If your broadband isnt at the "upto" speeds

hello,

does your broadband not run at your "upto" spped? do you have contention issues at prime time?

then please sign this e-petition:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/17148

The current legislation encourages ISP's to over sell and under invest in thier products. The internet is now a utility just like water, gas and electricity. The legislation should be changed to reflect this and encourage the ISP's to behave properly as utility providers.

If your broadband was "10Mb/s guaranteed" and and you got 30 Mb/s you would be much more inclined to enthuse about the ISP.

This change would make ISP's more transparent.

Edited by deleted (Fri 16-Sep-11 12:14:05)

In reply to a post by toady777:

does your broadband not run at your "upto" spped? To you have contention issues at prime time?

That does not make sense..

Broadband will always work up to the "up to" speed, unless it is completely broken in the sense that it is not working at all.

i.e ISP says, up to 2Mb, and you get 135k. That is still technically "up to" 2Mb.

You might want to rethink your petition.

Matt

ISPs do sell 5Mbps with 99.999 uptime, but you would not want to pay the price.

Voltage analogy, UK is nominally 230V RMS, to make it closer to the Europe 220V, but many still measure at 240V or sometimes higher, reducing life of some devices.

The minimum service level for consumer broadband is around the 25Kbps to 100Kbps mark, i.e. what they budget for in the bandwidth allocation, and this is impossible to guarantee due to the wide number of things that can affect it. The services with guarantees often use expensive managed hardware to allow for the tracking of uptime for SLA etc.

How does the guarantee cope with the variations in telephone line length, vagueries in how people configure computers, slow wireless links.

Also one service that guarantees 50Kbps compared to another with the same guarantee may perform very differently at peak times.

It's not good business sense to give you more than you've paid for is it?

I've never really understood this upto argument, I really can't see how else BB would or could be sold as a lot of it is down to the distance from the exchange and line quality, what I think people forget about in this digital age is that the old PSTN lines are effectively analogue lines, aren't they?

You seem not to understand the nature of broadband. To put it in simple terms, the "signal" weakens as it travels along a phone line, the longer the line. the lower your speed, this isn't due to ISP overselling, its a technical fact. The aims in the petition are unachievable in terms of providing a mass market broadband, although you may be able to get guaranteed speeds (quite low ones) if you are prepared to pay high costs for a leased line. The ADSL customers of an ISP will get varying speeds depending on their distance from the exchange - anything from sub 1 up to whatever the exchange is capable of - mine will only do 8Mbps. Im not saying that over-contention doesn't occur from time to time, but the wording of the petition over simplifies the problem, the majority of people have low speeds due to line length, line condition or indeed the funky wiring within their property, coupled in many cases with an under investment by the wholesaler in upgraded exchange equipment.

I'm on an Upto 8Mbps service, it performs in line with the expectations for my line stats, I get around 5.5Mbps, being a couple of miles from the exchange I cant expect more. Many people would benefit from taking the time to learn about the simple steps that can be taken to ensure that their line is performing at its best.

A better idea would be to outlaw the use of headline speeds, and force BTw to provide a realistic estimate of line capability in the checker rather than the ridiculous 1.5 to 5.5 meg guesstimate I saw on a friends line when he moved recently.

Just My Opinion.... YMMV

Thanks for pointing out the typo's - I'm too reliant on spell checkers.

I'm pretty sure if your gas supplier only gave you 50% gas pressure at prime time, and then the methane was mixed with nitrogen so that it barely held a flame you would complain. If this was because they only brought enough gas to cover the mean daily usage, there would be scandal.

This is what the ISP's are currently doing. Thier "upto" claims allow them to over subscribe thier infrastructure massively on the assumption that most users will never reach this limit. The trouble is, this is now at the point that at prime time many ISP's infrastructure in congested areas cant cope.

Currently ISP's work out the max possible bandwdith, then assume that the users will use less than 5% of it.

If however, they guaranteed a minimum level of service, then they would have to prove that for X users at Y bandwidth they must have Z bandwidth.

If the internet is truley to be a utility legislation must change to allow you the user a minimum SLA.

Actually at peak times in the winter there can be a lowering of gas pressure, and in some US cities brown-outs from too many air conditioners are not uncommon.

Also the way we pay for gas is different, its per unit used, if broadband were the same then ISP's would encourage us to use as much as possible.

Also remember even business SLA's generally only cover traffic from one location to another specific one and are based on technologies that do not suffer signal degradation over a few km of phone cable.

Up to is a bit of a cloudy description, but a guarantee of say 100Kbps, would make most people believe that YouTube would never work for example, when in reality even with current products it does for the vast majority of customers.

