View Full Version : Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users
Just having read this and a bit alarmed. What will this mean to my internet connection ? I like to download and watch programs from 4OD and BBC and various other streaming media which I think uses P2P technology. I also have VOIP vonage service. Will these restrictions effect the quality of any of the services I have. What is the point of super fast broadband if the only thing you can do on it is read and visit web pages and the rest of the traffic is being slowed down in someway. Its really is pathetic and taking the **** to offer fast broadband and then restrict your the speed of the traffic to the things you use it for.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/16/virgin_bittorrent/
:confused:
Moderator Edit:
This story has now been denied by Virgin Media PR: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/virgin-media-de.html
Maybe its not all bad:
Asked why the firm would ditch its system of choosing who to throttle based on their total usage, in favour of singling out BitTorrent, Berkett said: "I think it's an issue of fairness."
The end of STM?
I wouldn't worry yet. Given that there is limited bandwidth available (for whatever reason) then it's better to reserve some for latency-critical (VOIP) and bandwidth-critical (on-demand) traffic.
Whether VM consider Vonage and BBC/4OD to be worthy of protection is another matter, but it seems likely that they'll prefer them to non-commercial torrents.
When VM release the full details (and I hope they will), the arguments can start in earnest.
Commercial suicide.
Retentions are going to be busy.
Only problem with this is it also effects legal torrents as well, Linux distro's use this method to distribute the various releases. There are also completely legal torrent websites that distribute unknown bands songs, as well as freeware. As this is a way for some of these small bands to eventually break in to the main market, i can see some strong opposition to this.
qasdfdsaq
16-12-2008, 12:59
Just having read this and a bit alarmed. What will this mean to my internet connection ? I like to download and watch programs from 4OD and BBC and various other streaming media which I think uses P2P technology. I also have VOIP vonage service. Will these restrictions effect the quality of any of the services I have. What is the point of super fast broadband if the only thing you can do on it is read and visit web pages and the rest of the traffic is being slowed down in someway. Its really is pathetic and taking the **** to offer fast broadband and then restrict your the speed of the traffic to the things you use it for.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/16/virgin_bittorrent/
:confused:
4OD, BBC and "other streaming media" does not use bittorrent. Neither does Vonage VOIP (or any other VOIP for that matter).
None of the things you do are likely to be restricted, so what this means for your internet connection is that your speed and quality of service will improve and go up. In theory.
Assuming that throttling will replace STM rather than be applied on top of it, I'm actually rather in favour of this.
4OD, BBC and "other streaming media" does not use bittorrent. Neither does Vonage VOIP (or any other VOIP for that matter).
4OD and Iplayer don't use Bittorrent, but if you use the download client, rather than the web based catch up service, they *do* use P2P, so Virgin could very well "manage" them..
Commercial suicide.
Retentions are going to be busy.
Except it's not.
If it was all the other ISPs that employ traffic shaping (and there are many) would have gone bump by now. Strangely they haven't, why is that?
Traffic shaping makes perfect sense when you're forced to oversell capacity to even break even (people seriously underestimate how cheap it is to provide bandwidth to end users). If you don't want shaping and want gaurenteed bandwidth go get a leased line. Residential connections will ALWAYS be oversubscribed so will always need measures in place to ensure latency dependant applications get priority when usage exceeds capacity.
(or any other VOIP for that matter).
I thought bittorents are P2P and actually Skype VOIP uses P2P.
Can anyone tell me what the difference is between bittorent and P2P is because I'm dammed if I know. Also in the article it mentions restrictions based on applications now that could be almost any service we use the internet connection for. Whats to say Virgin start throttling my Vonage service so I am forced to take there phone service or throttle BBC ,C4 and all the other media offerings coming on line to force customers onto there own cable service.
:confused:
mentalis
16-12-2008, 13:25
I must be doing something wrong. I have tried downloading from torrents, including Linux distros, but found that the speed I was getting was pitiful. I prefer direct download, and even when STMed I get a better download rates than from torrents.
If this means an end to, or at least a relaxation of, the STM rules, then I, personally, am happy.
chickendippers
16-12-2008, 13:26
If this replaces STM then I could be in favour. I remain optimistic however will reserve judgement until the full details are announced.
And in the next breath there saying
"We could have launched 100Mb today if we'd wanted," he said, "we're not capacity constrained."
So if they are not capacity constrained why the need for any restrictions at all ? It sounds rather confusing and schizophrenic to me.
And in the next breath there saying
"We could have launched 100Mb today if we'd wanted," he said, "we're not capacity constrained."
So if they are not capacity constrained why the need for any restrictions at all ? It sounds rather confusing and schizophrenic to me.
Berkett is so full of the stuff, it's coming out of his ears.
broadbandking
16-12-2008, 14:09
OMFG is all I can say, I knew it would go down hill, too good to be true looks like Trax's was right
General Maximus
16-12-2008, 14:23
oh well, i'll hold on as long as I can and then i'll be saying bye to Virgin Media. They are ever increasingly imposing their will on the consumer, it is not up to them to decide what i do on the internet and when. If they want to constrain my use of the internet and what apps I can use, I will go to another isp and I hope everyone else joins me.
OMFG is all I can say, I knew it would go down hill, too good to be true looks like Trax's was right
It's all very clever stuff.
Make out that you are the best there is with all the gimmicks, talk and promises. get the publicity and the sign ups based on the gimmicks, talk and promises, and screw em later on. when the bad publicity starts all over again, just come up with some more gimmicks, talk and promises all over again.
I thought bittorents are P2P and actually Skype VOIP uses P2P.
Can anyone tell me what the difference is between bittorent and P2P is because I'm dammed if I know. Also in the article it mentions restrictions based on applications now that could be almost any service we use the internet connection for. Whats to say Virgin start throttling my Vonage service so I am forced to take there phone service or throttle BBC ,C4 and all the other media offerings coming on line to force customers onto there own cable service.
:confused:
It is p2p.
Bittorrent is just the most popular form of p2p at the moment, and the basis for a huge amount of other p2p protocols (such as many streaming video services, they mostly all use the tracker based methodology that bittorrent made popular, and are in many cases only minor alterations to the bittorrent protocol.)
Any of you suprised? Any of you really believed what neil said about allot just being used for network monitoring/data purposes? oh where oh where is broadbandbug to deny new allot equipment was installed when it's been admitted.
The trials have been going on for quite some time, i'm suprised no one noticed their torrent speeds going to hell, and i should note, he quotes it's about bandwith and not bittorrent in general, DPI is gonna be going after anything using high amounts of bandwith, that newsgroups too.
Be* here I come
... as far as I understand it .. imposing these changes constitutes an alteration of the terms and conditions in my contract therefore nullifying my 12 month contract that I am tied into unless of course I add a new service / take a deal from virgin
am i correct ???.. if so ... bye bye virgin ! .. after nearly 8 years ! LOL
The trials have been going on for quite some time, i'm suprised no one noticed their torrent speeds going to hell
I'm still pulling a constant 20meg on all my torrents.
city-boy
16-12-2008, 15:10
Been with them since they did broadband. But I could get BeThere at 20Mbit. I'd be off in a shot if they do this. I dont' even download that much on BitTorrent.
This could be the end!
moroboshi
16-12-2008, 15:38
Virgin seem determined to alienate as many people as possible. What little quality of service they have left will be further torched by this. What a bunch of clowns.
It does state that these measures will not be introduced until the middle of next year.. (they'll probably wait till the full 50Mb and 20Mb to docsis3 is rolled out)
qasdfdsaq
16-12-2008, 15:48
Oh the irony... Wait till full rollout of upgrades/conversions to increase capacity to er... save capacity?
Except it's not.
If it was all the other ISPs that employ traffic shaping (and there are many) would have gone bump by now. Strangely they haven't, why is that?
Traffic shaping makes perfect sense when you're forced to oversell capacity to even break even (people seriously underestimate how cheap it is to provide bandwidth to end users). If you don't want shaping and want gaurenteed bandwidth go get a leased line. Residential connections will ALWAYS be oversubscribed so will always need measures in place to ensure latency dependant applications get priority when usage exceeds capacity.
You make an excellent point, and in principle I too have no problem with traffic shaping per say. I signed up last week knowing this was the case.
But let's get real here. I would speculate that a VERY large propotion of Virgins customer base have some form of p2p software installed which they like to take advantage of from time to time. Surely not everyone needs a 20mb line just to d/l the odd e-mail and browse Ebay. If that service is suddenly capped then peeps wont be happy. In addition, if it is known that an ISP caps p2p then who would sign up to it? A smart advert on a rival ISP website saying "we wont cap your p2p like Virgin do" would take a percentage of virgin customers away I'm sure.
If Virgin wish to ditch their customer base who use p2p then good luck to them. Times are tough, competition is firece. Service is king.
<snip>Times are tough, competition is firece. Service is king.
I think you've hit it on the head.
Service is the key, and if VM know what percent of their customer base is using P2P on a regular basis (and they should if they have been using DPI this last year), and that figure is not as high as some claim, then the service could be improved for those who don't use it as much, but feel the ill effects of those who just don't stop using it.
We can argue till the cows come home that making the pipe bigger to allow more free flow is better than reducing the pipe, but IF the pipe can be reduced just for those who are taking more of their share of the flow....
In addition, if it is known that an ISP caps p2p then who would sign up to it? A smart advert on a rival ISP website saying "we wont cap your p2p like Virgin do" would take a percentage of virgin customers away I'm sure.
If Virgin wish to ditch their customer base who use p2p then good luck to them. Times are tough, competition is firece. Service is king.
I can pretty much gaurentee NO isp would ever dream of running an advertising campaign like that.
The profit for an ISP comes from the low usage customers who subsidise the cost of providing service to the high usage ones, this is what makes contention workable, for every heavy downloader you have a great many more people who hardly use their connection. To advertise that you don't throttle p2p you're inviting every heavy downloader to sign up, and you're suddenly going to see your contention rates being unworkable as your network becomes saturated, then all the people that joined you because you don't throttle p2p will leave because your network can't cope with their traffic, and your original customers will leave because their service has been adversely effected by a huge influx of heavy downloaders. It'd be an extremely short sighted short term scheme that would hurt the long term sustainability of the service.
They might not say it, but every ISP in the world would LOVE to ditch their heavy p2p using customer base because these are the customers who provide the lowest chance of profit, the cost of providing them with service is often (especially when it comes to ISPs using BT wholesale) many many times greater than the revenue they provide.
Virgin seem determined to alienate as many people as possible. What little quality of service they have left will be further torched by this. What a bunch of clowns.
So you're complaining that the QoS techniques they bring in are going to adversly effect the QoS? ;)
Impz2002
16-12-2008, 16:12
People seem to forget VM is a contended service, Providing everyone with a guaranteed bandwith weather it be 2meg or 50meg is not a viable option. there are always going to be times when people are all trying to use their connection at the same time. TheDon makes a very good point, has anyone ever wondered why a leased line is massively expensive ? its the guaranteed service level agreement that goes with it that costs so much. There isn't a single residential ISP in this country that provides a non contended service.
I believe that STM is a fair way of making sure all customers have a fair level of service. I think the trigger points for STM are low and don't reflect the things people use their connection for these days as the appetite for bandwith is just going to keep increasing.
I am assuming this Bittorrent shaping must be achieved by DPI which is a whole new bag of snakes.
I think people really need to realise what the network would be like if it was a free for all with no management. I guarantee there would be alot more moaning posts about slow speeds in peak times.
So in conclusion I support whatever method VM employ to make sure everyone gets their fair share as long as it reflects the changing times and treats everyone the same.
You don't get anything for free in life so lets just be glad we arnt all capped to x amount of gigs a month. Compared to some ISP's VM's STM is generous !
Impz
I can pretty much gaurentee NO isp would ever dream of running an advertising campaign like that.
Well.. you're probably right and I'm probably stetching it a bit, but they could do it. Just use the old *.
(*FUP) applies.
But if it's known that an ISP caps p2p, and even if you only use it once in a blue moon.. would you sign up to it? I would suspect the masses generally wouldn't.
Absolutly agree heavy users spoil it for the rest and the business model has to be sustainable. It is a business after all and not an emergency service. If peeps don't like it, leave.
But someone has to feed the lions. :)
broadbandking
16-12-2008, 16:47
I am right in thinking utorrent passes the throttling? with the encyption option enabled?
*sloman*
16-12-2008, 16:50
"we're not capacity constrained."
Remove the STM Neil!!!!!!
Impz2002
16-12-2008, 16:55
"we're not capacity constrained."
Remove the STM Neil!!!!!!
Well i think what neil said isn't entirely true as there are capacity issues with the current DOCSIS 1.0 network as some UBR's are very oversubscribed but as far as i can see the DOCSIS 3 network should have no capacity issues for some time.
Impz
I am right in thinking utorrent passes the throttling? with the encyption option enabled?
Depends on the type of throttling and how it's setup.
It's still pretty easy to identify encrypted torrent traffic as it doesn't change the pattern of the traffic, you just can't say with 100% certainty like if you could just view the headers, it's only 99% certain instead ;) Of course monitoring the traffic patterns is a lot more resource heavy, so it's not that widespread, but it's entirely possible.
Contention? If you cannot provide the maximum advertised speed to the majority of your subscribers at all times of the day then you are a liar who uses gimmicks, questionable advertising and deliberately vague and carefully worded FUPs to sell a substandard product. Its as simple as that.
Also, whenever an Israeli company is drafted in in any monitoring capacity be very afraid. You need to be more concerned about your privacy than whether you'll get that latest ubuntu distro in under 5 minutes. If you are in any doubt about that, you may want to do a little research into Israeli security firms and how involved they are on spying on your every move on a daily basis.
Contention? If you cannot provide the maximum advertised speed to the majority of your subscribers at all times of the day then you are a liar who uses gimmicks, questionable advertising and deliberately vague and carefully worded FUPs to sell a substandard product. Its as simple as that.
Virgin have lied from day one about how their product is able to cope with massive use and downloads. that is all the talk out of the way, but when people take them up on their offer, reality kicks in and they won't admit that they actually can't provide it after all.
Contention? If you cannot provide the maximum advertised speed to the majority of your subscribers at all times of the day then you are a liar who uses gimmicks, questionable advertising and deliberately vague and carefully worded FUPs to sell a substandard product. Its as simple as that.
No, you're a business who has a thing called a bottom line to worry about.
The cost of providing the maximum advertised speed to the majority of your subscribers is FAR higher than the income you're getting from them.
So you have two choices as a consumer:
1) Go get a leased line (or have your ISP raise prices to much closer to leased line levels)
2) Deal with contention.
In the real reality, of one where things cost money and consumers get what they pay for, it's as simple as that.
This practise has already been ruled illegal in the U.S., and Comcast was fined for DPI on BitTorrent packets. Deep packet inspection is also a violation of any type of net neutrlity idea, and represents all kinds of problems. There are also privacy implications to DPI, not that Virgin Media really care about privacy, with another announcement today that Phorm is still on the cards (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/16/phorm-internet).
DPI under the guise of network management, and the invasion of your privacy in the process, is a precursor to targeted advertising in a slightly different way than that implemented by Phorm. Which is exactly why it was banned in the U.S. by the FCC. Time to call your MP about net neutrality legislation :)
This practise has already been ruled illegal in the U.S., and Comcast was fined for DPI on BitTorrent packets. Deep packet inspection is also a violation of any type of net neutrlity idea, and represents all kinds of problems. There are also privacy implications to DPI, not that Virgin Media really care about privacy, with another announcement today that Phorm is still on the cards (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/16/phorm-internet).
DPI, and the invasion of your privacy, is a precursor to targeted advertising in a slightly different way than that implemented by Phorm. Which is exactly why it was banned in the U.S. by the FCC. Time to call your MP about net neutrality legislation :)
Nice to see you again Frank.
LOL, I was wondering who'd spot that Phorm article first. :)
This practise has already been ruled illegal in the U.S., and Comcast was fined for DPI on BitTorrent packets. Deep packet inspection is also a violation of any type of net neutrlity idea, and represents all kinds of problems. There are also privacy implications to DPI, not that Virgin Media really care about privacy, with another announcement today that Phorm is still on the cards (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/16/phorm-internet).
Neil Berkett said that using the company's network to provide more information about users - and therefore create more opportunities to make money out of them - is certainly still on the cards.
Berkett said dealing with illegal filesharing and using information about what customers do online in order to create better targeted online advertising.
But we very strongly believe that particularly with a brand like Virgin you cannot just ram things down customer's throats
I think he's in the wrong job. he sounds like something that should be working for the government.
This practise has already been ruled illegal in the U.S., and Comcast was fined for DPI on BitTorrent packets. Deep packet inspection is also a violation of any type of net neutrlity idea, and represents all kinds of problems. There are also privacy implications to DPI, not that Virgin Media really care about privacy, with another announcement today that they are going to proceed with Phorm (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/16/phorm-internet).
Luckily we're nowhere near as stupid as Americans, and the first debate on net neutrality in this country was summed up by saying it is "an answer to problems we don't have, using a philosophy we don't share (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/20/uk_net_neutrality/)".
There are EU regulations which specifically allow ISPs to prioritise traffic based on application, so don't hold your breath waiting for a similar ruling on it being illegal here.
Net neutrality is essentially an American created issue with no real world viability. It's dangerous to the sustainability of the internet and is essentially about Amerians beating their chests and going "ZOMG FREEDOM" rather than any usability issues. Every single usability issue for the internet (and any network) points well away from a neutral network and instead towards QoS that targets and prioritises latency dependant traffic at the expense of other traffic.
LOL, I was wondering who'd spot that Phorm article first. :)
Ahem...
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34697947-post76.html
;)
This practise has already been ruled illegal in the U.S., and Comcast was fined for DPI on BitTorrent packets. Deep packet inspection is also a violation of any type of net neutrlity idea, and represents all kinds of problems. There are also privacy implications to DPI, not that Virgin Media really care about privacy, with another announcement today that Phorm is still on the cards (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/16/phorm-internet).
