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mojo
20-06-2007, 09:57
An interesting article on Ars: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070619-the-youtube-effect-http-traffic-now-eclipses-p2p.html

Seems like Virgins traffic shaping malarky is going in the wrong direction. Rather than hitting the top 10% of users, now they are hammering everyone. It is no longer the 10%, it is the majority using video streaming web sites.

dev
20-06-2007, 10:03
er virgins traffic throttling affects all traffic, it's 3GB downloaded via any means so i dont see what this has to do with virgin at all.

Incomplete
20-06-2007, 10:07
er virgins traffic throttling affects all traffic, it's 3GB downloaded via any means so i dont see what this has to do with virgin at all.

Er think his point was that even Grandma using Youtube too much triggers the STM so the throttle is a bit indiscriminate rather than being targetted on those who would traditionally be considered heavy users.

---------- Post added at 09:07 ---------- Previous post was at 09:05 ----------

An interesting article on Ars: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070619-the-youtube-effect-http-traffic-now-eclipses-p2p.html

Seems like Virgins traffic shaping malarky is going in the wrong direction. Rather than hitting the top 10% of users, now they are hammering everyone. It is no longer the 10%, it is the majority using video streaming web sites.

Report by traffic shaping hardware manufacturer showing that buying their hardware is a good move shock ;)

dev
20-06-2007, 10:26
Er think his point was that even Grandma using Youtube too much triggers the STM so the throttle is a bit indiscriminate rather than being targetted on those who would traditionally be considered heavy users.

i'd say bandwidth is bandwidth, just because someone is watching youtube doesn't mean they can hammer the connection every second they're awake

zing_deleted
20-06-2007, 10:28
OMG nooooooooooooooooo

Is this thread on HTTP over taking P2P or is it another traffic shaping thread . If its a shaping thread then shame on you for starting another one

mojo
20-06-2007, 10:32
Yes, my point is that Virgin's claims about the top 5-10% of "heavy users" is rubbish. Everyone is becomming a heavy user now YouTube and services like Joost/Channel 4 on-demand are becomming popular.

Just wait until the BBC's iPlayer is launched. Virgin may cope by throttling the hell out of everyone, but it is going to destroy ADSL.

ADSL providers pay a fixed fee to BT for a certain amount of bandwidth, and then fit as many users as they like on to it. At current prices, they have to massively oversubscribe to make a profit, and rely on low download limits. Once the BBC get started (and presumably advertise the service on TV)...


Report by traffic shaping hardware manufacturer showing that buying their hardware is a good move shock ;)

Well, I don't think they would lie about something like that. After all, it is volume of traffic that sells their products, not the make up of the traffic.

Incomplete
20-06-2007, 10:51
Well, I don't think they would lie about something like that. After all, it is volume of traffic that sells their products, not the make up of the traffic.

Not really it's very much the makeup of the traffic. Their USP is that their equipment can look deeeep into your packets to identify them and selectively control them.

If there's no need for that all operators could adopt the freebie Virgin way of doing things, download X MB in Y time you get throttled ;)

---------- Post added at 09:51 ---------- Previous post was at 09:46 ----------

Just wait until the BBC's iPlayer is launched. Virgin may cope by throttling the hell out of everyone, but it is going to destroy ADSL.

ADSL providers pay a fixed fee to BT for a certain amount of bandwidth, and then fit as many users as they like on to it. At current prices, they have to massively oversubscribe to make a profit, and rely on low download limits. Once the BBC get started (and presumably advertise the service on TV)...

Good! Super cheap operators who offer a poor quality of service at stupidly low prices with incredibly harsh FUPs *cough Tiscali* deserve to be destroyed.

Changes in traffic patterns might also make Ofcom release the pricing pressures on the BT Centrals that are currently there to favour LLU.

About time people in the UK as a whole realise that quality pays in many different ways in virtually every part of life. Reminds me of people going abroad to where they actually pay more than £3 for a whole chicken, as in one that didn't live in its' own excrement with about 3 billion other chickens and commenting on how good the food was.

mojo
20-06-2007, 11:00
Changes in traffic patterns might also make Ofcom release the pricing pressures on the BT Centrals that are currently there to favour LLU.

About time people in the UK as a whole realise that quality pays in many different ways in virtually every part of life. Reminds me of people going abroad to where they actually pay more than £3 for a whole chicken, as in one that didn't live in its' own excrement with about 3 billion other chickens and commenting on how good the food was.

I tend to disagree. The problem is that BT's "21st Century Network" is a joke. They have no incentive to spend the huge amounts of money required to upgrade it either.

I am currently in Japan. My friend has 100/100 symetrical fiber optic connection, which she pays about 23 pounds a month for. No download limits etc, and is is very very fast. Most ADSL packages are either budget 12mB or performacne 56mB here too, for around the same money or less.

