Epitiro

Congratulations to Plusnet for a strong showing on the Epitiro ISP-I benchmarking.

The network investment is clearly paying off.

Edited by deleted (Wed 13-Feb-08 20:39:53)

With the usual proviso.

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Readers should be aware that as Epitiro only test the 11 largest providers, this does not represent the best of the industry.

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Also, the Epitiro site didn't give a lot of detailed info and I was wondering why enta was not on the list, it appears to be the ISP is selected by Epitiro? They seem to have montioring software on each ISP network, rather than a user response to a survey

It gives some indication of improvement against the largest 11, which is not a bad thing

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It gives some indication of improvement against the largest 11, which is not a bad thing

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Bearing in mind the largest 11 includes the likes of Tiscali, Talk Talk, Pipex, Orange, Virgin it's not a lot to beat really.

Wonder why Sky weren't included.

I wonder if you have to pay Epitiro to be involved? More benchmarking within the industry than end customer focused

At a guess, Entanet won't be included because they're more of a Partner Reseller than rather your standard ISP.

The likes of ADSL24, UKFSN would be candidates if their userbases were large enough.

I don't actually know the answer, just thinking aloud

A possibility. Perhaps Sky weren't prepared to have third party monotoring on the network, if in fact that is a requirement.

I still don't see the point of a survey which is blatantly unrepresentative of the ISP market.

Hmm.

I wouldn't have gone as far as to say that it's totally unrepresentative of the market.

It does give you a decent idea, but obviously doesn't include the smaller ISPs out there.

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I wouldn't have gone as far as to say that it's totally unrepresentative of the market.

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I think we've had this debate in the past. Bearing in mind there are 74 ISP forums on this BBS, take away the 11 leaves 63. Now bearing in mind the numbers of ISP's who don't appear here, have you any idea how many ISP's operate in the UK?. I would guess at hundreds.

Bearing in mind some of the 11 biggest are frequently complained about in their respective forums and in the ISP Unhappiness forum, suggests no basic research has been done. It seems to be a case of, let's do the biggest 11, without any idea of the current state of the market. As a matter of interest can you confirm if payment is required to be included and or third party equipment is used to monitor ISP's systems?.

Until such time as Epitiro includes some of the better smaller ISP's it has no credibility as far as I'm concerned. I would have thought Plusnet would welcome a comparison with better quality providers. I feel sure you would fair very well.

I don't think its a 'survey' as such more a benchmarking tool. I'm sure it has value to the 11 ISP but to the consumer......it might help but since they don't present all the data on their website its not that useful to me.

Wingco,

I was really meaning that there's a big difference between totally unrepresentative and partially unrepresentative of the market.

Just playing on words rather than ultimately disagreeing with you.

Roll on the ISPAs.

Agreed - Entanet have lots of smaller business to business partners too, I believe, and only a few like UKFSN/Freeola/etc that deal with the residential market (and last time I looked, the website didn't give a clue as to who were resellers, and if filling in contact details, it made me wonder how they choose which reseller is given those details).

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As a matter of interest can you confirm if payment is required to be included and or third party equipment is used to monitor ISP's systems?

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Any comment?.

I'm afraid that I don't know the answer to that question.

Cheers.

PS: What's the betting the Marketing Dept have this on the website very soon

I think they're holding out for us winning a hattrick of awards at the ISPAs

When are the ISPAs?

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When are the ISPAs?

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The Intenet Service Provider Association Awards - have a look here.

Edited by paulby (Thu 14-Feb-08 23:39:41)

Not a very credible selection of nominations this year, I am afraid.

you could always start your own

> Not a very credible selection of nominations this year, I am afraid.

The "nominations" being the short list are selected from Epitiro testing (which everyone has to go for with the ISPA awards) so they are objective tests.. The judges then decide the winners taking into consideration other information. Just because an ISP is the favourite of forum users en masse doesn't mean they necessarily have the best service overall.

