What %age of your speed do you expect to get?

As Access speeds get faster (some people are lucky enough to have 200Mbit/s+ connections) I'm starting to wonder what most peoples expectations are from their ISP in terms of the %age of the speed they expect to get at peak time.

This is of course assuming the ISP manages their capacity in such a way that latency.etc doesn't go to hell in a hand basket and screw up steaming/voip/gaming.etc

Does the expectation change with regards to where you are pulling the data from? (Given that it's usually easier/cheaper to have more local capacity though IXP's than transit to far flung destinations)

Obviously if you have a slow connection anyway it's easier for the ISP to make that bandwidth available to you, but on faster lines it becomes a lot more difficult to do it whilst providing the service at a price people would actually want to pay.

I have an FTTC connection and generally manage to max it out providing the sending end is capable of sending the data that fast, but equally I have some low end servers supposedly 1Gbit/s ports that often don't get anywhere near that, but given I'm not paying much for that service I don't really expect them to either.

I think that the ISPs bandwidth is just one aspect. If you are pulling from a server with a 1Mbs connect then that is the fastest you will get irrespective of your speed.

With regard to peak usage I went with Pulse8 as they resell TTB which apparently is prioritised higher than residential traffic on the TT network. TTB seem quite fast enabling more capacity when required.

I have noticed that BT and TT are now offering a minimum speed guarantee, I haven't read the detail to see if this applies during peak times.

As connectivity evolves I think we will see companies like Netflix, Amazon and YouTube installing caches in exchanges to reduce the traffic on the backhaul. Especially if they are charged for the bandwidth they use. They already have kit installed locally with some ISPs.

All that said I would expect to see a drop of no more than 15% in my max speed during peak...

Not in telephone exchanges however, which is how your post reads. In the UK your link for Netflix shows them providing peering links at LINX and LONAP.

No, I know they are not in telephone exchanges and I was citing my opinion as opposed to fact and was in the future, not now:

"As connectivity evolves I think we will see companies like Netflix, Amazon and YouTube installing caches in exchanges to reduce the traffic on the backhaul.

What I am saying is that at some point NetFlix and co may need to consider it if/when their consumption of bandwidth increases to the point it affects everything else because providing peering links will simply not be enough or net neutrality goes out of the window.

Edited by Skilty (Fri 07-Oct-16 09:56:23)

I think as the connections get faster the %age you will get during peak time will be less, but then again if you have a Gigabit or faster connection and only get 30%-50% of that at peak time do you actually care at that point? as 300-500Mbit/s+ is still crazy fast.


As for the caches in exchanges idea, I'm not so sure especially as that really only works for certain ISPs where they have their own network, a lot of the others the traffic is encapsulated in PPP and carried over the wholesale network (Either TT or BT) where it's dumped at the ISP's LNS which will be at a handover/pop.

Now caches in the ISP core does make some sense and I think The larger ones already do this.

Ironically most of the charges are infact the backhaul from the exchange to the POP, actual internet peering/transit is the cheaper bit for most ISP's

A lot of caching is covered by Multicast in exchanges and FTTC cabinets.

In reply to a post by dragon2611:

As Access speeds get faster (some people are lucky enough to have 200Mbit/s+ connections) I'm starting to wonder what most peoples expectations are from their ISP in terms of the %age of the speed they expect to get at peak time.

I've been with Plusnet for over three years now and I expect to get 100% 24/7. Some evenings the TBB graph looks a bit shaky but most of the time it just flatlines at 64Mb/s.

At one time I'd have accepted 75% during peak hours but since rate adaptive DSL arrived all my ISPs have delivered full speed 24/7 except when there was a fault. PN were trying my patience through the first half of last year but they admitted it was a fault and got it sorted eventually.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 07-Oct-16 19:18:21)

To be pedantic, multicast is not really caching as you can't watch something and make it start to suit you.

You mean it is only for live broadcasts?

If so my post was rubbish. I thought it was a bit more wide-ranging.

Yes, just for broadcast, like tuning into a TV channel over the air. I guess there are more uses than TV, but that's all Openreach use it for AFAIK.