I clicked through on your link in sig and came across this. http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/tr...

Not bad at showing how much they prioritise but it does show how poor P2P is.

Plusnet Value Fibre - Plusnet Extra Fibre
P2P= Best Effort P2P= Bronze

Nothing between them really and you only get gold if you pay for, Plusnet Pro Add-On. More money.

Prioritisation is a far different thing from speed limiting.

Its main function is to ensure that low bandwidth, highly latency dependent traffic such as VOIP and gaming get through easily, with gradations for other forms of traffic.

For instance, I would be highly annoyed if a browser page load for me took 3 seconds instead of less than a second because of your and other P2P users' downloads. Gamers would be justifiably incensed if they lost every game because of the same torrenters.

It is clearly in the interests of most internet users, not just PN customers, that torrents should be early losers in the competition for throughput.

An interesting, but unknown statistic, would be how many users on each ISP use torrents, and how many do not. It would also be interesting to know how many ISPs do or do not have any such controls in place, but just choose not to make them public.

I fear you repeatedly draw negative conclusions from the openness of PN about what they do, as opposed to the complete silence from most other ISPs. Has it occurred to you those others might be scared of comparisons?

In reply to a post by superspeed:

... you only get gold if you pay for, Plusnet Pro Add-On. More money.

I wasn't aware that Pro affected prioritisation. Does it? I thought it was only to do with the removal of speed caps.

That was wireless:

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

11:30: 2.2MBps (17Mbps).
14:00: 2.2MBps (17Mbps).
16:00: 1.5 - 2.2 MBps (12-17Mbps).

This is wired, and crossing either side of the "8PM-10PM" managed period:

19:00: 1.0-4.1 MBps (8-33Mbps)
19:50: 1.4-4.1 MBps (11-33Mbps)
20:30: 10-200 KBps (80Kbps - 1.6Mbps)
21:30: 10-200 KBps (80Kbps - 1.6Mbps)
22:20: 3.0-3.9 MBps (24-31Mbps)

Even pausing things when not directly testing, Knoppix was complete by that point.

All figures are as presented by BitTorrent. They don't look to include overheads (either P2P overheads or the basic ethernet and PPP overheads).

Well to me they seem linked. Something on low priority isn't going to be allowed to download fast or be unrestricted. That list basically show you that.

For instance, I would be highly annoyed if a browser page load for me took 3 seconds instead of less than a second because of your and other P2P users' downloads. Gamers would be justifiably incensed if they lost every game because of the same torrenters.

Think would be annoyed if someone rabbiting on VOIP, made my P2P slow down when, they have a normal moblie/landline for that.

I fear you repeatedly draw negative conclusions from the openness of PN about what they do, as opposed to the complete silence from most other ISPs. Has it occurred to you those others might be scared of comparisons?

We all have a right to know the truth about a product we are buying, so nothing negative about it. Why would anyone be scared of comparisons, that's crazy. Comparisons help, just like that, bit out of date fibre isp list your mate did, helped me.

Edited by deleted (Sun 11-Nov-12 22:54:05)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I wasn't aware that Pro affected prioritisation. Does it?

Yup:

- Everything that is "Titanium" stays that way - such as the VoIP and Gaming stuff you mention.
- VPN traffic is upgraded from Gold to Titanium - so is an obvious gain for business or home-workers seeking solid work connectivity.
- All other categories that are lower than "Gold" are promoted to Gold.

The most obvious difference is the "Other" category, where previously unrecognised traffic is categorised (perhaps new games, or perhaps something more "novel"). Most packages treat this category as suspicious, and give it a low priority (Silver or Gold-plated). The Pro add-on goes the opposite way, and deems "suspicious" as being very important (Titanium).

You tell me. That seems like another way of saying, pay for this and we will lift the restrictions. Both speed and priority.

Thanks again for the tests.

Still quite slow for your connection and worse from 8pm. But that's PN limit at that time from what I was told.

Ah! Thanks .

I clearly needed to go through the related pages.

In reply to a post by superspeed:

Well to me they seem linked. Something on low priority isn't going to be allowed to download fast or be unrestricted. That list basically show you that.

They are linked in a sense - but only because the lower priority can *cause* lower speeds, but does not *force* a lower speed.

Something on a low priority is going to be allowed to download fast - but *only* when there is sufficient bandwidth left after all the higher priority traffic has been dealt with.

That means it isn't truly unrestricted - but the restriction is a dynamic one, which accumulates from everyone else who is using any higher priority protocol.

The point is to make sure that those protocols which are small but latency-critical get through quickly, while those protocols that hog bandwidth without caring about latency come along behind.

In essence, P2P is being allowed to hoover-up all the spare bandwidth available - but in a controlled fashion.