"Premier" will soon be a meaningless concept

I gather that the difference between Premier accounts and Plus accounts seems to be mainly in the monthly "download" allowance. This is what will attract new punters to the deal, otherwise why bother paying the extra money?

I believe Premier is about 20Gb peak, and a whole lot more off-peak, whereas Plus is about 4Gb total. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the general idea, isn't it?

However, it's now 10:28am and downloads from Usenet have now dropped to 78Kb/s for me (maxing out at 6 threads) They were 178kb/s about an hour ago. This is more the rule than the exception now, and I fully expect Usenet downloads to be round about the 10kb/s mark by midday today.

So let's look a the difference again. I have a peak time allowance of 20Gb a month. Practically it would be impossible for me to reach that limit since Peak time speeds are fairly limited. However, off-peak is between Midnigh & 4pm, so that's OK. Excapt that it would appear that off-peak is now limited as well. Whether that's through Traffic Shaping or congestion on the Exchange or PN's network I don't know.

So what exactly is the advantage in my paying for a Premier account again? Since the only difference is in what I can download during peak/off peak times, and I've already established the speeds are attrocious at any time of the day other than (I assume) 3am to 7am, there's really no point in paying all this money, unless you download huge amounts through Http. You'll get full speed there. Unless the download link on the web page is an ftp link, or a BitTorrent link, and then you get shunted over to the low priority protocol queue.

I'm sure this isn't just an PN problem (but of course they're the only ISP I have experience of, so I don't really know). I'm also quite prepared to believe that this is down to congestion of the overall network, not just PN's attempts to manage the traffic, and I realise that PN want to maximise the speed for surfers, voipers and gamers, but surely it all makes the concept of a download allowance meaningless, since with most download protocols shaped down into the gutter, no-one can ever reach their allowances anyway?

BitTorrent is no longer only the protocol of the leecher, it's also increasingly being used for delivery of drivers, software patches, and the old favourite "linux distros". I can't really imagine anyone but a very small percentage of users legitimately using their full allowance on Linux CDs, but that's now starting to change, with the proliferation of sites offering legitimate Audio and Video downloads.

If Music and Movie sites start to use BitTorrent, then Traffic shaping is going to bite the ISPs in the butt. When the majority of new broadband users are lured in with the promise of on-demand Music, TV & Movies, only to find that the fast speeds in the adverts don't apply to the very thing they signed up for....

Is it just me or can I see Broadband Britain becoming unworkable in the very near future?

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Is it just me or can I see Broadband Britain becoming unworkable in the very near future?

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That'll be entirely upto the ISPs. Certainly, they all face an uphill struggle as usage increases, and prices do not make a massive change. One of our end goals has always been to offer a traffic manaement solution which allows their customer to design their own product to suit their needs. Watch this space.

It is PN that is causing this and they have been the cause for over 14 months. See:
http://pn-the-truth.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-1-payg-real-solution.html
http://pn-the-truth.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-1-traffic-shaping-speeds-and.html

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Watch this space.

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If only PN paid out

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It is PN that is causing this and they have been the cause for over 14 months. See:
http://pn-the-truth.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-1-payg-real-solution.html
http://pn-the-truth.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-1-traffic-shaping-speeds-and.html

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Ta for that. I shall have a read.

I'm not a PN-basher, but I am a customer. I can understand the concept of shaping traffic so that the majority of users get the fastest speeds, and when the majority of users were surf/voip/mail/game that was fine. But surely the time is fast approaching (if not here already) when the majority of users will be content-on-demand users.

When (not if) that day arrives, http will be a minority protocol, so current shaping will be counter-productive. Will we then see Usenet, P2P, and ftp jumping back into the platinum queue?

EDIT: Ah, I see the whole of my post has been covered by the first link anyway!

Edited by lorisarvendu (Mon 19-Feb-07 11:52:30)

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Will we then see Usenet, P2P, and ftp jumping back into the platinum queue?

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Today, albeit with another ISP.

Let me also say one other thing about Premier. I have seen some impressive download figures from people on this account - if you are prepared to wait, use it mainly overnight, you are a medium-heavy downloader (i.e. more than 50GB/month), don't need your files quickly and don't want to pay more than you do now then it can be a competitive price (PN's practices are a different matter altogether). Except for PN and other similar ISPs (Eclipse, Pipex, Nildram etc) you will not be able to download as much in total at similar prices. The only ISP that can and doesn't have these ever changing rules on traffic shaping is Enta. They provide 30GB/peak and 300GB of-peak for

Edited by rsharma (Mon 19-Feb-07 12:00:29)

"mainly in the monthly "download" allowance"

The differences are considerably more than that, although for a simple connection-only service, that's a fair comment (however, use of peer-to-peer and Usenet on BB+ is restricted severely, just not described as "blocked" the way it was on a legacy account called "Home Surf", which was at a price level between the BB+ and Premier accounts).

As well as traffic, there are web hosting, domain support, and other differences, such as a fixed IP and no idle timeout on Premier. I think the 100 GB monthly limit is greater than many other ISPs offer for similar fees, though EntaNet resellers do give a higher limit (not sure whether users reach it, however).

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Let me also say one other thing about Premier. I have seen some impressive download figures from people on this account - if you are prepared to wait, use it mainly overnight, you are a medium-heavy downloader (i.e. more than 50GB/month), don't need your files quickly and don't want to pay more than you do now then it can be a competitive price (PN's practices are a different matter altogether). Except for PN and other similar ISPs (Eclipse, Pipex, Nildram etc) you will not be able to download as much in total at similar prices. The only ISP that can and doesn't have these ever changing rules on traffic shaping is Enta. They provide 30GB/peak and 300GB of-peak for

Would you therefore advise 90% of Premier customers (they use less than 8GB/month in total) to move to PAYG with 8GB included allowance?

If you look at the savings they could make (