Is there a way to check for congestion on your exchange?

Thinking of moving to plusnet as above,however if I did,is there a way to check if my exchange is congested maybe first before I jump,or is it a case of if its congested they won't connect me?

My excahange BTW is MRPRE PRESTWICH

And I am looking at the fibre product

Thank you

I don't think there is, only for 20CN products.

AAISP do report any incidents or exchange problems they encounter, on this page. Nothing to do with Prestwich this month.

Exchange congestion on WBC (21CN) exchanges I believe is very rare, and swift action is taken when it does occur. Individual ISPs using the WBC system do not have congestion at exchanges other than that. It doesn't work at all like the O2/Be setup.

Plusnet basically doesn't suffer from congestion as they constantly monitor the following two graphs and I expect a lot more detailed information about their own performance:-

Handover capacity;
User tbb BQM graphs. (Mine's blank as I'm on the IPv6 trial and haven't sent them the link to my new graph. You can see if from my sig).

Wrt the latter, back in August my BQM went haywire. They contacted me to ask if I was aware of it. I wasn't, but it was nothing to do with the Plusnet service - it was a local issue.

They also issue frequent emails that we can set to be sent to us regarding any major issues, and capacity upgrades, such as:-

Subject: Increase in 20CN and 21CN Broadband Capacity - January & February 2014

We recently increased the capacity of our IPSC (20CN) broadband host links by a further 3500Mbps. It's these host links that we use to deliver bandwidth to customers provisioned on an 'Up to 8Mbps' 20CN product.

In addition to this we have increased the capacity of our WBC (21CN) broadband host links by 16.11Gbps. It's these host links that we use to deliver bandwidth to the majority of customers on our 21CN and Fibre services. We'll also be increasing this further by an additional 8.86Gbps.

That's probably more than O2/Be ever had , and are occurring every couple of months or so.

Thanks RobertoS,I appreciate your response and the links you have posted.

sky seem to be offering free line rental and £75 credit to migrating be/o2 customers, however that is not a deciding factor for me. what I need is a connection that I can torrent on when/if needed., that will stream iPlayer,nowtv,Netflix with out buffering. your comment regarding extra capacity has made me feel more at ease, as I've been following plusnets deals over the last 6odd months and I'd become concerned they might become over subscribed.

thanks for the help!

They've been adding capacity of that order every couple of months or so. The major effect of the rapid gaining of customers was that Customer Services got swamped. Waiting times for technical help phone answering and ticket responses became dreadful.

They now have a new (additional) help centre in Leeds, as well as the Sheffield one. Lots of new staff I expect are taking a while to get fully up to speed though. If you have a serious problem I expect you have seen the Digital Care team chaps here and on the PN Community Forum. They are rather good! The couple of minor issues I've had over two years have been dealt with perfectly well over the phone by the normal support.

Having said all that, AIUI Sky also keep well on top of capacity needs. The three best in my book are Plusnet, BT Infinity and Sky. After the initial deals expire I reckon Plusnet is the place to be.

I moved over to ADSL2+ with PN in early December. Initially didn't have any problems with slowdowns but the last 10 days or so, I' ve noticed pronounced slowdowns later in the day eg measured download speed @ 5:30am = 15.8Mbps ;@ 4:00pm = 4.5Mbps.!!
At the weekend the speed tests show a gradual slowing down from first thing until late evening. -last night at ~ 7:00pm I got a test result of 5Mbps.
Certainly doesn't feel any faster in the latter part of the day than I was getting with ADSL Max -I'm even expereiencing buffering with SkyGo which I didn't get initially.
This all suggests exchange congestion to me!

Which product are you on?

Unlimited ADSL2+ - the exchange upgrade was completed ~ early December and I switched over to ADSL2+ as soon as. I wasn't seeing any slowdowns initially, I've assumed exchange congestion perhaps due to other ISPs switching their subscribers over. Its only a small exchange ~ 1500 lines (SWXUU)
Currently works are underway to provide FTTC -several of the local cabs. are surrounded by barriers and new cabs for fibre are being installed - but as far as I'm aware ,this shouldn't make any difference to conventional b/band???

PN also have an exchange capacity page - http://community.plus.net/exchange-information/

There is a limitation with the AAISP info - they only monitor exchanges where they have end users. It's my understanding there needs to also be multiple users on that exchange in order for them to verify the information they compile.

That appears to be a single post last November in the forum, with nothing since. Cleary they have the info, as I surmised earlier, but not publicly available so far as I can see.

Edit - I can't even find a route/link to that page anywhere else .

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 17-Feb-14 12:34:31)

That page is updated regularly by one of the team here, it's on exchanges where we've identified multiple users affected by performance issues.