ADSL24 introduce traffic shaping...

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 14:46

This e-mail is to inform you about upcoming changes to your ADSL service with us.

We are aware that over the past few months the speed of the service for a small percentage of our customers has been disappointing during certain times of the day and evening. We have been in close talks with our supplier (Entanet) including a meeting at their head office last week to discuss what can be done to improve the speeds in the short term and going forward into 2010.

A few weeks ago Entanet informed us that their monitoring systems have recently flagged up a number of potential causes for the slow speeds and they have been investigating this in depth. They have identified that approximately 90% of our customers are seeing their connection adversely affected by approximately 10% of the customer base who are using their connection for heavy downloading via newsgroups and P2P (peer-to-peer) applications.

Although existing management tools are in place, some customers are still seeing significantly slower speeds even during their peak allowance period of the day, and this is the reason as to why action needs to be taken to improve the service.

After further discussions with Entanet and other partners alike, they have advised us of their intention to implement a new network management system to combat the issues. Please read through the following information:

Q: What will be changing to improve the issue?
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A: We will be applying new quality of service (QoS) techniques across the network to give a higher priority to services such as web browsing, gaming, video streaming, VoIP and VPN access.

Q: When will the new system begin?
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A: We will begin prioritising traffic from 00:01hrs, Wednesday 4th November 2009.

Q: Is this action permanent?
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A: We will monitor the impact of the traffic prioritisation for a period of approximately 3 weeks. If it is determined that this approach is successful then it is likely we will continue with this activity.

Q: How does it work?
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A: Services such as web browsing, gaming, video streaming, VoIP and VPN access will be given higher priority across the network. We intend to manage this to ensure that all services are available according to their priority. Therefore, varying levels of speed restriction will be applied to services such as Newsgroups and P2P where they impact the prioritised services. There are no plans to impose any hard capping of specific protocols; unlike certain other ISP's who set permanent limits on specific protocols and block ports. No ports are being blocked and you will still be able to access all protocols and services. For the avoidance of doubt, we have so far not applied any protocol shaping or protocol prioritisation techniques.

Q: What will happen to the Anti Loss Tool (ALT)?
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A: The ALT will no longer be required and will be switched off. Additionally, the high bandwidth flag/marker system will no longer be in operation.

Q: Does this represent a fundamental change to the broadband service?
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A: No, we are introducing new measures to prioritise traffic across the network without removing the ability for you to use the service for access to any traffic type. This action is in line with clause 2.5 of our Terms and Conditions which refers to carrying out improvements, preventing overload of the network and preserving the integrity of the services. As such, 30 days notice is not required for this change to the network management, and we are implementing this quickly to ensure that the current speed issues are improved to better the experience for our customers.

To finalise, we are confident that the introduction of these traffic prioritisation techniques will significantly improve the experience for the majority of our customers. We will be providing feedback to Entanet during the first few weeks of the new system becoming active, and after 3 weeks we will be informed as to if it has met the expectations and whether it will continue permanently. If this is the case, the ALT and flag/marker system are expected to be permanently retired.

We would like to urge you to allow a few weeks from the 4th November for the new system to bed in, as during this time there will be changes and optimisations being made by Entanet's network team behind the scenes to ensure everything is working as anticipated and fix any issues that may arise.

Once again, we hope the changes outlines above will improve the service for everyone and will release a further e-mail in the weeks to come to provide an update.

Thank you

ADSL24

N.B. We realise that you may not be affected by the information described above, however we are still obliged to inform you of these changes.

I am an ADSL24 customer and a heavy p2p user. Should I be concerned by this?

bigredshark · 2 Nov 2009 at 14:54

dirtydog said:
I am an ADSL24 customer and a heavy p2p user. Should I be concerned by this?

Probably you should, yes.

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 15:24

Seems like ADSL24's decline continues then. They used to trumpet the fact they didn't impose any restrictions on what you used your connection for. We pay for a set amount of peak time bandwidth and should be allowed to max it out with p2p, newsgroups or whatever we choose. And off peak usage is supposedly unlimited although again it's evidently not.

GregI · 2 Nov 2009 at 15:43

dirtydog said:
We pay for a set amount of peak time bandwidth and should be allowed to max it out with p2p, newsgroups or whatever we choose.

You can, and will be able to.

This "traffic shaping" is only going to really be in force at the weekends when heavy P2P downloaders take advantage of the unlimited service. What speeds P2P will be throttled to are unknown. We'll know on the 5th, or more importantly the weekend. Let's just hope it's not a big fail like Access.

I personally am happy with the decision. I actually want more than 1MB at weekends to browse the Internet.

bigredshark · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:07

I'm fairly sure you don't, because wholesale prices for internet transit would cost more than that before they pay BT's charges xDSL etc. Fact is, you do not get unlimited usage for that kind of money, the numbers just don't add up.

If you have a problem with their advertising then fine, but you can't actually expect unlimited broadband for what you're paying.

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:18

bigredshark said:
I'm fairly sure you don't, because wholesale prices for internet transit would cost more than that before they pay BT's charges xDSL etc. Fact is, you do not get unlimited usage for that kind of money, the numbers just don't add up.

If you have a problem with their advertising then fine, but you can't actually expect unlimited broadband for what you're paying.

Find me where in their T&Cs it says this and I'll agree

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:19

GregI said:
You can, and will be able to.

This "traffic shaping" is only going to really be in force at the weekends when heavy P2P downloaders take advantage of the unlimited service. What speeds P2P will be throttled to are unknown. We'll know on the 5th, or more importantly the weekend. Let's just hope it's not a big fail like Access.

