Thinking about Plusnet as ISP

I'm looking to leave my current ISP and I'm torn between whether to go with Plusnet Option 3 or ADSL24 both are very similar packages and the 1 month contract terms certainly appeal. I just have a couple of questions if anyone could answer them that would be great.

What is the general service like, speed and connection wise?
Are there any hidden charges when signing up?
How long after using MAC code and sign up does it take to switch over?

Thanks

Dunno if you have read the info, but do you know about the Plusnet 90 day guarantee?

Yes it was one of the things that made me look twice at Plusnet, that and the short term 1 month contract.

All the good IPStream ISPs have one-month contracts don't they? Entanet resellers, IDNet, Zen, Newnet, Plusnet. Bt doesn't.

There is one huge difference you may not be aware of, ADSL24 offer "no port blocking or traffic throttling".

Plusnet traffic manage and rate limit [throttle] on Option 3 to 256Kbps max download and 192Kbps max upload speed at certain times of the day depending on protocol.

I would recommend ADSL24 over Plusnet for these reasons.

I see absolutely no point in paying for an up to 8Mb connection when at times you will only receive a maximum speed of one quarter of a Mb.

As stated though on the traffic management pages that's so other protocols are given priority during the busy times - your p2p traffic may well run that slow during the evening but you'll still be getting web pages and streaming/voip traffic at the fastest speed the line can handle, and if you leave the downloading till overnight it won't be counted towards your usage allowance. It depends how you use the service as to whether or not that works out better for you.

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There is one huge difference you may not be aware of, ADSL24 offer "no port blocking or traffic throttling"

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Have they stopped managing traffic at busy times with the ALT, where all protocols are slowed when the network is busy?

Its a good way of doing it, but traffic management none the less.

At the end of the day its what you want out of your connection.

I'm an above average user, but Enta's ALT doesnt work for my useage and would actually drive me nuts.
I dont use p2p - therefore with PN practically all my traffic came down at 7Mbps.
Whereas with Enta my all speeds would slow down, during their peak usage times.

If you want to use p2p/nntp/pr0n download at peak time, then go Enta... or choose the Pro Option
If youe not bothered and as long as you understand whats affected and what isnt you should be fine.

Do you have any first hand experience of that?

Because I do, and I can assure you that the experience you believe you would have is not actually what you get. My experience with enta connections is that in fact you get pretty reasonable performance even at night when the "ALT" is in force.

They're not perfect though, and I've seen a few issues, but then I've seen many many more with PN.

I have changed to Pro from Option 2 just to get a product without restrictions. The small extra cost is well worth it in my opinion.

You can't be downloading that much if you are living with PN's data allowances, unless you're buying extra, and if you're doing that why not just go the whole hog and sign up for Zen or IDNet?
Looking at the chart for PN option 3, the protocols that aren't restricted don't need much bandwidth anyway, with the possible exception of downloading lots through a VPN or big files over http. The other bandwidth intensive protocols are heavily restricted for large parts of the day, and even with the ALT at Enta you'll get better throughput with those than you will with PN during the hours of restriction, and outwith those hours the ALT will most likely not be doing anything so you'll be back to full line speeds.
The biggest problem with Enta's ALT is the amount of FUD surrounding it.

Regards,
Steve

The ALT also only really affects people who sync above 4Mbps. PN management affects all sync speeds. I think This Entanet graph is interesting.

It's horses for courses, for some like kitz PN is better, for many I imagine Enta is better, but then pricing and overnight allowances come into the reckoning. The cheapest viable (ADSL) Enta is �19.99, but even that does have an overnight limit where PN are all unlimited I think?

The ALT throttles to a minimum of 2Mb after 10pm and apparently is tuned to deal with packet loss under normal contention conditions anyway, which is still far less restrictive than PN's Option 3 rate limits during the day and evenings.

I believe Kitz subscribes to Be...

