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[UncleUB]

Hi all,

Having just read these comments by Kitz.

Each central pipe can in theory hold many thousands of customers.  The more customers that are crammed on each pipe, then the slower speeds get as they are all sharing the same amount of available bandwidth.
Although the Centrals are 'owned by tiscali', BT Wholesale still provides the backhaul down the UK and they 'police the centrals' by only allow a maximum of 30,000 connections to each of the ISPs 622Mb central.  Once the 30,000 limit has been reached BTw say "no more connections" on this central and connection to the ISP just wont occur.

My question is,if I went with Plusnet are their pipes likely to be more congested than say Newnet.I'm thinking on the lines that because Plusnet are a lot cheaper they will attract more customers than say a smaller isp like Newnet.
Like Kitz has stated the more customers crammed on each pipe the slower the speeds.

[kitz]

Its up to the ISP how many centrals they purchase for the amount of customers they have.  One thing to bear in mind is that each 622 central costs the ISP something like £1.5million + VAT per annum.

Some ISPs use a hard CAP or some like Plusnet use Traffic Shaping to ensure that each person gets their fair share.
Some users dont like traffic shaping because it tends to restrict p2p type traffic the most, and they like to be able to download what they like when they like (within the cap).
I have no problems with traffic shaping as long as the ISP is upfront about what they do and how much as it lets the user make an informed choice as whats best for them.

The problem with Tiscali is that they traffic shape, (in fact block certain protocols at certain times of the day), but there still isnt enough capacity for all their users.

I dont know how many centrals Newnet have, nor how many customers they do have so its impossible to say...  but on the whole they seem to do ok.  IIRC in the past there has been times when things have been stretched.. but that could be applied to any ISP whilst they wait for a new central.

Whilst Plusnet, I do keep a record of how many centrals they have.. and they do seem to be keeping up with requirements.. in fact they have lit a new segment more or less every month for the past 2 years in order to keep up with demand and growth... which is more than could be said for some ISPs. (I dont mean Zen + Newnet in there).

Plusnet shape, newnet use a hard cap... its horses for courses and what suits your own requirements best.  If you do a lot of p2p then Plusnet definitely isnt for you. 

Newnet offer caps, their CEO is pretty upfront and has had to adjust these in the past which has caused some moans from the heavier users.. but I fully understand what he says and why he does..  its all to make sure that everyone gets their fair share a a price that is sustainable for both the ISP and the user.

[jazz]

I agree wholeheartedly with Kitz about the importance of ISPs being upfront and clear about what's going on.  I'm with Plusnet and their traffic shaping is clearly laid out.  I don't use P2P - I mainly use my connection for email and surfing plus a bit of tuning to the radio online.  None of their traffic shaping has caused me any problems with my usage. 

[UncleUB]

Thanks for the in depth reply Kitz,I really appreciate the time involved replying to some of my questions. 

I do not do anything except surfing,a few emails,a bit of Youtubing  and the odd download,usually m/s updates and the odd album from Amazon.

I am really getting swayed towards Newnet,but the cost element is pulling me in Plusnets direction,decisions,decisions. 

Once again many thanks. 

[jeffbb]

Hi
Just a thought

30,000 connections to each of the ISPs 622Mb central.

+ 20.7 Kbps per user ? Thank goodness a lot of people may be connected but NOT actually using any bandwidth .

cost of line about £60/year just for the line per user .

So when Isp offers Very low price then its obvious they must be banking on Many users not even connecting .

Regards Jeff

[tonyappuk]

I'm with Plusnet and in general very pleased with their service. It's worth pointing out that Plusnet don't count downloading between midnight and 0800 at all towards your download limit. So you can always use that facility for big downloads, p2p, whatever and if you don't want to stay up late, use a download manager with scheduling. Works for me.
Tony

[Mick]

When I was with PlusNet I found out that traffic shaping was extremely restrictive even between 00:00-08:00h.  By restrictive I do not mean just the transmission speeds, but actual packet retransmission and loss.  Trying to upload a large iso image file to any other but vanilla http/https ports would more often than not result in corrupt files.  It was doing my head in and no matter how much  I tried to slice the image and CRC each block, I would soon come across file corruption.  Things were better between 02:00-04:00 in the morning, but say just after midnight when everybody jumped online the situation was ridiculous (connections to a server would completely time out until 00:45 or even later than that).  For your average user this may be a satisfactory situation, but if you are using the Internet more intensively than just plain browsing and emails, the discriminatory effect of traffic shaping is sometimes not a viable option.

There is one more point that should be made regarding traffic shaping, a point of principle.  Tim Berners Lee the father of the Internet has spoken about Net Neutrality and Open Internet and we have seen what (once in place) deep packet inspection can offer to marketing spying services like Phorm.  However, if ISPs are to make money at very low charging rates (like e.g. PlusNet) then they have to maximise utilisation of their network.  In my experience you get what you pay for and trying to save £2.75 a month on your ISP bill may not be worth the throttling you will receive in return!  Of course, your mileage may vary. 

[kitz]

>> Just a thought
>> cost of line about £60/year just for the line per user .


Its actually worse than that..  on top of the charge for the centrals, they also have to pay 'port costs' which is to cover the cost of BTw provisioning a port on their DSLAM at the exchange and also covers the costs for over the copper pair and maintenance of by BT Openreach / adsl engineers.  Since this year port cost varies on your location (Broadband Access Market).

