Plusnet Discussion Thread

AzZ · 25 Apr 2013 at 13:11

Thanks. I will see how it goes and post back in a couple of days.

I should mention that the switch from my previous ISP was smooth and the turnaround for the installation was quite quick (10 days).

horrorxpunk · 25 Apr 2013 at 13:30

Awesome I love hearing good news about plusnet, I am actually a technical support agent so the majority of issues I deal with our faults so obviously most of what I hear is technical problems it's great to hear all the good feedback about plusnet though. This thread makes me wish my cabinet was FTTC enabled with BTWholesale but unfortunately it is not :-(

KIA · 25 Apr 2013 at 13:30

AzZ said:
The test from the BT openreach engineer gave an 80 down and 17 up reading but according to speed test this is not what I am getting. I know it's still very early but from users experiances is it likely to improve? I'm probably less than 50m from the cabinet as well.

Nobody gets 80/20 throughput.

Get the IP profile info from http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/

horrorxpunk · 25 Apr 2013 at 13:33

AzZ said:
The router is connected to my PC with the ethernet cable. I had the data extension cable installed from the master socket which is downstairs so have the modem and router in my room. How can I see what speed my line is actually capable of? According to the BT wholesale website it is 80/20.

Curretly getting 73/14. I know it's not that much of a loss but I expected it to be much closer to the estimate as distance form the cabinet is not much.

Setting up a PPPoE connection should help you determine the speed you are getting from your router you will need to connect the openreach modem directly to the master socket without the extension and connect your computer directly to the openreach modem. You can follow the instructions in the link below :

http://community.plus.net/library/broadband/fibre-help-how-to-set-up-a-pppoe-dialler-in-vistawindows-7/

Normally as a company though we would advise upto 76mbps downstream due to ofcom rulings.

I would say 15mbps upstream was about right for the majority of users.

valve90210 · 25 Apr 2013 at 14:32

horrorxpunk said:
There is something wrong at 15kbps that's well below normal, first you need to setup a PPPoE connection with your openreach modem. Connecting an ethrnet cable between lan1 and your computer. You need to open network and sharing centre. "set up a new connection or network" -> "connect to the internet" -> "broadband (pppoe)" -> enter your [email protected] and your account password. It may not connect straight away if you simply pulled the plug it can take up to 10 minutes for the exchange to see the connection drop and won't allow another session until that happens. Run a speedtest at speedtest.btwholesale.com and if you are still having problems you can raise a fault at faults.plus.net if that resolves the problem we will need to RMA your router for you.

The downloads were crawling along at 15KBps but I was still getting speedtest results around the 68mbps range and internet etc seemed very fast, it was as though usenet and torrents were being heavily throttled!

This morning everything seemed ok, connection still showing as about 68mbps and downloads goind at about 8MB per second. Will see how it goes this evening and if problems with it slowing down again I will give the test a go.

horrorxpunk · 25 Apr 2013 at 14:40

valve90210 said:
The downloads were crawling along at 15KBps but I was still getting speedtest results around the 68mbps range and internet etc seemed very fast, it was as though usenet and torrents were being heavily throttled!

This morning everything seemed ok, connection still showing as about 68mbps and downloads goind at about 8MB per second. Will see how it goes this evening and if problems with it slowing down again I will give the test a go.

Have a look at our traffic management here, you will see that P2P traffic is "bronze" so is given low priority on the network. However if you purchase the pro-add on you will get "gold" high priority with P2P and VPN traffic.

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_management.shtml

I wish virgin had something similar, then we wouldn't have such terrible STM

Smokey Deza · 25 Apr 2013 at 14:44

horrorxpunk said:
There is still time the engineer will turn up so fingers crossed. Sometimes the engineers can be late due to provisioning issues. Yes there is a large shortage of engineers at the moment so if you have a degree in telephony engineering it mite be a good job for you it has too be 2 hours to be classed as a late appointment but if it overshoots by an hour or so give us a call to our order updates department and we will find out what is happening.

Engineer arrived few hours ago who happened to be a friend of a friend. He set my modem up and I tested in Origin d/l BF3. A whopping 8.5Mb!

Super awesome

Hope it stays this way.

horrorxpunk · 25 Apr 2013 at 14:50

I remember when an engineer from virgin turned up at my house and he was indeed a friend of a friend. Member of Sheffield band Bal-Sagoth we had a good laugh together. He is what I'd describe as master technician and he helped tweak my line so it was perfect ;-)

Mite have to create a plusnet platoon for battlelog, I am waiting on Battlefield 4 at the moment I have played BF3 to death.

PapaLazaru · 25 Apr 2013 at 14:52

it is nice to ping in single digits on BF3.

valve90210 · 25 Apr 2013 at 15:51

horrorxpunk said:
Have a look at our traffic management here, you will see that P2P traffic is "bronze" so is given low priority on the network. However if you purchase the pro-add on you will get "gold" high priority with P2P and VPN traffic.

