Olympic slowdown

Will the rest of the UK get slower BB due to the London sporting event over the next two weeks as you would imagine that the powers that be will have ensured (if that was possible) that there will be no BB slow down in the "Olympic" areas of London?


Arthur

Doubt it. The situation has been over-hyped.

I am expecting to have massive slowdowns due to the schools being on holiday and kids sitting on the internet during the day.

This will most likely be blamed on the Olympics though

Well there were huge slowdowns on most ISPs for both the last Olympics and the Commonwealth Games (Manchester).

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Well there were huge slowdowns on most ISPs for both the last Olympics and the Commonwealth Games (Manchester).

Agreed but that was a number of years ago so I'm sure the UK network will be more than capable of handling what will be thrown at it

I guess what you are suggesting is that Team GB BB certainly won't be winning any medals as it'll be too slow

Arthur

On the VM forums people complained that they experienced horrendous slowdowns during the Euros 2012, particularly when England played.

I was one of them and went to post but there was already a couple of threads.

I don't understand why people watch live stuff using the internet as TV broadcasts are generally much better quality anyhow.

I don't understand why people watch live stuff using the internet as TV broadcasts are generally much better quality anyhow

Perhaps broadband is too cheap when compared to paying SKY a small fortune per month to have the Sports channels on top of it's basic packages .... I dunno, there is very little live sport to be watched on terrestrial TV anymore

Arthur

Apart from Euro 2012 and the Olympics of course.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

Apart from Euro 2012 and the Olympics of course.

That's quite true but they only occur every 4 years as does the World Cup, the Open golf was available on the BBC but the German GP was only live on TV via Sky Sports F1 channel.

However I expect the Olympics will be watched online by those with a suitably good connection when the TV isn't available.

Arthur

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Will the rest of the UK get slower BB due to the London sporting event over the next two weeks as you would imagine that the powers that be will have ensured (if that was possible) that there will be no BB slow down in the "Olympic" areas of London?

Dunno. Speedtest.net appears to be down at the moment, lol.

Edit: NM - it's back again.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2081899586.png

Seems fairly normal to me 20Mb/s too low as usual.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 24-Jul-12 20:41:09)

In reply to a post by drummerjohn:

I don't understand why people watch live stuff using the internet as TV broadcasts are generally much better quality anyhow.

Because putting a TV on your desk in an office is a little conspicuous.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

... but the German GP was only live on TV via Sky Sports F1 channel.

And http://www.vipbox.tv/ once you get past the adverts and popups on that. Taks a bit of skill and practice, but I can now do it inside 60 seconds.

Never click the main X anywhere. (If you hover over an X at the top left of a box, it diappears, then reappears as a tiny one at the bottom left, and that one works.

Also wait 30 seconds for the ones in the centre to just disappear. Never touch them, and never download. You don't need to.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Never touch them, and never download.

Yeah. The websites of questionable legality streaming live sports for free often prompt users to install "missing plugins" which are almost certainly malware.

By adding Adblock Plus and Adblock Plus Pop-up Addon to Firefox, I don'd get any of the annoying boxes, just clear video from the off.

Ahhhh! I hadn't thought of that solution.

A funny thing happened on Sunday, that I was thinking of asking you as you gave me the link in the first place. After the race the program continued for ages, with normal Sky adverts interrupting of course, while all the chat and interviews went on. Then the feed suddenly stopped. A message something like "This stream has been terminated due to copyright infringement" came up.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

A message something like "This stream has been terminated due to copyright infringement" came up.

That will be because the website are indeed infringing copyright by streaming content they do not hold the rights to broadcast. When the streaming services find out, they shut the stream down. Must be an endless task for them.

As a viewer you are unlikely to run into issues though, as you are not streaming the content out to anyone.

It is very rare to get a stream stopped on Vipbox. I think they are so reliable because most are relayed via http://www.justin.tv/directory/sports which are not easy for the copyright holders to get a response from.
As you may have gathered by various station identifiers, VipBox only supply links to elsewhere, though it has been one of the most reliable sites I have come across.