Telcos here invested money in upgrading their networks. They realised that BB is the future. Sure, it costs a lot to invest in, but the return in the long run will be huge. They can now supply TV, movie sales/rentals and more. In the future, they probably will not even be TV channels or video rental stores, just BB, and they want to be the ones providing it. In the UK, streaming TV has only just started and the quality is not quite as good as Freeview. Here in Japan, you can watch streaming HDTV at better quality than the over-the-air broadcasts.

Virgin should do streaming HDTV. HDTVs are not common and are expensive, but almost all computer monitors can do at least 720p.

Incomplete
20-06-2007, 11:39
21CN is purely a core network upgrade and migration from legacy systems to all IP architecture.

Worth mentioning that NTT are required to unbundle their FTTP networks in the same manner BT were as well. NTT had no more incentive than BT apart from economics of population density and a cheaper network build due to prevalence of overhead lines.

Just the way these mad Japanese people with their super internets and 4G phones are. :)

EDIT: The two most important factors accounting for the expansion of fiber networks in Japan are probably very low monetary interest rates and institutional policy commitment to provide ubiquitous fiber network. Since the mid-1990s, the Japanese central bank discount rate has been below 1%. In contrast, U.S. Federal Reserve discount rate has been above 5% for most of that period. Cheap access to capital encourages major capital investments.

mojo
20-06-2007, 15:02
21CN is purely a core network upgrade and migration from legacy systems to all IP architecture.

Worth mentioning that NTT are required to unbundle their FTTP networks in the same manner BT were as well. NTT had no more incentive than BT apart from economics of population density and a cheaper network build due to prevalence of overhead lines.

Just the way these mad Japanese people with their super internets and 4G phones are. :)

EDIT:

What you say is true, but keep two things in mind. Although NTT have to unbundle, the pricing scheme is much better so it is worth their while. Also, a lot of it is ADSL, which is up to 56Mb here because the exchanges are closer and the old copper has been upgraded in most places. But yeah, population density helps.

Oh, and I am renting one of those phones... 3.5Mb broadband to the handset!

annoyance
20-06-2007, 17:09
Personally I feel the problem is VM. (In 3yrs I never had speed issues when it was BY) But as soon as NTL take over and it becomes VM, shock horror, I have speed issues a few times a month.

VM seem to forget that this is the time of online GAMING, this does take up bandwidth. But they seem to think that we are still living in times were the most bandwidth goes to the minority that download movies and songs.

Cable has taken a huge step backwards since it became VM controlled, but at the same time it's also my best bet for internet right now so I am stuck here. :(

mcmanic
20-06-2007, 17:16
since virgin have taken over i cannot use any service that allows streaming in the evening, even simple gametrailers stop and buffer 3 or 4 times per clip. If i couldn't use my internet during the day (which alot cannot) then i would of cancelled by now because in fairness you are not getting what you pay for anymore for when the majority want to use it

mojo
21-06-2007, 09:05
It sounds like everyone is fed up. Annoyance: the thing is, it is not a minority downloading heavily any more. That was my point - now even the average user takes up quite a lot of bandwidth with streaming videos, webcams, IPTV, iTunes downloads etc. I mean, BitTorrent sells TV shows that weigh in at around 350MB, far more for movies. Everyone is at it, not just a minority.

Also, games use up quite a bit of bandwidth too. Not just when playing them, but when downloading patches and new content (XBOX Live is a good example of needing to download hundreds of megabytes).

As you say, the problem is VM not wanting to invest. If they took a long term view that BB is the future and investment now will not only put them in a very strong position (since BT is stuck at 16Mb or less with no plans to upgrade). Instead, I bet they are trying to do the usual NTL thing of offering a service that is slightly better than the opposition for slightly less or the same money.

LiamTG
21-06-2007, 10:56
It's the big conspiracy thing. Like the way the British are drip fed technology as our governments and top businessmen don't want the buying public to have things NOW. HDTV for example was available in the US and Japan in the late 80's - yes over 20 years ago.

In a year or so's time VM will make their VOD service available on line - they will then advertise it as completely unlimited with no speed restrictions or traffic shaping.

Get this VM - you can now purchase movies on line, in DVD format - LEGALLY. This means that should ppl wish to purchase said film in said format they will be DL on average 5GB.

Therefore you will penalise people for doing things the legit way.

My final comments are:

Don't advertise things you cannot deliver. HDTV and 20MB broadband.
Don't charge people for a service they are not getting. If you traffic shape them and they lose half their speed - half their internet bill.

Chrysalis
21-06-2007, 12:03
This amused me.

the vast majority of Internet traffic is non-critical (i.e., no one's going to die or lose $20 million if they don't download a YouTube clip or a new song in under a minute)

So a skipping youtube clip is not a critical problem?

