Traffic Management on Plusnet

What, in practical terms, is the likely effect of Traffic Management on PlusNet download speeds?

My exchange is Llanymynech and current connection speed is 224 kbps & can go as high as 352 kbps(routerstats).

PlusNet's KFIs document indicates that certain types of traffic are either slowed or managed and obviously the impact of this will vary depending on user activity at any particular time of day but does this slow everybody down pro rata, i.e. by a percentage, or slow everybody down by some other reckoning?

I notice at present that at certain times of day DNS responses increase significantly but downland speed varies less consistently. But I don't know how relevant this is. So, for example, if I have a 50Mb download which is slowed down might it take as long as double the optimum time or the optimum time plus a fixed amount or some combination and how do I quantify this at least very roughly?

BW

Pick your package:

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do...

How slow - 224kbps is ridiculous
Can you post the full stats - noise margin, speeds and attenuation

It is a bit slow!!

Stats:
Statistics Downstream Upstream
Line Rate 224 Kbps 416 Kbps
Noise Margin 9.1 dB 8.0 dB
Line Attenuation 63.0 dB 31.5 dB
Output Power 14.1 dBm 12.4 dBm

Router - Voyager 210 (I had been using a 2wire 2700 HG-B which connected slightly faster but has now failed)
Connection direct to main BT box via BT supplied ADSL V10 faceplate.
Distance to exchange >6 miles (by road, which is the land line route).

Thanks for taking an interest.

BW

Thanks.

I'd already looked at this info on PlusNet and also at their more detailed document. However basically it says things will go slower at times but doesn't get even close to quantifying the drop. For some people a halving of speed, for example, might not matter too much but at the speeds of my line it doesn't take too much to get to ISDN speeds and then to dial-up.

Obviously I don't expect anything as specific as, say, speeds might drop by 50% but it would be nice too have slightly more precision than 'slowed down'. As you can see from my current speed it doesn't take much of a slow down to be at stop.

BW

I can only assume that your router won't report an attenuation higher than 63dB as that is rather low for the distance
However, in reply to your actual question, it isn't done by percentage of speed but by absolute values however the priority system would still work to give the maximum throughput to time critical applications on your line

Edited by deleted (Tue 04-Oct-11 16:18:02)

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Pick your package:

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do...

That old one! This page last updated 19th May 2011

and it hasn't changed

Ok thanks.

Traffic management does not slow things by a percentage, it slows them to a maximum speed, which is generally much higher than your connection speed, so that is the least of your worries!

Edit: Sorry, just seen that Oldjim had said that in his reply.

Edited by kasg (Tue 04-Oct-11 19:55:59)

The thing I find unfair?

Notice the fibre management speeds vs. the non-fibre management speeds. Surely if traffic management is designed to minimise traffic on the ISP network, then they have sufficient capacity, given that they have opened the fibre speeds to 10x the non-fibre speeds.

You would think that the one advantage to being on a non-fibre, non ADSL2/2+ connection would be decreased management, since there's far less potential bandwidth.

Not so.

I really cant understand the logic of this kind of traffic management when all there packages have download limits anyway.
Why introduce artificial network congestion to prevent network congestion?

It's to prevent the greedy downloader [censored] from stealing all the capacity.