DPI under the guise of network management, and the invasion of your privacy in the process, is a precursor to targeted advertising in a slightly different way than that implemented by Phorm. Which is exactly why it was banned in the U.S. by the FCC. Time to call your MP about net neutrality legislation :)
I don't think they were fined, just ordered to stop "discriminating" against one sort of traffic.
"While the FCC action did not include a fine, it does require Comcast to stop its blocking practice by the end of the year. The company must also provide details to the commission on the management techniques it has used and let consumers know details of its future plans."
Link (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008086033_webcomcast01.html)
I think Comcast, and others, may try to get around this by announcing what the traffic management is, rather than hiding it, like Comcast did.
Interesting article here (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10000821-38.html?tag=mncol;txt)
Luckily we're nowhere near as stupid as Americans, and the first debate on net neutrality in this country was summed up by saying it is "an answer to problems we don't have, using a philosophy we don't share (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/20/uk_net_neutrality/)".
Obviously during the first debate on it they concluded it was a problem they didn't have...because nobody does DPI yet. But problems you will have soon, once this happens :) Clearly you have not had the pleasure of using a DPI throttled connection, but let me assure you it is a real pleasure.
Net neutrality is essentially an American created issue with no real world viability. It's dangerous to the sustainability of the internet and is essentially about Amerians beating their chests and going "ZOMG FREEDOM" rather than any usability issues. Every single usability issue for the internet (and any network) points well away from a neutral network and instead towards QoS that targets and prioritises latency dependant traffic at the expense of other traffic.
Of course it has real world viability. NOT having net neutrality is dangerous to the suvival of the internet as we know it. It is about choice, and not having one service prioritised over another, which is exactly what makes the internet an innovative place. I would rather the internet be open and innovative, rather than being told what services I can get - at what speeds - by an internet provider who makes money from prioritising those very services.
---------- Post added at 12:47 ---------- Previous post was at 12:46 ----------
I don't think they were fined, just ordered to stop "discriminating" against one sort of traffic.
Fair enough, my bad. Last time I heard they were, but that must have changed as you pointed out :)
Obviously during the first debate on it they concluded it was a problem they didn't have...because nobody does DPI yet. But problems you will have soon, once this happens :) Clearly you have not had the pleasure of using a DPI throttled connection, but let me assure you it is a real pleasure.
Of course it has real world viability. NOT having net neutrality is dangerous to the suvival of the internet as we know it. It is about choice, and not having one service prioritised over another, which is exactly what makes the internet an innovative place. I would rather the internet be open and innovative, rather than being told what services I can get - at what speeds - by an internet provider who makes money from prioritising those very services.
You can have your choice, I'll have a connection that still works fine for web browsing and voip when everyone else is torrenting their asses off.
No one is saying what services you can get at what speeds (that's the biggest myth about net neutrality) what is happening is that when the bandwidth required exceeds the bandwidth available the amount of bandwidth available to non-latency dependant applications will get reduced to ensure there is bandwidth reserved so that latency dependant ones are still usable.
What good is choice if you CAN'T choose to use certain services because your connection has high latency due to a saturated network?
You can have your choice, I'll have a connection that still works fine for web browsing and voip when everyone else is torrenting their asses off.
Well that would be my choice too, I would also like a connection where VoIP and browsing works fine, but where I can also use whatever application I want on the service that I am paying for. Why offer an "up to 50Mbps" service if you can't use it?
No one is saying what services you can get at what speeds (that's the biggest myth about net neutrality) what is happening is that when the bandwidth required exceeds the bandwidth available the amount of bandwidth available to non-latency dependant applications will get reduced to ensure there is bandwidth reserved so that latency dependant ones are still usable.
Well you are wrong on the first part and correct on the second part. You run into problems, for example, when an ISP decides that ABC Video store is high priority because that store pays them money, and XYZ video store is low priority because that store does not pay them money. What if I want to download from XYZ video store and not ABC video store because XYZ is much cheaper, yet XYZ is unusable and I am forced to use ABC? Why should I use something that is indirectly being dictated to me by an ISP (through available speed) on a connection that I already pay to use.
What good is choice if you CAN'T choose to use certain services because your connection has high latency due to a saturated network?
Well then don't offer such a high speed yet crippled service, or upgrade the network. It is so ironic that VM launches a 50Mbps service but at the same time makes an off-the-cuff remark about DPI on BitTorrent.
yeah great idea make traffic management even more confusing :rolleyes:
now it will just be a cat and mouse game between applications that are throttled and those that arnt
Ahem...
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34697947-post76.html
;)
Sorry Mick ;)
Well that would be my choice too, I would also like a connection where VoIP and browsing works fine, but where I can also use whatever application I want on the service that I am paying for. Why offer an "up to 50Mbps" service if you can't use it?
You can.
You just have to be aware that some applications may have a lower priority, and at times of congestion they'll work slower. It's a small price to pay for ensuring that when you need low latency you can get it.
Well yes you are correct of course, but you run into problems, for example, when an ISP decides that ABC Video store is high priority because that store pays them money, and XYZ video store is low priority because that store does not pay them money. What if I want to download from XYZ video store and not ABC video store because XYZ is much cheaper, yet XYZ is unusable and I am forced to use ABC? Why should I use something that is indirectly being dictated to me by an ISP (through available speed) on a connection that I already pay to use.
Ah the big myth of net neutrality. That ISPs will be paid to speed up certain sites, artificually slowing others. Any ISP that did that would see a mass exodus of customers, so they most likely wouldn't. Even if they hypothetically did, would it be such a huge problem? The money they recieve would be subsidising the cost of the ISP providing their service, keeping costs down for the consumer, and the effect on the speed of any other sites will most likely be negligable.
When you start talking about situations like this you're talking about bringing in legislation to prevent something there's NO EVIDENCE will happen, and in doing so compromising an ISPs ability to provide a connection that is suitable for low latency applications. I'm not a fan of legislating "just in case" especially when the "just in case" is a "not very likely". If it gets to the stage that ISPs are bringing in traffic shaping that effects the everyday use of the net unless the sites you use pay them big money then that's the time that ofcom can step in and consumers can vote with their wallets. Until then they need to leave things the hell alone because a network where all bits are treated equally ignores the fundamental fact that not all bits are equal, and some are a hell of a lot more important than others.
Well then don't offer such a high speed yet crippled service, or upgrade the network. It is so ironic that VM launches a 50Mbps service but at the same time makes an off-the-cuff remark about DPI on BitTorrent.
The issue isn't really with the downstream, downstream traffic (especially with services like 20 and 50mb) is mostly burst traffic. You just can't really download enough to sustain a 50mb/s transfer for significant periods, when you an download things quicker than you can use/watch them (a 2hr HD movie in 15mins for example) then there's going to be a huge amount of idle time on your connection, but you want that speed there when you do need it.
The real issue is with the upstream (which ofc directly effects the downstream traffic as well when your ACK's go missing.) and it doesn't matter how fast they make the upstream because applications like bittorrent will ALWAYS make use of it. This is where you have to draw a line and bring in something like DPI, you need to ensure you have upstream bandwidth to provide a smooth service, and you just can't do that in a neutral network, and you can't just keep increasing it until it's not congested because as p2p becomes more and more widespread you'll be fighting a losing battle.
No, you're a business who has a thing called a bottom line to worry about.
The cost of providing the maximum advertised speed to the majority of your subscribers is FAR higher than the income you're getting from them.
So you have two choices as a consumer:
1) Go get a leased line (or have your ISP raise prices to much closer to leased line levels)
2) Deal with contention.
In the real reality, of one where things cost money and consumers get what they pay for, it's as simple as that.
On the contrary, they do not get what they pay for, therein lies the problem.
Ah the big myth of net neutrality. That ISPs will be paid to speed up certain sites, artificually slowing others. Any ISP that did that would see a mass exodus of customers, so they most likely wouldn't.
There is no myth. You can be sure that the "legal, licensed peer-to-peer music service" (referred to here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/16/virgin_bittorrent/page2.html)) will not be subject to same throttling as other peer-to-peer services. There is also no hypothetical about it. ISPs where I live throttle BitTorrent traffic right now, to a crawl, while there is plenty of bandwith available. It is not a case of throttling it just while necessary as you claimed in your previous post, but rather throttling it all the time.
Even if they hypothetically did, would it be such a huge problem? The money they recieve would be subsidising the cost of the ISP providing their service, keeping costs down for the consumer, and the effect on the speed of any other sites will most likely be negligable.
And you know they will pass on these cost savings to the consumer how exactly? I'm guessing "pass throttling savings on to consumers" is not in VM's current business plan.
You know the effect on other sites would be negligible in a hypothetical situation how? It is ridiculous to claim that the effects of DPI are neglibible when you don't have a DPI throttled connection. Nor is Virgin Media an ISP utopia.
When you start talking about situations like this you're talking about bringing in legislation to prevent something there's NO EVIDENCE will happen
Really? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070813-isps-to-bbc-we-throttle-iplayer-unless-you-pay-up.html
Or maybe you would prefer to buy free BBC content, and other freely available content from VM's new "legal, peer-to-peer service"? :rolleyes: The rest of us would prefer to use the connection we paid for to get it.
It's a slippery slope, not the "not very likely" you refer to.
The real issue is with the upstream (which ofc directly effects the downstream traffic as well when your ACK's go missing.) and it doesn't matter how fast they make the upstream because applications like bittorrent will ALWAYS make use of it. This is where you have to draw a line and bring in something like DPI, you need to ensure you have upstream bandwidth to provide a smooth service, and you just can't do that in a neutral network, and you can't just keep increasing it until it's not congested because as p2p becomes more and more widespread you'll be fighting a losing battle.
Good points :)
There is no myth. You can be sure that the "legal, licensed peer-to-peer music service" (referred to here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/16/virgin_bittorrent/page2.html)) will not be subject to same throttling as other peer-to-peer services. There is also no hypothetical about it. ISPs where I live throttle BitTorrent traffic right now, to a crawl, while there is plenty of bandwith available. It is not a case of throttling it just while necessary as you claimed in your previous post, but rather throttling it all the time.
There is a myth. Most of the net neutrality "debate" involves people going around preaching about a multi-tired internet where you have to pay for access to different websites, which is a load of rubbish.
I can be sure it'll be a lower priority than something like VOIP because latency dependant traffic will be assigned a higher priority than normal traffic, and any p2p service, no matter how legal, wont be. It may be higher priority than torrents, but it'd never be the same level as something like VOIP.
And you know they will pass on these cost savings to the consumer how exactly? I'm guessing "pass throttling savings on to consumers" is not in VM's current business plan.
Nope, they wont, but they will use them to increase capacity as that is the entire point of getting the content providers to pay.
You know the effect on other sites would be negligible in a hypothetical situation how? It is ridiculous to claim that the effects of DPI are neglibible when you don't have a DPI throttled connection. Nor is Virgin Media an ISP utopia.
Really? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070813-isps-to-bbc-we-throttle-iplayer-unless-you-pay-up.html
Or maybe you would prefer to buy free BBC content, and other freely available content from VM's new "legal, peer-to-peer service"? :rolleyes: The rest of us would prefer to use the connection we paid for to get it.
It's a slippery slope, not the "not very likely" you refer to.
I used to work for a small ISP that had extensive QoS, our BT central pipe was constantly at full capacity, and any time http traffic dropped bittorrent traffic would immediately pick up the slack and take it back up to capacity.
The effect of us prioritising VOIP over HTTP was very marginal (as it was prioritising anything over default traffic) there was next to no noticable difference in browsing speed (as there just isn't that much VOIP traffic). Making bittorrent lower priority however made a MASSIVE difference because there is that much of it. This is how I know it'd be negligable, because the volume of traffic from a "priority" service is likely to be negligable against the overall bandwidth, whereas bittorrent takes out a massive proportion.
The iplayer thing is also fine IMO, it's a high bandwidth application, and should have a lower priority than normal browsing and latency dependant applications. The "we'll slow it down unless you pay" isn't like they're holding them to randsom, it's saying that they'll make it lower priority traffic unless the bbc are willing to foot the bill to increase capacity to compensate for the increase in usage (simply because it's not cost effective for the ISP to, because consumers wont pay more for it). It's not like they'd be blocking it, just making sure it doesn't adversely effect other applications.
The slippery slope is legislation for the sake of legislation when there isn't a problem to start with. We live in a free market, where companies are free to commit commercial suicide if they want to, and consumers are free to not use their products if they don't like them.
Forcing legislation that is damaging is not the answer. Reactive actions that deal with any issues will always be better than blanket legislation that takes a vital tool out of an ISPs toolbox. I really would not want to have a product from an ISP that was not allowed to implement any form of QoS.
---------- Post added at 19:26 ---------- Previous post was at 19:20 ----------
On the contrary, they do not get what they pay for, therein lies the problem.
Yes they do.
They pay for a CONTENDED service, as such they pay A LOT less than what you pay for the gaurenteed level of bandwidth that a leased line provides.
The problem lies with people having unreasonable expectations of what their money should get them.
If I go to an all you an eat buffet then sure, I COULD eat everything, if I did I'd get a bargain, but I'm not going to. The restaurant knows this, so they offer a contended service that costs a lot less than if they were cooking it all just for me.
ISPs can easily find out who is accessing dodgy torrent sites, so be afraid.
leagal torrents you will be OK.
Yes they do.
They pay for a CONTENDED service, as such they pay A LOT less than what you pay for the gaurenteed level of bandwidth that a leased line provides.
So because there is such a thing as a priority broadband service called a leased line, we have to make the obvious differences between the two and are not to have any expectations of the Virgin one?
The problem lies with people having unreasonable expectations of what their money should get them.
They would be the expectations that were given as the reason as to why you should sign up with Virgin.
If I go to an all you an eat buffet then sure, I COULD eat everything, if I did I'd get a bargain, but I'm not going to. The restaurant knows this, so they offer a contended service that costs a lot less than if they were cooking it all just for me.
You are wrong. and it's a pretty bad analogy.
You think it works for you because you said I'm not going to try changing it to I am going to try to and see how your argument turns out.
ntl.wotcha
16-12-2008, 19:45
What about Wow patches which are P2P distributed ? A 4GB patch would take ages and we all know how daft Wow is huge patches.
Impz2002
16-12-2008, 19:57
This practise has already been ruled illegal in the U.S., and Comcast was fined for DPI on BitTorrent packets. Deep packet inspection is also a violation of any type of net neutrlity idea, and represents all kinds of problems.
Comcast were actually preventing people from seeding torrents. they were doing this but inserting RST packets in the data stream to the person seeding the torrent. This caused the connection to be reset therefore making seeding impossible. I think that is why they got in so much trouble as slowing down traffic is one thing but actually modifying the traffic without user consent is another!
Impz
Releasing 50mb broadband and within 24 hours saying they're going to kill torrent traffic is akin to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera inviting me to their pool party ... the day after it happens.
Impz2002
16-12-2008, 20:04
Yes they do.
They pay for a CONTENDED service, as such they pay A LOT less than what you pay for the gaurenteed level of bandwidth that a leased line provides.
The problem lies with people having unreasonable expectations of what their money should get them.
Bravo ! well said.
I challenge anyone here to find a residential ISP that doesn't have a contended service. Can you imagine if VM's network was setup so all customers could fully saturate their connection whenever they wanted to ? can you imagine the amount of redundant bandwith that would just sit there not being used?
And then there is the financial side of this, VM would not last 5 mins as it would cost them so much to have a network like that.
Impz
---------- Post added at 20:04 ---------- Previous post was at 20:03 ----------
Releasing 50mb broadband and within 24 hours saying they're going to kill torrent traffic is akin to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera inviting me to their pool party ... the day after it happens.
They are not going to stop bittorrent traffic they are going to shape it at peak times !
I dont see why that is unreasonable, Networks need to be managed its all about striking a balance !
So because there is such a thing as a priority broadband service called a leased line, we have to make the obvious differences between the two and are not to have any expectations of the Virgin one?
Yes.
One is a residential connection aimed at residential users, the other is to offer gaurenteed bandwidth and aimed at businesses, and expectations should be in line with that.
That is to say that whilst it's a 50mb connection that is capable of reaching 50mb, there's nothing that says it can gaurentee this, and no SLAs, and even the simplist of thinkers can work out that if everyone was maxing their connections then you'd get no where near 50mb because it's not a sustainable level of bandwidth at the price point.
Anyone that thinks residential broadband should be a gaurenteed level of service is living in cloud cuckoo land.
They would be the expectations that were given as the reason as to why you should sign up with Virgin.
Yes, those reasons are it's more reliable and faster than ADSL. No where when you sign up does it state you are gaurenteed any level of service.
You are wrong. and it's a pretty bad analogy.
You think it works for you because you said I'm not going to try changing it to I am going to try to and see how your argument turns out.
You can try, and you'll get asked to leave the restaurant. Just like when you try to use more than your share of bandwidth on VM you'll get STM'd.
All you can eat services work because the average person will eat an amount of food worth less than they pay, leaving the restaurant to make some profit. The same with residential broadband, the average person will use less bandwidth than they pay for, so it's a viable service. When someone comes along and starts using the service constantly it shifts the balance of the average person to a level where it's not a viable service, then controls have to be put in place to ensure everyone else gets their fair share as well.
If you are a heavy downloader you will NOT find an ISP that is happy to have you. Many will tolerate you, but only until their average user suddenly becomes unprofitable, and then they'll start taking measures to ensure that their service an run profitably. If that's something you don't like, then you'll have to go for a service with dedicated guarenteed bandwidth, and you'll pay A LOT more for it.
jokasmoker
16-12-2008, 20:28
They are not going to stop bittorrent traffic they are going to shape it at peak times !
