:32 AM »

I checked how much bandwidth I have left after going on a game pass ultimate download fest.

I had so much overflow stacked up I still have 2.4tb of 2tb remaining. (400 meg buffer).

Code: [Select]
Total Peak All other Uptime
Down Up Down Up Down Up
Nov 2020 1.29T 42.9G 153G 10.3G 1.13T 32.5G 99.9663%
Oct 2020 324G 20.8G 28.0G 4.17G 296G 16.6G 98.4167%

Code: [Select]
Approx 2.40TB remaining from a 2.00TB quota per calendar month.
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