O2 publishes traffic management information on products

[ncjok]

Silly question, but what is this and why would you use it.

The definition of both terms are readily returned by a Google search, but I'll give you a few of examples of the usage.

• I'm working from home and want to securely manipulate files on my work/coorporate network.
• I'm out and about and want to surf the web in security, and without restriction, using WiFi provided by <insert coffee shop name here>

In the coffee shop or 'open WiFi' scenario it provides effective security against password sniffing and pharming attacks via DNS poisoning.

On mobile broadband packages, or your residential connection, you can use a remote VPN node to circumvent intrusive proxying which may be blocking your access to certain sites or services. A case in point is the IWF filter, which is far from perfect.

 

[Zarf]

Silly question, but what is this and why would you use it.

It's an encrypted tunnel to another network in the world, which effectively becomes your new gateway to the internet. So if you connect to a VPN service in America, you get a US IP address and can watch Hulu and other US zone only websites.
It also means that you can use P2P, Newsgroups etc without your local ISP being any the wiser, they can't tell what type of traffic is being sent over the VPN or where it originally came from, so they can't justify limiting it.

 

[marmalade]

Silly question, but what is this and why would you use it.

Privacy - so that when I send birthday wishes to Fidel /describe George W Bush as having the intellect of a rocking horse I may do so in relative privacy

 

[Indy500]

They had to deal with the doubling in users at some point, £10 a month or less for 20mbit unlimited is not sustainable. If you don't use Steam downloads and P2P constantly is 250GB really that bad? They're still offering a better deal than Virgin Media's extreme STM'ing...if your line's capable of a half-decent speed, which is most people, you're better off on O2 than VM.

The only issue I can see is what counts as P2P traffic.

 

[F2kSel]

I thought I read that rapidshare counted as P2P on access packages bit I haven't seen any mention of it on LLU.

Virgin could work out better for some, if you only have a slow connection on LLU you never benefit from faster speeds anyway so are in effect throttled all the time.

 

[Indy500]

I thought I read that rapidshare counted as P2P on access packages bit I haven't seen any mention of it on LLU.

Virgin could work out better for some, if you only have a slow connection on LLU you never benefit from faster speeds anyway so are in effect throttled all the time.

VM's lowest tier is more like 1-2Mbit most of the time...and I say this having used\shared it at 4 different locations in the last 2 years.

 

[Zarf]

The only issue I can see is what counts as P2P traffic.

Partly this, but i'm yet to see an ISP implement protocol based Throttling/Prioritisation without inadvertently screwing up the network for innocent apps (Such as Gaming).

Jump ship ASAP, the price isn't attractive enough to be worth the headaches.

 

[edGfaCTor]

They had to deal with the doubling in users at some point, £10 a month or less for 20mbit unlimited is not sustainable. If you don't use Steam downloads and P2P constantly is 250GB really that bad? They're still offering a better deal than Virgin Media's extreme STM'ing...if your line's capable of a half-decent speed, which is most people, you're better off on O2 than VM.

The only issue I can see is what counts as P2P traffic.

I agree it had to happen sooner or later there is too many people jumping to o2 to abuse it downloading using torrents 24/7.

 

[Indy500]

Partly this, but i'm yet to see an ISP implement protocol based Throttling/Prioritisation without inadvertently screwing up the network for innocent apps (Such as Gaming).

Same goes for VM then. I can't see any options at the same price that don't have some kind of restriction.

Jump ship ASAP, the price isn't attractive enough to be worth the headaches.

Wasn't planning to stay with O2 myself as my contract expires soon and I can't move it twice for free.

 

[Azuse05]

I agree it had to happen sooner or later there is too many people jumping to o2 to abuse it downloading using torrents 24/7.

And you base this on...?

Since O2 bought Bes network they've treated it exactly the same way they've treated their mobile one which now has half the data limits of the competition (6* less than tmobiles). They cut a fiver off peoples bills (tenner if they took the bb) then piled as many on as they could.

Charging talk talk prices but trying to offer a lot more data does not work. In fact talktalks llu has an fup higher that 250GB I think more than a few people are about to discover just how many programs run on p2p without them even knowing.

Can't imaging may blizzard gamers will be pleased next round of patches

 

[bhavv]

And I were actually thinking of moving to O2 broadband for a long time.

I'll keep my Sky.

 

[Indy500]

And you base this on...?

Since O2 bought Bes network they've treated it exactly the same way they've treated their mobile one which now has half the data limits of the competition (6* less than tmobiles). They cut a fiver off peoples bills (tenner if they took the bb) then piled as many on as they could.

Don't use internet on phone myself, utterly pointless. But then I see a mobile as a tool for making\receiving calls away from home, and for texts.

Surely though you can see that having half a million users, most of which are only paying ~£10 a month and in some cases swamping 20Mbit each had to be changed sooner or later? You acknowledged it yourself in this following sentence:

Charging talk talk prices but trying to offer a lot more data does not work. In fact talktalks llu has an fup higher that 250GB I think more than a few people are about to discover just how many programs run on p2p without them even knowing.

Can't imaging may blizzard gamers will be pleased next round of patches

Talktalk's reliability is also dismal to my knowledge, feel free to demonstrate otherwise though. As for the peer-to-peer applications, as I said it depends on how O2 implement this throttling.

 

[benftl]

They're still offering a better deal than Virgin Media's extreme STM'ing...if your line's capable of a half-decent speed, which is most people, you're better off on O2 than VM.

I disagree. Even on VM's lowest package I can download far more than O2 now allows on their top package.