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_management.shtml

I wish virgin had something similar, then we wouldn't have such terrible STM

I get that, but surely it shouldn't mean that if the network a is a bit busy I can't get any kind of useable speed even when I'm not doing anything else on my connection?

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/download_speeds.shtml

Unlimited fibre, apparently allows all traffic at line speed all day but that's a complete lie if the traffic prioritisation means that usenet etc will only go at 15KB (and not even stable at that speed) if the network is busy? Surely that is throttling/traffic shaping in all but name?

From earlier in the thread:

Quote:
Originally Posted by KIA
I don't want my ISP interfering with my traffic. They even charge £5 to disable the prioritisation!

Click to expand...

Originally Posted by bobpullen
So if you were using 100% of your bandwidth downloading over peer-to-peer and you went to stream a video over iPlayer, you'd want it not to work? That's exactly what would happen without prioritisation. With prioritisation, the video would be allowed to take priority over the torrent traffic.

The £5 Pro add-on is pretty pointless on the new Unlimited product TBH. When signing up for the product when it’s available people will notice we’ve actually removed the option from the signup journey (although it is still available on request).

I have personally been testing the profile for the new Unlimited product over recent months and not once have I noticed any slow down affecting any of my traffic unless the connection’s been at 100% utilisation or there's been some external factor at play.

From this it sounds like traffic priorisation works on a per user basis is that not right?

Originally Posted by bobpullen
Depends on the package you've opted for. If you've gone for Unlimited then there are no rate limits applied to any of your traffic.

Is this not true because it certainly seemed like my connection was being heavily throttled yesterday?

AzZ · 25 Apr 2013 at 19:02

horrorxpunk said:
Setting up a PPPoE connection should help you determine the speed you are getting from your router you will need to connect the openreach modem directly to the master socket without the extension and connect your computer directly to the openreach modem. You can follow the instructions in the link below :

http://community.plus.net/library/broadband/fibre-help-how-to-set-up-a-pppoe-dialler-in-vistawindows-7/

Normally as a company though we would advise upto 76mbps downstream due to ofcom rulings.

I would say 15mbps upstream was about right for the majority of users.

Thanks, I'm going to try this now and see if it makes a difference.

Andy Pandy · 25 Apr 2013 at 19:22

We got our PlusNet installed today. Did a speedtest and I'm getting 72mb download and 19mb upload

Downloading BF3 at 8 MB/sec! Yesterday I was on AOL 2mb so this is amazing

brucey034 · 25 Apr 2013 at 19:32

Spoke to a guy called Chris on the Plusnet forum and after the help and support he gave me, I have cancelled my Sky fibre order and re ordered Plusnet.

Hope it all goes through this time with no issues.

So come on Plusnet as a yorkshire man do me proud.

Will let you guys and girls know how it goes.

~Mike~ · 25 Apr 2013 at 20:14

Requested my MAC code today, pretty much decided to go with Plusnet.

horrorxpunk · 25 Apr 2013 at 21:26

There is no rate limit, this applies to the maximum speed attainable by particular activities which are identified by packet types.
The limitation is in the prioritisation of network bandwidth, usenet and P2P are given the second lowest bandwidth prioritisation. This means that network bandwidth is dealt to these requests on the network last. Now as far as I am aware are network is not over-utilised and we seem to rarely have over-utilisation issues.
Now 15kb/s seems very low speed for any connection, that's 120kbps and seems extremely low. Are your speeds still as low as this today?

Traffic prioritisation does depend on what type of package you are on with those with the pro-add on getting higher prioritisation for VPN and usenet traffic. So yes it does depend on the package which the user is on.

There is no maximum rate limit, so there is no max speed cap on usenet / P2P traffic.
But I agree your connection looks like it has been heavily throttled. I've asked Bob if he could have a read of this thread and answer any other questions on this when he can :-)

horrorxpunk · 25 Apr 2013 at 21:30

brucey034 said:
Spoke to a guy called Chris on the Plusnet forum and after the help and support he gave me, I have cancelled my Sky fibre order and re ordered Plusnet.

Hope it all goes through this time with no issues.

So come on Plusnet as a yorkshire man do me proud.

Will let you guys and girls know how it goes.

I am glad you are coming back to us for a second go, hopefully we should be able to progress your order quickly and without delay. Where they able to investigate and find out what the issue was with your order?
Please let us know what the outcome is :-)

Requested my MAC code today, pretty much decided to go with Plusnet.

Can't wait to have you as a customer if you have any non-account related questions let me know

bobpullen · 25 Apr 2013 at 21:30

valve90210 said:
The downloads were crawling along at 15KBps but I was still getting speedtest results around the 68mbps range and internet etc seemed very fast, it was as though usenet and torrents were being heavily throttled!

