New User Initial Thoughts.

Hi All,

I have just migrated to AAISP from TalkTalk.

With my old ISP TalkTalk, my ADSL1 service slowed to an absolute crawl in the evenings making even browsing frustratingly slow. I have an IP profile of 7150 kbps and tests direct to the BT Speedtester site almost always give 6600 + kbps results. TalkTalk, while admitting the problem appeared to be in their network, were unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

I live in a small village so am restricted to IPStream services so decided to give AAISP a try. What a difference! I am now getting 6600 + kbps ALL THE TIME! I can now watch youtube and other streaming services something I never could with TalkTalk at busy times.

It's not 100% percent rosy however. My TalkTalk service (ex freedom2surf) was unlimited, not that it helped me much! While I am unlikely to exceed the 50GB per month it is going to be all too easy to exceed the 1.25GB daytime allowance particularly as it is now so fast. Just windows updates and general browsing will get me close to, if not exceed that figure. It's probably just a case of changing my usage pattern; only time will tell.

The second problem, not a problem to me or I suspect the vast majority of people here, are the AAISP control pages. They are absolutely full of jargon and a nightmare for anyone who is not a "geek". I asked my wife to take a look at them to see what she thought. She said that "It might as well be written in Chinese". She didn't even want to continue after hitting the "Security Certificate" warning. As she is in the IT Industry and runs courses on MS Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Access she is not a complete airhead! Some might say that there is no need to go here for the average user but, as far as I can see, they have to be negotiated to get the "Usage" data. That data is pretty essential if you don't want to run up big bills.

Just one question. It appears to be suggested in some posts that there is a special "night time" rate. I don't see any mention of it in my 1.25GB/50GB two unit tariff.





























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Edited by deleted (Sat 04-Feb-12 14:03:32)

Hi and welcome.

The night-time special rate does exist, every day, between 2am-6am, metered at 1 unit per terrabyte (1000 gigabytes). If you can, schedule any non-immediate downloads during these hours.

In the control panel where it shows you your unit breakdown, there is a "Full" hyper-link at the bottom. Clicking this will show it. By default, any units for each tariff that are still 0.00 units (eg. you've not transferred enough traffic within those hours for it to clock to 0.01) are hidden from view. Clicking on "Full" will show you everything.

The 1.25 Gb per unit is pretty low for 20CN connections, I must admit, but be warned, you can eat through that fairly rapidly. When 21CN arrives at your exchange, definitely try and move onto that to get more peak time allowance.

In reply to a post by mixt:

Clicking on "Full" will show you everything.

Thanks. I missed that.

Re: the certificate warning.

AAISP uses CACert to sign it's SSL pages, and CACert is not trusted by default in most browers.

Info here: http://aa.net.uk/cacert.html

I was with AAISP until recently, when I had to move away. It's a good service, especially for the technically-minded, and it's certainly flexible. However, I think it's intended for the more 'traditional' households - full-time single adults and couples out at work during the day, Monday to Friday 9:00 to 18:00 - and not for the less predictable households (or ones with kids that use the internet). There's a big difference in price between starting a download at 17:01 and starting it at 18:01 - nearly 50 times...

Our small family's usage was heading rapidly in to the "Heavy Business User" category - 10GB during daylight hours. (When I first saw the 'heavy business user' category, I was thinking British Steel or British Petroleum, but apparently it's easier to reach 10GB than that...)

I'd definitely consider using them again if the tariffs were brought up to date and avoided charging daytime users quite as much. And those latency graphs are pretty cool, too.

Were you not tempted by 60GB 8am to midnight, unlimited free usage midnight to 8am for £17.99 per month?

In reply to a post by jelv:

Were you not tempted by 60GB 8am to midnight, unlimited free usage midnight to 8am for £17.99 per month?

Yes I was - I was just a little afraid to go for another big company. AAISP has a good reputation for not being the bottleneck and as I am out between 9am. and 6pm most days the daytime rate hopefully will not be a problem. If it is I shall move again..

I should say I'm not with AAISP but I would presume their broadband usage quotas are skewed to try and get usage at the night time in line with the business fibre connections (that will mainly be used during the daytime) so that their network as a whole uses pretty much the same throughput at any time during the day therefore creating the best value for money when AAISP are negotiating Transit contracts.

If AAISP didn't provide fibre business connections I'm pretty sure that you'd get more usage during the daytime than in the evening.

It's not just fibre related, A&A have always considered 9-5 Mon-Fri to be their peak usage period (with the most expensive bandwidth costs) for as long as I've been a customer of theirs (just under 10 years now)

That used to be the case for them..... but times, they are a changing:

http://www.aa.net.uk/news-2011-10.html

Certainly A&A have tweaked the numbers but still peak time is still 9-5 Mon-Fri

Consider what bandwidth 1 unit buys on each type of line
20CN Peak: 1.25Gb Off-Peak: 50Gb
21CN Peak 2.5Gb Off-Peak: 50Gb
Be Peak: 10Gb Off-Peak: 50Gb

So even at their closest on Be you still get 5x more bandwidth for yuour unit Off-Peak and on BT lines it buys between 20x and 40x times more bandwidth, so I'd argue we have quite some way to go before the peak times can be said to have changed.

Very true. A&A was the perfect ISP for me prior the change as I worked in an office during the day and had (I think) 125GB per unit on BE in the evenings.