Edited by deleted (Thu 30-Oct-08 17:11:41)

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I dont use p2p - therefore with PN practically all my traffic came down at 7Mbps.
Whereas with Enta my all speeds would slow down, during their peak usage times.

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But it is not just P2P that is rate limited with Plusnet, What could you possibly download that is not affected by Plusnet's throttling of P2P, Usenet, FTP, Download Sites and Download Servers?

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If you want to use p2p/nntp/pr0n download at peak time, then go Enta... or choose the Pro Option

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What about all other protocols as above which you failed to mention?
If you want to download Windows Updates? Game Patches? Virus Updates?Virtually anything that requires downloading a file is throttled.

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If youe not bothered and as long as you understand whats affected and what isnt you should be fine.

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I agree, if you want all of your downloads throttled for most of the day, choose Plusnet Option 3.

Im currently on Option 3 and the only thing that i have seen throttling on at the moment is P2P and Windows update during the day. I have downloaded many game patches and general HTTP files during the day and its come down at my full line rate, infact i have been on the plan for a while and 99% of the time i get very fast speeds. You would probably get high throttling if the network was very busy yes, but they always add new capacity should they need to. For example they added an additonal 155Mb segment on the 23rd October, and they do this frequently. Theres only the very rare occasion i find downloads slow, so saying all downloads throttled for most of the day isnt my experience on Option 3 thats for sure.

What you seem to be suggesting is that throttling only kicks in when the network is busy. I very much doubt that is the case.

More a case of your are lucky to be finding download servers that aren't on Plusnet's hit list.

Not really lucky, download servers they throttle are:(from Plusnet)

Download sites:

Adult bouncer
Bangbros Online
Kingdom.com
badonga
guba.com
imageshack.com
megaupload
metainterfaces.com
narrowstep.com
rapidshare
sendspace.com
wildrose.net
TerraSpace (Rapidshare again)

Download servers

German Mirror site
Ireland Mirror site
Kent Mirror site (^Must be Sourceforge)

Akamai 1-5 (High bandwidth content delivery such as windows update)

IP ranges are:

213.203.218.120 - 127
193.1.193.0 - 127
212.219.56.128 - 191
80.67.81.0 - 255
80.67.87.0 - 255
84.53.134.0 - 255
84.53.136.0 - 84.53.137.255
213.254.200.0 - 63

Thats what they list, and understandably. Sites and servers that a lot of people could/will potentially use. General HTTP downloads to of which i use, speed is dependant how many packets are being dropped on that gateway at the given time. Which will be counted as Plus Non Interactive traffic, but gold on the Pro plans. Theres always throttling there from the Ellacoya stuff yes, but if theres room to be flexed it seems to do just that.

Edited by deleted (Thu 30-Oct-08 20:14:45)

I could live quite happily within Plusnets allowances, and no I couldnt move to Zen because some months I would exceed their allowance and have to buy extra, so it would work out much more expensive. :/

With Entas ALT - unless youre a member of this forum then there very little information about it. I see little information about it on many of their reseller sites... apart from UKFSN (thanks Jason).

Like I said in my original post - its what you want out of your connection.. and its certainly not like some in this thread have implied that everything aside from surfing is throttled.

Its not all akami servers.. About a year ago I reported throttling from one of the akami servers which shouldnt have been restricted (Opera downloads) .. and it was soon removed by Plusnet.

>> I agree, if you want all of your downloads throttled for most of the day, choose Plusnet Option 3

Thats not true.
M$ downloads were about the only slowness that affected me.. theres plenty that can be downloaded thats not affected - Please dont assume that just because I dont use p2p or those servers, it doesnt mean that I dont know how to use the Internet.
As other Plusnet users have also confirmed in this thread.. the servers they throttle are clearly listed.. if you use other servers then its fine.

Well I moved to PlusNet option 2 from Madasafish on the 30th October and things have gone downhill from then. Currently my broadband connection is all of <1.5Mb/s and if you compare that to my previous 2 years with MAAF when my speed did not drop below 3Mb/s and often stood at 5.6+Mb/s for 99% of the time then you should know if I am happy or not. -Disconnecting and reconnecting or powering off router shows little if any improvement even though on different connections so I can only conclude the Plusnet data flow system as a whole has problems even though the member�s pages indicate all is ok.

