Might be related to Virgin wanting to charge BBC for delivering their iPlayer content... Virgin can maybe bully the BBC around when it comes to content delivery, but Level3 will tell Virgin to go stick it. And then Virgin customers will be left with very poor access to the internet in general...
Bloody Olympics...
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Might be related to Virgin wanting to charge BBC for delivering their iPlayer content... Virgin can maybe bully the BBC around when it comes to content delivery, but Level3 will tell Virgin to go stick it. And then Virgin customers will be left with very poor access to the internet in general...
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This is curious and something I'm waiting for an answer from my man at the BBC on. We have private peering with them and I'd expect all iplayer content to be available through that in the future.
If it isn't then I'll be very annoyed with them, the BBC have been pretty arrogant about the traffic generated by iplayer and it's affects. While iplayer was available over private peering I could just about see their point (an ISP could easily and cheaply (cost of a fibre run) gain access to said content so it was just the cost of carrying it on their internal network. However if they've offloaded all content access to Level3 then thats very dubious practice and will cost ISPs huge amounts of money.
I'm not worried about bandwidth, Level3 is one of our tier 1 partners and we have 10GigE available but the cost will be painful.
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But Virgin will likely have a very favourable arrangement with Level3 already so it won't hurt so much, it'll actually harm smaller ISPs more as Level3 don't have a whole lot of time for them.
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For an ISP to work, they must be able to reach the entire internet...there are two means of doing this...
Peering - Peering is an agreement between two ISPs to connect to each other and exchange traffic bound for the others network(s). Generally it's done on the basis of mutual benefit, so you take my traffic for free and I'll take yours for free.
But you can't peer with everyone (well you can but that makes you what's called a tier1 ISP), so...
Transit - You pay a tier 1 ISP (or a tier 2 ISP if you're cheap) to take any traffic and route it to it's destination, a tier1 ISP can reach any address through it's connections. You generally pay for data transfered on a 95th percentile basis.
Thats my short summary, wiki has a good artical on how it works too...
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I work for a Business ISP in the City, we don't do consumer connections so you're unlikely to have heard of us. I prefer not to drop names as I do occassionally dump my thoughts on traffic shaping here and don't want them to be associated with the company.
Our ADSL is mostly homeworker connections and backups for smaller sites so it's not going to be typical of consumer providers but it uses the same BT platform in the end.
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Its hilarious, lmfao here, the internet is collapsing due to the iplayer, what a joke eh, the UK's whole internet system is collapsing due to the iplayer. 
They on about Tv on demand this that and other, bugger off, our internet can't even cope with the little old iplayer, how the **** can we start streaming Tv/movies etc.... when watching Eastenders brings it doon.
They on about Tv on demand this that and other, bugger off, our internet can't even cope with the little old iplayer, how the **** can we start streaming Tv/movies etc.... when watching Eastenders brings it doon.
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Interested in your source for this - as I understand it, virgin have a link to the bbc, which they use for Iplayer via on-demand. Launching Iplayer through the on-demand service is designed to limit the impact to the web products.
If it happens again tomorrow I shall go to a friends across the road and see if they are getting the same issues (on a different ISP), that should give me an idea if Fast are bs me or not.
It was just speculation.
Of course it could be that Level3 approached BBC and said we will manage your entire network infrastructure if iPlayer traffic is statically routed through us (which then makes Level3 money).
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That wouldn't surprise me, bearing in mind that the BBC were likely paying Akamai a lot of money to do the job, Level3 likely offered a vastly reduced price or nothing in return for the traffic. I don't like it though, it'll ultimately end up costing the consumer more...
If it happens again tomorrow I shall go to a friends across the road and see if they are getting the same issues (on a different ISP), that should give me an idea if Fast are bs me or not.
I'm with Fast as well, my throughput was as low as 300 - 400Kbps and I'm on a fixed 2MB service that I requested. That started probably about the same time as yourself. Actually Tuesday or Wednesday it went all bonkers. The speed slowly restored about 8PM onwards. Then it died again 1 - 2AM. Picked up and remained 3 - 3:30AM. This has been happening just about every day/night since then this week. I have sometimes suffered loss of service. Even when all lights are green.
Do suffer many line drops with them?
I moved away from BT June 07 to Fast hoping problems would have been better.
Also what router do you have? I don't know if I have a router problem (Linksys WAG325N,) I bought this when I switched to Fast. The thing is almost two weeks ago the connection remained stable for 17 days without a drop, then Monday afternoon the first of daily line drops. Each day got worse. Still to this day, 5 - 9 line drops a day. There's no pattern to it. Day or night, computers on or off. Not a thing on.
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Yep I remember when it was 'blueyonder' they have loads of direct peers to BBC, Google, Jolt, etc.
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Aye, level 3 is isn't the best way to do things, suerly bbc and the isps could sort some peering arrangements out, this would be the best option for everyone. why pay some dodgy 3rd party,
it is worse for the isp and in turn the customer. cheaper for BBC so they probably don't care. 
hope level 3 dies and people go crazy at BBC because it seemspretty unreliable and slow to me whenever i get to a game server via level3 it aint good.
The way I see it is with peering arangment the isps are sharing the costs but obviously if you ont get anything from them it is expensive, ie BBC peering with some small isp, not much advantage for them, 2nd option would be something like akami, which imo is the perfect soltion. and woste of all level3 where the BBC dont even pay to get it out their door whic is taking the poo, suerly link it upto the nt yourself, now the isps/customers essentially pay for BBCs net connection...
you know level3 are doing this for free for the bbc
it is worse for the isp and in turn the customer. cheaper for BBC so they probably don't care. hope level 3 dies and people go crazy at BBC because it seemspretty unreliable and slow to me whenever i get to a game server via level3 it aint good.
The way I see it is with peering arangment the isps are sharing the costs but obviously if you ont get anything from them it is expensive, ie BBC peering with some small isp, not much advantage for them, 2nd option would be something like akami, which imo is the perfect soltion. and woste of all level3 where the BBC dont even pay to get it out their door whic is taking the poo, suerly link it upto the nt yourself, now the isps/customers essentially pay for BBCs net connection...
you know level3 are doing this for free for the bbc
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