I dont see why that is unreasonable, Networks need to be managed its all about striking a balance !
if they shape bit torrent traffic along the same lines as they do traffic management atm i think its not all that bad just dont download via peak times download over night.
also what about the amount of traffic sites like youtube and others generate http://torrentfreak.com/http-traffic-overtakes-p2p-courtesy-of-youtube/
thats surely more than what p2p traffic is seems like bit torrent is being made the scapegoat.
if they shape bit torrent traffic along the same lines as they do traffic management atm i think its not all that bad just dont download via peak times download over night.
also what about the amount of traffic sites like youtube and others generate
thats surely more than what p2p traffic is seems like bit torrent is being made the scapegoat.
youtube isn't too bad, iplayer saw massive rises in bandwidth used for streaming (around a 100% increase) though. The reason http has overtook p2p again is because of traffic shaping, without it bittorrent would destroy everything else.
There's a couple of great posts that deal with this on plusnet's blog, one of them deals with the cost of providing bandwidth (http://community.plus.net/blog/2008/02/28/how-uk-isps-are-charged-for-broadband-the-cost-of-ipstream/) which obviously isn't entirely relevant to VM as it's for ADSL and so deals with the cost of bandwidth on BT centrals, with the exception of the section on transit costs, which reveal their external transit costs average out to £20 a month per Mb/s. (Incidently, look at the p2p usage on the overnight graph on that blog, keep it in mind)
The other is specifically about iplayer (http://community.plus.net/blog/2008/02/22/will-bbc-iplayer-usage-break-the-internet-the-bandwidth-timebomb/) and it's effects on bandwidth usage. Now, remember the p2p usage on that graph on the other blog? Check it out on the ones for the evening on this one. It's gone from around 55%, down to 10-20%. This is because of their traffic shaping (http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/traffic_prioritisation.shtml). Without it p2p would be using whatever it can get it's hands on. It really is a beast that HAS to be tamed if people want a service that is at all reliable.
awesometeeth
16-12-2008, 20:58
i was seriously looking at going back to virgin when i moved next year...
i wont bother now, this and STM is just a royal pain the bum. Not like i even use torrents much, but i do use it to share legal software and im not going to be told when i can do it.
just more restrictions which make virgin even less appealing and im so tired of them bringing in more and more rules as to how you can use your service.
Anyone that thinks residential broadband should be a gaurenteed level of service is living in cloud cuckoo land.
You're using the word guarantee, when I don't think many people are expecting guarantees of it always being 50Mb.
infact it's Virgin who are making it sounds as if it's guaranteed.
You can stream crystal clear HD video straight to your computer with virtually no buffering at all.
If there's virtually no buffering at the full 50Mb, is it going to be stuttering like mad at even half of 50Mb?
It's enough for everyone to share in the same house. download movies, stream TV shows, browse online and game online all at the same time and all at ultra fast speeds.
Everyone all at the same time.
Yes, those reasons are it's more reliable and faster than ADSL. No where when you sign up does it state you are gaurenteed any level of service.
No, they are not selling it as the expectations being that it is more reliable and faster than ADSL. they are selling it as what you can do with it.
If you are a heavy downloader you will NOT find an ISP that is happy to have you.
So why 50Mb if they don't want you if you are going to do everything they are telling you that you can do with it?
they don't want you to use it, they just want you to buy it.
hokkers999
16-12-2008, 21:10
I am right in thinking utorrent passes the throttling? with the encyption option enabled?
I use uTorrent in encrypted mode, I also route all that traffic through an encrypted vpn to somewhere in Switzerland.
At that point it is only "traffic" and there is *zero* way to tell what it is.
www.swissvpn.net
---------- Post added at 21:10 ---------- Previous post was at 21:06 ----------
ISPs can easily find out who is accessing dodgy torrent sites, so be afraid.
leagal torrents you will be OK.
Not if you pass it through an encrypted VPN first :D
Luckily we're nowhere near as stupid as Americans, and the first debate on net neutrality in this country was summed up by saying it is "an answer to problems we don't have, using a philosophy we don't share (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/20/uk_net_neutrality/)".
There are EU regulations which specifically allow ISPs to prioritise traffic based on application, so don't hold your breath waiting for a similar ruling on it being illegal here.
Net neutrality is essentially an American created issue with no real world viability. It's dangerous to the sustainability of the internet and is essentially about Amerians beating their chests and going "ZOMG FREEDOM" rather than any usability issues. Every single usability issue for the internet (and any network) points well away from a neutral network and instead towards QoS that targets and prioritises latency dependant traffic at the expense of other traffic.
Or to put it another way, my voice call and online gaming trump's timmy's need to download another copy of the latest Batman movie ;)
As someone who both plays games, and uses p2p from time to time, i've no problem with any isp taking measures to prevent the heavy p2p guys from affecting my gaming/browsing, as long as they don't use quite the stupid system comcast used (which iirc basically kept reseting all p2p torrent uploads).
sk8er_boi6000
16-12-2008, 22:03
No offence, but what gives you the right to assume that your demand for gaming bandwidth is more important than someone else's right to use their bandwidth for P2P applications? The use of a P2P application doesn't automatically imply pircay or legal activity. The arrogance of people these days who assume they have the moral high ground because they don't use torrent applications is both immensly annoying and moronic in the extreme.
I have personally used torrent applications for legal means, both for distribution and download, do I deserve to have my usage automatically throttled just because the type of bandwidth usage I am employing is considered unfavourable by others?
Also, even if I where to use a torrent for an illegal means, so freakin what. I am getting sick of internet smart alecs who seem to think it is their god given right to be judge, jury, and executioner to everyone who has ever pirated something.
Virgin are doing this for one reason, and one reason only. To be tight and save themselves from upgrading their network, and if this plan does come to fruition I will be ditching my services pronto.
No offence, but what gives you the right to assume that your demand for gaming bandwidth is more important than someone else's right to use their bandwidth for P2P applications? The use of a P2P application doesn't automatically imply pircay or legal activity. The arrogance of people these days who assume they have the moral high ground because they don't use torrent applications is both immensly annoying and moronic in the extreme.
Oh, I dunno, maybe something to do with the small matter of gaming traffic being extremely time sensitive and latency being pretty damn important with it?
Your p2p traffic can wait, it doesn't matter if it has a trip time of 500ms, with gaming traffic it does.
Feel free to ditch your service. You'll struggle to find an ISP that doesn't traffic shape and has no intention of doing so, especially as more and more people start using bandwidth heavy applications.
Also, even if I where to use a torrent for an illegal means, so freakin what. I am getting sick of internet smart alecs who seem to think it is their god given right to be judge, jury, and executioner to everyone who has ever pirated something.
Virgin are doing this for one reason, and one reason only. To be tight and save themselves from upgrading their network, and if this plan does come to fruition I will be ditching my services pronto.
As I read elsewhere
The internet is far bigger than Virginmedia, and if they are so stupid
as to target their own customers and risk losing the revenue
you have to think that if they are jumping on P2P, then is P2P the main thing that is costing them money? if it is then they aren't going to make any money if you tell these people that they have to go and pay another ISP because we don't want your money.
---------- Post added at 22:16 ---------- Previous post was at 22:13 ----------
Feel free to ditch your service. You'll struggle to find an ISP that doesn't traffic shape and has no intention of doing so,
Scaremongering?
especially as more and more people start using bandwidth heavy applications.
Virgins worst nightmare that.
sk8er_boi6000
16-12-2008, 22:16
Oh, I dunno, maybe something to do with the small matter of gaming traffic being extremely time sensitive and latency being pretty damn important with it?
Your p2p traffic can wait, it doesn't matter if it has a trip time of 500ms, with gaming traffic it does.
Feel free to ditch your service. You'll struggle to find an ISP that doesn't traffic shape and has no intention of doing so, especially as more and more people start using bandwidth heavy applications.
Latency is not affected by the amount of traffic generated by other users, it is affected by your distance from the machine that you are in contact with. STM is not going to improve that situation, if a machine is 500 miles away from you it will still be 500 miles away when Virgin throttle my connection. The only possible way for bandwidth usage to slow down your gaming would be if everyone on an exchange hammered it at exactly the same time, which is extremely unlikely to happen.
Irregardless, I am paying the same for my connection as any other customer, therefore the reason for your bandwidth use does not give you right of way.
Also, you are wrong, o2 and BE still don't cap their connections yet.
n0c0ntr0l
16-12-2008, 22:21
Oh, I dunno, maybe something to do with the small matter of gaming traffic being extremely time sensitive and latency being pretty damn important with it?
Your p2p traffic can wait, it doesn't matter if it has a trip time of 500ms, with gaming traffic it does.
Feel free to ditch your service. You'll struggle to find an ISP that doesn't traffic shape and has no intention of doing so, especially as more and more people start using bandwidth heavy applications.
I found one, they are known as Be* there and the difference between them and virgin 20Mb is the difference between the moon and the sun, I should know, I've had the two... Be have been perfect been seeing torrent speeds at peak time of well over 1MB/s and they have all the O2 customers on their line as well.
Latency is not affected by the amount of traffic generated by other users, it is affected by your distance from the machine that you are in contact with. STM is not going to improve that situation, if a machine is 500 miles away from you it will still be 500 miles away when Virgin throttle my connection. The only possible way for bandwidth usage to slow down your gaming would be if everyone on an exchange hammered it at exactly the same time, which is extremely unlikely to happen.
Irregardless, I am paying the same for my connection as any other customer, therefore the reason for your bandwidth use does not give you right of way.
Also, you are wrong, o2 and BE still don't cap their connections yet.
Latency is effected by network congestion, if traffic shapping is slowing down your p2p downloads the network IS congested, that's how traffic shaping works, it's not an artificial cap on how much bandwidth it can use.
They key word there is yet. Once the average user is using more bandwidth than they are paying for they will. It's simple economics. The very idea of unlimited broadband is fundamentally flawed and only works whilst average usage is lower than the cost to provide that usage. I've already posted links that show an ISPs external transit costs alone equate to £20 per Mb/s per month, it's just not viable to offer unlimited services that have high levels of utilisation at prices that the consumer will pay.
BTW, thanks for the negative rep, I love spending time explaining real world issues to people only to be called arrogant. Maybe you'd care to find some links that contradict any of my points?
Virgins worst nightmare that.
Not really.
It's only bad when it's consistant traffic and not burst traffic. P2P is so bad because it's consistantly heavy upstream bandwidth, the burst traffic from the downloads isn't really THAT bad, its getss the upload saturated by torrent traffic that hurts.
Virgin are best placed to deal with higher bandwidth applications, as long as those applications don't abuse the upstream as much as bittorrent does.
Impz2002
16-12-2008, 23:38
also what about the amount of traffic sites like youtube and others generate http://torrentfreak.com/http-traffic-overtakes-p2p-courtesy-of-youtube/
thats surely more than what p2p traffic is seems like bit torrent is being made the scapegoat.
P2P traffic is by far the largest single use of bandwith online. i think it counts for about a third of internet traffic IIRC !
Impz
---------- Post added at 23:38 ---------- Previous post was at 23:34 ----------
I use uTorrent in encrypted mode, I also route all that traffic through an encrypted vpn to somewhere in Switzerland.
At that point it is only "traffic" and there is *zero* way to tell what it is.
Not true, even if it is encrypted the pattern of torrent traffic can still be seen. not as easy to do but still possible
You know what im sick of people moaning about STM and acting as if VM owe you something. If you dont like it then leave ! VM are by a long way one of the best providers in the UK. yes STM is an annoyance but when i want to use my connection it always works and i always get decent speeds. If STM didnt exist then im sure it would be alot worse.
Straight out throttling would be bad, prioritising would be better (eg. if capacity is not short at a particular time, then it goes at full speed). After all, if it's busy, everything is throttled by contention, so it makes sense if time critical traffic (Voip, gaming, Live streams etc.) has the most favourable contention, while bulk traffic has the least.
As for Bitorrent, don't shoot the messenger, it's a protocol that can be used to serve Large files by co-operation, and what happens to be on it at any time does not make it inherently good or bad.
P2P traffic is by far the largest single use of bandwith online. i think it counts for about a third of internet traffic IIRC !
and they want to risk losing that many people?
setting up your own p2p network at an extra cost isn't going to bring them back or make you any new customers either.
Impz2002
16-12-2008, 23:48
and they want to risk losing that many people?
setting up your own p2p network at an extra cost isn't going to bring them back or make you any new customers either.
Your forgetting the fact that almost all other UK isp's already throttle P2P in some shape or form. I use torrents fairly often and if i have to accept slower speeds during peak times to allow others in my area to use their connection for gaming or skype etc then that is fair. There is a limited bandwith and as long as everyone has their fair share of whats available then that is fine by me.
Nobody knows the basis on which this shaping will happen there are no details of what triggers there will be or for how long it will last so passing judgment now is foolish !
Impz
highroyds
16-12-2008, 23:55
I think this is just crazy and its VM shooting their own foot. First they announce the 50MB BB, but then announce going after Torrent users. Thes loads of places that use Torrents - TV Episodes, pc game patches and other web sites for legal stuff. I can see people moving over to Sly if VM do this in the way we think it'll hit.
They'll loose too many customers.
cook1984
17-12-2008, 00:01
This could actually be a really good thing if it means the end of the much hated STM.
Luckily my BT downloads wont be affected. They are piped through a VPN anyway. Presumably VPN will get high priority in the new scheme of things since it's often used by people working at home and doing other stuff that needs good bandwidth and latency, so my downloads might even get a bit quicker! ;)
There are two ways they can implement this. They could just try to throttle BitTorrent, in which case they will fail just like every other ISP in the world that has tried. Even if they somehow manage it, the BT devs will come up with a solution (e.g. better encryption) pretty quickly. The other option is to throttle everything that isn't HTTP/mail/VOIP/VPN/etc, which will bugger up things like iPlayer and is doomed fail also.
Will newsgroups be throttled too? If not, people will just switch to using them at peek times instead of BT overnight.
A better option would be to invest in something like PeerCache and network upgrades. Make BT faster and improve general speed too.
You have to laugh when they announce a crippled 50 meg service one day, and then just for good measure announce they are thinking of making it even more wretched a day or two later.
and they want to risk losing that many people?
setting up your own p2p network at an extra cost isn't going to bring them back or make you any new customers either.
Actually setting up their own p2p network would be just about the best thing they can do. Internal traffic costs peanuts, p2p between customers on the same ISP would cut their costs dramatically.
They won't lose people because every other ISP is either already doing it, or will be in the future. You can go on about how o2 and be don't, but they will. VM was always said to be immune from caps and throttling "because it's cable" but they soon caught up. It has far lower internal transit costs than ADSL, but eventually the external ones caught up and they had to cap. The same will happen with LLU, they have relatively low levels of usage at the moment, when they grow and demand increases they will start to throttle and cap. They both already have FUP's that allow for the disconnection of heavy users (and yeah, it's not enforced at the moment, but neither was VM's for years, I could go back through this very forum and find loads of posts going on about how VM (well NTL and Blueyonder) will never cap or throttle).
Anyone that thinks that an ISP will ever beable to offer TRUELY unlimited bandwidth is deluding themselves as the costs involved (as I have shown) are just far too high. All ISPs rely on having a huge amount of low usage customers subsidising the high usage ones, and they would all gladly get rid of all the heavy downloaders because it would make their businesses A LOT more profitable.
It wasn't all that long ago that all ISPs were "unlimited" then they slowly, one by one, started bringing in caps and traffic shaping, the heavy downloaders did the ISP dance, switching from ISP to ISP to try to keep their "unlimited" service, and now we're reaching the end of it, with only the LLU ISPs left, it's not going to be long before they join the traffic shaping party.
General Maximus
17-12-2008, 00:08
i hate the idea of dpi out of principle. If i am paying for an internet connection i want the freedom to use it for whatever i want to, not to be told what i can download with what apps. I would actually prefer to be stm'd rather than move to dpi.
hokkers999
17-12-2008, 01:05
[snip]
Not true, even if it is encrypted the pattern of torrent traffic can still be seen. not as easy to do but still possible
You know what im sick of people moaning about STM and acting as if VM owe you something. If you dont like it then leave ! VM are by a long way one of the best providers in the UK. yes STM is an annoyance but when i want to use my connection it always works and i always get decent speeds. If STM didnt exist then im sure it would be alot worse.
Sorry my friend you are wrong there. It is *encrypted* there is no way to know what is going down the wire as it were. From VM's point of view it is one connection to one remote point. That fact the tunnelling through it are hundreds of torrent connections is impossible to tell.
I wasn't moaning about STM just pointing out how to avoid application throttling.
Impz2002
17-12-2008, 01:24
Sorry my friend you are wrong there.
Sorry i agree with what you are saying , its tunneled through a VPN then it is untraceable. if it were just encrypted in utorrent then that can be seen.
For some reason i forgot about the VPN aspect while i was replying.
Impz
sk8er_boi6000
17-12-2008, 01:52
Latency is effected by network congestion, if traffic shapping is slowing down your p2p downloads the network IS congested, that's how traffic shaping works, it's not an artificial cap on how much bandwidth it can use.
They key word there is yet. Once the average user is using more bandwidth than they are paying for they will. It's simple economics. The very idea of unlimited broadband is fundamentally flawed and only works whilst average usage is lower than the cost to provide that usage. I've already posted links that show an ISPs external transit costs alone equate to £20 per Mb/s per month, it's just not viable to offer unlimited services that have high levels of utilisation at prices that the consumer will pay.
BTW, thanks for the negative rep, I love spending time explaining real world issues to people only to be called arrogant. Maybe you'd care to find some links that contradict any of my points?
Not really.
It's only bad when it's consistant traffic and not burst traffic. P2P is so bad because it's consistantly heavy upstream bandwidth, the burst traffic from the downloads isn't really THAT bad, its getss the upload saturated by torrent traffic that hurts.
Virgin are best placed to deal with higher bandwidth applications, as long as those applications don't abuse the upstream as much as bittorrent does.
