A&A's peak time doesn't relate to anything set by BT - if I'm reading between the lines right it is about keeping their network and peering arrangements underutilised during the normal working day so there is plenty of spare capacity should it be needed by a jump in demand from office users (particularly those on nice fast, expensive, officially uncontended, SLA-backed leased lines).

BT wholesale don't charge for data transfer; instead they charge for capacity.

An analogy: you pay for the number of lanes on your motorway, not the number of cars on it

AAISP buy wholesale services in terms of capacity and sell it on to users in terms of data transfer. In order to use their limited capacity more efficiently, they vary the charge for data transfer depending on the time of day so as to encourage users not to do everything at peak times.

Back to the analogy: you don't want everyone to travel at rush hour unless it's really necessary

As for 9-10pm being peak time, this depends on your users. AAISP's are predominantly businesses and day time tends to be their heaviest time. (At least, I think this is still the case for AAISP.)

Edited by xela (Fri 20-Jul-12 18:46:06)

It may have been true in the past, but I read AAISP's peek is around 10pm now. Same as other mainstream ISPs.

Edited by stuorguk (Sat 21-Jul-12 01:11:05)

AAISP changed prices/usage per unit back in Nov last year as a result of the shift in usage patterns of their customers. They did indeed used to be a primary business ISP but with more non-business users they have had to redress the balance with the changes

http://aaisp.net.uk/news-2011-10.html

In reply to a post by billford:

(I should probably add that AAISP aren't alone on my shortlist- Goscomb Technologies are in the running, and Zen will be if they implement IPv6 before I have to make a decision!)

Hi Bill - I may be too late in following-up, but I moved from A&A to Goscomb in November last year as a result of the A&A price increases, increasing difficulty of controlling daytime usage ( running my own server ) and some niggles around customer support.

I was anxious about Goscomb because they are mainly a business connectivity provider but their customer service has been exemplary and they have been very professional in investigating any queries, even rather technical ones; they do read what I write and answer appropriately. Highly recommended.

Yes, native IPv6 works right out of the gate. They didn't have a v6 white-listing agreement with Google but as of June this year that's no longer a problem, all Google v6-hosted services such as YouTube are open to all v6 users.

And from the packets reaching my router it is apparent that they also support IPv4 multicast if you fancy playing with that!

Downside: they are rather pricey, particularly for the unmetered packages. And since their MD doesn't write a public blog it's not very clear what their plans and aspirations are, but on the other hand that also means I'm not exasperated quite as often...

The problem with recommendations is that they don't always make coming to a decision any easier

But thanks

In reply to a post by stuorguk:

It may have been true in the past, but I read AAISP's peek is around 10pm now. Same as other mainstream ISPs.

I expect the peak bandwidth use for ADSL and FTTC will be shortly after 0200: when many automated transfers start (or become throttled) to make use of the really cheap part of the day (1000G/unit instead of 50 (off peak) or 2.5 or less (normal office working day times).

I suspect the general peak ignoring the 0200-0600 slot will be somewhere between 1900 and 2300 - when people are home from work, have had their evening meal, and are using things like iPlayer and tv/film streaming services.

For the customers with leased lines (which IIRC are SLA backed with regard to the bandwidth being available) will be during the day at some time as said customers will be business users.

Linx Stats are quite telling. Peak is 9-10pm. The BBC said their iPlayer peak was the same.
In the US, Netflix accounts for about 30% of traffic at peak periods. Look at Linx stats when Netflix UK started around the beginning of the year. It went up quite a bit in a few months.

IPTV is going to drive bandwidth usage up a lot more in the next few years. When you think that Netflix streams at 9Mb/s in HD, thats a lot of bandwidth. Its starting to put ISPs like AAISP completely out of reach for domestic consumers.