A few years ago I did a report for another site on how much it actually costs the ISP to provision adsl for a customer - a cut down version of it can be viewed here.  It should be pointed out that the prices have slightly changed over the past few years, but not by much.  The biggest difference being that on market 3 exchanges the ISP can negiotiate a discounted price.  Market 1 & 2 prices are still similar.
The prices shown are for having full pipes to capacity.. if the ISP does it cheaper then you are going to obviously get either some sort of very heavy congestion or shaping.  If the ISP attracts a lot of heavies, this will also have an impact.

[kitz]

Interesting comment Mick and I fully agree with some points.  The adsl market these  days is driven purely by cost.  Its a debate that Ive had several times with various people and ISPs that whilst I can appreciate the fact that the market has changed, there seems little scope for the provision of adsl like it used to be in the early days. 

More and more users seem to be wanting cheap.. they dont care what its actually like.  My neighbour on TT is a classic example getting 400 kb at peak..  but their reaction is its cheap and it does what they need. 

Now that would drive me crazy...  Im not a heavy but obviously I do use the internet a lot and I like a decent performance... therefore Im prepared to pay a lil bit more for it.  Not sure which package you were on with PN... I was on premier and for me it worked well.  I dont p2p so I cant comment on that but I found nntp fine as long as I avoided the 6-10 period.  Quite often Id start something it 10pm and it would come down at full wack.
One of my debates with PN more recently is that in their latest product set there isnt a product that offers a better standard of shaping for those who are prepared to pay a bit more.  Both the 'value' and 'unlimited' involve heavy p2p/nntp shaping over much of the day.  OK Pro isnt shaped, but tbh I didnt mind a lil bit of shaping as long as it wasnt excessive.

[Mick]

I was on BBYW Option2 (not sure what the equivalent is today; no doubt download limits have changed since).  It was a good package at the time and initially the traffic shaping was not noticeable (other than some annoying measured latency, because packets still have to be processed by their ellacoyas).  Also, the customer service was really exceptional!  The best I have ever experienced in any industry (especially so under Metronet ADSL before they were bought out by PN).  However, as people chased cheap deals (heck, some ISPs started throwing in ADSL for "free" in their bundled offers) more and more flocked to PN and their switches struggled to balance traffic across more and more pipes.  At times the deterioration was very noticeable.  A few days later when more capacity was brought on line and the switches got a chance to load balance, things would get better.

On busy days it would get very frustrating trying to get a fast download when the kids came back from school or after dinner.  As you say Kitz, there was usually a respite between 21:30 and 11:30 when speeds would return to normal and then a slowdown when the free period would start at midnight.  Football matches or nothing worth watching on the box would affect the amount of people staying in/going on line and speeds would vary accordingly.  The best EVER speeds that I achieved with PN were over last Christmas holidays when I was getting full speed at almost any time of the evening.

One of my debates with PN more recently is that in their latest product set there isnt a product that offers a better standard of shaping for those who are prepared to pay a bit more.

Right, but then when you start paying a bit more you have a choice of true Open Internet with no throttling, shaping, port blocking or packet loss! 

More recently with the credit crunch (and the new MD from BT) there seems to be a clear policy to place PN in the 'value deals segment' of the market.  Profit margins per customer now become so thin that there's only so much that the ISP will consider worth doing for keeping/satisfying the customer.  The whole emphasis has to shift from quality of product and customer service to low price at any cost!  Ha! 

The thing is that I do not use bitorrent or similar software, but do need to connect to servers here and overseas at all sort of random ports.  It's no fun being in an ssh session updating software or making some critical modification and then your connection is lost because traffic shaping is dropping packets like mad.   

However, if I were say a student staying up all night with very limited funds and not enough money for beer, then an ISP value deal would perhaps be more important than the practical effect of traffic shaping and the philosophical implications of Network Neutrality.  You pays your money, you takes your choice ...

[kitz]

>> You pays your money, you takes your choice ...

Indeed you do

[UncleUB]

More recently with the credit crunch (and the new MD from BT) there seems to be a clear policy to place PN in the 'value deals segment' of the market.  Profit margins per customer now become so thin that there's only so much that the ISP will consider worth doing for keeping/satisfying the customer.  The whole emphasis has to shift from quality of product and customer service to low price at any cost! 

 

Tbh, This had crossed my mind if I were to migrate to PN.
Are they likely to be bothered with you/what can you expect for £5.99.They must have signed up hell of a lot of customers,especially those connected to market 3 exchanges.

[kitz]

They have done so by providing an account that is very heavily traffic shaped.

If you select the relevant product from the drop down box you can see what type of traffic is shaped and by how much

http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/plusnet_shaping.htm

Whilst many users could quite happily live with that type of product.. 
I personally couldnt since it encroaches too much on some of the protocols that I do use.  (I run an FTP server and use FTP on a daily basis to maintain this site.  I also use VPN and on occasion nntp)

[UncleUB]

Thanks Kitz,so looking at those charts,for what I use the internet far it says 'unrestricted'.So in theory it should be fine.

As I only get about 1.7MB,I wouldn't want that to be throttled down further.

Some of the stuff on there I don't understand (Binary,ext FTP and VPN),I'm certain they don't apply to me though 

[Azzaka]

... which is more than could be said for some ISPs. (I dont mean Zen + Newnet in there).

To be honest Zen added a new central i believe within the last 6months. This is so we could grow and give a better service.