Efour
21-06-2007, 12:03
Just upgrade Poplar and cut the blanket BS 4pm-11pm 2mbit throttle

Incomplete
21-06-2007, 14:53
What you say is true, but keep two things in mind. Although NTT have to unbundle, the pricing scheme is much better so it is worth their while. Also, a lot of it is ADSL, which is up to 56Mb here because the exchanges are closer and the old copper has been upgraded in most places. But yeah, population density helps.

Oh, and I am renting one of those phones... 3.5Mb broadband to the handset!

Yeah it's a big thing in Japan to have fibre to a tower block then a DSLAM in the basement, essentially meaning the exchange is in the basement of the building so the copper run is a few hundred feet, then running VDSL2 or a non-standard variant.

Have to love those phones. Japan loves its' tech and fair play to them :)

I saw the pricing and regulatory scheme, NTT appear to have a lot more of a 'say' than BT do here, and there's no seriously anti-NTT regulation in the name of 'competition' it's in the name of 'fairness' rather than trying to force extensive competition in a natural infrastructure based monopoly.

---------- Post added at 13:53 ---------- Previous post was at 13:51 ----------

It sounds like everyone is fed up. Annoyance: the thing is, it is not a minority downloading heavily any more. That was my point - now even the average user takes up quite a lot of bandwidth with streaming videos, webcams, IPTV, iTunes downloads etc. I mean, BitTorrent sells TV shows that weigh in at around 350MB, far more for movies. Everyone is at it, not just a minority.

Quite.

Sadly rather than doing this they were more interested in a willy waving contest with Sky so offer a 20Mbit service that in some places they just don't have the capacity to deliver.

This is the way they mitigate that.

Toto
21-06-2007, 15:21
Yes, my point is that Virgin's claims about the top 5-10% of "heavy users" is rubbish. Everyone is becomming a heavy user now YouTube and services like Joost/Channel 4 on-demand are becomming popular.

Not everyone, I don't subscribe to YouTube, I may watch the odd video if its sent to me by email, but that's it.

mojo
22-06-2007, 11:28
Not everyone, I don't subscribe to YouTube, I may watch the odd video if its sent to me by email, but that's it.

If you were an ISP, would you not consider it a critical problem that your users can't use one of the most popular sites on the internet properly?

---------- Post added at 10:28 ---------- Previous post was at 10:20 ----------

It's the big conspiracy thing. Like the way the British are drip fed technology as our governments and top businessmen don't want the buying public to have things NOW.

I don't think there is a conspiracy, it's just that we are rubbish at this sort of thing. No one wants to invest unless it's a dead cert. Companies are always looking for the quick fix in the short term, to help keep shareholders who have no interest in investing in network upgrades or R&D or new technologies for mid to long term prosperity.

Worse, the public are idiots too, scared of new things they don't understand. "Video on demand"? I have a video recorder... For example, here in Japan everyone has a mobile phone with camera, email etc. Even people in their 70s and 80s have them. People demand the latest tech and make an effort to make an informed decision when buying.

I suppose if there is a conspiracy, it's that people like Currys and PC World want you to buy overpriced underpowered crap. The attitude here is give the customer a choice and help them buy what they really want to make them as happy as possible, to build up a good reputation and loyal clientel. In the UK, the attitude is to make them buy the highest margin item and then rip the off with an extended warranty.

Toto
22-06-2007, 12:20
If you were an ISP, would you not consider it a critical problem that your users can't use one of the most popular sites on the internet properly?

---------- Post added at 10:28 ---------- Previous post was at 10:20 ----------



Why you asking me that? You made the sweeping statement that "everyone" uses YouTube, I corrected you. I don't, I am not everyone.

And yes, I would consider it a problem if a customer couldn't access a legitimate site if they were using my network, but for your information, traffic management does not prevent users from accessing YouTube.

InternetFollower
22-06-2007, 14:09
[QUOTE=mojo;34333669]If you were an ISP, would you not consider it a critical problem that your users can't use one of the most popular sites on the internet properly?

Have you considered that your issue may have absolutely nothing to do with your ISP. There's a lot of network infrastructure between the UK and the youtube servers that VM have no control over. Also as you state it is one of the most popular sites on the Internet so have you considered that there could be some peak time congestion on the youtube servers themselves?

As stated on the youtubes own help pages:

"Why does the video keep stopping and starting while I'm watching it?


If a video doesn't play continuously, it may be due to your connection speed. You'll need a broadband connection with at least 500+Kbps for the best viewing experience. It's also possible that our servers are experiencing high traffic, which sometimes affects the speed. If this is the case, there's not much you can do, but we are continuously adding servers to keep up with demand. Thanks for hanging in there with us as we continue to grow. "

Even when STM is enforced a M user still has a speed of 1Mbps which should be more than adequate to meet youtubes streaming requirements.