Also, some providers just won't go for the awards.. you need to submit paperwork and they don't. Bringing in objective testing for part of the awards is definitely a good thing.

There are some criticisms that can be made of ISPAs.. certainly in previous years (and I *think* this year but I need to check) the VoIP/Internet telephony type award was not frames well in my view.


seb

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I think they're holding out for us winning a hattrick of awards at the ISPAs

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Looking at the nominations there's no competition. Plusnet will triumph again. Congratulations

Post deleted by greyposter

One should always do homework before signing up to any provider.

However, I would suggest Epitiro technical benchmarking is far more scientific than, say, referral operator DSLZone's 'Ratings' which many suggest as a benchmark. I've noticed that some providers 'rated' above Plusnet there have only one rating in the last 6 months or are currently involved in insolvency proceedings.

As Epitiro's research ( Not a survey! ) is blind and is also used as the benchmark for the ISPAs, they are not a bad source of research.

I doubt Enta would want to be included in the benchmarking as their throttling is across the board evenings and weekends which would severely hit their scores. Whereas Plusnet's throttling does not.

Enta throttling in effect takes from the internet browser and gives to the P2P user. Plusnet throttling slows the P2P user and gives to the internet browser.

The Epitiro benchmarking shows Plus have benefitted from investment and are giving a better service to their punters in hard, cold data. Rather than just believing Plusnet comms woolly spin data

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Enta throttling in effect takes from the internet browser and gives to the P2P user. Plusnet throttling slows the P2P user and gives to the internet browser.

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(sorry for the OT post for the forum, but it IS on topic for the way the thread appears to have developed)

I'm not sure that the above is really a fair characterisation of the way ENTA's system works (not commenting on the characterisation of PN's system as my experience is pre-BTW) - ENTA's system seems to me to be more a managed sharing of the available bandwidth (subject to the limitations imposed by BTO's lack of session steering) at times of high demand while protecting responsiveness as far as possible.

From the reports I have seen that is a case of protecting low pings at the expense of applying a responsive, shared ceiling to downloading.

So the people adversely affected, by this (at high demand times: typically 10pm-midnight weekdays and PM at weekends when the ceiling for sustained download bandwidth tends to vary between 2Mbps and 8Mbps) are those wanting to download lots of data rapidly (typically P2P, binary NNTP, rapidshare and similar... - it just takes longer) and those protected are those gaming, browsing, streaming, email, VPN and remote access - which would be compromised by contention if it were left as a free-for-all and if unmanaged demand caused packet-loss.

Obviously, no ISP's system can protect everyone when demand finally exceeds available throughput - but that is an argument about central/segment provision per customer (and involves financial constraints).

I have no idea why ENTA are not involved with Epitiro - there could be many reasons. It may well be that the method of testing would not reflect well on ENTA - their management does not distinguish between types of traffic, so a system that does might give an unrealistically positive view. However, I personally am happy that ENTA's focus on provision to businesses means that outside business hours I get access to more bandwidth for the price than if ENTA's business model focussed on consumer provision. But each to their own. Oh, and I am someone who downloads quite a lot - I'm just not anal about waiting a little longer - I sync under 5Mbps, so seldom get affected adversely by ENTA's management and just benefit from the protected responsiveness.

Sorry for the waffle, but I felt the 'soundbite' above wasn't quite a fair characterisation and for once (in the immortal words of Vic Reeves) I couldn't let it lie .

Stuart

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As a matter of interest can you confirm if payment is required to be included and or third party equipment is used to monitor ISP's systems?.

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It used to be the case that you had to be an Epitiro customer to be able to participate in the testing.

TT

I see PN are sponsoring one of the ISPA award categories this year

edited for clarity.

Edited by wingco1 (Sun 17-Feb-08 22:26:56)

Throttling may affect some parts of the benchmarking, but there are many parameters, e.g. packet loss and ping response may be better with throttling than none