Latency would only be affected if the exchange was either overloaded, or generally didn't have the capacity to cope, and as VM are putting out these press releases saying how wonderful their services are, and that they are capable of putting out connections of 200 mb/s then I believe it would be fair to assume that their network has plenty of spare capacity available to it. As for the negative rep, if you go about making a point in such a blatantly arrogant and "in your face" way, then that is what you can expect.
The point is remarkably simple, Virgin are screwing customers over rather than increasing the capacity of their network to actually deliver on what they promise, and my point (which you still don't seem to be able to counter) is that despite your assumption that your gaming bandwidth is important to you, there is nothing mandated in law that says your use is any more valid than mine, Virgin are just choosing to screw BT users over because like most e-morons around these days they assume that there are no legitimate uses for BT technology making its users an easy and convenient target.
The other point is that several software companies, and more often than not makers of Linux distributions turn to Bittorrent in order to distribute their products, quiet legitimately, to save themselves on the massive bandwidth costs that the hundreds upon thousands of downloads of these things incur, and if more ISP's continue to follow this, rather crappy lead that seems to be becoming a regular theme amongst ISP's nowadays then people who produce those things will get harmed by it.
Quiet simply, it is about time that ISP's all over the world (not just virgin) stopped doing everything on the cheap and actually made REAL efforts to actually come good on the products they are selling us.
thejoyrider
17-12-2008, 02:33
lol people still use torrents? o_O
Latency would only be affected if the exchange was either overloaded, or generally didn't have the capacity to cope, and as VM are putting out these press releases saying how wonderful their services are, and that they are capable of putting out connections of 200 mb/s then I believe it would be fair to assume that their network has plenty of spare capacity available to it. As for the negative rep, if you go about making a point in such a blatantly arrogant and "in your face" way, then that is what you can expect.
If traffic shaping is in effect then yes, it is overloaded. They don't limit for the sake of limiting (it doesn't have to be at the UBR either, it could just as easily be at the external peering point).
The internal network is more than capable of the speeds, as are likely a fair amount of their peering connections. That doesn't mean that all are though, and there will be congestion at points in the network, at these points traffic has to be prioritised, and very low priority traffic (such as ICMP) gets dropped, low priority stuff gets held back, and high priority time critical stuff gets pushed ahead.
If you think my posts are arrogant then you need to reread them. They are merely stating facts, gaming traffic is time critical, torrents, and any other form of download, are not. And by time critical I mean miliseconds matter.
The point is remarkably simple, Virgin are screwing customers over rather than increasing the capacity of their network to actually deliver on what they promise, and my point (which you still don't seem to be able to counter) is that despite your assumption that your gaming bandwidth is important to you, there is nothing mandated in law that says your use is any more valid than mine, Virgin are just choosing to screw BT users over because like most e-morons around these days they assume that there are no legitimate uses for BT technology making its users an easy and convenient target.
No, they are offering a contended service, and supplying that. They are then bringing in measures to make best use of that contended service. You can't increase capacity to financially unviable levels, no matter how much customers want you to as soon you'll go out of business.
There is nothing in law that states time critical traffic is more important than others, but there are frameworks in EU law that state ISPs have the right to prioritise traffic for certain applications, and common sense tells you that those applications will be ones whos bandwidth usage is time critical, and not something where latency really doesn't matter. Like it or not applications like VOIP and gaming are FAR more important than torrent traffic, regardless of what you're downloading, simply because a 500ms delay on a torrent piece isn't going to effect you, in gaming and VOIP it will.
The other point is that several software companies, and more often than not makers of Linux distributions turn to Bittorrent in order to distribute their products, quiet legitimately, to save themselves on the massive bandwidth costs that the hundreds upon thousands of downloads of these things incur, and if more ISP's continue to follow this, rather crappy lead that seems to be becoming a regular theme amongst ISP's nowadays then people who produce those things will get harmed by it.
To save themselves on the bandwidth costs, and to offload them to the ISP instead.
So, the ISP instead foots the distribution costs, the consumer doesn't want to pay, so what happens? Does the ISP just blindly invest in infrastructure with no financial return on it? Does it beans. It's forced to make do with the infrastructure it has in place, and that means QoS to ensure that other services aren't adversely effected.
I guess it's ok for content providers to cut their bandwidth costs but not ISPs? This is essentially the crux of the issue when it comes to net neutrality, the content providers want to do everything in their power to cut their costs and to offload them to others (the ISP) yet don't want to pay the ISPs to contribute to the cost of updating their infrastructure to cope with the added bandwidth usage. ISPs are quite legitimately annoyed at this, and as they can't pass on increased costs to the consumer (as the consumer has no appetite for price rises) they have to implement QoS to make best use of what they have.
Quiet simply, it is about time that ISP's all over the world (not just virgin) stopped doing everything on the cheap and actually made REAL efforts to actually come good on the products they are selling us.
They don't do things on the cheap.
Once again, external transit costs for an ISP once all peering agreements have been taken into account costs an average of £20 per Mbps per month. That means a 50meg line used constantly costs £1000 in external transit a month.
It's not their internal infrastructure that is the issue, it's the external transit out to the rest of the internet which IS NOT cheap. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realise if it costs you £1000 in external transit alone to provide 50Mbps, then you need one hell of a lot of contention!
Sorry but anyone who uses Virgins "free" music download service is a retard, just as anyone who uses other corporate sponsored download services like iMesh are retards. I mean would you knowingly install adware/spyware on your pc? Didn't think so.
Anyhoo, the problem with bittorrent is not that everyone who uses it is raping their upload bandwidth, rather a small ammount of idiots who dont know how to configure their torrent client are raping their upload bandwidth. Everyone else knows how to set it up correctly and will limit their upload to 70-80% of capacity which leaves more than enough headroom so as not to effect downstream. If VM were to throttle bittorrent there would be no need for them to throttle download at all and to only throttle upload by a maximum of 30%.
You are unlikely to stop people from using bittorrent, that much is a fact, but in throttling them you only keep them using their connection longer than if they were not throttled which sort of defeats the point. **** poor upload speeds dont help the issue either.
Impz2002
17-12-2008, 08:44
Anyone that thinks that an ISP will ever beable to offer TRUELY unlimited bandwidth is deluding themselves as the costs involved (as I have shown) are just far too high.
as far as im aware the sky MAX package has unlimited bandwith
Sorry but anyone who uses Virgins "free" music download service is a retard, just as anyone who uses other corporate sponsored download services like iMesh are retards. I mean would you knowingly install adware/spyware on your pc? Didn't think so.
I'm still trying to work out where you justify the term retarded? Very little details has been released by Virgin about their "free" music service, so how is it or its potential users retarded?
And considering that p2p technology is one of the biggest vectors for the distribution of spy/malware on individual PC's, surely you would need to broaden your "retard" swipe to millions of other users who aren't that careful either?
SimonB79
17-12-2008, 09:51
If this new system gives Gamer Traffic priority over Bit-torrent then I'm all for it. :clap:
(Its about time this was introduced.... people are killing the bandwidth by running torrent servers 24 / 7 and everyone else is suffering put em at the bottom of the pile that's what I say.) :rolleyes:
Linux distros my ARSE... dodgy porn & pirate software more like :LOL:
These Torrent Bandits are probably the same people that leave their water taps running constantly and cause water shortages. :td:
Luckily my BT downloads wont be affected. They are piped through a VPN anyway. Presumably VPN will get high priority in the new scheme of things since it's often used by people working at home and doing other stuff that needs good bandwidth and latency, so my downloads might even get a bit quicker! ;)
i wouldnt think VPN would have that high a priority as using your residential connection for work purposes is against the T&C's
comicbookguy
17-12-2008, 10:08
Amazing I pay them nearly £400 a year for my broadband and I'm not allowed to do what I want with it. it's bad enough we get traffic shaped at the moment but hammering down Torrent bandwidth too surely means we should get a rebate or a reduction in costs.
I thought bittorents are P2P and actually Skype VOIP uses P2P.
Can anyone tell me what the difference is between bittorent and P2P is because I'm dammed if I know.
That's a little like asking what's the difference between a Ford and a car. A P2P system is any download network that uses client software that downloads what you ask it to, but then shares it so that other users can download it from you.
Bittorrent is one form of P2P.
---------- Post added at 10:17 ---------- Previous post was at 10:15 ----------
Amazing I pay them nearly £400 a year for my broadband and I'm not allowed to do what I want with it. it's bad enough we get traffic shaped at the moment but hammering down Torrent bandwidth too surely means we should get a rebate or a reduction in costs.
That's just it. There have always been restrictions on what you can do with it. If you want really unlimited connections, you need to look at leased lines and other business connections (not the low end business connections). Be prepared to pay a *lot* more than £400 a year though.
These Torrent Bandits are probably the same people that leave their water taps running constantly and cause water shortages. :td:
If you hadn't of said that I would have took you seriously.
Who leaves their taps running constantly?
---------- Post added at 10:34 ---------- Previous post was at 10:26 ----------
Actually setting up their own p2p network would be just about the best thing they can do. Internal traffic costs peanuts, p2p between customers on the same ISP would cut their costs dramatically.
They won't lose people because every other ISP is either already doing it, or will be in the future. You can go on about how o2 and be don't, but they will.
You can't use the excuse that every other ISP is either already doing it, or will be in the future.
Not every other ISP is already doing it, and not every other ISP will be doing it in the future.
the only ISP that wants to censor the internet is Virgin. and censoring the internet will lose them customers.
Berkett is an idiot. he thinks that he is the leading broadband supplier and he seems to think that changing what we can do on the internet is his role in life as an idiot.
the only ISP that wants to censor the internet is Virgin. and censoring the internet will lose them customers.
Berkett is an idiot. he thinks that he is the leading broadband supplier and he seems to think that changing what we can do on the internet is his role in life as an idiot.
Your views on Berkett aside, can you please explain how giving a lower priority to p2p traffic over other traffic types is censoring?
For the record I don't disagree it will loose VM, or any other ISP customers, that's a given, and probably a partial goal too.
Impz2002
17-12-2008, 11:00
(Its about time this was introduced.... people are killing the bandwidth by running torrent servers 24 / 7 and everyone else is suffering put em at the bottom of the pile that's what I say.) These Torrent Bandits are probably the same people that leave their water taps running constantly and cause water shortages. :td:
I think that is a very uncompromising position to take. Bittorrent users have just as much right to their share of the bandwith and any shaping should be done equally so it is fair for everyone and dosnt just pick out certain protocols. Also this shaping should be controlled on the fly depending how much traffic there is on the network. if its 9pm and a quiet night I would like to see the throttling reduced or stopped if there is sufficient bandwith together.
I saw something somewhere about a US ISP that has a very good traffic management. Instead of having their speed reduced for a number of hours the system gave people who have not used their bandwith much priority over people who hit the trigger. but if there are only a few users on at a particular time nobody is shaped but if its really busy during peak hours the heaviest downloaders are pushed to the back of the queue for bandwith.
Impz
Your views on Berkett aside, can you please explain how giving a lower priority to p2p traffic over other traffic types is censoring?
Speaking after Virgin Media announced its 50Mb/s super-fast broadband package, Berkett also branded as "naive" any of his rivals who think that they can keep increasing the speed of the connections they offer customers without also taking some responsibility for what those customers then do online, especially if they use their internet connection for illegal filesharing.
Berkett said dealing with illegal filesharing and using information about what customers do online in order to create better targeted online advertising are both issues that involve the emergence of a "digital conscience" within the industry.
Berkett, however, said calls for legislation to stop filesharing - as is being attempted in France - should not be heeded. Instead, customers will ultimately only change their behaviour when the content industry and the ISPs work together to create applications that mean people do not feel the need to illegally copy intellectual property.
"I think it is naive, to say the least, for a network provider on one hand to be talking about leading in next generation broadband and creating intelligence across their networks that ultimately they can monetise, and then (to be) sticking their head in the sand and saying they have no obligation to help in terms of (protecting) intellectual property," he said.
Still not seeing it as censoring, can you explain please?
Impz2002
17-12-2008, 11:09
Still not seeing it as censoring, can you explain please?
I don't see the logic in calling this censoring its not like that at all !
if you want to see censorship then look at be* with the iwf and acertain wikipedia page...
General Maximus
17-12-2008, 11:11
maybe discriminating would be a better word instead of censoring
if you want to see censorship then look at be* with the iwf and acertain wikipedia page...
Wasn't it the case with Virgin too?
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16569
---------- Post added at 11:16 ---------- Previous post was at 11:15 ----------
maybe discriminating would be a better word instead of censoring
Ok, we'll use the word discriminating. but Berketts goal is to eventually censor. he has already said as much.
Most of my heaviest downloading comes from torrent sites, the rest from Usenet which is also mentioned. I'm well out of my original contract so I'll wait and see how bad things get before deciding to jump (including Phorm). There may not be many alternatives by that time and even then the overall effect of having a much lower maximum speed due to ADSL line length may be greater than VM's throttling.
moroboshi
17-12-2008, 11:42
Your views on Berkett aside, can you please explain how giving a lower priority to p2p traffic over other traffic types is censoring?
For the record I don't disagree it will loose VM, or any other ISP customers, that's a given, and probably a partial goal too.
Censoring probably isn't the best word to use, but certainly Virgin will be an ISP with a very unbalanced, discriminatory, intrusive, restricted, and highly spied upon internet service.
The combination of very limiting download caps, difficult to avoid phorm spyware installation, over the top prices, and now the throttling of P2P makes Virgin look like pretty much the worst ISP around.
It's only the speed they're able to offer (if you live in the right areas) that makes them in any way appealing.
Amazing I pay them nearly £400 a year for my broadband and I'm not allowed to do what I want with it. it's bad enough we get traffic shaped at the moment but hammering down Torrent bandwidth too surely means we should get a rebate or a reduction in costs.
Just to put that into perspective, your £400 a year will pay for just over 1.5Mbps of external transit. Add on the costs of the equipment within VM's network, the cost of supporting it, the costs of the billing and support departments, and then think about that when you think you're not getting what you pay for.
Surely that means you should get billed for the bandwidth you use, or an increase in costs? Thought not.
You can't use the excuse that every other ISP is either already doing it, or will be in the future.
Not every other ISP is already doing it, and not every other ISP will be doing it in the future.
It's not an excuse, it's an explanation.
If after all I've said in this thread you can't see why all ISPs eventually need some control over the usage of their networks then you have a pretty blinkered and one sided view of the situation.
I'll repeat it again, it's simply NOT VIABLE to offer a truely unlimited service. The costs involved with providing transit out to the internet, the costs of the internal infrastructure, the costs of supporting it, are all far too high to ever beable to offer a truely unlimited service at residential broadband prices.
As such we have pseudo-unlimited service, where it's unlimited whilst price of service x number of subscribers x average bandwith used is less than the cost of providing that total bandwidth. Once average bandwidth used increases to make the cost of providing it higher than the revenue from the consumers you WILL see limits on all ISPs. There is no way Be, Sky, or O2 will provide you with a service at a loss, so once enough people are hammering it so as they can't make money on it, they will limit.
Just to put that into perspective, your £400 a year will pay for just over 1.5Mbps of external transit. Add on the costs of the equipment within VM's network, the cost of supporting it, the costs of the billing and support departments, and then think about that when you think you're not getting what you pay for.
Surely that means you should get billed for the bandwidth you use, or an increase in costs? Thought not.
They dictate the prices. they tell us all these heavy uses we can do with it. infact they encourage it at the signup page. they keep throwing all this speed at us to tempt us to buy it. but at the end of the day they can't afford to do it really, and we should all stop doing anything with our connections but keep paying them the money because we feel sorry for them.
I blame the BBC and their bloody iPlayer
why can't they just buy a newsgroup server to take the perssure off the network?
The only reason i am with VM is to download films, game, demos and so on at a cost of £25 a month if that goes i will move to sky and pay the same price and get a package off them with free internet or pay £10 slower speed but i get that with VM as i download at peak when i am on my comp.
The only reason i am with VM is to download films, game, demos and so on at a cost of £25 a month if that goes i will move to sky and pay the same price and get a package off them with free internet or pay £10 slower speed but i get that with VM as i download at peak when i am on my comp.
And there are many more like you that use it for the very same reasons. there are many more that do use it for what you can call illegal purposes. if Virgin were honest they would say that they are the people who are keeping them in business.
Berkett forgets this, and seems to think just waving his willy is what will keep him afloat.
Other ISPs will soon be taking advantage of where Virgin are getting too big for their boots and going wrong when it comes to what a customer wants and expects from an internet connection in the 21st century. and it's not 50Mb and over Mother of all broadband speeds.
^^^^^ beautiful, took the words out of my mouth :D
I preached the same words 2 years ago gary l never got listened to then and sure they arent listening now.
When the real advertising kicks in about all this hoo and haa word of mouth from customers especially in these economic times see how many customers desert vm they had there warnings over this and other matters long ago.
Now they as a company want to be internet dictators and use the internet to moneterise there customer and or there data (as said in same statment by vm).
How will all this happen when people will desert in droves?
AppleSauce
17-12-2008, 14:06
I hate people who seed their torrents all day, if people are so intent on seeding then buy a dedicated server in some random country and do it right, wish people wouldn't bog down Virgins network for the rest of us with their seeding habits.
And there are many more like you that use it for the very same reasons. there are many more that do use it for what you can call illegal purposes. if Virgin were honest they would say that they are the people who are keeping them in business.
Berkett forgets this, and seems to think just waving his willy is what will keep him afloat.
Other ISPs will soon be taking advantage of where Virgin are getting too big for their boots and going wrong when it comes to what a customer wants and expects from an internet connection in the 21st century. and it's not 50Mb and over Mother of all broadband speeds.
Only one problem with this line of thought, they don't make any money off heavy p2p users. Heavy p2p users infact cost them money.