Thanks for the info, I gave it a go but how do you get rid of the grey box what ever it is?
(see link below)

http://i46.tinypic.com/2eajbwz.png

Arthur

http://beusergroup.co.uk/?id=882

I have never got that one so I don't know.

This morning though I enabled IE9's popup blocker. Then when I clicked the link for that site I had to "Allow once". That got me in, then I closed the popups I got, and then it asked a couple more times and I just closed the request.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Well there were huge slowdowns on most ISPs for both the last Olympics and the Commonwealth Games (Manchester).

Slowdowns here again this morning. Over 14Mbps down earlier, but now about 2Mbps.
It is all to do with prioritizing interactive traffic when the Enta Interconnect nodes are capacity saturated.
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/8449/slowdown.jpg

So the contention that is natural to all consumer SME broadband services is kicking in, face of no surprise

Definitely a very marked effect here - normal speed was ~67Mbps, now down to ~21.

My BT BB slowed to 2.8mb during this morning's events. Back to its usual 8.8 by lunchtime. What I don't understand is why anyone wants to stream with its big download requirements when we have perfectly good Freeserve digital.

Most offices dont have Freeview TV's on each desk

Back to normal for the time being. Is there some sort of sporting competition that people are watching?

I'm feeling the slow down at certain points during the day as well - BUT at least Entanet are open about their capacity usage unlike most providers where their customers won't know what's going on! :¬)

Switched to USB TV today...

I'm feeling the slow down at certain points during the day as well - BUT at least Entanet are open about their capacity usage unlike most providers where their customers won't know what's going on! :¬)

I agree. My Entanet supplier explained with the usual 15 minute response to a ticket. So far, so much more helpful than those that put their efforts into silly misleading adverts. Exactly what I had hoped for.
"

Dear XXXX XXXXXX,

That's not a problem. To clarify, where the connection nodes are under heavy load there is a traffic prioritisation system in place where interactive traffic is prioritised over non-interactive traffic. For more information, please follow the link below.

http://noc.enta.net/2009/12/traffic-prioritisation-m...

If your speed drops again, to determine if you are being affected by this, I would advise rerunning the BT speed test, then proceeding to step 2. This asks you to switch to some test login details with BT, bypassing the connection node entirely. If your speed is normal in step 2, it is likely that you are being affected by contention at the interconnect node.

Should you need to respond to this message, please click here. Alternatively, you can call our Support Team on 0871 210 9977. Please do not reply to this e-mail, as this address does not receive incoming mail.

Kind regards,

Dean Simmons

Freeola and GetDotted Customer Support Centre "

Edited by professor973 (Wed 01-Aug-12 21:37:39)

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

My BT BB slowed to 2.8mb during this morning's events. Back to its usual 8.8 by lunchtime. What I don't understand is why anyone wants to stream with its big download requirements when we have perfectly good Freeserve digital.

Two reasons:-

1) Not many offices profide TVs for their staff to watch from their desks during working hours;

2) As I understand it the full 24 channels are only available in HD over FreeSat, not Freeview. (Freeserve was a very good dialup ISP that has mutated over the years into Orange broadband). However iPlayer of course has them in HD, so when we want to watch something that isn't on Freeview I shove an HDMI cable from the laptop to the TV and go Full Screen. Tsonga tennis was from 19-all onwards was good .

As the sporting event continues my BT BB has slowed from around 9Mb to around 4Mb over the past few days. My stats appear unchanged so I assume this is down to the iplayer etc.

I neither stream nor game so my speed is adequate for my needs, in fact it's similar to previous years before we got FTTC 100 yds down the road. But aren't there wider issues in using the internet for entertainment rather than communications?

Not had much in the way of slowdown, other than really peak times. Not too bad. Have noticed my SNR drop a fair bit though. Depending on traffic I can see a fluctuation of 1.5dB on my line. Currently sitting at 2.4dB, but was at 1.9dB last night.