RXP
22-06-2007, 15:07
---------- Post added at 10:28 ---------- Previous post was at 10:20 ----------
Why you asking me that? You made the sweeping statement that "everyone" uses YouTube, I corrected you. I don't, I am not everyone.


Huh?

I may watch the odd video if its sent to me by email

Chrysalis
24-06-2007, 15:54
---------- Post added at 10:28 ---------- Previous post was at 10:20 ----------



Why you asking me that? You made the sweeping statement that "everyone" uses YouTube, I corrected you. I don't, I am not everyone.

And yes, I would consider it a problem if a customer couldn't access a legitimate site if they were using my network, but for your information, traffic management does not prevent users from accessing YouTube.

A skipping video stream is virtually the same tho in my opinion.

Toto
24-06-2007, 18:37
A skipping video stream is virtually the same tho in my opinion.

That could be a technical issue, I mean if I've been traffic managed to 5Meg from 20, I should still be able to view a decent feed, if the site is not experiencing any problems, or there are no drops betwwen the respective network and VM. :shrug:

TheDon
24-06-2007, 20:06
This amused me.



So a skipping youtube clip is not a critical problem?

No, it's not.
By non-critical it means that it doesn't really matter if your clip buffers for 30 seconds or a minute, you dont lose anything from it.
Whereas a surgeon using a live link up to consult on a rare operation (which does actually happen these days) has CRITICAL bandwidth usage, if their link has to buffer and they miss something, then people can die.
Links between banks and other financial institutions are also critical, alot of the business world has critical links between their different sites, the links going down means they can't operate, they lose money.

Critical traffic needs triple 9 reliability, youtube doesn't by a long long way, yes it's bad if your customers can't access it, but it's not the end of the world and you're not going to pull in all your engineers to fix it.

Also, as pointed out most of the of the problems (From my experience with it I'd estimate upwards of 90%) with youtube videos stuttering and having to rebuffer are due to conjestion within the youtube servers and network itself and are completely out of VM's control. STM always leaves you enough bandwidth for a youtube stream which are relatively low bandwidth.

mojo
25-06-2007, 04:39
No, it's not.
By non-critical it means that it doesn't really matter if your clip buffers for 30 seconds or a minute, you dont lose anything from it.

You see, the problem with that logic is that Virgin are selling different tiers of service. Sure, maybe a 30 second buffering on the M package is acceptable, but if I am going to shell out for the XL package I expect more.

Okay, no-one is going to die, but your example is silly anyway. No surgeon is going to use a residential BB connection, they would have a dedicated ATM line or something.

I'm sorry to say but your attitude is the perfect example of really bad customer service in this country. It's not that people like you don't care, you just have much lower expectations than the customers and like to exaggerate/oversell your service while not investing in upgrades.

If Virgin made it clear on their ads that during peak times you only get 20% of what you paid for, and gave people the option to cancel their BB before the 1 year minimum or at least offered a discount because of reduced service it might be OK.

As it is, a lot of people pay for 20 meg but by the time they get home from work to use it they find they are stuck on 5 meg from the start.

Rik
25-06-2007, 11:15
but if I am going to shell out for the XL package I expect more.


Being shaped to 5MB at peak time has absolutely no detramental effect on streaming at all in my experience, youtube videos arent that bandwidth intensive and you would have to watch rather a lot to get even near the 3gig limit between 4-12

Im on XL and its a excellent service. :tu:

If VM are not meeting your expectations then really you should be looking for alternative ISPs

mojo
25-06-2007, 13:39
Being shaped to 5MB at peak time has absolutely no detramental effect on streaming at all in my experience, youtube videos arent that bandwidth intensive and you would have to watch rather a lot to get even near the 3gig limit between 4-12

I'm sorry, I really am getting fustrated now. You really don't get it, do you?

If I just wanted to watch Youtube videos, I would be on M.

Virgin are saying "please pay the same for 80% less service". If you cannot understand why I think that is a pretty crappy deal, there is no hope for you.

TheDon
25-06-2007, 13:39
Ybut your example is silly anyway. No surgeon is going to use a residential BB connection, they would have a dedicated ATM line or something.

Never said they would be, the quote says the majority of internet traffic, not residential BB traffic :p
NO residential BB traffic is critical, if it is, you shouldn't be using residential BB.

I'm sorry to say but your attitude is the perfect example of really bad customer service in this country. It's not that people like you don't care, you just have much lower expectations than the customers and like to exaggerate/oversell your service while not investing in upgrades.

I have REALISTIC expectations on level of service.
If people want dedicated bandwidth, get a leased line, if you want a service that is capable of providing up to 20mb, but at times suffers from contention at peak times and is one hell of alot cheaper, get cable.