If all the heavy downloaders left VM they'd have a lower revenue sure, but their costs would decrease by a great deal more.
This is what people just don't understand, someone who rarely downloads large amounts of data is worth 20x as much to VM as someone who always does.
The people that don't download subsidise the ones that do. Saying that the heavy downloaders are the ones keeping the company afloat is ridiculous, they're the ones who cost the company the most.
Some people seriously overestimate their worth to the company. This is why Berkett doesn't really care about ****ing off the big downloaders, he'd secretely quite like it if they all left VM.
As for the issue of what they're advertising 50meg for, people using legitimate HD streaming and download services cost VM a lot less than people downloading with p2p. Not all traffic is created equal, and p2p traffic is quite expensive because it's nearly always external transit traffic to other ISPs worldwide. A legitimate service like iplayer for instance, will have direct peering to VM which costs significantly less. If all the p2p traffic was replaced with hosted services with direct peering to VM then VMs transit costs would drop significantly.
It's not that VM can't supply the bandwidth (Berkett was right in saying they're not bandwidth constrained), it's that the type of bandwidth p2p uses is relatively expensive.
SimonB79
17-12-2008, 14:10
At the end of the day if u aint happy then sod off and go elsewhere.... and maybe then us normal users might get a better service... Hell... I use my consoles / computers online all the time and hardly ever hit the STM limits.... :rolleyes:
Go and download ya 500gig a day torrent crap elsewhere LOL
(Im sure the other ISPs will welcome u bandwidth hogs with open arms... i don't think.) :rolleyes:
broadbandbug
17-12-2008, 14:14
Any of you suprised? Any of you really believed what neil said about allot just being used for network monitoring/data purposes? oh where oh where is broadbandbug to deny new allot equipment was installed when it's been admitted.
The trials have been going on for quite some time, i'm suprised no one noticed their torrent speeds going to hell, and i should note, he quotes it's about bandwith and not bittorrent in general, DPI is gonna be going after anything using high amounts of bandwith, that newsgroups too.
I am still here.. I told you before.. I don't know anything about any of the trials.. It is not an area I have anything to do with..
I am aware of a music download project.. That is it I am afraid.. I don't profess to know everything that is going on inside VM:)
Only one problem with this line of thought, they don't make any money off heavy p2p users. Heavy p2p users infact cost them money.
If all the heavy downloaders left VM they'd have a lower revenue sure, but their costs would decrease by a great deal more.
But they still need the income from the heavy users as much as they do from the not heavy users. those that only use their connection for email and browsing will subsidise those that make heavy use of theirs.
Virgin need to sell the higher priced connections, but when you make it clear that you are making it as unuseable as possible with many restrictions imposed, then it won't sell. and there will be nobody buying them and everyone not focussing on the speed aspect anymore, but a connection with not so many restrictions tied to it.
highroyds
17-12-2008, 14:55
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/virgin-media-de.html
Virgin Media Denies BitTorrent Throttling Report
If traffic shaping is in effect then yes, it is overloaded. They don't limit for the sake of limiting (it doesn't have to be at the UBR either, it could just as easily be at the external peering point).
Well VM may not, but other ISPs that use DPI do. And there is no question about it. I know, I am on one where the uplink is throttled by the wholesale provider, and my Torrent speeds drops to 40KBs EVERY DAY between 6pm and 1am. Yet I can open up a browser and download a file at 300-400KBs, so there is clearly bandiwdth available. That is LIMITING FOR THE SAKE OF LIMITING, so people better hope that VM does not do that.
General Maximus
17-12-2008, 15:05
lmao, they are denying it now because they know that nobody is going to sign up for 50mbit knowing that they aren't going to be able to use it for what they want to use it for. VM can deny it all they want but i think we all know from experience that they are lieing through their teeth and we can all expect to be screwed this time next year.
I'll repeat it again, it's simply NOT VIABLE to offer a truely unlimited service. The costs involved with providing transit out to the internet, the costs of the internal infrastructure, the costs of supporting it, are all far too high to ever beable to offer a truely unlimited service at residential broadband prices.
Nobody said it should be a truly unlimited service. Everyone acknowledges the bandwidth caps that are in place. Given those caps are in place, there is no reason why one should not be able to use the bandwidth they have paid for, for whatever they want, at the maximum speed of the service that is being sold. Period.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/virgin-media-de.html
Virgin Media Denies BitTorrent Throttling Report
Virgin deny everything. it's only till it's actually implemented that it's proved they were lying about denying it.
things don't just happen overnight. they are planned and trialled long before the event.
Truth is nobody wants to take the 50Mb when Virgin have been saying what restrictions they are going to apply to it once it's flying out the window.
Berkett and his big mouth! :)
sk8er_boi6000
17-12-2008, 15:29
If this new system gives Gamer Traffic priority over Bit-torrent then I'm all for it. :clap:
(Its about time this was introduced.... people are killing the bandwidth by running torrent servers 24 / 7 and everyone else is suffering put em at the bottom of the pile that's what I say.) :rolleyes:
Linux distros my ARSE... dodgy porn & pirate software more like :LOL:
These Torrent Bandits are probably the same people that leave their water taps running constantly and cause water shortages. :td:
You are quiet simply an ignoramus, go onto the internet, have a look at all the legitimate uses for Bittorrent technology and then have a think about your attitude.
Hell how do we know you aren't using your connection to cheat in games, and hack game servers? we can all sit here throwing stupid allegations at each other with no factual backup
I guess it's ok for content providers to cut their bandwidth costs but not ISPs? This is essentially the crux of the issue when it comes to net neutrality, the content providers want to do everything in their power to cut their costs and to offload them to others (the ISP) yet don't want to pay the ISPs to contribute to the cost of updating their infrastructure to cope with the added bandwidth usage. ISPs are quite legitimately annoyed at this, and as they can't pass on increased costs to the consumer (as the consumer has no appetite for price rises) they have to implement QoS to make best use of what they have.
There is a simple difference there, makers of free software don't rake in the money like ISP's do, they rely on free distribution media to get their work to the public, and Linux/BSD have an important place in the computing world as it is the only truly free OS option available to those short of money. Do you genuinely think it is fair to penalise these people just because they can't afford datacenters with the copious amounts of bandwidth needed to distribute multi gigabyte Linux images? These people have the same rights, hell your gaming doesn't even contribute anything to society but Linux does (for the record I use Windows on all my rigs before someone tries to tar me with the FSF humper brush)
The internal network is more than capable of the speeds, as are likely a fair amount of their peering connections. That doesn't mean that all are though, and there will be congestion at points in the network, at these points traffic has to be prioritised, and very low priority traffic (such as ICMP) gets dropped, low priority stuff gets held back, and high priority time critical stuff gets pushed ahead.
As Virgin are saying they can DELIVER these speeds, then it is fair to assume they could deliver it to the home, making your argument void.
InfiniteBiscuit
17-12-2008, 15:29
This Neil Berkett character's a good laugh, ain't he?
Am I the only one who pictures him as a maniacal bond like villian?
Raistlin
17-12-2008, 15:31
Play nicely people ;)
I can't say that denial holds much water for me either. The idea that you would purchase expensive, high end Allot DPI Technology (http://www.allot.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=611&Itemid=88888929) purely to "understand the way people use our broadband service" is not particularly plausible, given the feature set of the technology. I note that the use of this technology has changed from "understanding" to the quoted claim that DPI technology will be used to "monetise the intelligence" of the network. Seems like a fair shift to me.
Anyways, I look forward to The Register clarification :D
Does anyone know whats happening/not happening? According to http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2008/12/17/net-neutrality-to-be-tested-by-virgin-media/
This is because at some point during next year they will be looking to revise their policies on broadband with the view to blocking torrent sites and other P2P outlets.
Hmmm.. so now its blocking torrent sites eh?... the plot thickens.
But they still need the income from the heavy users as much as they do from the not heavy users. those that only use their connection for email and browsing will subsidise those that make heavy use of theirs.
Virgin need to sell the higher priced connections, but when you make it clear that you are making it as unuseable as possible with many restrictions imposed, then it won't sell. and there will be nobody buying them and everyone not focussing on the speed aspect anymore, but a connection with not so many restrictions tied to it.
No, they don't need their income because the income from them is offset by the costs they bring.
Not everyone on 20mb is a heavy user, most just like being able to download quickly when they need to, others just have it because it's part of their package.
When you're on about heavy users you're talking about less than the top 5%. These people could leave and make a dent in VM's revenue, but take a massive slice out of their transit costs.
You only really care about the revenue from a consumer if that revenue is less than the cost of providing them with their service, with heavy downloaders this isn't the case.
Well VM may not, but other ISPs that use DPI do. And there is no question about it. I know, I am on one where the uplink is throttled by the wholesale provider, and my Torrent speeds drops to 40KBs EVERY DAY between 6pm and 1am. Yet I can open up a browser and download a file at 300-400KBs, so there is clearly bandiwdth available. That is LIMITING FOR THE SAKE OF LIMITING, so people better hope that VM does not do that.
Sorry but that proves nothing other than their QoS is set up to prioritise HTTP downloads over torrents.
Lets say an ISP has 10mpbs of bandwidth available, that could be being used by say.... 5mbps p2p, 1mbps VOIP, 3mbps HTTP and 1mbps streaming video.
Now, the bandwidth is at 100% utilisation, what happens when you want to download something over http? Under a neutral system, you get crap speeds. With DPI and QoS, the p2p traffic gets reduced to 4.5mbps, and the HTTP traffic goes up to 3.5mbps to give you your 500kbps download.
It's not that the bandwidth was "always there", it's that the lower priority uses have been squeezed to give a higher priority usage more bandwidth. If you go back to the plus.net blogs I linked to there are some bandwith utilisation graphs that show this perfectly. The level of usage is constant throughout the day, however during the day the %age that p2p traffic uses on the network is squeezed as other uses increase.
No ISP wants idle capacity sitting there doing nothing.
Add to this denial Berkett's previous bo*****s statement. Seems this VM CEO has a big mouth.
Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett has attacked the principle of net neutrality, whereby internet service providers do not interfere with or degrade the speed at which content is delivered from websites to consumers, branding it as "b****cks".
Berkett's cable operator ranks as the second largest internet service provider in the UK with approximately 3.6m customers.
In an interview with the Royal Television Society's Television magazine, Berkett said that "this net neutrality thing is a load of b****cks", and revealed that Virgin is already in talks with unnamed content providers about paying to have their content delivered faster than others.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/a93556/virgin-media-ceo-attacks-net-neutrality.html
Does anyone know whats happening/not happening? According to http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2008/12/17/net-neutrality-to-be-tested-by-virgin-media/
Hmmm.. so now its blocking torrent sites eh?... the plot thickens.
Unsourced comment from a blog? I'd hold the same weight to that comment as I would to someone signing up to this forum and saying the world was going to end in the next week.
Sorry but that proves nothing other than their QoS is set up to prioritise HTTP downloads over torrents.
<snip crap>
Dude, you have NO IDEA what you are talking about. The ISP I am referring to have ALREADY ADMITTED to doing DPI shaping. I love how you are trying to tell me how my own connection is shaped.
QoS does not cause Torrent traffic to drop from full speed down to 40KBs at 6pm exactly, and then allow it to increase again at exactly 1am
Let me guess, the composition of the ISP traffic changes at exactly 6pm every day and X number of people start using http traffic so as to bring my torrent traffic to exactly 40KBs, and they continue use http traffic for a constant rate until 1am, whereupon they log off and go to bed.
SimonB79
17-12-2008, 15:52
You are quiet simply an ignoramus, go onto the internet, have a look at all the legitimate uses for Bittorrent technology and then have a think about your attitude.
Hell how do we know you aren't using your connection to cheat in games, and hack game servers? we can all sit here throwing stupid allegations at each other with no factual backup
sticks n stones mate.... sticks n stones.... Im using my wii to reply ATM so i will keep it short.... but i take your using a business line 2 distribute your linux p2p offerings and not residential?
No, they don't need their income because the income from them is offset by the costs they bring.
Not everyone on 20mb is a heavy user, most just like being able to download quickly when they need to, others just have it because it's part of their package.
When you're on about heavy users you're talking about less than the top 5%. These people could leave and make a dent in VM's revenue, but take a massive slice out of their transit costs.
You only really care about the revenue from a consumer if that revenue is less than the cost of providing them with their service, with heavy downloaders this isn't the case.
I understand you now. you're saying that the best thing for them to do is not have any customers at all. be they light users or heavy users.
the money they will save from costs they have to spend on customers. will keep them in business.
sk8er_boi6000
17-12-2008, 16:07
sticks n stones mate.... sticks n stones.... Im using my wii to reply ATM so i will keep it short.... but i take your using a business line 2 distribute your linux p2p offerings and not residential?
I don't distribute any Linux distributions myself, but I made the point that others do. Technically anyone who seeds the torrent after completing the download is distributing it, so that would apply to business and residential users.
The point is, that throttling in the ISP system would harm everyone... downloaders, distributors, and yes pirates as well, as I could still be using my connection to download a Linux ISO. What line I use to seed a torrent makes no difference, if it is a legitimate use. I am not trying to, and cannot defend the illegal use of Bittorrent technology but so many people these days are ignorant to its other uses.
Dude, you have NO IDEA what you are talking about. The ISP I am referring to have ALREADY ADMITTED to doing DPI shaping. I love how you are trying to tell me how my own connection is shaped.
QoS does not cause Torrent traffic to drop from full speed down to 40KBs at 6pm exactly, and then allow it to increase again at exactly 1am.
I'm not denying they are using shaping, infact my post said that all it shows is their shaping prioritises HTTP over torrents, which says that they ARE using it.
Qos between those times does explain it perfectly, most ISPs don't use QoS 24/7, only at peak times, such as.... between 6pm and 1am!
And as for having no idea what I'm talking about, I worked on the QoS platform for an ISP for over 18months, I've sat there watching real time network utilisation graphs showing the changes in traffic patterns based on QoS, seen how traffic patterns change during the day as people get home from work and then go to bed, my entire job role for the last 9months was tuning and monitoring the QoS settings to make sure nothing was wrongly categorised, and to make sure our external transit links weren't getting raped by p2p. I think I know what I'm talking about, everytime I close my eyes I can still see the SNMP graphs.
What about you? What's your experience with QoS and DPI? Other than "ZOMG MY TORRENTS ARE TEH SLOW!"?
Once again, nothing from what you states shows there is any free bandwidth available on the network, only that HTTP takes priority over torrents. Now, there COULD be free bandwidth, it'd be a dumb as hell setup to just blanket limit any form of traffic whilst there's bandwidth available, but what you said doesn't PROVE there is.
The point is, that throttling in the ISP system would harm everyone... downloaders, distributors, and yes pirates as well, as I could still be using my connection to download a Linux ISO.
Maybe VM will offer Linux ISOs on their prioritised content store for cheap, so you can get it much faster than through a torrent? ;)
I understand you now. you're saying that the best thing for them to do is not have any customers at all. be they light users or heavy users.
the money they will save from costs they have to spend on customers. will keep them in business.
No, the best thing for them is to have customers that are profitable, and not customers that aren't. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp.
Light users are, they can give light users a contention of 100:1 and they won't notice. "Normal" users as well (normal being average), can deal nicely with a contention of 50:1. Medium users can deal nicely with contentions of 20:1. These are all profitable.
Heavy users though, if you had an ISP full of just heavy users you'd have to give them a contention of around 2:1, 5:1 at best, and this IS NOT profitable.
Now if you have a small fraction of heavy users, it's not really an issue, sure they aren't profitable, but the profit you make from the other users outweighs this and subsidises them (this is the point Be, O2, Sky, etc are at now). But when the number of heavy users increases you're suddenly making less and less money, and there's a point where you start losing money in providing the service (this is where those ISPs are heading). The job of an ISP is to prevent it getting to this point, either by disconnecting heavy users (which is what happened all the time with ISP's using BT wholesale ADSL) or shaping to ensure that this point can't be reached. Disconnecting is bad press, so the thing of choice is to shape and try to squeeze the heavy users usage down and keep costs at workable levels.
Maybe VM will offer Linux ISOs on their prioritised content store for cheap, so you can get it much faster than through a torrent? ;)
Already on mirrors.virginmedia.com, no Mandriva though :(
We already have traffic shaping though - so why more of a throttle with certain applications p2p at lauch then it could be newsgroups then ftps the http downloads - where will it end i.e it wont so go with it if thats the qos you want :P.
Its certainly not a service i want especially when there going to pimp and monetarise there customes and or data via some phorm u like or homebred pimping service.
n0c0ntr0l
17-12-2008, 16:24
No, the best thing for them is to have customers that are profitable, and not customers that aren't. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp.
Light users are, they can give light users a contention of 100:1 and they won't notice. "Normal" users as well (normal being average), can deal nicely with a contention of 50:1. Medium users can deal nicely with contentions of 20:1. These are all profitable.
Heavy users though, if you had an ISP full of just heavy users you'd have to give them a contention of around 2:1, 5:1 at best, and this IS NOT profitable.
Now if you have a small fraction of heavy users, it's not really an issue, sure they aren't profitable, but the profit you make from the other users outweighs this and subsidises them (this is the point Be, O2, Sky, etc are at now). But when the number of heavy users increases you're suddenly making less and less money, and there's a point where you start losing money in providing the service (this is where those ISPs are heading). The job of an ISP is to prevent it getting to this point, either by disconnecting heavy users (which is what happened all the time with ISP's using BT wholesale ADSL) or shaping to ensure that this point can't be reached. Disconnecting is bad press, so the thing of choice is to shape and try to squeeze the heavy users usage down and keep costs at workable levels.
I think you'll find that Be and sky have a ton of heavy users at the moment. Most people who could change have changed. Having heard of the green grass in their quarter. It did impact speeds at one point but they did what virgin just refuse to do. They upgraded the netwrokd. All of it. Be even did it twice. They did it when the O2 people came over and they did it all over again when the network began to show signs of straining and people began to complain. You won't see VM doing that.
