IPlayer on BB Plus

Hi, I'm a little confused regarding how IPlayer downloads are identified as traffic.

I've noticed that if I download a 60 min programme during the day it takes around 12 mins to download - pretty good, I generally get just under 6000kbps according to the plusnet speedtester. But the other day I started a download at around 3:50pm, which started off as normal and had about 2 minutes left to complete at 4:00pm, when the speed took a real dive and the download virtually stopped! in fact the time remaining suddenly shot up to over 30 minutes remaining, which becommes completely unusable.

I'm on an old Broadband Plus account - does everyone else have this problem or is it just me?

Hi there,

On Broadband Plus iPlayer downloads will be rate limited during peak (post 4.00pm). Don't quote me on it but I think this is currently set somewhere around the 512kbps mark. Does that coincide with the sort of speeds you're seeing?

Bob,

yes I think that would be about right, just a bit suprised it's restricted down to that sort of level, as it makes it unusable anytime after 4pm.

I seem to remember that if I changed to one of the newer products they all have restritions on the download amounts at peak time so thought I'd be better of staying with the Plus account?

Hi Kodo,

When our Network is under normal load, there are no rate limitations in place for either Value or Unlimited. As an existing customer, you'd be able to move over to one of those on a 12 month contract.

In reply to a post by Kodo:

Bob,

yes I think that would be about right, just a bit suprised it's restricted down to that sort of level, as it makes it unusable anytime after 4pm.

You should still be able to view the normal iPlayer streams, desktop downloads will be slower though.

I seem to remember that if I changed to one of the newer products they all have restritions on the download amounts at peak time so thought I'd be better of staying with the Plus account?

Yeah, desktop downloads will still slow during peak (unless you upgrade to our Pro package) however streaming is unrestricted on all the current account offerings.

OK thanks for that, maybe I'll have to take anouther look at upgrading to a newer account.

In the meantime could you check if these router stats look about right or not?

DSL Parameters and Status
Vendor ID: 00B5GSPN
Revision Number: Y1921a
Serial Number: 123456789abcdx
Local Tx Power: 11.95 dB
Remote Tx Power: 19.77 dB
Local Line Atten.: 20.5 dB
Remote Line Atten.: 11.5 dB
Local SNR Margin: 9.5 dB
Remote SNR Margin: 23.0 dB
Self Test: Passed
DSL Standard: G.dmt
Trellis Coding: Enable
Framing Structure: Framing-3
Config Data Up Down
Intrlvd Fast Intrlvd Fast
AS0(kbps): - - 7520 0
AS1(kbps): - - 0 0
LS0(kbps): 448 0 - -
LS1(kbps): 0 0 - -
RValue: 16 0 16 0
SValue: 8 1
DValue: 4 32

according to the Plusnet site, my Current line speed = 6500, but the router is connecting at 7520, so not sure if there's something wrong?

The connection seems very stable and very rarely disconnects

thanks for your help!
Kodo

Your router sync speed is 7520kbps and this leads to an IP Profile of 6500kbps (explanation). It is the latter figure that Plusnet show as "current line speed" in the Member Centre.