Comcast STM etc

But everything is so much better in the US, people regularly claim they don't have usage limits like the UK....

Comcasts is based on the user's usage and utilisation on the local UBR. It ignores protocol.

So on paper its far superior to what VM uses now. Because its fairer, and it should mean its not used much in low utilisation areas and agressive as it needs to be to keep busy areas working better.

Of course its possible an isp such as VM could configure it badly and it works like rubbish.

Of course on paper isnt the same as in practice.

Comcast have a soft cap of 250GB per month for their consumer product. There's some horror stories of people being cut off entirely after going over this limit a few months in a row.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

But everything is so much better in the US, people regularly claim they don't have usage limits like the UK....

ComCast apparently have a 250GB soft cap - with warnings etc, at least in Colorado and California.

Time-Warner-Cable in North Carolina, have hard limits at various levels for different products - but their top end business plan is only 50megabit / 10megabit (upload) but unlimited usage.

I think there are some small regional ISPs in some midwest areas that are unlimited.

Everyone forgets how big the US is.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Apr-12 22:00:51)

consider this, the 2nd april your starting point been when STM started I think is just coincidence.

Previously bottom tier customers would be on docsis1.
Previously speeds were 10,30,50 and 100 (at the highest price)

Now the first thing affecting performance is VM are upgrading customers early on request regardless of spare capacity the up speeds stay capped but down speeds doubled which increases DS utilisation and US utilisation whilst downloading as higher download speeds need more ack's sent.

The second thing which may well be the real killer is ALL new customers will now be on docsis3, so if eg. 90% of people in your area are bottom tier, then that would mean on average 90% of new orders wouldnt even touch your docsis3 port, now 100% of new orders would be going on that port.

Of course there is the fact for the most part downstream capacity increases arent done, I have seen only one person on the entire internet report 8 active downstream channels and a lot of people still have only 4, and I have not seen anyone yet report bonding on the upstream which is supposed to be coming as well. Also if VM update to the comcast style management then I would expect that to improve things as long as VM configure it sensibly eg. making it keep utilisation below say 70% rather than something silly like 95%.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

.. as long as VM configure it sensibly eg. making it keep utilisation below say 70% rather than something silly like 95%.

I always thought that queuing theory dictated 70% as the sensible maximum loading but I've also seen stuff from Ignition suggesting that there is some sort of Voodoo going on in the CMTS that can cope well with higher loadings than that without unacceptable congestion effects. If there is and it turns out to be 90% then you can guarantee that VM will set their threshold for considering spending any money at 95%.