I'm not denying they are using shaping, infact my post said that all it shows is their shaping prioritises HTTP over torrents, which says that they ARE using it.
Well actually, you said they don't limit for the sake of limiting, and I said yes they do on my ISP and I know they do using DPI. Then you tried to tell that no they don't, and my outline of the situation only proved that QoS was being utilised. But whatever.
What about you? What's your experience with QoS and DPI? Other than "ZOMG MY TORRENTS ARE TEH SLOW!"?
Yes, that's it! Suffice to say that while you have hands on experience of ISP throttling, I also have an understanding of networking reservation control mechanisms.
Once again, nothing from what you states shows there is any free bandwidth available on the network, only that HTTP takes priority over torrents. Now, there COULD be free bandwidth, it'd be a dumb as hell setup to just blanket limit any form of traffic whilst there's bandwidth available, but what you said doesn't PROVE there is.
If HTTP traffic was prioritised at 6pm (or torrent traffic deprioritised) then my torrent speed would vary over the 7 hour period based on the utilisation of the network - above and below 40KBs.
In your scenario of QoS, there would be more people using HTTP (or any other type of traffic) around 6pm than at 12:30am. Therefore, my torrent speed should be slower at 6pm than at 12:30am.
The fact that it does not move off the 40KBs mark shows that it is being throttled to a certian rate. So there IS limiting for the sake of limiting, and it IS targeted at Bittorrent. Anyways, this is my last post as I have better things to do, and shouldn't you be watching SNMP graphs.
Vm would rather spend money on headlines and paying over paid actors mega money for crap ads than any service improvments - its a well documented fact now that they spend a few thousand on the network and millions on advertising.
Take a look at the amounts spent by virign media since the merger if you dont belive me - it borders on ridiculous then they still try and squeeze more blood from a stone when the blood got drained years ago.
Most of the users havent switched yet imho but they will soon then virign will see this year how great there ideas for superfasterslowpimpingproffileddata mother of all broadband are.
Your welcome to keep a historic note of this thread maybee should call it the death knell shout of vm
No, the best thing for them is to have customers that are profitable, and not customers that aren't. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp.
Berkett is trying to make them all profitable by imposing restrictions to slow it all down. and reduce bandwidth.
only problem is that he needs people who will agree to pay for such a product.
SimonB79
17-12-2008, 16:46
makes you wonder why they cant just introduce monthly data capping.... the more you pay the more ya get and that would sort the whole problem. ??
Ignitionnet
17-12-2008, 16:52
I think you'll find that Be and sky have a ton of heavy users at the moment. Most people who could change have changed. Having heard of the green grass in their quarter. It did impact speeds at one point but they did what virgin just refuse to do. They upgraded the netwrokd. All of it. Be even did it twice. They did it when the O2 people came over and they did it all over again when the network began to show signs of straining and people began to complain. You won't see VM doing that.
That isn't really fair. VM have done well over a thousand node splits in the past year. They do upgrade, whether it's enough is a different matter but to say that they do not is unfair.
---------- Post added at 16:51 ---------- Previous post was at 16:48 ----------
Well actually, you said they don't limit for the sake of limiting, and I said yes they do on my ISP and I know they do using DPI. Then you tried to tell that no they don't, and my outline of the situation only proved that QoS was being utilised. But whatever.
Yes, that's it! Suffice to say that while you have hands on experience of ISP throttling, I also have an understanding of networking reservation control mechanisms.
If HTTP traffic was prioritised at 6pm (or torrent traffic deprioritised) then my torrent speed would vary over the 7 hour period based on the utilisation of the network - above and below 40KBs.
In your scenario of QoS, there would be more people using HTTP (or any other type of traffic) around 6pm than at 12:30am. Therefore, my torrent speed should be slower at 6pm than at 12:30am.
The fact that it does not move off the 40KBs mark shows that it is being throttled to a certian rate. So there IS limiting for the sake of limiting, and it IS targeted at Bittorrent. Anyways, this is my last post as I have better things to do, and shouldn't you be watching SNMP graphs.
In a perfect world of a managed network the following would be the case:
1) No prioritisation until a network component nears congestion.
2) No deprioritisation, only upwards prioritisation of realtime and interactive traffic.
3) Management sufficient to avoid degredation of real time and interactive traffic only, maximising use of network resources by allowing customers to use as much traffic as the network can deal with at the time with no additional restraint. If the capacity is there no reason to not have it used, managing to an arbitrary limit is wasteful.
This is perfectly possible but not necessarily easy.
---------- Post added at 16:52 ---------- Previous post was at 16:51 ----------
makes you wonder why they cant just introduce monthly data capping.... the more you pay the more ya get and that would sort the whole problem. ??
Because they would lose the ability to advertise as unlimited. With the ASA allowing anyone to advertise as unlimited who doesn't advertise a hard limit it would put them at a competitive disadvantage. This way they can advertise an unlimited service still.
n0c0ntr0l
17-12-2008, 16:57
That isn't really fair. VM have done well over a thousand node splits in the past year. They do upgrade, whether it's enough is a different matter but to say that they do not is unfair.
---------- Post added at 16:51 ---------- Previous post was at 16:48 ----------
In a perfect world of a managed network the following would be the case:
1) No prioritisation until a network component nears congestion.
2) No deprioritisation, only upwards prioritisation of realtime and interactive traffic.
3) Management sufficient to avoid degredation of real time and interactive traffic only, maximising use of network resources by allowing customers to use as much traffic as the network can deal with at the time with no additional restraint. If the capacity is there no reason to not have it used, managing to an arbitrary limit is wasteful.
This is perfectly possible but not necessarily easy.
---------- Post added at 16:52 ---------- Previous post was at 16:51 ----------
Because they would lose the ability to advertise as unlimited. With the ASA allowing anyone to advertise as unlimited who doesn't advertise a hard limit it would put them at a competitive disadvantage. This way they can advertise an unlimited service still.
You have a very good understanding of this. What's your take on the whole matter, cause so far all I have seen you do is let everyone know the information straight.
Ignitionnet
17-12-2008, 16:59
Sorry but that proves nothing other than their QoS is set up to prioritise HTTP downloads over torrents.The level of usage is constant throughout the day, however during the day the %age that p2p traffic uses on the network is squeezed as other uses increase.
No ISP wants idle capacity sitting there doing nothing.
<Snipped various other stuff>
It's a known and proven fact that Frank's ISP's wholesale provider, Bell Canada, has a fixed hard limit on certain types of traffic per client IP address. They certainly do have idle capacity sitting there doing nothing, as proven by various information they provided during a recent CRTC investigation.
I'd suggest that you Google CRTC Bell Canada before trying to make the above claims regarding what Frank does and does not see on his own ISP's network. His speeds drop like a cliff at a certain time, then go back up like a rocket at the same time very day, to the same speed every day, without fail.
---------- Post added at 16:59 ---------- Previous post was at 16:58 ----------
You have a very good understanding of this. What's your take on the whole matter, cause so far all I have seen you do is let everyone know the information straight.
I've no take because I don't have enough information to give an informed take at this time. In the words of Sarah Palin 'I'll get back to you on that'.
I think you'll find that Be and sky have a ton of heavy users at the moment. Most people who could change have changed. Having heard of the green grass in their quarter. It did impact speeds at one point but they did what virgin just refuse to do. They upgraded the netwrokd. All of it. Be even did it twice. They did it when the O2 people came over and they did it all over again when the network began to show signs of straining and people began to complain. You won't see VM doing that.
They have a fair amount, I wouldn't say a ton.
If VM refuse to upgrade the network how do we now have docsis 3 equipment in place? :p There's no doubt that some areas of the VM network fell behind at the end of the NTL/Blueyonder days, but just throwing money into network upgrades isn't going to solve all the problems, and there has been massive upgrades done over recent times.
But It's not just about upgrading the network, it's about having the ability to pay for the transit costs as well. You can have the greatest backhaul network in the world, but if your transit links are saturated you're screwed. There has to be a level where you stop throwing money at problems when you have no chance of recouping it. It's a simple problem of economics, there's only so much revenue you're getting, so only so much you can spend on these links, if the amount you need to spend to move the bandwidth offnet is greater than the amount you're getting from your customers, you're screwed and need to do something to reduce the amount of bandwidth needed.
Well actually, you said they don't limit for the sake of limiting, and I said yes they do on my ISP and I know they do using DPI. Then you tried to tell that no they don't, and my outline of the situation only proved that QoS was being utilised. But whatever.
If they're limiting they generally have a reason, that reason generally being that if they didn't then they'd be unprofitable. I didn't try to tell you they don't, I just said that being able to open a http download at full speed didn't prove that bandwidth was available.
Yes, that's it! Suffice to say that while you have hands on experience of ISP throttling, I also have an understanding of networking reservation control mechanisms.
If HTTP traffic was prioritised at 6pm (or torrent traffic deprioritised) then my torrent speed would vary over the 7 hour period based on the utilisation of the network - above and below 40KBs.
Maybe, it really depends on the level of traffic and what it was like before 6pm. There would obviously be a gradual ramp up in http traffic, but then it'll stay pretty steady until around 11 where it will then gradually drop off. You'll get some fluctuations but not massive ones.
In your scenario of QoS, there would be more people using HTTP (or any other type of traffic) around 6pm than at 12:30am. Therefore, my torrent speed should be slower at 6pm than at 12:30am.
The fact that it does not move off the 40KBs mark shows that it is being throttled to a certian rate. So there IS limiting for the sake of limiting, and it IS targeted at Bittorrent. Anyways, this is my last post as I have better things to do,
See if you'd have said that before I'd have probably agreed with you that they've put an arbituary cap on it between certain times, but you didn't. All you said was that your torrents were slowed yet you could download at full speed through http, which is entirely more flimsy evidence and points to nothing but standard QoS.
and shouldn't you be watching SNMP graphs.
Hell no. Quit that job a year ago as I was fed up of the crap pay long hours and awkward shift work (not to mention constantly having to justify the QoS settings to customers who all thought they paid for gaurenteed service) Now I do contract work on corporate network design and security, more pay for less work, means I can sit here posting on forums most the time instead!
Berkett is trying to make them all profitable by imposing restrictions to slow it all down. and reduce bandwidth.
only problem is that he needs people who will agree to pay for such a product.
Maybe. He is running a company with massive debt, so he's ofc going to want to try to make as much money as possible.
Obviously we'll have to wait to see how it'd be implemented, but my point is merely don't see it as an outright evil, because QoS is a very valid tool for ISPs that enables them to be run profitably without having the network slow down for most uses.
Maybe I just have a little more faith in him then some, but I can't see him commiting commercial suicide in search of higher profits, getting rid of STM and replacing it with shaping would IMO be 100x better. P2P is really the only thing that should get hit by shaping, everything else should be fine as you can peer for a hell of a lot less (in the realms of 10x) than your transit costs, so peering to the big download sites means you can offer higher bandwidth for the same cost, and you just need to shape the phobititively expensive transit links.
---------- Post added at 17:05 ---------- Previous post was at 17:02 ----------
<Snipped various other stuff>
It's a known and proven fact that Frank's ISP's wholesale provider, Bell Canada, has a fixed hard limit on certain types of traffic per client IP address. They certainly do have idle capacity sitting there doing nothing, as proven by various information they provided during a recent CRTC investigation.
I'd suggest that you Google CRTC Bell Canada before trying to make the above claims regarding what Frank does and does not see on his own ISP's network. His speeds drop like a cliff at a certain time, then go back up like a rocket at the same time very day, to the same speed every day, without fail.
Ah see, I was basing it on being an UK ISP, the American and Canadian ones... I wouldn't touch most with a barge pole, I can see why net neutrality is a big issue over there because they don't seem to have the same level of competiveness that drives against pratices like that as we do over here. UK ISPs though are generally pretty good with shaping. I can only think of one that is known to have hard limits on p2p traffic, and that's because it's a niche gaming ISP.
Ignitionnet
17-12-2008, 17:15
Ah see, I was basing it on being an UK ISP, the American and Canadian ones... I wouldn't touch most with a barge pole, I can see why net neutrality is a big issue over there because they don't seem to have the same level of competiveness that drives against pratices like that as we do over here. UK ISPs though are generally pretty good with shaping. I can only think of one that is known to have hard limits on p2p traffic, and that's because it's a niche gaming ISP.
I can think of a few. Tiscali, AOL, Carphone Warehouse just thinking of the first 3 that come to mind. It's far cheaper to use NBAR on your LNS or set fixed limits than to invest in more intelligent shaping hardware, especially where there are multiple network ingress and egress points and shaping on a per endpoint basis is trickier or you would be needing to have a dedicated LNS for each LTC group.
---------- Post added at 17:15 ---------- Previous post was at 17:11 ----------
You have a very good understanding of this. What's your take on the whole matter, cause so far all I have seen you do is let everyone know the information straight.
I have a take. I'm not that fussed as I'll be using an unlimited, uncapped, unshaped DOCSIS 3 service at 120Mbit/s down, 10Mbit/s up for a similar price to the shaped, behavioural advertising included VM 50Mbit / 1.5Mbit (or 1.75 eventually 2.5Mbit/s) service.
EDIT: Oh very well. The potential Torrent throttling will likely be applied to upstream as each area's DOCSIS 3 service group will only have a single upstream available initially, and in some areas for the foreseeable future. The by far most likely course of events is that the upload throttling will come in at the same time as an upstream uplift to 2.5Mbit in order to reduce potential upstream overload. Serving a group of customers with 200Mbit downstream and 8.8Mbit or best case 27Mbit upstream doesn't make for a nice ratio if it only takes 3 / 8 customers uploading full whack, seeding a torrent for example, to degrade service for everyone else, 10, 20 and 50Mbit alike. This ratio will of course change and be variable depending on area and upstream spectrum / bandwidth availability but at least in some cases the bandwidth will be very asymmetrical.
They have a fair amount, I wouldn't say a ton.
If VM refuse to upgrade the network how do we now have docsis 3 equipment in place? :p There's no doubt that some areas of the VM network fell behind at the end of the NTL/Blueyonder days, but just throwing money into network upgrades isn't going to solve all the problems, and there has been massive upgrades done over recent times.
Can we see your factual evidence and or any proof of virgin media spending big money since the merger on the network?.
I did see a couple of thousand per year being spent on the oversubbed network but and a big but a few 30-40 million per advertising campaign (uma,samuel jackson to name a few) so where these big money upgrades are i've yet to see.
Not hard to work out spend less on false advertising (still no knuckles rapped by ofcom), stupid shaping and data mining of customers (still no knuckles rapped by govt) and more on your network and you and your LOYAL customers are the winner not hard to work out.
But then again some people just cant work it out and this will be there downfall.
Must just be about how much customer A is and Milk god virgin love there milk money.
Interesting reading this thread and some of the Anti-Bitorrent comments.
My opinion is that VM would absolutely not want shot of BT users as when the fastest connections become available, I would hazard a guess that a very high percentage of those taking it out are BT users, the rest are enthusiasts who may be quite noisey on here, but in reality they are few and far between.
I've always gone with their top product for this reason, but will be stopping now. I have no use for an ISP who is going to throttle BT.
Once all the "pirates" (aarrrhhh matey) go, VM will be left with a lightning fast network, but just loads of people on the lowest package paying a tiny amount in subscription. I doubt it would be enough to maintain the system at such a high capacity.
It follows logically that, for a system to be cost effective in terms of maintenance and support, it must be running at something near capacity to be pulling in enough revenue.
You wouldn't open a massive, state of the art toll road only for electric cars to keep the electric car drivers happy with no other traffic around them. No, you need the big, badass hummvees too and lots of traffic jams.
*sloman*
17-12-2008, 17:54
If this replaces STM then I could be in favour. I remain optimistic however will reserve judgement until the full details are announced.
Same here i would be in favour of this but using torrents are not illegal!
Just downloading the music/movies/programs etc... you don't have the rights to is illegal.
They will never stop the hardcore pirates, private torrent sites/trackers, Usenet etc...
Just downloading the music/movies/programs etc... you don't have the rights to is illegal
Is it?
Maybe. He is running a company with massive debt, so he's ofc going to want to try to make as much money as possible.
That is why we don't have to listen to him when he talks rollox. because we know he's just doing it because he hasn't got any money.
Maybe I just have a little more faith in him then some, but I can't see him commiting commercial suicide in search of higher profits,
How do you tell a mad man that he's off his head?
The Jackal
17-12-2008, 18:18
Has this not happened already ?
I'm not a heavy torrent user - occasionally download but when I do I open up a 1000 connections.
Thought I'd kick off a few downloads today and hit 14mbps down with torrents - 800 connections but at 5pm I got whacked bad by Virgin media - 40% packet loss.
It felt like being capped by the dropping packets. My home connection is basically unusable now.
General Maximus
17-12-2008, 18:54
Broadbandings - "Serving a group of customers with 200Mbit downstream and 8.8Mbit or best case 27Mbit upstream doesn't make for a nice ratio if it only takes 3 / 8 customers uploading full whack, seeding a torrent for example, to degrade service for everyone else, 10, 20 and 50Mbit alike"
This is what really bugs me. They have supposedly been upgrading their network yet if they can't even make sure more than 5 customers gets the actual 50*1.75 what is the point of even offering it? They would be better off not wasting everyones time and just leave us with 20mbit till they are actually in position to deliver what they are advertising. I am not saying that i expect full speed 100% of the time but i would say at least 70% of the time and if they know the network is going to be congested during certain times of the time and week they need to act accordingly and plan their upgrades around making sure that the numbers of customers can receive X amount of bandwidth during those peak times. They had might as well advertise 200mbit*27mbit because "in theory" i can receive that if i was the only person using it.
