Traffic management / bandwidth shaping

Everytime TalkTalk call me up trying to sell me their service, they always claim that they have zero traffic management on their network.

Is this true, or are they telling fibs?

It's true

In reference to www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/5866.html:

TalkTalk Essentials and Plus products now Totally Unlimited
TalkTalk started to offer an unlimited downloads service on its Essentials package to replace its original 40GB monthly usage allowance a while ago, today shows another major change in that there will be no more usage of traffic management in peak hours on either the Essentials or Plus product range.

These changes mean the provider will be able to advertise its products as Totally Unlimited, as opposed to just unlimited, the key difference being that with a plain unlimited service reasonable levels of traffic management are allowed.

Previously the differentiation between Essentials and the Plus product was that Plus had less management, but now the Plus product is promoted as the Plus TV service, including a YouView box and unlimited calls to UK landlines.

Edited by deleted (Sat 22-Jun-13 20:22:30)

beaten to it but here's an addtional link to their policy http://www.talktalk.co.uk/legal/broadband-traffic-ma...

Edited by deleted (Sat 22-Jun-13 20:24:31)

What about customer traffic going through their antivirus system? Is this still the case? I don't like the sound of that.

My neighbor has a TalkTalk connection and there is something just not quite right about it that I can't put my finger on exactly, the equipment/router is all good, as I set it up for him. That said, this was probably before the recent policy change.

Explain the not quiet right?

A lot of people I think benefit by changing the DNS system used.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

A lot of people I think benefit by changing the DNS system used.

+1

Use OpenNIC DNS on TalkTalk and never had a problem.
http://www.opennicproject.org/

Laggy in places, does not perform as well as my Zen connection (despite the fact I am on 8Mbps and they are on 20Mbps).

Never thought of DNS, is there an issue with TalkTalk DNS? Seems bizarre an ISP would make their DNS servers a weak point.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Never thought of DNS, is there an issue with TalkTalk DNS? Seems bizarre an ISP would make their DNS servers a weak point.

I don't know why but from experience TalkTalk's DNS servers have never been the fastest. But its hardly a big deal, as the likes of OpenDNS, OpenNIC, google DNS etc work just fine.

Would be happy to use the one in the OpenNIC, but wouldn't touch the others with a bargepole. As it happens, on Zen, using GRC DNS benchmark Zen's DNS servers are the best performing.

Two different DNS benchmarking tools report slightly different results:

GRC's DNS benchmarking tool was running in WINE. It reports that the Opal Telecom (TalkTalk) primary name server (62.24.139.9) provided by the peer during PPP session init, is overall fastest [1]

Whereas namebench [2] an open source alternative to the GRC tool, reports the benchmarking results in more detail:

According to namebench, the Opal nameserver (62.24.139.9) has the fastest individual response duration. [3]

However, on average, it is the ns8.bt.net nameserver (194.72.9.38) that is consistently fastest.
Hanging off that IP address, BT apparently runs Nomimum Vantio 5.2.0.1, the carrier-grade DNS caching engine [4]

Following close behind that BT name server is Google's Public DNS-2 server (8.8.4.4).

Although not really much to choose between any of the fastest servers!

cheers, a

EDIT:

namebench reported quite a number of failed responses or timeouts from the Opal primary nameserver, deciding eventually that it was "probably broken". So maybe the Opal server is actually pretty fast but only while its load isn't heavy, at which point it just ignores requests?

[1] http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/13387112/img/dns...
[2] http://code.google.com/p/namebench/
[3] http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/13387113/img/dns...
[4] http://www.nominum.com/products/core-engines/caching...

Edited by deleted (Sun 23-Jun-13 02:25:52)

In reply to a post by asbokid:

namebench reported quite a number of failed responses or timeouts from the Opal primary nameserver, deciding eventually that it was "probably broken". So maybe the Opal server is actually pretty fast but only while its load isn't heavy, at which point it just ignores requests?