As for investing in upgrades, many of you have very unreasonable expectations as to how cheap this actually is.

Just to give you a perspective here (even though it's not cable, as we can't find out the cable costs anywhere) and non-LLU ADSL isp using a 622mb BT central pays £125k a month for rental of that central. That's ignoring the 30k installation charge, and the nearly £8/month tail cost of each line you connect to it. (BTW, those are prices set and dictatated by ofcom, not BT, those prices don't make BT a massive fortune, they are indicative of the costs of providing and maintaining that sort of pipe)
So, to provide a 4mb service on adsl, it costs the ISP £800/month, + £8 tail cost, JUST to get the data to their network, there are then more costs to do with external peering to actually shift the data onto the internet. While VM don't have to pay anyone rental for their backbones, they do have to provide them themselves, and the running costs, and cost of them over their life expectancy, isn't much different to what BT charge.

This is why it's unreasonable to expect a connection that functions at 100% the majority of the time. Consumer BB just isn't designed for it, and is not at all priced for it either. Contention is built into the network so as it is actually viable.

Sadly contention didn't count on the youtube generation. People that before just read their emails and browsed a few websites grabbing the odd file which made contention work pretty well are now spending hours sat down watching clips of people falling off house roofs fat guys miming along to songs. And you can't expect an overnight change to fix that, upgrading the network throughout to beable to cope with the increased demand is a massive task.

mojo
25-06-2007, 13:56
Never said they would be, the quote says the majority of internet traffic, not residential BB traffic :p
NO residential BB traffic is critical, if it is, you shouldn't be using residential BB.

It's still stupid, because no one in their right mind would use the internet for that kind of thing. Anyone who games knows that sometimes you get lag, and sometimes it has nothing to do with YOUR ISP. You can't control the internet, so using it for something that critical is madness. That's why I said ATM line, i.e. a direct and unobstructed connection.


I have REALISTIC expectations on level of service.


No you don't. Realistic is being able to use Youtube without problems.

If people want dedicated bandwidth, get a leased line, if you want a service that is capable of providing up to 20mb, but at times suffers from contention at peak times and is one hell of alot cheaper, get cable.

I'll take cable, just don't artificially throttle me please. If there is contention in my area, I'll deal with it. Or, better still, you could invest in some network upgrades.

Just to give you a perspective here (even though it's not cable, as we can't find out the cable costs anywhere)

Apples and oranges. The costs for Virgin are a lot different to an ISP stuck with BT's network, and are different from LLU providers too.

Clearly, Virgin has or can buy external bandwidth. Otherwise, if that were the bottle neck no-one would be able to get the full 20 meg at peak times.

The problem is local oversubscription, which means Virgin probably needs to invest in more bandwidth from local stations to their network. Either that or just more UBRs, but there is no way to tell.

This is why it's unreasonable to expect a connection that functions at 100% the majority of the time. Consumer BB just isn't designed for it, and is not at all priced for it either. Contention is built into the network so as it is actually viable.

No-one is suggesting that it is. What I am trying to say is that instead of wasting massive amounts of money on bandwidth throttling, Virgin should be spending it on network upgrades.

You say it yourself: no one counted on the YouTube generation, and things are only going to get worse. If it really were just a few percent of people maxing out their connections 100% of the time, I might support the decision,  but it isn't. If I pay for XL, I don't want to be waiting 75% longer during peak times to watch a HD movie trailer or download a TV show. That's why I got an XL connection - so I can download a lot quickly. I mean, why else pay for XL?

If Virgin can't offer it, they should either reduce the price or stop offering it at all.

Rik
25-06-2007, 14:10
You really don't get it, do you?

It seems you dont grasp that fact that your moaning on and on about it isnt going to make VM suddenly dump STM, its here to stay and no matter how much fuss you make thats not going to change.

I download all my stuff during the day when im at work, and 3gig during 4-12 is fine for ME, I accept everyones usage is different, and its up to them to make the choice, is the service suitable for them or not?

The service is obviously not meeting your expectations as you have stated above so perhaps the best option is for you to look for a ISP that does meet your needs?

Its not rocket science is it? ;)

---------- Post added at 13:10 ---------- Previous post was at 13:00 ----------


No-one is suggesting that it is. What I am trying to say is that instead of wasting massive amounts of money on bandwidth throttling, Virgin should be spending it on network upgrades.


They have been spending it on Network upgrades and still are, some of us lucky folk have 20MB that we can leave running all day up till 4pm downloading at 2.33MB/s.

Thats a pretty hefty network upgrade imo.