Ignitionnet
17-12-2008, 19:10
Broadbandings - "Serving a group of customers with 200Mbit downstream and 8.8Mbit or best case 27Mbit upstream doesn't make for a nice ratio if it only takes 3 / 8 customers uploading full whack, seeding a torrent for example, to degrade service for everyone else, 10, 20 and 50Mbit alike"
This is what really bugs me. They have supposedly been upgrading their network yet if they can't even make sure more than 5 customers gets the actual 50*1.75 what is the point of even offering it? They would be better off not wasting everyones time and just leave us with 20mbit till they are actually in position to deliver what they are advertising. I am not saying that i expect full speed 100% of the time but i would say at least 70% of the time and if they know the network is going to be congested during certain times of the time and week they need to act accordingly and plan their upgrades around making sure that the numbers of customers can receive X amount of bandwidth during those peak times. They had might as well advertise 200mbit*27mbit because "in theory" i can receive that if i was the only person using it.
Considering that it takes 2 20Mbit customers to saturate a network segment at the moment, and even on my future 120Mbit service not even 2 customers to saturate the network, it's not that bad.
They advertise it that way because it's statistically unlikely that enough people will be downloading at full speed to cause issues at any one time.
Never consider broadband networks by their actual contention ratio but by apparent contention. Contention of 150:1 is fine so long as the bandwidth isn't filled up, likewise in some areas 20:1 wouldn't be good enough.
I have a 20Mbit service, there are 400 people of various levels of service sharing 38Mbit, and on average the usage tops out at 26Mbit. I saturate it if I download a bit at peak times, but then that's what STM is for.
VM budget I think about 128kbps per modem at peak times, which appears to work ok in my area's case.
Linux distros my ARSE... dodgy porn & pirate software more like
Although i dont do the dodgy porn & pirated software thing myself i do download the odd Linux distro but i could never quite understand those who give "Linux Distro`s" as a reason for the 100`s of GB`s they admit to downloading every month.
Even if someone did the top 100 on Distrowatch every month it would still be far less than just the 100GB`s.
Damn,thats the 98th time i`ve downloaded teh Linux but this MD5 thingy still keeps failing......better try again
sk8er_boi6000
17-12-2008, 20:52
Although i dont do the dodgy porn & pirated software thing myself i do download the odd Linux distro but i could never quite understand those who give "Linux Distro`s" as a reason for the 100`s of GB`s they admit to downloading every month.
Even if someone did the top 100 on Distrowatch every month it would still be far less than just the 100GB`s.
Obviously not, but the point is that legitimate users will be hurt, not just pirates.
As for connections, my global limit is 450 within my client, so I can't be hammering things that badly
highroyds
17-12-2008, 21:00
One of these days they'll make their minds up. First its classed as Unlimited broadband, then they start capping you when you download too much. But they're still able to advertise as Unlimited downloads. Then they say don't download illegal music and movies, but they can't and won't do anything to people who do that except give them a friendly warning.
Now they say they are going to go after the users who use Torrents.
Now I've just been looking at their home site advertising the 50MB broadband and couldn't believe what I saw.
Take a look. Thats telling me a whole different story.
whydoIneedatech
17-12-2008, 21:04
One of these days they'll make their minds up. First its classed as Unlimited broadband, then they start capping you when you download too much. But they're still able to advertise as Unlimited downloads. Then they say don't download illegal music and movies, but they can't and won't do anything to people who do that except give them a friendly warning.
Now they say they are going to go after the users who use Torrents.
Now I've just been looking at their home site advertising the 50MB broadband and couldn't believe what I saw.
Take a look. Thats telling me a whole different story.
You do realise that the are legitimate download sites such as I-Tunes out there and that is the type of site they will mean.;)
You do realise that the are legitimate download sites such as I-Tunes out there and that is the type of site they will mean.;)
Yeh. while it looks like they're telling the thieves and pirates why they should have it. they're actually talking to the law abiding people out there.
they don't even want the thieves and pirates :)
n0c0ntr0l
17-12-2008, 21:19
One of these days they'll make their minds up. First its classed as Unlimited broadband, then they start capping you when you download too much. But they're still able to advertise as Unlimited downloads. Then they say don't download illegal music and movies, but they can't and won't do anything to people who do that except give them a friendly warning.
Now they say they are going to go after the users who use Torrents.
Now I've just been looking at their home site advertising the 50MB broadband and couldn't believe what I saw.
Take a look. Thats telling me a whole different story.
You my friend have done it, you have just become the undoing of virgin's advert there. I'm going to submit a complaint to ASA. Because you would be capped before you could finish downloading it wouldn't do it in an hour!
Obviously not, but the point is that legitimate users will be hurt, not just pirates.
I actually dont agree with it myself either and i really dont give two hoots what anybody does with their connection.Apart from the first few months of the 20Mb last year our connection has always been fine and the STM has never been an issue.
As for connections, my global limit is 450 within my client, so I can't be hammering things that badly
A mere 150 here,on the odd occasion i use Deluge.Any downloading i am doing is done through the night anyway so it`s neither here nor there in reality.
Ignitionnet
17-12-2008, 22:11
I must mention that, in my humble opinion, it is none of anyone else's business what other customers do with their service.
Also I am concerned myself, Bittorrent is used for other things besides porn and warez. World of Warcraft updates run peer to peer, both from other customers and from Blizzard's own peers in their datacentres. warcraftmovies.com uses Bittorrent, as do a number of other perfectly legal and legitimate systems.
I would rather a flat, protocol agnostic monthly cap. Perhaps a PAYG system or reasonable charges for overages.
Though I'm quite a big fan of net neutrality...
SimonB79
17-12-2008, 23:57
20meg with a 40 to 80gig monthly cap for £25 a month would do me fine.
You do realise that the are legitimate download sites such as I-Tunes out there and that is the type of site they will mean.;)
And legitimate download sites such as itunes are far far cheaper to provide bandwidth for than p2p.
The issue isn't with the volumes of traffic with p2p, it's the TYPE of traffic.
Whereas with iplayer and itunes they can peer with the content providers at provide the bandwidth at marginal cost you can't with p2p, you just can't peer with every ISP around, especially globally. This means p2p traffic is expensive, not just through network utilisation, but though cost per mb.
If you do want to download like a whore, newsgroups are FAR better from both the end users (they don't leave you open to copyright distribution charges, downloading is not a crime, sharing is), and an ISP's perspective. Sites such as giganews have extensive peering that makes it cheap for the ISPs, hell, they could just outsource their newsgroup service to giganews like a fair few ISPs do and it'd be even cheaper.
General Maximus
18-12-2008, 00:25
same here Simon, and then you can buy downloads in blocks like texts for mobiles, another 20gb for £5 or something. Either that or i would actually prefer to stay on current stm as much as i hate to say it.
Ignitionnet
18-12-2008, 14:09
And legitimate download sites such as itunes are far far cheaper to provide bandwidth for than p2p.
The issue isn't with the volumes of traffic with p2p, it's the TYPE of traffic
Then wouldn't something like P4P be a good option? Both save cash and increase customer satisfaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proactive_network_Provider_Participation_for_P2P
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081103-comcastic-p4p-trial-shows-80-speed-boost-for-p2p-downloads.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080314-verizon-embraces-p4p-a-more-efficient-peer-to-peer-tech.html
Maybe products from Cachelogic? (http://www.cachelogic.com)
ISPs have options to think outside the box, away from the corporate network model of throttling / blocking anything you don't like. Distributed network caching, utilising anycasting, CDNs, these guys have multiple datacentres, extensive control over their networks and their connectivity to the outside world.
I'm also not sure why you keep mentioning transit as a major cost driver - it isn't. The major cost driver is and always will be the last mile bandwidth on an ISP network. Less than a tenner per Mbit/s/month on transit pales somewhat compared to the cost of an optical resegmentation, pulling KM of fibre, installing lasers, civils of building a new node, a few grand on a CMTS card to supply another 38Mbit/s to 400 customers.
Joe Average's 10GB/month costs VM at most £1.25 assuming 128kbps peak usage and being 100% transit traffic. This is why STM is there, to lower the spike at peak times from heavy users. Transit charges are at 95th percentile so it's purely based on peak usage, which STM reduces.
BT throttling on cable is nothing at all to do with transit bandwidth, no cable ISP throttles torrents to reduce their transit bill, they throttle them to reduce their upstream loading - this is why cable ISPs in Canada and the US only throttle uploading, and why Comcast's equipment exclusively targetted upstream. In the case of DSL ISPs they throttle to reduce interconnect bills with incumbents or load on ILEC rented CO/exchange links.
Then wouldn't something like P4P be a good option? Both save cash and increase customer satisfaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proactive_network_Provider_Participation_for_P2P
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081103-comcastic-p4p-trial-shows-80-speed-boost-for-p2p-downloads.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080314-verizon-embraces-p4p-a-more-efficient-peer-to-peer-tech.html
Maybe products from Cachelogic? (http://www.cachelogic.com)
ISPs have options to think outside the box, away from the corporate network model of throttling / blocking anything you don't like. Distributed network caching, utilising anycasting, CDNs, these guys have multiple datacentres, extensive control over their networks and their connectivity to the outside world.
I'm also not sure why you keep mentioning transit as a major cost driver - it isn't. The major cost driver is and always will be the last mile bandwidth on an ISP network. Less than a tenner per Mbit/s/month on transit pales somewhat compared to the cost of an optical resegmentation, pulling KM of fibre, installing lasers, civils of building a new node, a few grand on a CMTS card to supply another 38Mbit/s to 400 customers.
Joe Average's 10GB/month costs VM at most £1.25 assuming 128kbps peak usage and being 100% transit traffic. This is why STM is there, to lower the spike at peak times from heavy users. Transit charges are at 95th percentile so it's purely based on peak usage, which STM reduces.
BT throttling on cable is nothing at all to do with transit bandwidth, no cable ISP throttles torrents to reduce their transit bill, they throttle them to reduce their upstream loading - this is why cable ISPs in Canada and the US only throttle uploading, and why Comcast's equipment exclusively targetted upstream. In the case of DSL ISPs they throttle to reduce interconnect bills with incumbents or load on ILEC rented CO/exchange links.
Is there a significant difference with the cost of suplying a user with say 50GB worth of data for virgin compared to O2/Be there?
gunner45
18-12-2008, 22:21
In a perfect world of a managed network the following would be the case:
1) No prioritisation until a network component nears congestion.
2) No deprioritisation, only upwards prioritisation of realtime and interactive traffic.
3) Management sufficient to avoid degredation of real time and interactive traffic only, maximising use of network resources by allowing customers to use as much traffic as the network can deal with at the time with no additional restraint. If the capacity is there no reason to not have it used, managing to an arbitrary limit is wasteful.
This is perfectly possible but not necessarily easy.
Comcast has what looks like a good solution which, under heavy load, assigns lower priority to heavy users. It is protocol agnostic, meaning it doesn’t discriminate against certain kinds of traffic versus other types.
Typically, says Comcast, a CMTS downsteam port has 275 modems sharing it, an upstream port 100 modems. The cable modem has a bootfile which is assigned by the DOCSIS protocol on startup. The bootfile contains a lot of information about your cable service, perhaps most importantly, how fast you can download/upload.
The traffic management occurs based on activity at the CMTS ports and is actually applied with a combination of flags set on your cable modem and those flags being processed on Comcast’s routers.
Here’s how it works:
1. Each port (keeping in mind it is either upload or download) is monitored independently.
2. Each cable modem has a flag for its current state
2.1. PBE - Priority Best Effort. The default state.
2.2. BE - Best Effort. A lower priority state. PBE traffic is prioritized below BE.
3. If a port reaches "Near Congestion State", which means that it has average over a certain threshold of utilization over a 15 minute period, network management will commence.
3.1. Downstream threshold: 80% utilization
3.2. Upstream threshold: 70% utilization
4. The network searches for users on that CMTS port that are in an "Extended High Consumption State", which means they have averaged over a certain threshold of utilization over a 15 minute period.
4.1. The user’s modem is set to BE.
4.2. Downstream and upstream threshold: 70% utilization
5. The network keeps the user in "Extended High Consumption State" until the user’s average utilization has dropped below the threshold for 15 minutes
5.1. User’s modem is set back to PBE.
5.2. Downstream and upstream threshold: 50% utilization
6. When in the BE state, all PBE traffic will be processed by the Comcast Internet routers before the BE traffic, regardless of the type of traffic, however the likelihood of it reaching a congested status is very low, and even in that case, the probability of dropped traffic is even lower.
So, if you are doing large downloads and if the network is in danger of being congested, you’ll likely be set to BE.
cook1984
18-12-2008, 23:40
Take a look. Thats telling me a whole different story.
That is a total, bare faced lie!
Once STM hits, you will not be able to download at full speed for an hour. Thus, it will be impossible to download a HD movie in one hour.
Okay, so at first there will not be any STM, but they know it's coming and will hit people in the middle of their contracts, so they know they can't actually offer that service for the full 18 month lock-in.
I am going to submit a complaint to the ASA about this.
General Maximus
19-12-2008, 00:31
where did you get 1 hour from? Once you hit stm that is it for 5 hours. They did say they were going to look at increasing the threshold on 50 mbit so you might be able to download 15gb for example before you hit stm so that you can easily download a HD movies.
I am going to submit a complaint to the ASA about this.
I think if more people complained then VM would not get away with all their advertising gimmicks, lets face it, vm broadband is not unlimited now isit, because you are limited to a certain amount of data you can download before BANG your stopped to x mb which is not what you agreed to pay for...you look at other countries with cable broadband and they do not have all these problems do they? :mad:
Mick Fisher
19-12-2008, 03:00
I think if more people complained then VM would not get away with all their advertising gimmicks, lets face it, vm broadband is not unlimited now isit, because you are limited to a certain amount of data you can download before BANG your stopped to x mb which is not what you agreed to pay for...you look at other countries with cable broadband and they do not have all these problems do they? :mad:
A memorable but flawed sentiment as the Goverment policy of "Light Regulation" is a license for ISP's, and most other businesses, to blatently rip off consumers without fear of any consequences save for the very occasional light slap on the wrist.
Our Government is so desperate for money that it is frightened to regulate business properly for the fear that it will move off-shore with the resulting revenue and job loss. They are however quite happy for us to subsidise the situation by being ripped off and suffering atrocious customer service.
It's really just another stealth tax. :mad:
Ignitionnet
19-12-2008, 08:49
Is there a significant difference with the cost of suplying a user with say 50GB worth of data for virgin compared to O2/Be there?
Nope.
---------- Post added at 08:49 ---------- Previous post was at 08:48 ----------
Comcast has what looks like a good solution which, under heavy load, assigns lower priority to heavy users. It is protocol agnostic, meaning it doesn’t discriminate against certain kinds of traffic versus other types.
Yep I posted on this solution elsewhere. It's by default giving all customers a better than best effort level of service and placing heavy users onto the normally default best effort tier.
As you mentioned it's also protocol agnostic in a similar manner to STM, which is nice.
cook1984
19-12-2008, 22:31
where did you get 1 hour from? Once you hit stm that is it for 5 hours. They did say they were going to look at increasing the threshold on 50 mbit so you might be able to download 15gb for example before you hit stm so that you can easily download a HD movies.
You misunderstand. What I mean is that you would not be able to download at 50mb for one hour. On all current tiers, you cannot download at full speed for one hour during the day or the evening. You will be hit with STM first and your connection retarded to the point it's useless for anything beyond basic web browsing.
---------- Post added at 22:31 ---------- Previous post was at 22:24 ----------
Yep I posted on this solution elsewhere. It's by default giving all customers a better than best effort level of service and placing heavy users onto the normally default best effort tier.
Our ISP at work tried something like this a couple of years ago, when BT first changed their pricing from per ADSL connection to per back-end pipe and suddenly everyone couldn't even manage 50:1 ratios.
Being an IT outfit we pulled a lot of bandwidth. Drivers, applications, Windows Updates (200MB+ on a fresh Vista SP1 install) etc so at about 9:30AM we were automatically pushed onto the "slow pipe" with all the other "bandwidth hogs".
It was so bad we couldn't even browse the web, let alone download anything. Our business ground to a halt. We called our ISP and spent three hours complaining and demanding the service we paid for before they put us back on the "fast pipe". It was still as slow as it ever was, but at least we could work.
You misunderstand. What I mean is that you would not be able to download at 50mb for one hour. On all current tiers, you cannot download at full speed for one hour during the day or the evening. You will be hit with STM first and your connection retarded to the point it's useless for anything beyond basic web browsing.
But the ad is for the 50Mb only. there isn't no STM on the 50Mb as yet, but will be later.
cook1984
19-12-2008, 22:35
But the ad is for the 50Mb only. there isn't no STM on the 50Mb as yet, but will be later.
This would be so much easier if you actually bothered to read the whole post.
I'll say it again since expecting you to scroll up and read it is apparently a bit too much to ask. VM know they are going to bring in STM next year at some point. Anyone who signs up now will be on an 18 month contract and will be hit with STM.
Looking at their advert, there is no mention of this, no footnote to qualify their claims. It looks like you get 50mb for 18 months. That is simply not true.
This would be so much easier if you actually bothered to read the whole post.
I'll say it again since expecting you to scroll up and read it is apparently a bit too much to ask. VM know they are going to bring in STM next year at some point. Anyone who signs up now will be on an 18 month contract and will be hit with STM.
Looking at their advert, there is no mention of this, no footnote to qualify their claims. It looks like you get 50mb for 18 months. That is simply not true.
I'm with you all the way, and agree with you. but the fact is there is no STM on the 50Mb at this time. so complaining about an ad which will be changed when STM is introduced is a waste of time.
Getting people to sign up for 18 months when Virgin know full well that they will be applying STM to that contract very soon is different. and there will be a lot of comebacks from that later, but there isn't no STM at the moment so the ad isn't misleading in that sense.