During the transferprocess I ended up getting disconnected for half the day when the change should have been seamless, I then got charged a �40 connection fee even though I was moving MAAF to Plusnet. I initially raised a ticket re getting a refund, then phoned on the 1st November and was assured a refund would follow. Well tonight, 10th November still no refund so phoned again and it turned out nothing had been processed. I now have up to 25 days to wait for my �40 direct debit refund to go through the banking systems.

Now I can accept that these sort of things can happen with any ISP but should they all happen so soon?

I have to say tech support / customer services are on the ball once prompted and they are very easy to communicate with but my experience of the overall broadband changeover service and now download speed performance does make me wonder just how bad it can get? It makes me glad I am not tied to a long contract and if things do not improve PDQ then I suspect I will be off somewhere else and a refund requested.

Does that answer some of your questions ?

>I now have up to 25 days to wait for my �40 direct debit refund to go through the banking systems.

You could just ring up your bank and tell the the error in the DD and they have to process the refund straight away.

The Direct Debit Guarantee

* If the amounts to be paid or the payment dates change, the organisation collecting the payment will notify you normally 10 working days in advance of your account being debited or as otherwise agreed
* If an error is made by the organisation or your bank or building society, you are guaranteed a full and immediate refund from your branch of the amount paid
* You can cancel a Direct Debit at any time by contacting your bank or building society. We also recommend you notify the organisation concerned.

I was going to do that but a phone call to the bank revealed you have to go in to the bank to initiate a repayment request. They will not do it over the phone and work patterns prevent a trip in at the moment.

If I may ask who do you bank with?
I have reversed DD over the phone.

I'd send in a letter and if they did not accept that raise a formal complaint at the bank.

Maybe Acegio is not signed up for phone or direct (Internet) banking and phoned a call centre not the branch. I find branches will do things over the phone that call centres will not, even with Direct Banking and Internet Banking.

(Like setting up a new account with POA in someone else's name when you already have POA on all other accounts with that bank in that person's name and also have a joint account - either to sign - with that person at that bank).

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 11-Nov-08 04:17:43)

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Currently my broadband connection is all of <1.5Mb/s and if you compare that to my previous 2 years with MAAF when my speed did not drop below 3Mb/s and often stood at 5.6+Mb/s for 99% of the time then you should know if I am happy or not.

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Is that your connection (sync) speed or actual throughput speed?
If PN users were seeing those sorts of speeds there would be quite an uproar on here and their own forums.

If its your sync speed as your post seems to imply, then thats something between the exchange and your router, and not something PN have any control over.

Could it be a deterioration of the physical line itself? - Try the quiet line test (Dial 17070 and select option 2).

Your linestats would also be a good place to start to see if anyone can spot anything obvious.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you all but with the speeds being very low my wife had me on more �productive work� about the house !

Now back to the questions I was asked. Bank :- Bank of Scotland and yes I did call the out of hours phone banking phone line. They explained that I had to complete a repayment request and that had to be done at the branch.

As for my sync speeds and router values:-
Downstream upstream
SNR Margin 15 27 dB
Line Attenuation 13 6 dB
Data Rate 8128 448 kbps


BT test page
Your DSL connection rate: 8128 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 7150 kbps

Looking on the PlusNet status page tonight, it appears there may be problem with their network / management after all.

Out of interest is anyone having a problem pinging www.bbc.co.uk or www.tiscali.co.uk when compared to say www.yahoo.co.uk or even www.madasafish.co.uk ? I find on the tiscali and BBC route the loss is 50% compared to zero on the others. Gateway AG02 b the way.

Could you add details of your problems to the topic about this on the Community forums? One of the moderators has kicked off a topic to gather information in a standard format to help see the pattern.

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,70503.0.html