ISP throttling?

WalesOwl

WalesOwl

WalesOwl

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So ISPs actually need to throttle people to "guarantee a quality service to other customers"?

I can't see how by throttling me from 1600KBs to 500KBs makes someone on another line be able to watch youtube any better to be honest.
 
Traffic balancing, QOS, cramming as many people as you can onto one pipe. Call it what you like. But even small 1/100th of a second make a difference in the grand scheme of things. If you don't like the service you are getting, move ISP.
 
WalesOwl said:
So ISPs actually need to throttle people to "guarantee a quality service to other customers"?

I can't see how by throttling me from 1600KBs to 500KBs makes someone on another line be able to watch youtube any better to be honest.
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At their end they only have a fixed speed to 'the internet'. This connection costs a fortune so they only have as much bandwidth as they can realistically get away with.

The figures typically quoted back when ADSL was 'new' was 50:1 contention, i.e. if they have 50 users with 2Mbps connections to the ISP, they won't have 100Mbps bandwidth to the internet, they'll have 2Mbps relying on the idea that not all 50 users will be using it at once. I'm not sure what the figures are these days.
 
WalesOwl said:
I can't see how by throttling me from 1600KBs to 500KBs makes someone on another line be able to watch youtube any better to be honest.
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Lets say a 1000 people connect to the internet on a 155Mb connection. 900 of those are browsing Overclockers forums using on average 5Kb/s each, in total require 5Mb/s of bandwidth. We have 150Mb/s left to share between 100 people. 90 of those are on youtube streaming xfactor auditions requiring 1Mb/s of bandwidth each, the ISP is left with 60Mb/s between 10 people. There 10 people want to download the latest movie on Bittorrent (which is really well seeded and so could download at their theoretical maximum connection of 10Mb/s). Unfortunately there is only enough bandwidth for them to download at 6Mb/s each.

Now all 1000 people are fighting for the inadequate bandwidth for the demand. This results in packet loss, meaning some of the requested content from each PC will be dropped. This then causes unresponsive web browsing, youtube videos will use up their cache and then the user will have to wait for the video to download the next bit before being played. The bittorrent clients will appear to have slowed down to the 6Mb/s.

The ISP could potentially provide more bandwidth, but that is expensive. Instead they slow down the bittorrent users to a manageable level so everyone else's low bandwidth applications run smoothly and they can cram more people onto a single connection.
 
They don't just give eg 8mb to Mr Joe to look at his email because the request doesn't need the bandwidth. 95% of the time people do not use the bandwidth the have available to them. Fact. If you are using all your 8mb or whatever connection all the time you are actually using bandwidth of other users on your exchange. It's all about contention. As above.
 
Phil99 said:
The figures typically quoted back when ADSL was 'new' was 50:1 contention, i.e. if they have 50 users with 2Mbps connections to the ISP, they won't have 100Mbps bandwidth to the internet, they'll have 2Mbps relying on the idea that not all 50 users will be using it at once. I'm not sure what the figures are these days.
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they ditched the numbers beacause they could not keep it up

a 155pipe costs about £45k per year (plus £50k install) from BT, which you could fit about 20 people maxing out an 8mbps connection, who pay on average about £15 a month each, so for your £3600 you are going to make a rather large loss each year

packet shaping, throttling and down load limits are what make it possible to even have any kind of broadband buisness
 
Well I'm with virgin, so they just hate me on one particular day and then forget the next :)

But thanks for the replies, I didn't know that the ISPs ran a deficit of bandwidth as it were.
 
I'm with Virgin (no idea on what connection - 20mb maybe?) and one I've done my fair bit on Newsgroups or FTP's it'll throttle me down from 2.1mb/s to 500kb/s till the next day. Second it reaches midnight though it seems to come flooding back for the next few hours - then the throttle again.

Personally I live with it because I tend not to download too much or I'm never in a rush. Would annoy me loads if I was into my topsites and racing though.
 
AcidHell2 said:
People expect to much for to little. Pat the premium for a true non throttling isp.
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problem is i don't download everyday (very rare i do download a 'large' amount of data) so paying for 50mb would be a major waste, the least they could do for us is offer a 'day pass' service where i could buy a higher connection speed for one day were i can get all my downloading done with and be back on the standard 'surfing' speed the next day
 
fluff said:
You don't need a lot of bandwidth for that. Just low latency and a script.
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True, but what would be the point in spending all that time doing it to be throttled to download at 500kb/s when the next big thing comes out. I'd suggest a quick head and being 'in the know' is far more important than latency though.
 
Peerzy said:
True, but what would be the point in spending all that time doing it to be throttled to download at 500kb/s when the next big thing comes out. I'd suggest a quick head and being 'in the know' is far more important than latency though.
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:o

in the world of gaming, specifically FPS, latency is EVERYTHING!
 
Why would they say that you have 50MB connectivity if you can literally use it for only a few hours before breaching their fair usage?

Seems a bit retarded that you are buying a 100W light bulb that is only 100W for 2 hours, then it will be 25W till the next day. :(
 
throttling is getting annoying for me, i am with sky connect and they throttle me from 6pm till midnight right down to 0.12Mb, it's like ten years ago on dial up, this country needs to sort this out, i have only been connected a little over a week, day 2 they started to throttle me, needless to say i have used the 14 day cooling off period and canceled them.
 
WalesOwl said:
Why would they say that you have 50MB connectivity if you can literally use it for only a few hours before breaching their fair usage?

Seems a bit retarded that you are buying a 100W light bulb that is only 100W for 2 hours, then it will be 25W till the next day. :(
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Would you rather it was slower all the time? (Plus there's no throttling on 50Mbps VM connections ;))
 
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