Is PAYG rate limited at all?

The restrictions apply to accounts that rate limit download servers [Akamai hosts] during peak times, ie;

Option 1,2,3 and BB Plus, not sure about Option 4.

"Windows Update uses Akamai and as you'll see from the following page, this will means that speeds from there will be restricted to 1Mbps from 4pm until midnight." Metronet_James

"Certain download sites like Akamai and Rapidshare as well as FTP are rate limited at certain times but are treated as gold." DaveTomlinson

I do not need to prove anything, unless Plusnet decide to sue me for libel, I am not dumb enough to put myself in that situation knowing that Plusnet have threatened litigation in the past.

Edited by deleted (Sat 12-Jan-08 13:43:17)

Do you have any evidence that Akamai 1-5 host the BBC web pages? (I know that Akamai host BBC sites - but what does the 1-5 mean?).

Certainly under the list of sites there are a set of IP address ranges and if I set up wireshark to capture packets to/from these address ranges and browse the BBC site then I capture no packets at all - this includes watching video clips, listening to radio (live and previous shows). Note that if I download from Adobe then I do capture packets.

"I do not need to prove anything"

---

"I do not need to prove anything"

---

And?

Thanks Graham - You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. The list of Akaimai servers there doesn't reflect the entire service provided by Akaima, and Akamai isn't used to serve all of the content supplied by their customers either. Dave covered this topic in some detail in one of his Blog entries:Akamai and the tale of the download servers.

The idea is to prevent an impact such as this. What we try to achieve is that non time critical traffic like big MS Updates is prevented from swamping higher priority time sensitive traffic, such as that used for streaming traffic.

That's not easy with Akamai but we do speak to them regularly and are working on ways we can make this process more transparent to avoid any confusion (I'd also welcome suggestions on how we can explain this better). If ANY customer can point to an example of where we've got this wrong and it causes an issue with delivery of any time sensitive content, we'd want to hear about it and would definitely make it a priority find an appropriate way to put that right.

Ian

Edited by IanWild (Sat 12-Jan-08 14:14:29)

Post deleted by wingco1

HI, THIS WAS IN REPLY TO THE POST THAT WINGCO1 HAS NOW DELETED WITH REFERENCE TO GAMING PERFORMANCE ON PLUSNET. (sorry for the edit)

Hi,

When I play BF2142, BF2 etc on UK servers that are well hosted rather than being on low spec hardware and behind congested links my pings vary from about 15ms to about 25ms and are normally around 20ms. When I had 4 of us on my 2Mb link playing BF2142 etc for a few hours the pings were slightly higher at around 20-25ms. That gives you an idea of the performance people can get on well hosted servers via Plusnet.

When I join gaming servers I always have one of the lowest pings on the servers. This means even if the server is badly hosted I still get a low ping relative to other players. This means via Plusnet I get consistently lower pings thaN other people playing on line gaming.

The other important thing for gaming is to have a stable connection as well. Having a ping that varies between 1ms and 200ms is not helpfull. Again with Plusnet I get a ping that is not only lower than other gamers but also very stable. This was even true with 4 of us gaming across my 2Mb link, there was no lag and no disconnections except when a gaming server died !

Thats means in my experience yes I do get low stable gaming pings which is what gamers want. Also yes the majority of the time unless I go on a server abroad I do have one of the lowest pings on the server.

Edited by deleted (Sat 12-Jan-08 16:05:23)

Replying to myself now but here a few quick tips to improve peoples gaming pings.

Your gaming ping is really made up of 3 parts. The place where the server is hosted, your ISP and your home PC setup. The first part you can do little about, the second you need to choose an ISP which provides good stable gaming pings such as Plusnet, an entanet reseller, Zen etc.

For your Home PC :-

(1) If you internet router has a firewall built in when gaming ONLY you can turn off any AV and Firewall type software on your PC. This reduces your ping and improves the games performance. DO NOT turn off any AV type software for anything else other than gaming

(2) Play on servers in the same country as you. The closer the server is all things being equal the lower and more stable your ping will be. For BF2142 this is easy enough but for COD4 try using XFire as the in game browser is not very good.

(3) Make sure no unneeded programs like P2P clients, autoupdaters and other programs are running in the backgrouns when you are on line gaming. They will impact the performance of your PC and increase your ping.

(4) Use a wired and not wireless connection as it will be more stable and reliable.

Hope that helps people out a bit