VM's lowest tier is more like 1-2Mbit most of the time...and I say this having used\shared it at 4 different locations in the last 2 years.

I'd say you've had back luck with VM. I'm on 10mb and receive 1.2MB/sec most of the time.

Same goes for VM then. I can't see any options at the same price that don't have some kind of restriction.

VM impose throttling of all traffic if you download more than the limit during peak hours, but even their most harsh throttle down to 300KB/sec allows more than enough for gaming.

 

[Indy500]

I disagree. Even on VM's lowest package I can download far more than O2 now allows on their top package.

Without being STM'd to death, no, not in my experience. You're also not comparing like for like, why not compare to VM's 20Mbit?

I'd say you've had back luck with VM. I'm on 10mb and receive 1.2MB/sec most of the time.

Really? Well I'm using a friend's VM service now and that speed lasted less than 3 hours before the connection got STM'd to death. At the moment downloads top out at ~120kb\sec. I was trying to game last night and the ping was terrible, it nearly dropped connection twice (timeout warnings).

VM impose throttling of all traffic if you download more than the limit during peak hours, but even their most harsh throttle down to 300KB/sec allows more than enough for gaming.

Peak hours? Don't make me laugh.

As for caps, well most months I don't think I exceed 100GB of usage. The exception would have been downloading the MSDNAA catalogue which is a one off.

 

[benftl]

Without being STM'd to death, no, not in my experience. You're also not comparing like for like, why not compare to VM's 20Mbit?

.

Easily. If I schedule my downloads for 9pm - 10am, I could download over 50GB in one night, or over 1TB in a month. This excludes any downloading you could theoretically do during the day. If I were on the 20mb package, this would double to 2TB/month, so as I say, even on VM's cheapest package I'm easily better off with bandwidth than O2's top package (250GB). Also, there's no horrible P2P throttling, the lowest download I'd ever manage would be 300KB/sec versus O2's 100KB peak or whatever it is.

Really? Well I'm using a friend's VM service now and that speed lasted less than 3 hours before the connection got STM'd to death. At the moment downloads top out at ~120kb\sec. I was trying to game last night and the ping was terrible, it nearly dropped connection twice (timeout warnings)..

120KB/sec, the lowest you'd get from a good server would be 300KB/sec so I'd say there's an issue on your friends end. You can't generalise the whole network because you've experienced faults. If you plan it right you can get past the STM, which is the whole point of it.

 

[Zarf]

Without being STM'd to death, no, not in my experience. You're also not comparing like for like, why not compare to VM's 20Mbit?

On the 20Mb product You can download 7GB between 10am and 3pm before being limited to 5Mb/s for a few hours, 3pm-4pm is uncapped, and then you can download a further 3.5GB in the evening between 4pm and 9pm before limiting.
Then of course you've got 13 hours completely uncapped.

All that means you could hit over 125GB a day without being capped at all.

If I have to be limited, STM's a good way to go about it - the allowances are generous enough for normal usage during the day, even watching HD or grabbing a game from steam without hitting the STM, and even if I do hit it 5Mb/s is hardly the end of the world.
When I was on the 10Mb product at uni I was almost never STM'd thanks to use of schedulers. Even when I was, 2Mb/s was fine for normal browsing and my pings remained rock solid <15ms.

Can't wait to move back to a Virgin area, I've been stuck on 2Mb ADSL Max for the past few months.

 

[muon]

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

I don't have a problem with the 100GB limit at all on the mid package. I assume they will provide us with a way of checking how much BW we've used.

I do have a problem with the traffic shaping. As the VM STM users have highlighted, the actual user experience drops right off when it's throttled.
Not to mention, some products use P2P to share their patches, mostly Blizzard games but League of Legends and a couple of others spring to mind.

 

[~Divine~Wind~]

...snip...Virgin Media's extreme STM'ing...snipQUOTE]
Extreme?
I regularly did a lot of downlaods throughout the day, Iso's, game clients, steam stuff on my old 20Mb line and never really noticed the STM kicking in.

Without being STM'd to death, no, not in my experience. You're also not comparing like for like, why not compare to VM's 20Mbit?

Really? Well I'm using a friend's VM service now and that speed lasted less than 3 hours before the connection got STM'd to death. At the moment downloads top out at ~120kb\sec. I was trying to game last night and the ping was terrible, it nearly dropped connection twice (timeout warnings).

Peak hours? Don't make me laugh.
As for caps, well most months I don't think I exceed 100GB of usage. The exception would have been downloading the MSDNAA catalogue which is a one off.

Your friend on the cable or ADSL VM?
100Gb of useage including up and download is not a lot in reality
My puing with VM was always decent <20 on some occasions, obv if yer connecting to a server miles away would increase a tad xD

I was with VM for about 7/8 years, BB went down twice in that time and never for more than 2 days, ****hot service I feel

When we move again I'm definatley making sure I get a VM connection again.
These pings over 100 justa int cutting it

 

[bloodline76]

I don't have a problem with the 100GB limit at all on the mid package. I assume they will provide us with a way of checking how much BW we've used.

I do have a problem with the traffic shaping. As the VM STM users have highlighted, the actual user experience drops right off when it's throttled.
Not to mention, some products use P2P to share their patches, mostly Blizzard games but League of Legends and a couple of others spring to mind.

I stream a lot of films from my computer to my ps3 as its easier than having all the disks about for my one year old to play with. I am glad I didnt sign up to a new contract. I will enojy it until they make the change for everyone.