Yep, not something you could easily make a comparison of but one way of thinking, when a central pipe starts getting full you'll see ping spikes, packet loss and slowdowns.

On our network we control what gets affected by the priority so we say that lower priority traffic gets slowed down and higher priority doesn't.

So for a 2Mbps connection you still get 2Mbps on HTTP, 20ms pings on gaming and your VoIP call is perfect but your P2P is reduced to say 192kbps.

The same situation on the unmanaged pipe might reduce your speed to 512kbps which you get on both the P2P and HTTP but at the expense of a 50-250ms fluctuating in game ping and random packet loss cutting your VoIP call off every 30 seconds.

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That's my point Ian, if hypothetically, the congestion occurs prior to reaching the PN network all traffic will be slower as it hasn't reached the point at which PN can mark it with a coloured blob yet.

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Isn't that the effect that exchange congestion gives you?

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... and for not so good speeds on gaming and http.

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I have been with two different ISP's since leaving Plusnet 12 months ago.

Neither ISP uses any form of shaping or rate limiting at all.

All three are on a par regarding gaming with excellect pings and no lag.

Regarding HTTP, browsing with Plusnet may be fine but HTTP servers are rate limited on all but one account option.

All protocols are rate limited with Plusnet at some point during the day, including some HTTP websites at all times.

In this respect the two other ISP's outshine Plusnet by not rate limiting, and it certainly makes a lot of difference.

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some protocols will be hit to create bandwidth for the high priority ones.

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Which is why the Plusnet network drops Gold packets at peak times.

My parents sky connection is ok but not good for gaming, P2P etc. They used to be with BT and sync'ed at full speed for ADSL. Now with sky off peak gaming pings are 50ms and download speeds are not too hot. So what ever they are up to is not very good in their experience.

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Because we're able to drop bronze and/or silver traffic to ensure that we're meeting the demand for gold and titanium traffic this will then allow us to sustain speed on those protocols.

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Did you forget to mention that you also drop Gold traffic?

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So for a 2Mbps connection you still get 2Mbps on HTTP

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Though not on the various HTTP protocols that Plusnet rate limit.

Which ISP's were you with ?

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Isn't that the effect that exchange congestion gives you?

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Exactly, which affects all ISP's. So advertising low latency and low pings is something any ISP can only guarantee within their network.

The implication that just because an ISP manages/prioritizes traffic leads to a better gaming experience is misleading. Due to circumstances outside it's control this is not always the case. Exchange congestion, peering congestion, games server congestion all play a part.

I want to make it clear that this isn't a dig at PN. It's a response to jelv's post. He implies that because HTTP and gaming traffic are prioritized that they are faster than an ISP who doesn't manage the network in the same way.

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Because the traffic is prioritised above other traffic, the network should adapt to ensure that titanium/gold traffic comes down faster.

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In reality the titanium queue, the highest priority queue, can only accept a small amount of traffic. It is normally reserved for network management protocols, routing protocols and VoIP to guarantee latency. Traffic in other queues is slowed down as it passes through the Ellacoya switches and slowed again as it passes through the QoS implemented on the ERXs (I'm presuming you still use those devices). HTTP on PN will be slower than any uncontended ISP. If gaming traffic sits in titanium, it may be as quick as an uncontended ISP, if gold, it will be slower.

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That's the entire point of traffic management.

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The point of your traffic management is to manage the bandwidth, speed is only a factor when traffic sits in the titanium queue.

TT