How EE Implements Traffic Management with No Kit?

EE resells White Label BTw products and presumably has no kit at exchange or any backhaul network.

Yet they operate varying degrees of TM on their various products, incl. usage limits on some and the blocking of outgoing Port 25 SMTP whereas BT doesn't.

How do they manage to implement this?

Do they instruct BTw on how they want to play it? Or maybe they have some online access to BTw's QoS servers?

Or maybe as part of their contract ability to route traffic via the ee network which handles management and various other nice things like email

That would make sense if EE had a network, but I thought EE got rid of their network years ago.

But on similar lines, EE got rid of their network to BTw and perhaps BTw still run it on EE lines to carry out these functions. But that wouldn't explain how EE impose their TM at their 'Off-Net' non-ex-LLU exchanges, for which they have special TM rules.

I'm pretty sure their email servers are run by Orange France as we get occasional error messages in Francais.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sun 30-Nov-14 23:02:54)

Interesting!

What does a tracert to bbc.co.uk show?

Also to www.orange.co.uk which has just really surprised me! It goes from Plusnet to LINX then off to Amazon in Ireland and seems to stay there.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Interesting!

That's what I thought !

C:\>tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.246.103]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms OrangeRouter [192.168.1.1]
2 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 213.1.112.200
3 406 ms 11 ms 10 ms 213.1.117.61
4 13 ms 13 ms 14 ms 213.1.67.50
5 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms 87.237.20.134
6 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms bbc-linx.pr01.thdow.bbc.co.uk [195.66.224.103]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms ae0.er02.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk [132.185.254.90]
9 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 132.185.255.165
10 14 ms 13 ms 13 ms fmt-vip132.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk [212.58.246.103]

Trace complete.

C:\>tracert orange.co.uk

Tracing route to orange.co.uk [46.137.108.216]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms OrangeRouter [192.168.1.1]
2 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 213.1.112.200
3 9 ms 11 ms 9 ms 213.1.117.45
4 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 213.1.67.226
5 13 ms 12 ms 13 ms 87.237.20.132
6 13 ms 12 ms 13 ms 195.66.225.175
7 25 ms 26 ms 27 ms 178.236.3.51
8 27 ms 27 ms 27 ms 176.32.106.36
9 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms 178.236.1.141
10 23 ms 25 ms 25 ms 178.236.0.198
11 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms 178.236.1.17
12 24 ms 39 ms 27 ms ec2-79-125-0-5.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com [79.125.0.5]
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

Tails out! 46.137.108.216 is owned by Ireland Dublin Amazon Data Services Ireland Ltd
.
But that'll be Orange's & EE's websites being hosted by Amazon, not any ISP network. We do know that Orange hosts its webspace at Energis UK cuz we had trouble lately with its final DNS resolvers.

They got rid of their LLU hardware, a network is a very different thing to a collection of LLU exchanges and DSLAM

If EE is using the pure whitelabel BTW service then am sure there are options for inserting your own hardware into the network.

Ah, that's how it's done!

I was going by your News item:

In reference to www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4215-orange-hand-over-broadband-keys-to...:

Orange have announced they will be handing over their fixed-line infrastructure to BT who will integrate it into their network. In return, Orange will piggy back on BT's national network which will provide a larger footprint to sell their broadband service from, and help them to provide a higher quality service.

where I wasn't clear how much hardware made up the "infrastructure" and I take it to be all. But it then goes on to talk about piggy-backing which I take to be only in the commercial sense.

Also notice in the tracerts that the 1st 3 steps are BT's but the next belongs to Orange before it goes on to the wider Net. That's where the TM must be implemented. Presumably TM can be imposed on the packets at a distance from the user's line.

Very interesting!

There can be many IP devices that you do not see too so a tracert does not tell you everything.

Yes, I forgot to include that.