Anyway ill refrain from posting on this thread again as these threads are getting very tiresome after the first 100 :D

TheDon
25-06-2007, 15:39
No you don't. Realistic is being able to use Youtube without problems.
And for the millionth time, the youtube problems ARE NOT problems with VM's network. Youtube itself cannot keep up with demand at peak times.

I'll take cable, just don't artificially throttle me please. If there is contention in my area, I'll deal with it. Or, better still, you could invest in some network upgrades.
Blindly throwing money at it causes companies to die when the creditors close in.

Apples and oranges. The costs for Virgin are a lot different to an ISP stuck with BT's network, and are different from LLU providers too.
Yes, VM has ALOT more upfront costs when it comes to network upgrades. However the overal costs over the lifetime of the service are comparable.

The problem is local oversubscription, which means Virgin probably needs to invest in more bandwidth from local stations to their network. Either that or just more UBRs, but there is no way to tell.

More bandwidth isn't as simple as just writing a cheque. It involves laying new fibre, and we all know how cheap that is.

Are you aware of how much the UBRs actually cost? AFAIK VM use Cisco 7246's, the list price of these (chasis only, no line cards) is $20,000 (and they discounted as they are end of life) adding in a full set of line cards can easily take it into 6 figures.

Plus, the UBR's generally aren't the problem, they have a backplane capable of 3.2Gbps, and a max user base of 10,000, VM aren't pushing anywhere near 10k subscribers on a UBR.

No-one is suggesting that it is. What I am trying to say is that instead of wasting massive amounts of money on bandwidth throttling, Virgin should be spending it on network upgrades.

Massive amount of money on bandwidth throttling? It costs a tiny fraction of what it costs for the network upgrades to throttle. So the network upgrades can be said to cost gargantuan amounts.

You have to remember that above all else VM is a business. One that at the moment isn't in all that good shape. It doesn't have endless money to throw at problems, and if it did, why would it anyway? At the moment it's only just able to keep the creditors happy, generating enough revenue to keep paying the interest payments. If it started throwing away money into network upgrades then prices would have to rise significantly to pay for them, else those creditors would come knocking pretty damn fast.

A business is not a charity, it's not there to give you exactly what you want when you want it, it's there to give you what is viable for it to give you, when it's viable to give it, while keeping the bottom line up as high as possible.

You say it yourself: no one counted on the YouTube generation, and things are only going to get worse. If it really were just a few percent of people maxing out their connections 100% of the time, I might support the decision,  but it isn't. If I pay for XL, I don't want to be waiting 75% longer during peak times to watch a HD movie trailer or download a TV show. That's why I got an XL connection - so I can download a lot quickly. I mean, why else pay for XL?

If Virgin can't offer it, they should either reduce the price or stop offering it at all.

They can offer exactly what they say they can. A contended 20mb service. The simple matter is that at the moment consumer BB is aimed at burst usage, not sustained.
Lowering the price would be suicide as well, it's simply not affordable for them.

Still, many people just think that a company has no costs to cover and everything they charge is pure profit.

If you want to ride the wave of the fastest/cheapest, head over to Be and get your fill of LLU action, but trust me on the fact that the LLU bubble will soon burst and once the LLU providers are as conjested as everyone else they'll have the same problems.

Chrysalis
25-06-2007, 17:06
No, it's not.
By non-critical it means that it doesn't really matter if your clip buffers for 30 seconds or a minute, you dont lose anything from it.
Whereas a surgeon using a live link up to consult on a rare operation (which does actually happen these days) has CRITICAL bandwidth usage, if their link has to buffer and they miss something, then people can die.
Links between banks and other financial institutions are also critical, alot of the business world has critical links between their different sites, the links going down means they can't operate, they lose money.

Critical traffic needs triple 9 reliability, youtube doesn't by a long long way, yes it's bad if your customers can't access it, but it's not the end of the world and you're not going to pull in all your engineers to fix it.

Also, as pointed out most of the of the problems (From my experience with it I'd estimate upwards of 90%) with youtube videos stuttering and having to rebuffer are due to conjestion within the youtube servers and network itself and are completely out of VM's control. STM always leaves you enough bandwidth for a youtube stream which are relatively low bandwidth.

Ok on the basis of your argument it shouldnt matter if a webpage takes 10 seconds to load instead of 5 seconds right?

The difference between video streaming and using a website is the point you are using the website, ie. reading or looking at pics it is when it is idle and loaded the page, likewise me typing this reply there is no need for bandwidth whilst I am using the page. Streaming of course there is a problem since you using it requires the video to be loading at a rate fast enough to not interrupt the flow of usage, if I asked you would it be acceptable for your tv to keep stuttering I think I know what the answer will be.

Certianly video streaming is high priority above legacy http/email/file downloads all 3 of them. Probably only less then VOIP, video conferencing and gaming.

