Fibre unlimited - traffic prioritisation sanity check

Just want to make sure that after reading their blog post (http://community.plus.net/blog/2012/12/21/its-unlimited-why-is-it-still-traffic-managed/) one hundred times my understanding of the traffic prioritisation stuff is correct! Eighteen months contract is a long time if I've misinterpreted anything!

As I understand it Plusnet Unlimited Fibre doesn't use any form of traffic management/shaping or rate limiting - it only uses traffic prioritisation for all of your house's traffic to ensure service quality. Does this mean that torrents, P2P, Usenet etc will all run at line speed 24/7 if nobody else in the house is using anything else?

Hi There

See below for your answer I have been with plusnet for the last 18 mouths with no issues and pay extra £4 so that you do not get effected by this. just added Plusnet Unlimited Fibre and it's great best service around ..!!

the link below explained why and to be fair that's is more than others do and I do not mind that... so see what you think ?

http://community.plus.net/blog/2012/12/21/its-unlimi...

Sounds like baloney to me. Until people come on here (and they may do) and tell you that their BitTorrent and what not appears to run at maximum speed then assume the worst.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Sounds like baloney to me. Until people come on here (and they may do) and tell you that their BitTorrent and what not appears to run at maximum speed then assume the worst.

That might be the case but here it is from the horses mouth again no mess around they just tell it as it is ..

https://portal.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guid...

I bet that P2P will fall under Abnormal Load https://portal.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guid...

I'm on unlimited and I haven't seen any slow downs. I can quite happily download from Usenet at my line speed of about 6.7 MB/s even at peak times.

In reply to a post by linuxkid:

That might be the case but here it is from the horses mouth again no mess around they just tell it as it is ..

https://portal.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guid...

Unfortunately that is not completely the case. Many people might have forgotten but I can remember all the incidents going back many years of times they were caught out on various issues by savvy people on here and made to look rather foolish, whether it is saying they don't apply QoS to this particular service when they do, or when they claimed they were not running their network at 100% capacity during peak times when they were.

Now, I must be fair and say I am not a customer and haven't checked out any connections they supply in detail recently but their reputation precedes them on matters like this and I am still dubious about recommending plusnet to people who do a heavy amount of downloading through bit torrent and USENET etc.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Sounds like baloney to me. Until people come on here (and they may do) and tell you that their BitTorrent and what not appears to run at maximum speed then assume the worst.

If that is deemed to be the case then maybe they are in breech of ASA regulations "Unlimited" should mean exactly that , no traffic shaping /management / protocol prioritising of any kind unless needed to protect their network from a catastrophic failure ,
But i'm very sceptical of what they are saying , and the fact that BT own them , doesn't exactly make me want to belive them either, and due to their 18mth min term , i doubt i would be prepared to find out by ordering it

In reply to a post by TheHollster:

As I understand it Plusnet Unlimited Fibre doesn't use any form of traffic management/shaping or rate limiting - it only uses traffic prioritisation for all of your house's traffic to ensure service quality. Does this mean that torrents, P2P, Usenet etc will all run at line speed 24/7 if nobody else in the house is using anything else?

The prioritisation works across the platform as well as within the individual user's connection. See this post by Kelly.

At first sight that can sound bad. But a moment's reflection show that is how it needs to be.

Bear in mind that apart from live streaming, the other protocols use tiny amounts of bandwidth, and even streaming HD isn't huge when compared to what P2P takes up. There is also the commitment (for the foreseeable future) to maintain the necessary capacity, and that he implies there seems to be a high probability that your speed would be below line speed due to the sources not coping rather than Plusnet's capacity.

Note a post he made in the Community forums:-

it's my job to ensure our tm is compliant with asa/ofcom. I also believe we are offering management that benefits customers. I.e. Prioritisation of time sensitive traffic over less sensitive traffic without making customers feel like their downloads are being limited.

Plusnet: Head of Products and Digital Care

In reply to a post by tommy45:

If that is deemed to be the case then maybe they are in breech of ASA regulations "Unlimited" should mean exactly that , no traffic shaping /management / protocol prioritising of any kind unless needed to protect their network from a catastrophic failure

That's not what the ASA regulations say.

It actually says "Limitations that do affect the speed or usage of the service must also be moderate only and clearly explained in the advertisement."

"Moderate" is of course open to interpretation.

It follows that Plusnet's bronze queue is allowed to go slower than the titanium queue, but only by a "moderate" amount.

Yes the clever use of wording to get around legislation, or that's how i see it, after all people don't join an isp to see if they can win an award if that's what bronze silver & gold are, they do specify in big bold lettering UNLIMITED therefore it should be free from the pn (bt ) throttling malarky they can dress it up all they like, but that's what it equates to

Edited by tommy45 (Sun 06-Jan-13 22:36:49)

Post deleted by The_KELRaTH

word.

The ASA guidance qualifies "moderate" as "no more than the user would expect from natural contention" I think.

In my eyes, this means seeing a ~1-2Mbps dip at peak hours on an up to 16Mbps product and possibly larger bigger dips on a fast fibre connection, obviously dependant on your exchange location and equipment.

Although this does give the ISP some wiggle room, I suspect this is in there to protect the ISP from claims of their products not being 'unlimited' when its actually back haul congestion out of their control.

We certainly don't plan with this in mind. I look at latency graphs every morning to make sure that we aren't slowing down. Looking at our bronze queue at peak last night, we were averaging <20ms latency for that traffic, i.e. pretty much what we see in our gold queues, and no dropped packets. Therefore, customers torrenting on the New Unlimited product should have seen close to line speed performance for their torrents. (if that was all that they were doing at the time). These graphs don't take into account anything on the BT side of the connection yet though.

In reply to a post by KellyD:

word.

?
That's a bit too abstruse, even for me .

I think it's obvious...
... highlight most of the post except the one "word", then press the "del" key by mistake.

In reply to a post by KellyD:

These graphs don't take into account anything on the BT side of the connection yet though.

Uh oh, what's this? Us and them?

That's reading something into the post that wasn't there!

Simply that we currently only graph our network performance/latency and not anything on the wholesale/supplier side.

It did occur to me that's what had happened, but strange that he didn't see and correct it at the time.

It is a known forum feature that typos appear between previewing and posting.
It does that ti me all the time

So, not the old "well, our network is unlimited so your problem must be with BT" excuse. Because Plusnet are BT.

It was deliberate! I suggest you all check the urban dictionary, but be careful, not exactly worksafe!

In reply to a post by KellyD:

It was deliberate!

Ah I see. Of course.

not exactly worksafe!

That's OK. It is where I work.

In reply to a post by KellyD:

It was deliberate! I suggest you all check the urban dictionary, but be careful, not exactly worksafe!

Indeed . The example is very boastful.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The example is very boastful.

Does it explain the ad you mentuoned in TTTS?

I was going with definition 2

Hah, I'd forgotten that Photoshopped Microsoft Word box with rappers on the front.

Invalidly quoting the third one gives what I like .

"Word" has no single meaning ....

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Sounds like baloney to me. Until people come on here (and they may do) and tell you that their BitTorrent and what not appears to run at maximum speed then assume the worst.

Link.