In reply to a post by toady777:

If the internet is truly to be a utility legislation must change to allow you the user a minimum SLA.

If a Minimum Speed SLA was set what do you think exactly would happen? - I predict it would likely end in vast areas being deemed "not suitable for broadband order" and simply wont allow you to sign up (like the early days) - you would certainly not see ISPs or BT try to improve the line, this is simply physics. A long line is a long line and no amount of rerouting or copper improvements can improve what spec an ADSL product can and can not work along and to what speed. (ignoring technological / product changes)

So your campaign could in fact hobble more people than it helps.

If however you were to focus instead on peak time throughput that would be a different matter. But personally I don't see any need to change the "Upto" arrangement as providing the buyer has a little knowledge and is realistic the system does work IMO.

I think it would be a good thing to advertise the broadband by a minimum guaranteed speed. Its how they do it in Portugal and it seems to work well there. I can only speak from my own experience but it didn't seem like rural areas suffered from this sales model. I was still able to get broadband up in the mountains.

Really, is that what portugal do?

http://net.sapo.pt/adsl/tarifarios
http://net.sapo.pt/adsl/tarifarios/outras_zonas

Looks to me just a selection of packages, not unlike what Be do in the UK, with its up to 12Mbpps and 24Mbps

In reply to a post by toady777:

If your broadband was "10Mb/s guaranteed" and and you got 30 Mb/s you would be much more inclined to enthuse about the ISP.

This change would make ISP's more transparent.

They don't guarantee anything, read the small print

In reply to a post by toady777:

does your broadband not run at your "up to" speed?... then please sign this e-petition:

Ridiculous! Better to start a petition on:

Does your broadband run faster than your "up to" speed?

Many ISPs market their ADSL2+ offerings as "Up to 20 Meg" or even "Up to 16 Meg" when ADSL2+ can operate up to 24 Meg. When you are close enough to exchange you could will get higher than the advertised speed and, therefore, you are not getting what you are paying for .

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

, with its up to 12Mbpps and 24Mbps

12 Mega bits per pico second ! Now that would be fast! at 12 Ebps / 12 Exabits per second!

Forget about 'upto' - there are two many factors for anyone to guarantee speed. Every link in the chain between you and the server can have a negative impact and look how many links there are:

Your PC.
Your network.
Your router.
Your line.
The exchange.
The exchange backhaul.
The core network (several hops here in most cases crossing the country from node to node).
The link to your ISP's servers.
The interconnect between your ISP and the next one.
<repeat the bit in bold a few times depending on far away the server is>
The link from the host ISP to your target server (could be anything already listed).
The target server's router.
The target server's internal network.
The target server itself.

..then back again for the response.

No it's pointless trying to guarantee speeds - it's as impossible as guaranteeing journey times on international journeys.

A more useful petition would be one that addresses the use of the word 'unlimited'.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 16-Sep-11 15:15:58)

Upto = capable of a certain speed, if there was a promise and guarantee of a certain set speed then yes, however there is not because that why its upto!

Exactly.. no arguments here, I know what up to means and I'm fine with it.

Why do posters keep assuming that most people are morons and cannot comprehend that "up to" means that there line will not work above the stated speed and may be slower? Should I sue Bugatti because my Veyron (or ADSL kit in the exchange) can go up to 220mph, but the UK roads (phone lines) limit me to 70mph or less?

No more daft legislation please. As others have pointed out here, your proposal could result in large swathes of people without any service as ISPs avoid penalties in rural areas, or a move to charging per megabit consumed, probably raising prices all round.

Feel free to not sign the petition.

I'm only suggesting it be dicussed as the current model leads to ISP's over selling and there being no way to force them to increase bandwidth. The only way out is paying to end a long term contract and trying some other ISP.

In the commercial sector in the UK most lines and connections are fixed speed. I work for a cloud services provider and fully understand why the "upto" model is used in the residential market. I'm just trying to get a discussion going.

The "upto" model with high speed internet (ethernet like connection - not the current DSL stuff) will just get abused by the likes of VM and BT by over subscribing thier lines unless a stand is taken.

Please post here if you have a better suggestion. be positive not negative

In reply to a post by toady777:

In the commercial sector in the UK most lines and connections are fixed speed. I work for a cloud services provider and fully understand why the "upto" model is used in the residential market. I'm just trying to get a discussion going.

Oh dear, you do know the price of the commercial leased lines (e.g. Ethernet) delivery don't you? You pay for a committed data rate service and SLA's it costs a little more than your £15 a month ADSL connection.

yes i do - as a said i work for a cloud services provider. My company actually resells virgins commercial lines - i have a good idea how much it costs.