---------- Post added at 16:02 ---------- Previous post was at 16:00 ----------

Being shaped to 5MB at peak time has absolutely no detramental effect on streaming at all in my experience, youtube videos arent that bandwidth intensive and you would have to watch rather a lot to get even near the 3gig limit between 4-12

Im on XL and its a excellent service. :tu:

If VM are not meeting your expectations then really you should be looking for alternative ISPs

yeah my comments were not reffering to VM directly as I have no idea what the service is currently like, but rather aimed at the extremist idea some isps may have to simply start throttling youtube as a result of it becoming popular.

---------- Post added at 16:05 ---------- Previous post was at 16:02 ----------

Never said they would be, the quote says the majority of internet traffic, not residential BB traffic :p
NO residential BB traffic is critical, if it is, you shouldn't be using residential BB.



I have REALISTIC expectations on level of service.
If people want dedicated bandwidth, get a leased line, if you want a service that is capable of providing up to 20mb, but at times suffers from contention at peak times and is one hell of alot cheaper, get cable.

As for investing in upgrades, many of you have very unreasonable expectations as to how cheap this actually is.

Just to give you a perspective here (even though it's not cable, as we can't find out the cable costs anywhere) and non-LLU ADSL isp using a 622mb BT central pays £125k a month for rental of that central. That's ignoring the 30k installation charge, and the nearly £8/month tail cost of each line you connect to it. (BTW, those are prices set and dictatated by ofcom, not BT, those prices don't make BT a massive fortune, they are indicative of the costs of providing and maintaining that sort of pipe)
So, to provide a 4mb service on adsl, it costs the ISP £800/month, + £8 tail cost, JUST to get the data to their network, there are then more costs to do with external peering to actually shift the data onto the internet. While VM don't have to pay anyone rental for their backbones, they do have to provide them themselves, and the running costs, and cost of them over their life expectancy, isn't much different to what BT charge.

This is why it's unreasonable to expect a connection that functions at 100% the majority of the time. Consumer BB just isn't designed for it, and is not at all priced for it either. Contention is built into the network so as it is actually viable.

Sadly contention didn't count on the youtube generation. People that before just read their emails and browsed a few websites grabbing the odd file which made contention work pretty well are now spending hours sat down watching clips of people falling off house roofs fat guys miming along to songs. And you can't expect an overnight change to fix that, upgrading the network throughout to beable to cope with the increased demand is a massive task.

You are quoting costs as if it was a dedicated bandwidth tho, its not it is shared. ADSL is a horrible example for quite a few reasons, you may find the prices are set not in line with BTs costs which I expect are considerably lower but rather to make LLU viable. LLU providers and cable I expect pay considerably less for their bandwidth. It cost a fraction of that price for international transit.

---------- Post added at 16:06 ---------- Previous post was at 16:05 ----------

And for the millionth time, the youtube problems ARE NOT problems with VM's network. Youtube itself cannot keep up with demand at peak times.



Just to address this part of your post I dont see any buffering at all on youtube during peak, I am on a isp that does no traffic shaping and my exchange isnt congested, so am interested in the basis of why you think youtube have congested their own bandwidth.

TheDon
25-06-2007, 17:27
Ok on the basis of your argument it shouldnt matter if a webpage takes 10 seconds to load instead of 5 seconds right?

The difference between video streaming and using a website is the point you are using the website, ie. reading or looking at pics it is when it is idle and loaded the page, likewise me typing this reply there is no need for bandwidth whilst I am using the page. Streaming of course there is a problem since you using it requires the video to be loading at a rate fast enough to not interrupt the flow of usage, if I asked you would it be acceptable for your tv to keep stuttering I think I know what the answer will be.

Certianly video streaming is high priority above legacy http/email/file downloads all 3 of them. Probably only less then VOIP, video conferencing and gaming.

My point is just that it's not CRITICAL if it takes longer. Just because it's not critical though, doesn't mean that it's not an inconveniance for people.

I was just explaining how it is true that the vast majority (i.e. nearly all) of internet traffic ISN'T critical, and how while youtube being annoyingly slow and taking ages to load a clip maybe just that, annoying, but it's not critical.

You are quoting costs as if it was a dedicated bandwidth tho, its not it is shared. ADSL is a horrible example for quite a few reasons, you may find the prices are set not in line with BTs costs which I expect are considerably lower but rather to make LLU viable. LLU providers and cable I expect pay considerably less for their bandwidth. It cost a fraction of that price for international transit.
Which was exactly my point as to WHY it's not dedicated bandwidth and why there is massive contention. Any idiot can see that if it's costing £200/month/mb to move traffic onto your network then there HAS TO BE contention because the costs of providing dedicated bandwidth is ridicilously high to the point of it being completely unviable.