Yes, that's the problem - you would expect the TT DNS to be the fastest for TT users as it is on the TT network, so that's no surprise. But, the reason I switched to Google DNS was because the TT DNS would intermittently hang taking ages to respond to the lookup. The effect in a web browser being that page loading hangs - stopping the page loading and reloading usually brought it back to life.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Would be happy to use the one in the OpenNIC, but wouldn't touch the others with a bargepole. As it happens, on Zen, using GRC DNS benchmark Zen's DNS servers are the best performing.

What is wrong with Open DNS? i can understand not wanting to use Googles. i have never heard of openNIC

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

What about customer traffic going through their antivirus system? Is this still the case? I don't like the sound of that.

My neighbor has a TalkTalk connection and there is something just not quite right about it that I can't put my finger on exactly, the equipment/router is all good, as I set it up for him. That said, this was probably before the recent policy change.

You mean their home safe, the one that sends everything to their Chinese partners servers. no thank you

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

What about customer traffic going through their antivirus system? Is this still the case? I don't like the sound of that.

My neighbor has a TalkTalk connection and there is something just not quite right about it that I can't put my finger on exactly, the equipment/router is all good, as I set it up for him. That said, this was probably before the recent policy change.

You mean their home safe, the one that sends everything to their Chinese partners servers. no thank you

You do know that you can opt out of homesafe? (Proof) Along with opting out of homesafe and using an anonymous OpenNIC DNS your TT connection is as good as anything out there

Edited by deleted (Mon 24-Jun-13 18:04:11)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i have never heard of openNIC

Then its time to educate yourself
http://www.opennicproject.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS

OpenDNS extends DNS (Domain Name System) adding features such as misspelling correction, phishing protection, and optional content filtering. It provides an ad-supported service[1] "showing relevant ads when we [show] search results" and a paid advertisement-free service.

Think that covers what is wrong with it.

That refers to their complete Umbrella service 'Cloud-delivered malware and botnet protection and Web filtering for all locations, users and device', not just the simple free pair of DNS servers.

If chinese kit is the worry you will be finding it hard to buy hardware without something from china in it

I was under the impression their bog standard DNS servers have features that redirect you away from malware and phishing sites etc.

Personally, I prefer to be in control of that...

Direct me to a malware or phishing site & I'll test it.

Don't know any at the moment - but it is mentioned on their website that they do this: http://www.opendns.com/technology/

I just prefer to have that level of control myself, and I *think* that OpenDNS does not conform to certain RFCs because of the way it behaves with non-existent DNS names.

I'm not sure I'm ready to cut costs and jump to TalkTalk just yet, but it is getting very tempting.

Yes, it talks about giving you the tools to decide what to let in, and what to block but doesn't say you must open the toolbox and use them .

Still I'd still like to test it if anyone can suggest any suitable dodgy sites. Please PM if you feel it should not be publicly shown.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

You do know that you can opt out of homesafe? (Proof) Along with opting out of homesafe and using an anonymous OpenNIC DNS your TT connection is as good as anything out there

But even if you opt out the data is still intercepted. i did nto think that using a different DNs server mad a difference, I thought Talk Talk home safe used the same sort of Technology that Phorm did, deep packet inspection.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i have never heard of openNIC

Then its time to educate yourself
http://www.opennicproject.org/

so just another DNs server then

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS

OpenDNS extends DNS (Domain Name System) adding features such as misspelling correction, phishing protection, and optional content filtering. It provides an ad-supported service[1] "showing relevant ads when we [show] search results" and a paid advertisement-free service.

Think that covers what is wrong with it.

But that is what it is all about is content filtering, at least you get a choice.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If chinese kit is the worry you will be finding it hard to buy hardware without something from china in it

it is not Chinese kit as such as my router is Chinese, Tp-link, it is one make of Chinese kit I worry about, the same make that the Americans are not keen on and yet we welcome them with open arms. typical British

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

it is not Chinese kit as such as my router is Chinese, Tp-link, it is one make of Chinese kit I worry about, the same make that the Americans are not keen on and yet we welcome them with open arms. typical British

Indeed. Disgraceful of us not to be paranoid about a specific brand of Chinese hardware to try and protect our own manufacturers and pass it off as some kind of security issue.

Do you serious think that if Huawei are a security 'issue' TP-Link are any different?