Sky Connect

Unfortunately, because my broadband connection hangs off a small village exchange, if I moved to Sky I would only be able to get Connect. I read varying views about its reliability and restrictions.

Anyone here on this package that cares to comment?

Thanks.

Have been on Connect for about a month now and like you was concerned about performance etc.

I am approx 500 meters from a rural exchange and during the DAY I am getting consistently 6.5 plus Mb download speed without a a problem. I am usually off line by around 7.30 pm every day so can't speak for after that time.

I migrated from NewNet who are a superb ISP for greater bandwidth allowance with SKY and have to say, my speed is about 1.5 Mb faster than with NewNet. Remember these figures are throughout the day.

The migration to SKY is an absolute doddle. Their supplied router (Netgear Black) is really good and very efficient when using wireless connections and there is absolutely nothing to set up or enter into the router to get started....a real plus for me.....just plug it in!

I would suggest that (if you haven't done so already) sign up to to 'My Sky' and follow your migration progress on line, then pay a visit to the 'Sky User' web site which is really informative.

However, when/if my exchange is LLU'd I will opt for the top SKY BB package saving £7.00 per month.

Hope this helps a little?

Edited by monaltrie (Sun 04-Jan-09 12:05:41)

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I am getting consistently 7.5 plus Mb download speed without a a problem.

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That's not bad, considering the absolute maximum IP profile is 7.15Mbps, and minus a bit of overhead, the maximum throughput is 6.8Mbps !
Are you sure you're not confusing connection speed (which can go up to 8.1Mbps) with download speed?

Edited by adebov (Sun 04-Jan-09 11:41:41)

Whoops! Hit the 7 instead of the intended 6. Apologies. Post amended.

Thanks very much for this. I don't think that daytime speeds are such an issue because I understand that it's between 5pm - midnight that Sky 'regulate' Connect. I am not a gamer or into massive downloads, but I do stream TV and radio in the evenings and would hate for that to be affected.

Because it's a 12 month contract with Sky, it wouldn't be easy to jump ship, if it turned out to be a bad move.

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I understand that it's between 5pm - midnight that Sky 'regulate' Connect.

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Sky Connect is a resold BT produce and ALL such products are affected at those times of day when lots of users log on (evenings and weekends). Sky are reputed to be marginally worse than some others because they have contracted for less capacity.

Only if you can get on LLU will be less affected by this.

Regards,

Felix

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Sky Connect is a resold BT produce and ALL such products are affected at those times of day when lots of users log on (evenings and weekends).

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That's actually not true. Just because it is a re-badged product, it does not follow that ALL such products are affected at peak times. Sky have a deliberate policy of regulating traffic from 17:00 - 24:00 for their Connect product. This from their terms and conditions:

"Excessive use during peak time We will monitor your Sky Broadband usage during peak times from 5pm to 12am each day. This is when the majority of customers use the network and when speeds could be affected by the excessive usage of a minority. If we consider that your usage is excessive during peak times we may slow down your connection for the rest of the day so that it has less affect on others."

Others ISPs, such as Zen, ID Net and Newnet have no such policy and their products are not necessarily affected by exchange contention at peak times.

As a subscriber of 5 years to Zen, I can vouch for this personally, which is why I am hesitant about going to Sky Connect with such a policy in their T&Cs.

Sky don't regulate anything. It is BT that regulates it. Sky have it in their T&C because it happens.

All BT retail products are subject to contention. The only difference between ISPs is the degree to which they are affected. It may well be that Zen have a different agreement with BT which limits that effect - perhaps they buy more capacity.

Regards,

Felix

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Sky have it in their T&C because it happens.

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Again from their T&Cs:

"Traffic management of our Network
To ensure we provide a sustainable quality broadband service to our customers, we continuously monitor and efficiently manage the Sky Network as a whole. To do this, during peak times (from 5pm to 12am each day), we may slow down the speed that all Sky Broadband Connect customers can get on certain applications which we consider use up a lot of bandwidth"

If slowing down the speed isn't 'regulating', then I don't know what is.

Zen, IDNet and Newnet (and other ISPs) don't do this. It's nothing to do with any agreement with BT

(edited for typo)

Edited by lodge (Sun 04-Jan-09 16:28:50)

Again, Sky don't regulate any traffic on Connect, which is BT's network; only BT can do that. Neither can any other ISP that retails BT's product, so perhaps they feel no need to put it in their T&C.

Presumably Sky could regulate traffic on their LLU systems, but as far as I am aware, they don't.

Regards,

Felix

All ISPs using BT Wholesale's rebadged IP stream product (such as Sky Connect) have their "own Centrals" which are leased from BTw and therefore they can control and route their users traffic out on to the internet in a way which they deem the most efficient.

This includes traffic shaping, as declared in Sky's T&Cs for Connect.

Actually Zen have small print about speeds could be 2mb at peak but could be as low as 160kbps:

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It is likely that speeds no greater than 2Mbps will be achieved at peak usage times.
Speeds are affected by line length, quality and peak Internet usage periods and will range from 160Kbps to 7150Kbps

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Again, Sky don't regulate any traffic on Connect, which is BT's network; only BT can do that. Neither can any other ISP that retails BT's product, so perhaps they feel no need to put it in their T&C.

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I think you're not quite clear on how BTw products actually work.
An ISP will lease transit capacity, generally from BT.
On IPstream products, this is normally in the form of 'centrals'.
Each central has a capacity of 622Mbps, but they can be split into four 155Mbps segments, for the smaller ISPs (or for those who don't quite have enough users for an entire extra central).
An ISP will lease as many centrals as it feels necessary for its needs (for example, Entanet lease 6 x 622Mbps centrals, plus they have some WBC transit as well, giving them over 3.7Gbps instantaneous capacity to be shared by all users).
The amount of transit capacity, available to an ISP, is a nationwide thing, so it's quite possible for BT to run out of backhaul [from an individual exchange] well before an ISP runs out of capacity on its centrals. This is often a higher risk on smaller village exchanges.

Yes, BT will requlate traffic to prevent a central from going over 622Mbps, but they don't do it per user.
So, well before the BT limits cut in, an ISP is required to manage the traffic on its own centrals.
Most do this by having very low usage allowances (30GB a month, or less), so people cannot hammer their connections 24/7.
Others do this by traffic shaping (reducing the speeds of individual protocols and ports - e.g. ftp, p2p, usenet, etc. are throttled by more than http & VOIP).
Some more do the traffic management by regulating the entire download speed for each user (Entanet do this - as a central becomes overloaded; Entanet not BT lower the data throughput for each user, on the affected central, until the central is not overloaded).
In all cases, it's the ISP which has control over traffic shaping, overall throttling, etc., not BT.
BT do not have the capability to traffic shape or throttle individual customers.
The ISPs keep control over the traffic shaping and throttling (or lack of it - because on the expensive, or low usage ISPs, they simply don't have the high volume users), BT do not do it for them.

Thank you. I stand corrected.