Apart from anything else, if they had no traffic management in place, their dynamic routing protocols would die a death very quickly.

In reply to a post by MrShed:

Plus, DPI isn't the only way to skin a cat. I maintain my position that Sky will traffic manage to some extent. No way they will just have a free for all across their core.

Sky publicly state they don't use traffic management, so I tend to believe that more than your hunch.

In reply to a post by MrShed:

Apart from anything else, if they had no traffic management in place, their dynamic routing protocols would die a death very quickly.

There are two things here, I agree Sky will manage their network, but the words "traffic management" in the UK retail ISP world means the stuff that Plusnet do, and advertise they do. (which I and others) dislike. This is where the ISP gives traffic from the user that is voip a big priority over someone else who is downloading the latest Windows or Mac update.

However what I think you mean is at the network core and peering points they manage traffic to ensure there is no overload condition, as TCP/IP goes badly wrong when overloaded (packet loss) which most of us have seen on smaller ISPs (including BE and O2). That isn't what is meant by consumer traffic management - but is what all ISPs must do and is what network engineers in big corporates are doing as well.

Agreed, and you are right they are different things. Its all a bit off topic really, as all I was really meaning to respond to was the incorrect statement that "traffic management is not needed on the majority of exchanges".

In reply to a post by MrShed:

Its all a bit off topic really, as all I was really meaning to respond to was the incorrect statement that "traffic management is not needed on the majority of exchanges".

Don't use quotation marks unless you are going to quote me directly. I was using the word "exchanges" since that is usually the scope of congestion. And you're the only one here who isn't taking traffic management to mean DPI with protocol prioritisation and/or speed limits (which, despite your hunch, Sky don't utilise).

Which I just acknowledged.

Fine I'll quote: "In the vast majority of exchanges where Sky LLU is not congested, network management is not needed on Sky Broadband."

False, and against best practice.

PS - somewhat picky to whinge about using quotation marks in a paraphrased quote, when the semantics of the quote in the context of the conversation was basically identical.

OK Look lets bring this conversation back to something more positive and constructive rather than sniping.

My point is that any network engineer and network designer worth their salt knows that it is best practice to incorporate traffic management policies end to end, in order to get the best use of the bandwidth available and provide required services to end users (in this case domestic customers).

This is for two main reasons:
1) Bandwidth is very expensive (comparatively) so it makes more economic sense to manage existing bandwidth effectively and run close to capacity than to leave a raft of spare bandwidth available.
2) Many protocols are "greedy" and will take as much bandwidth as is available in order to fulfil a transactional request more quickly. Therefore you often see "microspikes" in bandwidth utilisation and queueing on interfaces.

Point 2 is even more important in this situation, as there is a heavy contention ratio on the backhaul due to the bandwidth on the last mile to customers. At the very least, this contention ratio is certainly not 1:1.

As such, whilst some exchanges are more congested than others, no exchanges are "uncongested" - nor, more importantly, should they be strictly speaking as this implies poor capacity management and poor economic sense from the provider. Capacity of backhauls should be running at at least 80% at times if not higher.

As an absolute minimum, traffic management is most definitely best practice to prevent one "greedy" user from causing congestion for 50/100 others - even in microspike terms. More widely, yes there is some debate as to whether this is "good" or "bad" in a domestic consumer environment. This is purely because of what is acceptable as opposed to what "should" be done, according to best practice.

This can be easily highlighted by the issues that myself and the OP are having. Were there traffic management in place, even very limited traffic management, then my internet connection would not be completely destroyed by a number of users sharing my bandwidth using high bandwidth protocols.

Traffic management is not about penalising users, its about creating a level playing field for all users and effective economic use of bandwidth.

Therefore, to come back to your point - do some users benefit from Sky not traffic managing? Absolutely. Is it "needed"? Anyone working in the industry would tell you that to guarantee even a very low level of service to your customers, the answer is a resounding yes - even on a relatively less congested exchange.

Edited by deleted (Wed 15-Jan-14 12:09:26)

A third reason is by the way (sorry, completely forgot about this), bandwidth demands tend to change much more quickly than bandwidth capacity can be changed.

I've said all I'm going to say on this thread, no point in repeating it. Good luck with getting your connection sorted.