International transit is extremely cheap, all external transit is and most peerings being heavily used 2 way are actually free. But that doesn't change that the majority of costs for isps are in getting the data to their peering points in the first place. Their internal network costs them far more to setup and maintain than their external peering.

Just to address this part of your post I dont see any buffering at all on youtube during peak, I am on a isp that does no traffic shaping and my exchange isnt congested, so am interested in the basis of why you think youtube have congested their own bandwidth.
Peak for who? Peak for you, or peak for youtube? American site, 50% of youtube users are US based (based on their recent launch of targeted versions of youtube where they stated that nearly half of youtube viewers were non-us) your peak != youtube's peak.
I get full speed on 10mb nearly all the time, it's VERY rare that my speed drops below 90% of max, however when America gets home, youtube goes slow for me. Everything else works fine, but youtube struggles. It's also worth noting that it's not universal, youtube videos are spread over a vast many servers, some get more load than others and so you'll get slow performance on some clips but not others.

Chrysalis
26-06-2007, 17:48
My point is just that it's not CRITICAL if it takes longer. Just because it's not critical though, doesn't mean that it's not an inconveniance for people.

I was just explaining how it is true that the vast majority (i.e. nearly all) of internet traffic ISN'T critical, and how while youtube being annoyingly slow and taking ages to load a clip maybe just that, annoying, but it's not critical.


Which was exactly my point as to WHY it's not dedicated bandwidth and why there is massive contention. Any idiot can see that if it's costing £200/month/mb to move traffic onto your network then there HAS TO BE contention because the costs of providing dedicated bandwidth is ridicilously high to the point of it being completely unviable.

International transit is extremely cheap, all external transit is and most peerings being heavily used 2 way are actually free. But that doesn't change that the majority of costs for isps are in getting the data to their peering points in the first place. Their internal network costs them far more to setup and maintain than their external peering.


Peak for who? Peak for you, or peak for youtube? American site, 50% of youtube users are US based (based on their recent launch of targeted versions of youtube where they stated that nearly half of youtube viewers were non-us) your peak != youtube's peak.
I get full speed on 10mb nearly all the time, it's VERY rare that my speed drops below 90% of max, however when America gets home, youtube goes slow for me. Everything else works fine, but youtube struggles. It's also worth noting that it's not universal, youtube videos are spread over a vast many servers, some get more load than others and so you'll get slow performance on some clips but not others.

It doesnt matter if a clip takes a long time to start what does matter if it starts pausing to buffer whilst you watching it, dont you understand this?

By peak I mean a time when a lot of people will be using youtube. Generally either .us or .uk evening time and weekends.

Contention is ok congestion is not the two are different things.

TheDon
26-06-2007, 21:05
It doesnt matter if a clip takes a long time to start what does matter if it starts pausing to buffer whilst you watching it, dont you understand this?

By peak I mean a time when a lot of people will be using youtube. Generally either .us or .uk evening time and weekends.

Contention is ok congestion is not the two are different things.

If it starts buffering during playback hit pause when you load the page and wait for it to load fully and the bar to fill before playing it. It's not hard.
And as I've said a million times, my point is only that youtube isn't CRITICAL traffic, not that it's not annoying when it buffers, the 2 are entirely different things.

Chrysalis
29-06-2007, 12:40
it isnt critical but if an isp can only supply critical traffic without problems then I would say something isnt right. I would count any type of streaming as higher priority then normal http tho.

Generally I would expect the following to work without problems on a broadband connection I pay for assuming I have purchased a high enough speed, within my traffic quotas and not saturating my own connection.

VOIP
gaming
streaming
ssh/telnet

the following I would expect to slow down during busy periods for the isp but not to stupidly low levels like isdn speeds.

file downloads
web browsing
email
p2p

Of course there shouldnt be any packet loss any time of the day.

I am curious how much bandwidth people doing http speedtests take up as I expect many isps prioritise these speed tests.

mojo
30-06-2007, 14:06
I have to agree with Chrysalis. Of course, ISPs want web browsing to be fast too, but I think generally the speed of the individual web site tend to have more impact than the speed of the ISP.

The "free-for-all" approach is best I think. My brother is a heavy gamer and has a 2meg connection, which before throttling he was happy with. Good pings, stable connections. Now ping times have gone up.

Chrysalis
01-07-2007, 14:28
I have to agree with Chrysalis. Of course, ISPs want web browsing to be fast too, but I think generally the speed of the individual web site tend to have more impact than the speed of the ISP.

The "free-for-all" approach is best I think. My brother is a heavy gamer and has a 2meg connection, which before throttling he was happy with. Good pings, stable connections. Now ping times have gone up.

mojo indeed, shaping if done properly can be beneficial as entanet have shown, but just about every other isp has took it too far and made things worse for their customers generally forcing worse performance then what contention would give.