But this is more about stopping them screwing residential users over with misleading and sometime blatently untrue advertising and becoming accountable for the service they offer.

Who's your ISP at home?

If you want ISPs to behave as utility providers the inevitable result is that they charge per unit used as gas, electricity and many water companies do.

I'm sure they'll be happy to guarantee performance charging per GB.

I'm not sure how many different ways joe public can read "up to" ?

It is very self explanatory

Talk Talk http://sales.talktalk.co.uk/product/broadband/plus

How fast will my broadband be?
Quite simply, the fastest broadband we can provide. Use our speed checker above to see how fast your broadband will be.


BT http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProduc...

Up to
20Mb
download speed

Hover over it and it tells you you'll get as fast as possible on your line dependant on location line etc etc

With all packages you can run a speed test to get an indication of expected speed.

How hard is it??

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Who's your ISP at home?

If you want ISPs to behave as utility providers the inevitable result is that they charge per unit used as gas, electricity and many water companies do.

I'm sure they'll be happy to guarantee performance charging per GB.

I think I would rather pay by the GB

I'm with VirginMedia. And yes Im in a vastly over subscribed area with no UBR upgrade for the last 9 months

This is what happens when ISP's oversell....

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/567b070d37e...

Edited by deleted (Fri 16-Sep-11 19:21:20)

I don't think the rest of us would rather pay by GB. When we all used to pay x per minute to connect to the net no-one dare stay on because of the charges. It would be the same with a charge per GB, no-one would dare use it for fear of charges.

Virgin are cheap, cheap comes with nasty in many cases.

You should note your issue is specifically upstream congestion though rather than download, and is a cable specific problem.

Ditch Virgin, they made a conscious decision to raise speeds and increase contention with it. A minimal download performance guarantee will just end up with ISPs managing traffic specifically to ensure they keep within that guarantee even if it means heavily managing things.

there nothing stopping you using a business internet connection that will provide you what you want.

rest of us will be happy paying way less than you and getting way more speed.

you don't really have an idea how it work as what you are suggesting is impossible. if your line is over 3.8km then you CAN NOT GET SPEED ABOVE 5meg. no government can change this.

that's why you are finding no support here. what you are suggesting will result in no internet for huge number of people.

also think ,ost people would prefer to have 1-2 meg connection and not have to worry about paying per meg

To be honest I find the fixation of many people on sync speeds quite laughable and woudl far prefer to see a statement on minimum throughput guarantees as is offered with the Infinity service.

How ever you define it though, other posters have indicated the many factors that can degrade performance that are beyond the control of ISPs. These don't impact on commercial Ethernet services where the good ISPs will provide a managed solution, installing their own routers etc. The performance is then guaranteed to that point.

The big difference though is cost. There is no real evidence of us consumers being prepared to pay the rates required to deliver that sort of high quality service in any great numbers. Those that want to can opt for a service with a throughput guarantee and will be the better for it.


But please no daft legislation, let intelligent customers make their own decisions!

Sorry, meant for the OP, not for you!

There of course did used to be a measure of expected throughput. The early days of ADSL had potential contention on a home DSL connection of 50:1.

So, by my calculations an up 8Mbps connection could be expected to get a minimum throughput of 160Kbps (480Kbps for a 24Mbps connection). If the downstream is max around 1Mbps then that would would give 20Kbps in the downstream.

Based on that contention ratio most peoples connections are probably not looking too bad.

BT dropped contention ratios though - probably because they were difficult to monitor and most users wouldn't understand them.

In reply to a post by ian72:

BT dropped contention ratios though - probably because they were difficult to monitor and most users wouldn't understand them.

Contention ratios (at the BT Wholesale level) only existed on fixed speed lines, before (and I suppose after though perhaps no longer now that true fixed speed have been replaced by RADSL with fixed profiles) ADSL Max was introduced. The whole concept of Max is different, hence contention ratios aren't applicable.

As I understand it ISPs these days work on a budget of "n" kbps per customer through their MSILs and within their own systems, where "n" is possibly as low as 100. Hence peak time congestion on some and/or the need for traffic management on many as well.

You still see ISPs advertising contention ratios of 20:1 and 50:1. Either they are totally clueless, or that is some ratio within their own systems. The idea of a 50:1 contention ratio on an MSIL is somewhat laughable.

And also because they have not scaled them in the way you did.

Some ISP's took them to over 100:1 based on the old calculation method. The variable speed nature of rate adaptive made it harder to maintain fixed ratio's, and anyway as Tiscali provided, two providers even in fixed speed days could sell contended at 50:1 but have very different experience.

e.g. put 100 x 2Mbps users onto a 2Mbps link, versus BT Wholesale that at that time would have put perhaps 1000 x 2Mbps users on a 10Mbps link.