I personally am happy with the decision. I actually want more than 1MB at weekends to browse the Internet.

If it really does improve the service then there's no problem but given how ADSL24 and Entanet have been going downhill, I'm wary of things like this.

bigredshark · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:35

dirtydog said:
Find me where in their T&Cs it says this and I'll agree

I'm not searching their conditions for it but it's there, you aren't owed free and unlimited use of 8Mbps I'm afraid. It's not possible for them to provide it at the price and if they can't do so then I'm fairly certain they're not dumb enough to say they can in any legally binding form.

Doesn't really answer your question I admit and it goes nowhere other than starting the old arguments again. End of the day heavy users are currently getting a service subsidized by other users and degrading their service while they're at it, who's fault that might be is open to question given any number of ISPs instance on misleading downright false advertising at times and any number of users instance on acting like spoilt 12 year olds.

ADSL24 and Entanet have been going downhill because the number of heavy users is becoming too high (because they've got a reputation for being tolerant of them over time - exactly the same reason I've always predicted every successful ISP will end up traffic shaping or capping over time.)

At the end of the day, if you want fair then you probably want a capped provider, you get your allocation of traffic and you can use it how you want without traffic shaping (with a decent provider at least). But given you have a hard limit you can't rape other users...

derkaderka · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:47

My exchange got enabled by BE there last week , Iam jumping ship

More pity the fools who think this is going to make things better

9.7M is what I sync at , I cant get more than 65-100K on average most of the time

I do download a fair amount BUT its scheduled from 2am onwards cos Iam not a git

FYI , looks like th shaping will be on all the time , the ALT keeps saying its not on
but the speeds say otherwise

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:51

bigredshark said:
At the end of the day, if you want fair then you probably want a capped provider, you get your allocation of traffic and you can use it how you want without traffic shaping (with a decent provider at least). But given you have a hard limit you can't rape other users...

ADSL24 does cap peak usage, after which you have to pay extra. That is one of the reasons I chose them, so I know exactly where I stand, unlike those other ISPs which hide behind restrictive FUPs and such like.

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:53

derkaderka said:
9.7M is what I sync at , I cant get more than 65-100K on average most of the time

I can usually max out my 2Mb line (~235K/sec) so that sounds poor.

bigredshark · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:54

dirtydog said:
ADSL24 does cap peak usage, after which you have to pay extra. That is one of the reasons I chose them, so I know exactly where I stand, unlike those other ISPs which hide behind restrictive FUPs and such like.

Well in that case I'd move on. Capping and shaping isn't nice. Then again capping peak usage only is fairly dumb, just make it capped full stop...

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 16:57

bigredshark said:
Well in that case I'd move on. Capping and shaping isn't nice. Then again capping peak usage only is fairly dumb, just make it capped full stop...

Move on to whom though?

I don't have a lot of options.

Their prices are good, £18.95 for 30GB peak and free usage off peak (12am-8am and all weekend).

bigredshark · 2 Nov 2009 at 17:03

dirtydog said:
Move on to whom though? I don't have a lot of options.

Their prices are good, £18.95 for 30GB peak and free usage off peak (12am-8am and all weekend).

Well be*/o2 are still good for now (but they'll have the same congestion issues, even with LLU, there's only so much you can scale a network before it becomes very expensive to do much more.

Apparently Zen are still good, but expensive for relatively small caps...

LabR@t · 2 Nov 2009 at 17:15

i am with adsl24 and look

Download speedachieved during the test was - 1255 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :6464 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 5500 Kbps

sucks

Who is best dsl provider now ? I can get sky but not sure on anyone else

LabR@t · 2 Nov 2009 at 17:24

LOL

from BT BB site

What you get:
BT Home Hub wireless router +
Hub Phone
Up to 20Mb download speeds
Unlimited usage at home and unlimited WiFi minutes

unlimted wifi minutes ? what the hell do they mean all routers give you free home wifi

IS skyBB any good for gaming?

BT, sky or stick with adsl24?

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 17:43

bigredshark said:
Well be*/o2 are still good for now (but they'll have the same congestion issues, even with LLU, there's only so much you can scale a network before it becomes very expensive to do much more.

Apparently Zen are still good, but expensive for relatively small caps...

I can't get be* etc. here unfortunately. And yeah Zen is a tad pricy to say the least.

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 17:45

LabR@t said:
i am with adsl24 and look

Download speedachieved during the test was - 1255 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :6464 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 5500 Kbps

sucks

It does, but is ADSL24 to blame, or your line?

I just tried a test for example:

sync of 2272, IP profile 2000.

Bane · 2 Nov 2009 at 17:59

LabR@t said:
i am with adsl24 and look

Download speedachieved during the test was - 1255 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :6464 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 5500 Kbps

If that's BT speedtester site I thought it was meant to be independent of your ISP? So could suggest other issues like exchange congestion.

Waiting for someone more knowledgeable to confirm.

dirtydog · 2 Nov 2009 at 18:03

Bane said:
If that's BT speedtester site I thought it was meant to be independent of your ISP? So could suggest other issues like exchange congestion.

Waiting for someone more knowledgeable to confirm.

You can run the BT speedtester while connected to your ISP which is probably what he did.

I agree it is also possible to login (as speedtest@speedtest_domain IIRC - or bt_test_user@startup_domain possibly) independently of your ISP, to test the actual line speed.