In reply to:

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I'm speaking hypothetically James, but all I'm trying to establish is, if a managed network becomes heavily congested is it possible that some traffic is dropped before being prioritized?

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You need to remember that PN rate-limit the likes of p2p traffic during peak hours for a large majority of their users. Traffic is dropped at the Ellacoya and then again at the ERX if the BT centrals or the individual customer rate-limit is reached. If they're dropping traffic elsewhere, then it is not by design.

TT

In reply to:

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

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And certainly not for HTTP to the likes of EasyNews, GigaNews etc.

TT

I am sure i read somewhere that with sky you have to ask to be put on some sort of special tier or something to get better latency for gaming.

In reply to:

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And certainly not for HTTP to the likes of EasyNews, GigaNews etc.

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Plusnet also rate limit HTTP traffic from hosting peers such as Akamai which include a lot of very popular websites on their customer list and by no means includes all of the rate limited websites.
Popular rate limited sites include:

Amazon
Adobe
BBC
Grisoft
Logitech
McAfee
Nintendo
PC World
Reuters
Thomas Cook
Warner Music
Yahoo
etc etc etc

Edited by deleted (Thu 10-Jan-08 23:39:54)

I would suggest find out what it is like NOW - not what it used to be like.

HTTP is not rate limited - gold drops are about as common as hen's teeth!

If their gaming is poor, it can be improved by having your Max Delays lowered.

As for P2P maybe a rule in the router was missed or perhaps they are on the BT product that Sky offer, called Connect?

Sky block no ports whatsover, nor do they rate limit any protocol on the LLU Packages, Base, Mid or Max.

edit: typo

Edited by soundsystem (Fri 11-Jan-08 01:55:10)

I don't believe that's the reality of it but I accept it is possible because that is how the system is probably design. I'm not aware of gold packets dropping currently...do you have some evidence of this or is it just hearsay on your part?

PlusNet customers can see the packet drop statistics graphs for each pipe. It would not be true to say that there are no gold drops on any pipes. They show 0 on 3 out of 8 in the past 24 hours with the gold drops on the others between 0.0002% and 0.0226% on the other 5. That is between 2 and 226 per million.

This thread seems to have gone off track. The original poster was asking if Plusnet would meet their needs for gaming, P2P and customer service.

In my experience as a current customer the staff at Plusnet are helpfull and friendly. Them being based in the UK is a great help unlike the cheaply outsourced helpdesks such as BT and TalkTalk.

The gaming performance is very good with low and stable pings (20ms approx) for all games I play (COD4, BF2,CS,BF2142) at any time of the day. On UK gaming servers I normally have one of the lowest pings. The only issue is games not set as high priority will not perform well unless you are on the PRO package.

P2P works fine during off peak but can be slower at peak at times. This is not a major problem for me as I don't really use P2P. When I do I schedule it for off peak times. Other people may want to be able to download P2P at full speed any time of the day.

The above discusion about traffic management is interesting but what really matters is what current customers think of the service and that it is clearly explained for potential new customers on Plusnets website. It would be unfortunate if anyone thought the people who have posted in this thread that are not recent / current Plusnet customers are commenting on their current Plusnet experience for performance, reliablity and customer service.

I for one am a current customer who is very happy with my connection but do not play on-line games and could not therefore comment to the op. I was trying to provide real data on the sub-thread rather than people relying on outdated hearsay.