To be of use, people need to know the constant commited bit rate, and what is available for burst, and how often bursting is allowed.

Agree with all that. But the key thing from my perspective is that originally broadband was designed with contention built in (and indeed still is). However, since they stopped stating contention (for all the various reasons) people seem to think that they should get at worst within a few meg of line speed even for a FTTC connection. That is not realistic in the real world at current prices.

My examples just showed that even on a 24Mbps line people are getting more than they would have (for the most part) as a percentage of throughput than they would have potentially expected 10 years ago.

In the end people have to understand somehow what it is they are buying - and if they knew that their knew 24Mbps line is actually provisioned for a throughput of 500Kbps (just an example) then maybe they would start to see what they get for £10 a month (and as 500Kbps with a nominal 50:1 contention was £40 per month even when I started on broadband that is quite a large drop in prices).

Edited by ian72 (Tue 20-Sep-11 08:07:49)

When the 50:1 was around BB was mainly bought by the geeks who 'got' the numbers, but we were still explaining all the time what 50:1 actually meant.

Trouble is most ISP's dont actually run any system that guarantees a minimum throughput. Same in the old 50:1 days, where the 50:1 only applied if you filled the pipe with the appropriate number of 0.5/1/2 Meg customers.

and if they knew that their knew 24Mbps line is actually provisioned for a throughput of 500Kbps

100k more like, but I agree with the point. Broadband is like timeshare.

some use the 20:1 and 50:1 conventions to differentiate their "Office" from "Home"products.

Contention ratios now are at least 100:1 on mass market ISPs

In reply to a post by yarwell:

some use the 20:1 and 50:1 conventions to differentiate their "Office" from "Home"products.

Still meaningless and invalid. Even Office products (if they truly are, in BTW terms) only get a higher priority through the WBC system. No way are 20:1 and 50:1 acceptable descriptions.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 22-Sep-11 12:43:44)

indeed, they just haven't reworked their product descriptions. Bit lame.

Bit lame.

Quite.
It's one of the first things I pick up on when a newbie asks if anyone knows anything about unheard-of ISP super-duper that has these ratios. The rest of the description always looks attractive, so how do you convince them the ISP has to be highly suspect purely on those grounds? It is a bit geekie after all!

In reply to a post by toady777:

I'm pretty sure if your gas supplier only gave you 50% gas pressure at prime time, and then the methane was mixed with nitrogen so that it barely held a flame you would complain.

Poor analogy as your example uses a situation which relies upon the supplier doing something (mixing a second gas in) whereas in the real world, its the laws of physics working against you. The ISP cannot change the laws of physics. A better analogy if you like the gas version is that if you were supplied with hydrogen gas at home, the atomic size would mean that the gas would leak out of the plastic pipes used to deliver to your home. You would not get the pressure you wanted, unless you paid for the company to replace all the connections with glass piping through which hydrogen cannot leak. That is available today but you don't want to pay for it.

In reply to a post by toady777:

This is what the ISP's are currently doing.

No, it isn't - you claim the ISP's are deliberately downgrading the service when its the laws of physics working against you.

In reply to a post by toady777:

Their "upto" claims allow them to over subscribe thier infrastructure massively on the assumption that most users will never reach this limit. The trouble is, this is now at the point that at prime time many ISP's infrastructure in congested areas cant cope.

Sort of - it allows them to size their infrastructure to match the actual demands of the clients. Even if they gave you 8Mb instreaed of 'up to', the backhaul world cost more, you would pay more, and the congestion would not alter.

In reply to a post by toady777:

Currently ISP's work out the max possible bandwdith, then assume that the users will use less than 5% of it.

Firstly I would suggest you have no idea what they do in practice.. Secondly what they are doing is sizing backhaul to match the actual traffic, not the theoretical maximum. You'll notice that motorways are sized to reflect average patterns of use i.e. 4 lanes maximum covers 99% of the usage pattern. They do not build 10 lane motorways just in case everyone decided to go to London on the same day at the same time.

In reply to a post by toady777:

If however, they guaranteed a minimum level of service, then they would have to prove that for X users at Y bandwidth they must have Z bandwidth.

You are not going to get a free lunch so get over it. This is all about you wanting more capacity but not being willing to pay for it. The stated maximum capacity with guarantees is available in packages that businesses normally buy so buy that. Your argument is all based around wanting something for nothing.

Your petition will get nowhere as its so easy to show that you know nothing about either business, physics, telecomms or that what you want is already available - but that you don't like the cost.