PN Traffic Questions

Hi.

I've been looking to change from Premier Option1 to another product, so lately I've been doing some monitoring of my usage Vs my speeds at different times. Coupled with a cabling replacement I did, I've come across some things which I find slightly confusing (I'm sure it's easily answered. ).

Firstly, I want to get clarification on the Opt 1 traffic management. According to:

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/products/archi...

...management should cut in at 13GB and apply according to usage and traffic type etc. That seems to ring true based on the e-mails I received in July (when I posted about a sudden high usage). Based on this, I wondered why the TBB speedtest and TBB download files (50MB, 100MB, 200MB, 1GB) received differing speed restrictions? Said piccy, shows the result of trying to download a file (sub 2 Meg spikes) and the speedtest 'proper' (nice, solid 6 Meg bar). Both tests were done around 10.30pm.

Secondly, I'm trying to decide on my new product, but am thinking ahead to the future too, and am aware that with ever-increasing website sizes, number of objects, videos and images, the general usage will rise, even if one doesn't change their browsing habits. At first I was sold on the PN Extra package, but noticed that there are restrictions on said package:

https://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/d...

Based on my recent usage, I wonder whether Pro is more suited to me over Extra. As you can see, my usage is largely 'Web' and 'Streaming', or in other words, my heaviest usage tend to be youtube (or similar), and the download of large speedtest files.

What I don't want with Extra, is to find that I am getting throttled when testing my line speed (ironic, eh? ). I do want to reduce my monthly bills though, so am sitting on the fence trying to decide which direction is best. Anyone got any added info?

Ta.

Hi there, We don't change any traffic management profiles at 22.30 so the difference in speeds is likely to be a different protocol in use by the TBB tester. I'd recommend running a Wireshark capture at the same time as the speed test to see if this is correct. Even if I'm wrong, this might give us enough information to tell you what's going on.

Both streaming and browsing are prioritised on Extra so it's unlikely that that you'd see much difference there. We always try to prioritise speedtest traffic too, for obvious reasons!

Why not give it a month on Extra then change to Pro if you're not happy? You can hop back and forth between the packages as much as you like (just remember we can only change you on your billing date).

Ta very much!

Can confirm the default download test files are Port 80. You can confirm this by checking the URLs for the default link hover, and the '80' hover. So it would appear that http traffic is being managed during peak times once a certain limit is reached.

What period does that PN usage analysis cover? Is it from the start of the month or the start of a billing period that started in August?

Note that the default port for the TBB speed test is 8095, but you can run it twice in quick succession and choose port 80 for one of them.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 14-Sep-10 00:13:19)

The usage is three weeks out of four of the current billing period (mid August to present).

That's fine then .

If it was calendar month then Pro could have been difficult.