This morning everything seemed ok, connection still showing as about 68mbps and downloads goind at about 8MB per second. Will see how it goes this evening and if problems with it slowing down again I will give the test a go.

horrorxpunk said:
Have a look at our traffic management here, you will see that P2P traffic is "bronze" so is given low priority on the network. However if you purchase the pro-add on you will get "gold" high priority with P2P and VPN traffic.

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_management.shtml

I wish virgin had something similar, then we wouldn't have such terrible STM

You should be able to achieve line speed from Usenet/P2P etc. and I'd personally suggest against the Pro add-on because it kind of voids the prioritisation we apply that helps if you're caning your line doing multiple things at once.

It's currently the busiest period of the evening and here's a Usenet download I've just triggered on my Unlimited account:

There's a /very/ slim chance that you may have disconnected/reconnected recently and not been authenticated properly on our traffic management platform. If you continue to have problems then shout up and I'll look into it.

brucey034 said:
Spoke to a guy called Chris on the Plusnet forum and after the help and support he gave me, I have cancelled my Sky fibre order and re ordered Plusnet.

Ah, Mr Purvey I presume?

You're in good hands. Apologies I've not been around thee parts recently to lend a helping hand

AzZ said:
Curretly getting 73/14. I know it's not that much of a loss but I expected it to be much closer to the estimate as distance form the cabinet is not much.

The maximum IP Profile is around the 78Mbps mark. Taking into account overheads 73Mbps is very close to the mark. I'd perhaps expect a little more from your upload though.

OhEsEcks said:
Anyone replaced the supplied modem and router with their own unit? If so, what are you using?

I have. See my post here.

MilanoChris said:
Very happy. Ping looks great too compared to BT Infinity.

Just a shame that this area isn't 80/20 yet, any idea how I find out when it will be?

Definitely looks like you've been provisioned on 40/10 rather than 80/20. Assuming you opted for Unlimited rather than Essentials then this isn't right. Have you managed to get it sorted or is the situation still the same?

lee87 said:
Noticed I'm getting much slower speeds when using wireless on my devices. Only 35Mb in speed tests and downloads even when it is right next to the router, 70Mb using ethernet.

Logged into the router and seen that the wireless is only working at 65Mb.
Is this normal for the Technicolor 582n?

Pretty much. I'm not connected to a Tecnicolor router at the moment (it's a Netgear WNR1000) but it's still a 150n device. Compare the speedtest below to the Usenet download graph I posted above. The Usenet download was done over Powerline adapters. I'm posting this from a laptop about two metres away from the router.

As alluded to by others the 582n will drop the wireless broadcast rate if it detects noise from other overlapping wireless signals. The rate it's broadcasting at is what you see in the router interface. If you change the channel then you'll probably see this jump back up to 150Mbps however it might not stay there.

Even if it did, as a rule of thumb you can pretty much half the broadcast rate and then account for overheads/noise/loss before you arrive at your throughput rate. I wouldn't expect anyone to consistently hit 70Mbps+ using the router we supply.

Best regards,

valve90210 · 25 Apr 2013 at 21:33

horrorxpunk said:
There is no rate limit, this applies to the maximum speed attainable by particular activities which are identified by packet types.
The limitation is in the prioritisation of network bandwidth, usenet and P2P are given the second lowest bandwidth prioritisation. This means that network bandwidth is dealt to these requests on the network last. Now as far as I am aware are network is not over-utilised and we seem to rarely have over-utilisation issues.
Now 15kb/s seems very low speed for any connection, that's 120kbps and seems extremely low. Are your speeds still as low as this today?

Traffic prioritisation does depend on what type of package you are on with those with the pro-add on getting higher prioritisation for VPN and usenet traffic. So yes it does depend on the package which the user is on.

There is no maximum rate limit, so there is no max speed cap on usenet / P2P traffic.
But I agree your connection looks like it has been heavily throttled. I've asked Bob if he could have a read of this thread and answer any other questions on this when he can

bobpullen said:
You should be able to achieve line speed from Usenet/P2P etc. and I'd personally suggest against the Pro add-on because it kind of voids the prioritisation we apply that helps if you're caning your line doing multiple things at once.

It's currently the busiest period of the evening and here's a Usenet download I've just triggered on my Unlimited account:

There's a /very/ slim chance that you may have disconnected/reconnected recently and not been authenticated properly on our traffic management platform. If you continue to have problems then shout up and I'll look into it.

Connection seems to be fine tonight, usenet happily downloading at full speed (about 8MB/s) and everything nice and fast!!!

If I get any more problems I shall give you guys a shout!

brucey034 · 25 Apr 2013 at 21:47

Ah, Mr Purvey I presume?

That's the man.

Really hope it works out ok this time.

brucey034 · 25 Apr 2013 at 21:53

horrorxpunk said:
I am glad you are coming back to us for a second go, hopefully we should be able to progress your order quickly and without delay. Where they able to investigate and find out what the issue was with your order?
Please let us know what the outcome is

I am under the impression that Open reach have the wrong post code info.