Now I work from home it's not as good but I'd rather have a decent ISP and watch my usage than a [censored] ISP.

In reference to www.aa.net.uk/news-2011-10.html:

We have been traditionally a business ISP with peak usage during the day. Gradually over the last few years that has changed. This means we have a peak usage in the evening and weekends now. Our tariffs need to change to reflect this - encouraging daytime and discouraging evening and weekend usage.

I didn't understand this quote of theirs when I was trying to understand their pricing structure, which does appear to discourage daytime use. But I suspect that they are currently more concerned with controlling demand than in suddenly gaining thousands of extra customers - which could reduce the quality of their service.

Daytime used to be very low allowances and evening weekends much higher.... when I came back I got 8GB per unit for daytime and 125GB per unit for evenings / weekends.

This now 10GB per unit daytime (increase of 25%) and 50GB per unit for evenings and weekends (decrease of 60%)

Granted it's 5x "more expensive" during the day still but they've always had peak during the day as they have a large customer base who are businesses.

I am not a customer so I cant really comment much but when I was on aaisp years ago the impression I got was they would upgrade capacity whenever it was needed, now the last last year or so they seem to be fiddling constantly with their pricing, rebalancing day and night etc. which gives me the impression they trying to equalise the day and night time usage instead of upgrading capacity for the peak usage. In short I wouldnt sign up to aaisp now because they way too unpredictable with what they offer.

I think the rebalancing is more due to changes in the way their customers' data use is balanced than having an overly "make-do-and-mend" attitude to network capacity - with people downloading or streaming more video and other large content off-peak (through services like iPlayer and netflix, or less legitimate means) off-peak traffic relating to personal use is seeing a much higher growth rate than peak traffic which is mainly due to business use. They can't just not react to that sort of change, nor would it make sense commercially to pile more capacity in for those off-peak bursts when that capacity would lie idle most of the time (even in most of the off-peak time). I assume they've considered introducing more differential pricing bands which might help there by spreading the load more evenly, but it would probably be a complication too far IMO: irritating to some existing customers and scaring off potential customers.

I'm told (I forget where I heard this, probably this forum somewhere) that they are currently um-ing and ah-ing about the next stage of capacity upgrades because they at the limit of where current arrangements can practically go and the next step is a major investment with no half-way house. If that step is taken too early they'll lose a pile on running more capacity than is needed for now and would probably have to pass some of that hit on to customers.

In short I wouldn't sign up to aaisp now because they way too unpredictable with what they offer.

On the assumption that my understanding is correct (always a big assumption, I know...) as a current customer I feel quite safe sticking around. They seem to have a handle on where they are going even if they are not sure yet when to charge ahead with certain changes. Their network is stable and not from what I can see showing signs of getting too close to saturation, and the recent change in charging structure was the first in a while (the first since I started considering switching to them over a year ago) so it isn't like they are messing around every month or few, and people who weren't happy were allowed to leave without penalty even if near the start of a 12 month contract.

The upgrade work for the "step-change" has been completed and more capacity to BT 21CN has been ordered.

My understanding of the rebalancing is similar to yours - essentially it was imnplied that the differential between peak and off peak traffic levels had lessened, so the usage parts of the tarrifs were adjusted to reflect this.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

now the last last year or so they seem to be fiddling constantly with their pricing, rebalancing day and night etc.

Or it may be because they are preping their centrals for the upgrade to 10Gb.

Source: http://revk.www.me.uk/2011/09/putting-up-prices.html

Upgrading capacity is never a cheap business.

My impression was that they are mainly concentrating on the business daytime traffic and ideally the total capacity is geared to the daytime usage. They'll then tweek the tariffs for the off-peak to try to make the off-peak usage match daytime.

Hi,

I started this thread and can now give my thoughts after one month of use.

I have to say that I had no idea now little 1.25GB per month between 9-6 really is! There are three computers in this household and even severely restricting use during the day I have have used the following (sorry about the formatting) :-

Billing from install to 10 Mar 2012 Units
Metering started 02 Feb 2012 13:00
Usage recorded up to 03 Mar 2012 15:00
________________________________________

This period
Bytes Rate Units
20CN daytime (09-18 M-F) 5,875,361,188 1¼GB 4.70
20CN evening (18-24 M-F) 8,446,632,073 50GB 0.17
20CN night (00-09) 953,575,038 50GB 0.02
20CN weekend 6,049,193,280 50GB 0.12
20CN night special 74,059,084 1TB 0.00
Units so far this period 5.01
________________________________________

Allowance calculation
Monthly tariff 2 units
Total tariff allowance for this period 2.51
________________________________________

So far this period
Total allowance 2.51
Total usage 5.01
Over usage to carry forward, so far 2.50


Even though I have only used 20GB this month because I have used 5GB between 9-6 I am way over my allowance.

I can't fault the speeds or the service but this is going to prove to be a very expensive ISP. I live in a small village so am stuck with 20CN.

Plusnet here I come!

Edited by deleted (Sat 03-Mar-12 16:14:51)

When I first looked at AAISP usage allowance I thought the daytime allowances were 'per day' not 'per month'! [*True*]

I love AAISP's customer service reputation but for people that need to use the internet (including video etc.) during the day it just doesn't work. As you will see in this forum, for those that only need/use broadband outside working hours then things are fine