BT supplied YouView - data use

A friend is about to start a new broadband contract with BT involving the provision of a YouView recorder. The broadband contract is only for 20GB (not a lot by today's standards, but ample for her typical use) but the data consumed by the YouView box doesn't count as part of the monthly allowance. OK so far.

How does the BT broadband 'metering' system distinguish between data used by the YouView box (not billable) and 'normal' data i.e. that which comes off the monthly allowance?

And, for my hypothetical supplementary question: suppose we installed a second YouView box of our own (i.e. not supplied by BT as part of a contract), how would the metering system distinguish between data consumed by the BT-supplied unit (unmetered) and the purchased one (part of the 20GB allowance)?

Edited by PlutoX (Sat 14-Jun-14 14:06:34)

My guess would be that data from/to the IP addresses used for BT's Youview service are omitted from BT's data counter used for billing. Same goes for BT Wi-fi usage on the Hub.

As each youview would have its own IP Address. Only 1 address would count. The second would form part of download usage. Unless you purchase multi room for £5 per month.

Not quite. The IP address is the same but the unique device id (MAC id?) is the one used to associate the Youview box with the subscription.

You can of, course use the BT Sport app or website to give you a sort of mutliview functionality which comes free as part of have a BT internet connection.

In reply to a post by flippery:

As each youview would have its own IP Address. Only 1 address would count. The second would form part of download usage. Unless you purchase multi room for £5 per month.

Eh??? Presumably, the YouView box gets leased an IP address on the Hub's LAN by its DHCP server. That address is a moveable feast, depending upon which devices on the network happen to be on at any one time. While a given device is likely to be offered the same IP address each time (based on its MAC address), it's not an absolute.

No, the correct answer cannot lie in IP addresses simply because they are impermanent.

I was suggesting that the IP addresses of the servers used to send the Youview data are white-listed and not counted towards billing. I don't think the customer's IP address would come into play, because as you say, it's variable.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

The IP address is the same but the unique device id (MAC id?) is the one used to associate the Youview box with the subscription

That sounds feasible. However, while the MAC address is built into the box hardware, it might be relatively easy for other boxes to spoof that address and thereby obtain "free" data.

My suspicion at this point is that BT use their own portal for YouView access (i.e. different from that used by 'purchased' YouView boxes) possibly in combination with checking the MAC address of the box and/or the user's public IP address at any one time.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

I was suggesting that the IP addresses of the servers used to send the Youview data are white-listed and not counted towards billing.

Fascinating: I hadn't considered the possibility that data originating from particular IPs might be classified as exempt from charging. Of course, with IP data you can do that sort of thing; with gas or electricity, you cannot

In reply to a post by PlutoX:

Fascinating: I hadn't considered the possibility that data originating from particular IPs might be classified as exempt from charging. Of course, with IP data you can do that sort of thing; with gas or electricity, you cannot

Yep, it would seem a sensible way of doing it to me. The same system could be used to zero-bill data to the BT VPN IP's used for BT Wi-fi, since that data is not customer-billed either.

The multicast data is added in the BT Wholesale network, downstream of the BT Retail metering system. The system is described here:

http://www.sinet.bt.com/sinet/sins/pdf/511v1p5.pdf

Page 9 describes the way your line profile is reduced to leave room for the IPTV stream and I assume that multiple IGMP Join requests (from more than one box) reduces the profile accordingly.