NTL/Telewest are port throttling

[ScoobyDoo]

"Telewest is introducing network throttling on its 'unlimited' broadband product.

News groups and chatrooms have had complaints of bandwidth problems from NTL customers since early November.

NTL/Telewest has now admitted that it is restricting traffic. Effectively the company is introducing "sin bins" for heavy users.

Telewest sent us the following statement:

As part of our continued efforts to improve our customers' broadband experience we are introducing measures to more efficiently and pro-actively manage network traffic. These measures are currently being trialled in the Preston region, which includes Preston, Wigan and Blackpool.

The measures identify traffic patterns that are deemed potentially abnormal and apply traffic management rules to ensure customers are not adversely affected. We believe this could offer a much more consistent experience for the vast majority - over 95 per cent - of customers.

These optimisation measures are only used in the evenings at peak time when the potential for abnormal traffic to have an adverse impact on our customers' experience is greatest.

Throttling network traffic is never popular with users, but increasing use of voice over internet protocol telephony, video services, and online gaming means customer demand keeps on growing.

Telewest's marketing guff makes much of "unlimited usage, unlike BT and Wanadoo" which is likely to increase user anger. ®"


Taken from 'The register' today.
Thought this had been happening for a while due to shocking download speeds between 6pm - midnight.. and we now know why.

 

[Minstadave]

Not yet come across any throtteling on my measly 2MB cable in the Cambridge area so fingers crossed this won't cause me problems. Its the rubbish upstream speeds that annoys me.

 

[chesterstu]

that really annoys me. I download from newsgroups and pay about £40 a month for my unlimited 10Meg NTL connection, more that most people i know on ADSL but i getting shafted because i am using the product as they described it. An unlimited bandwith internet connection. Don't even get me started on the contention ratio which is even more annoying

 

[Minstadave]

Whats a "contention ratio" if you don't mind me asking? (I'd google it but I'm surfing on my PDA and its so clunky)

 

[FishThrower]

if they are going to do bandwidth throttling then what is the point of the 50mbit cable they are introducing next year? is that just for video on demand?

 

[chesterstu]

When you get broadband u share one main connection with other users. so if you have a 50:1 connection ratio then 49 other people are using the same connection to the ISP as you, this may be as little as 100MB between 50 of you, so if every one is on 100/50 = 2 when you are paying for 10mb.

But having said that business ADSL is lot more expensive because there contention ratios are a lot lower

 

[Dave85]

o dear o dear looks like telewest are going to be losing a lot of customers soon, bunch of muppets cant go on about unlimited this and that then do this to the users who are actualy keepin them at the head of the game.

I give it 6 months there nooby throttling will be nationwide.

 

[silversurfer]

40 doesnt sound that cheap to me. Your paying for a premium product there since dsl doesnt generally go that high.

The isp never intend for their customers to use it all the time and they cannot afford to provide that either imo. My not so fast connection will let me do 29 gigabytes a day or 864 gig every month, Im sure the true cost of that far exceeds what I pay towards it.

If its not affordable or viable then you are fighting the tide

if they are going to do bandwidth throttling then what is the point of the 50mbit cable they are introducing next year? is that just for video on demand?

Yes

 

[NiCkNaMe]

Whats a "contention ratio" if you don't mind me asking? (I'd google it but I'm surfing on my PDA and its so clunky)

The number of users your sharing your bandwidth with. e.g - 50:1 then there's another 50 people sharing the available bandwidth to you... which is why port throttling and download limits and the like are being introuced/have been introduced. What you or anyone within your local vicinity on the same UBR are doing with your connection directly affects others.

Doesn't mean I agree with it, however

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Not yet come across any throtteling on my measly 2MB cable in the Cambridge area so fingers crossed this won't cause me problems. Its the rubbish upstream speeds that annoys me.

Me either, i'm on the 2MB package too.

 

[Droolinggimp]

Im still going strong here on 10mb(12mb?) (free btw never paid for it not one penny over the last 14 months ) Thing is I can d/l of newgroups at 1.2mb-1.3mb sec.. Think they might be testing the upgrade around here tbh..

 

[Skiddley]

Bizzarely, I haven't been charged by NTL for 5 months and counting now. Thankyou Mr NTL.

 

[chimaera]

To be fair if one person is absolutely milking the connection and affecting other people then theres nothing wrong with port throttling, if its just because they can't be bothered to provide a decent service then its wrong.

I'm moving onto telewest next week and are quite a heavy user, if my 4mb connections drops to 3mb in peak times i'm sure i can handle it, i'll just do my downloading overnight.

As telewest said it wont affect 95% of users, but if those other 5% are causing problems for the rest then its a majority rules i'm afraid.

 

[dbmzk1]

Sitting here with NTL 10mb (was 20mb trial). I've not noticed any slowdown in anything I do at any point. Yet!

 

[NiCkNaMe]

Bizzarely, I haven't been charged by NTL for 5 months and counting now. Thankyou Mr NTL.

Looking forward to paying the bill off as a lump sum then I take it m8?

 

[Dr_Evil]

Just enable encryption in your P2P software to "circumvent" their throttling mechanics....

 

[Avalon]

<snip>" These measures are currently being trialled in the Preston region, which includes Preston, Wigan and Blackpool.
<snip>
Thought this had been happening for a while due to shocking download speeds between 6pm - midnight.. and we now know why.

I don't get it unless you have moved from Stoke on Trent to the NW and not updated your profile how is this related to your issues ?

In general the 'evidence' i've seen suggests people are limited to 5mbit from UNET but full speed from the BY news server (and several users have posted details on workarounds they state work for them Hamachi etc). It also indicated NTL were grouping user IP's according to usage.

Also claims of official notification of this have been made as far back as October but don't cite official sources and i've yet to see any publically avaliable official statment on the subject, what has been doing the rounds are emails to individuals/organisations. While i'm not calling those who have posted said information liar's I can't say i've seen any definative proof that BY has changed over to the NTL TS policy but it doesn't look good

I'll be interested to see if advertising changes and what Alex Brown has to say on the subject ....

Certainly is food for thought though.....

 

[chesterstu]

Just enable encryption in your P2P software to "circumvent" their throttling mechanics....

hmmm..... does it not work on ports considering the standard UNET port is 119 I know some providers have ports higher than this. If this does actyually work encrypting traffic maybe its time to go Giganews

 

[Rich]

Nope, it will use TCP 443 (SSL).

Whether that will help you or not remains to be seen. As long as NTL/Telewest print CLEAR GUIDELINES that we can all follow then im not too concerned about this.

 

[silversurfer]

I was reading one guy complaining about being moved to the naughty boys pipeline and only having 20k download in the evenings. His main objection was they stopped him using secure websites and being in an armchair he was unable to do home shopping which was vital to him.

Is this related to the encryption suggestion above maybe?