Infact I said the same as what you're saying already. you could say that they were misleading people with all the promises and there being no STM to sign up. knowing that at a later date they will screw them all with the thing they were trying to get away from. STM.
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34698976-post118.html
so, how long is this going to take? when will it be done? i can't wait much longer to be able to use my internet connection at normal hours again.
if they haven't throttled bittorrent users by january, i'll be switching to an isp that does.
Maybe this has been addressed elsewhere but surely VM would be better off by making more use of their internal NG server and trying to get more peeps off external torrents that consume bandwidth onto this. Peeps are always going to be downloading films etc which are all freely available on the VM NGs. Fair enough you only have a 7 day rentention and no SSL but its fast and free and would surely free up external bandwidth making the business model more sustainable.
Stabhappy
20-12-2008, 11:42
It's not actually internal. It's hosted by a reseller in Amsterdam(?).
bang goes that idea then :(
Ignitionnet
20-12-2008, 12:00
bang goes that idea then :(
Not really sir, I am almost 100% certain that VM have settlement free peering, IE they aren't paying per Mbit/s for traffic to their outsourced news service.
They likely pay a wodge of cash each month for access to the news service and that's it.
Anyone that thinks residential broadband should be a gaurenteed level of service is living in cloud cuckoo land..
Bravo!
I must agree with every single post you have made on this thread.
Lots of extremely good and valid points :)
Stabhappy
21-12-2008, 18:47
Not really sir, I am almost 100% certain that VM have settlement free peering, IE they aren't paying per Mbit/s for traffic to their outsourced news service.
They likely pay a wodge of cash each month for access to the news service and that's it.
I think that the original idea is that there would be less external peering, more internal, which as a concept is flawed to start with unless ideas such as P4P come into play. But that doesnt apply to newsgroups ;/
cook1984
23-12-2008, 00:12
I'm with you all the way, and agree with you. but the fact is there is no STM on the 50Mb at this time. so complaining about an ad which will be changed when STM is introduced is a waste of time.
I believe it is reasonable grounds for a complaint. It's known as Bait and Switch.
VM offer one thing to entice you in. Unlimited 50 meg. No mention of any STM or limits. I bet if you call them and ask they will swear blind that it is never going to happen.
Once they have you locked in to an 18 month contract though, that's when they pull the switch and reduce your service by 85% or more.
PC World got in trouble for this very same thing several times. Advertise a really cheap laptop on TV, but when you get to the store it's sold out because they only had one or two, but wait perhaps you would be interested in this more expensive one now you are here...
If anyone decided to get 50 meg, remember to call VM and get them to confirm that there will be no STM/throtting/management/prioritisation of any kind during your 18 month contract. Record the call and keep a copy safe. That way when they introduce it you can get out of your contract. I'm tempted to do it myself and just try to download the whole god damn internet in those few months before it kicks in, since it looks like they are going to hammer everyone later on.
---------- Post added at 00:12 ---------- Previous post was at 00:09 ----------
I think that the original idea is that there would be less external peering, more internal, which as a concept is flawed to start with unless ideas such as P4P come into play. But that doesnt apply to newsgroups ;/
PeerCache has been around for years. P2P caching has been around for years, and is totally legal in the same way that web caches are.
VM offer one thing to entice you in. Unlimited 50 meg. No mention of any STM or limits. I bet if you call them and ask they will swear blind that it is never going to happen.
I rang VM on the day it was announced and was told "Yes there would be STM once it was completely rolled out"
So a very honest answer there.
:)
I mean does anyone expect a 50Mb completely unlimited line for £51 or less, come on peeps lets be serious, bandwidth costs a lot more than that :)
I rang VM on the day it was announced and was told "Yes there would be STM once it was completely rolled out"
So a very honest answer there.
:)
May we ask who told you that?
I think if more people complained then VM would not get away with all their advertising gimmicks, lets face it, vm broadband is not unlimited now isit, because you are limited to a certain amount of data you can download before BANG your stopped to x mb which is not what you agreed to pay for...you look at other countries with cable broadband and they do not have all these problems do they? :mad:
They're allowed to call it unlimited as long as there's no hard cap on the amount you can download.
If STM was a "Download x amount then you get cut off" it isn't unlimited, as it's a "download x amount then download as much as you like at a slower speed" it is classed as unlimited, even though the amount you can download at that speed is lower.
The issue comes with the definition of unlimited, all connections are limited, they just simply can't download more than the speed lets them, so "unlimited" has come to mean "as much as you can download at the connection speed we give you" rather than actually being unlimited (as that's impossible).
Being an IT outfit we pulled a lot of bandwidth. Drivers, applications, Windows Updates (200MB+ on a fresh Vista SP1 install) etc so at about 9:30AM we were automatically pushed onto the "slow pipe" with all the other "bandwidth hogs".
It was so bad we couldn't even browse the web, let alone download anything. Our business ground to a halt. We called our ISP and spent three hours complaining and demanding the service we paid for before they put us back on the "fast pipe". It was still as slow as it ever was, but at least we could work.
Your business deserved it for being an "IT outfit" that doesn't know even the basics of doing fresh installs. Any "IT outfit" that has to download windows updates more than once is a joke that shouldn't be in business.
I've done tens of thousands of fresh installs, and every single one of them comes online with every patch up to the start of the month already installed and never touches windows update, because I know how to slipstream patch files into an install CD and know that sitting around waiting for windows update to download patches is not the best use of my time. If your company used windows update daily then you had fundamental problems in the running of it, and a slow internet connection should have been the least of your worries.
Ignitionnet
24-12-2008, 14:59
I mean does anyone expect a 50Mb completely unlimited line for £51 or less, come on peeps lets be serious, bandwidth costs a lot more than that :)
You'd best tell UPC this :)
http://www.upc.nl/internet/fiber_power/
---------- Post added at 14:59 ---------- Previous post was at 14:55 ----------
I've had a bit more of a think about this.
It's not necessarily a bad thing so long as the following are done:
1) It applies to upstream only.
2) It's only employed to avert congestion, if the network is not near congestion point traffic flows normally.
3) Tier upload is uplifted as follows:
10Mbit: 512kbps -> 1Mbit
20Mbit: 768kbps -> 2Mbit
50Mbit: 1.5Mbit -> 5Mbit
Giving a 10:1 ratio on all products.
4) STM is removed.
UPC are using 6.4MHz wide 16QAM upstreams, total bandwidth 20.48Mbit usable around 17.6Mbit to deliver 10 and 6Mbit upstreams on their products, VM could also use that modulation and width merrily.
You'd best tell UPC this :)
http://www.upc.nl/internet/fiber_power/
And Free
http://www.free.fr/fibre-optique/index.html
And Orange
http://abonnez-vous.orange.fr/Fibre/Avoirlafibre/L-Offre.aspx?idnode=550
lightboy
24-12-2008, 15:08
I mean does anyone expect a 50Mb completely unlimited line for £51 or less, come on peeps lets be serious, bandwidth costs a lot more than that :)
err yes £51 is extortionate amount to pay ..
there are several isp's who can offer 24MB (with 1.5-2.5mb upload) adsl with no stm for around £20
virgin charge way more than that for stm'd 20MB (with 768k upload)
when 50MB type speed is available on dsl platform i reckon average price will be in the 30-40 quid range ..
oh and as for the bitorrent thing they already seem to be doing that as even when i have got like millions of seeds and peers best d/l speed i have
ever had on any file was about 200KB's and ive got XL (i.e. 10% of available bandwidth) same goes for emule limewire etc..
only way i get full speed is payed newserver or rapidshare premium ..
I've done tens of thousands of fresh installs, and every single one of them comes online with every patch up to the start of the month already installed and never touches windows update, because I know how to slipstream patch files into an install CD and know that sitting around waiting for windows update to download patches is not the best use of my time. If your company used windows update daily then you had fundamental problems in the running of it, and a slow internet connection should have been the least of your worries.
:clap::clap:
gunner45
24-12-2008, 15:45
err yes £51 is extortionate amount to pay ..
there are several isp's who can offer 24MB (with 1.5-2.5mb upload) adsl with no stm for around £20
virgin charge way more than that for stm'd 20MB (with 768k upload)
You have to compare like with like.
You usually get close to VM's speed because of fibre to the cabinets.
But offerings of 24mbps are unrealistic as you practically need to be next door the the exchange to get that. Where I live gives me 13mbps at the most, so I'm not tempted by anything from Be or other ADSL2+ providers.
You have to compare like with like.
You usually get close to VM's speed because of fibre to the cabinets.
But offerings of 24mbps are unrealistic as you practically need to be next door the the exchange to get that. Where I live gives me 13mbps at the most, so I'm not tempted by anything from Be or other ADSL2+ providers.
I'd rather get 13Mbit unrestricted than have 20Mbit with all day STM :)
Impz2002
24-12-2008, 16:50
I've done tens of thousands of fresh installs, and every single one of them comes online with every patch up to the start of the month already installed and never touches windows update, because I know how to slipstream patch files into an install CD and know that sitting around waiting for windows update to download patches is not the best use of my time. If your company used windows update daily then you had fundamental problems in the running of it, and a slow internet connection should have been the least of your worries.
Bravo , well said ! you speak nothing but sense my friend !
Impz
---------- Post added at 16:50 ---------- Previous post was at 16:47 ----------
err yes £51 is extortionate amount to pay ..
there are several isp's who can offer 24MB (with 1.5-2.5mb upload) adsl with no stm for around £20
virgin charge way more than that for stm'd 20MB (with 768k upload)
when 50MB type speed is available on dsl platform i reckon average price will be in the 30-40 quid range ....
I think you are overlooking one very vital piece of info there. Most people on ADSL lines cannot receive the 24meg connection as they live too far from the exchange. Unless you live next door to the exchange you wont get anywhere near those speeds in real life conditions. VM's 50meg is not affected by distance and is therefore a vastly superior product !
Impz
err yes £51 is extortionate amount to pay ..
there are several isp's who can offer 24MB (with 1.5-2.5mb upload) adsl with no stm for around £20
virgin charge way more than that for stm'd 20MB (with 768k upload)
when 50MB type speed is available on dsl platform i reckon average price will be in the 30-40 quid range ..
oh and as for the bitorrent thing they already seem to be doing that as even when i have got like millions of seeds and peers best d/l speed i have
ever had on any file was about 200KB's and ive got XL (i.e. 10% of available bandwidth) same goes for emule limewire etc..
only way i get full speed is payed newserver or rapidshare premium ..
Missing the point.
You can get a connection that is capable of that speed yes. You can't however pay for that much constant bandwidth for that price. Transit costs for the ISP are way more than that £51 for 50Mb/s. You're also ignoring that that price is BB alone, you can get 50meg + phone line for £46. That brings it nicely into the 30-40 quid range you'd expect from ADSL.
They also aren't slowing BT, I max 20meg on it easily, I'd suggest the issues are either with you having firewall/router issues, or downloading from badly seeded torrents. I use torrents (legal ofc) with seed:leecher ratios of over 20:1, and never have a problem pulling max speed from them.
General Maximus
24-12-2008, 18:10
you might want to take a look at your max number of global connections for your torrents. Less is more so to speak. Although i dont pull my max speed from public trackers like the piratebay, I can always get my max speed from private sites which promote seeding in the way of monitoring share ratios or use a credit based system. I always limit my upload speed to 40k while I am downloading (to achieve my max speed) and then knock it back up afterwards to seed.
cook1984
24-12-2008, 19:46
Your business deserved it for being an "IT outfit" that doesn't know even the basics of doing fresh installs. Any "IT outfit" that has to download windows updates more than once is a joke that shouldn't be in business.
Actually, you are the one showing your ignorance.
We asked Microsoft about this, and they explicitly told us that we were not allowed to install customer's PC using slipstreamed CDs. In fact, for non-volume licence installs (i.e. most of them outside of large businesses) we are not even supposed to use CDRs, only original install media.
We had to argue with them for a long time to clarify that customers who don't have a Windows CD (only a restore CD or partition) can have installs/repairs done for them with our CDs. We even had to argue over keeping downloaded copies of service packs or using SP1 (which was the latest back then) integrated CDs for customers who only had original XP discs.
Another company we have dealings with was fined by MS for using slipstreamed CDRs, which they didn't realise was a problem. In fact, we didn't before that happened, which is why we asked MS to clarify.
[/quote]I've done tens of thousands of fresh installs,[/quote]
No you haven't.
261 working days a year. Minimum 20,000 installs over 20 years is over 36 Windows installs per working day. Even if you got started in 1988 I don't believe you have done that many.
because I know how to slipstream patch files into an install CD and know that sitting around waiting for windows update to download patches is not the best use of my time.
So do I. I also know how to set up a caching proxy server and a WSUS server for our SBS customers. I keep copies of 90% of the drivers I need on a file server. We still pull down a lot of data.
Maybe you can get away with it, but we can't. If MS found out we were using slipstreamed CDs for customer repairs, at a minimum they would fine us (the other company paid £16,000) and they may also stop selling us software licenses (we get discounts via the Action Packs etc). If you refuse to pay the fine they sue you for copyright infringement and breaking EULA.
---------- Post added at 19:46 ---------- Previous post was at 19:42 ----------
I mean does anyone expect a 50Mb completely unlimited line for £51 or less, come on peeps lets be serious, bandwidth costs a lot more than that :)
Depends. Our government says broadband is important but doesn't do anything about it, do we get expensive and poor service.
The Japanese government says broadband is important and does something about it. They get 1000/1000 (yes, gigabit) fibre optic broadband with near universal coverage by 2010 for around £23/month.
Actually there was a bit of a stir when one provider (NTT DoCoMo) introduced a 30GB upload cap on it's basic 100/100 service. That's 30GB per day though, and still unlimited downloads.
Even in other European countries you get unlimited fibre or ~50 meg ADSL for around £20-30/month.
Easy to do tens of thousands of Windows Install - using PXE servers, multiple installs can be done at once.
We send out new builds twice a year to 4000 PCs.
Actually, you are the one showing your ignorance.
We asked Microsoft about this, and they explicitly told us that we were not allowed to install customer's PC using slipstreamed CDs. In fact, for non-volume licence installs (i.e. most of them outside of large businesses) we are not even supposed to use CDRs, only original install media.
We had to argue with them for a long time to clarify that customers who don't have a Windows CD (only a restore CD or partition) can have installs/repairs done for them with our CDs. We even had to argue over keeping downloaded copies of service packs or using SP1 (which was the latest back then) integrated CDs for customers who only had original XP discs.
Another company we have dealings with was fined by MS for using slipstreamed CDRs, which they didn't realise was a problem. In fact, we didn't before that happened, which is why we asked MS to clarify.
It's really strange you know, because there's countless knowledgebase articles on how to slipstream updates on the microsoft website (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&hs=FBa&q=microsoft+slipstream+site%3Amicrosoft.com&btnG=Search). It's amazing how they're encouraging people to break their license agreements. Unless of course, they allow it. Which they do.
No you haven't.
261 working days a year. Minimum 20,000 installs over 20 years is over 36 Windows installs per working day. Even if you got started in 1988 I don't believe you have done that many.
"tens of thousands" = a huge amount, although I really wouldn't be suprised if it was actually over that amount. When I first started working, all those many years ago, it was for a solutions provider and I had the great job of running around to all the nice new pcs, booting them from the network, and doing remote installations. In one weekend at one of the companies clients I must have done a thousand. Those sort of clients combined with several schools we dealt with mean that 36 would have been a pretty slow day. Infact I can't think of many of our clients that would have had that few, we'd have been far too expensive for them. We had 3 seperate teams working on deployments, one doing the network, one moving in the pcs, and then the one I started in doing the software rollouts. When you're doing that day in day out the installations soon mount up.
We never once used windows update though.
We use Shavlik for distributing Windows Updates (including the latest Security patch) - works for us.
cook1984
25-12-2008, 16:29
It's really strange you know, because there's countless knowledgebase articles on how to slipstream updates on the microsoft website (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&rls=en&hs=FBa&q=microsoft+slipstream+site%3Amicrosoft.com&btnG=Search). It's amazing how they're encouraging people to break their license agreements. Unless of course, they allow it. Which they do.
I never said that they didn't allow it. In fact I said that I do use slipstreamed CDs myself.
What I was saying is that, in our business of repairing and maintaining PCs for the public and businesses, MS have stated clearly and categorically that we cannot use slipstreamed CDRs if the customer only has an OEM copy of Windows. That is most machines bought in PC World or from Dell/HP/etc.
Some business machines have XP Pro or Vista with an original CD, or the customer has bought a boxed copy of XP, or they have a volume license. In those cases, we are allowed to use slipstreamed CDs.
You will note that in order to create a slipstreamed CD you must have an original CD to start from. Note also that MS does not offer ISOs of original CDs to the general public, only people with VLKs. So, for anyone who bought a PC from PC World and who only has restore discs (which are basically image files, not Windows CDs) there is no legal way for them to create a slipstreamed CD short of buying a new copy of XP.
Like you, many people are ignorant of this fact. That is why the other company I mentioned got into trouble - they assumed it was okay, but it isn't.
Zhadnost
25-12-2008, 17:58
PC World got in trouble for this very same thing several times. Advertise a really cheap laptop on TV, but when you get to the store it's sold out because they only had one or two, but wait perhaps you would be interested in this more expensive one now you are here...
Yeah I remember this, it would have at least been nice if the one or two was per store ..
---------- Post added at 17:58 ---------- Previous post was at 17:48 ----------
The Japanese government says broadband is important and does something about it. They get 1000/1000 (yes, gigabit) fibre optic broadband with near universal coverage by 2010 for around £23/month.
Yeah, and the economics are exactly the same in the UK, I mean the population dentisy is almost excatly the same ...
...... I think we may be straying slightly into off topic land.
Raistlin
25-12-2008, 18:07
..... I think you might be right ;)
< nudge >
As VM are going to get rid of 2200 staff this news does not supprise me:-)
Ignitionnet
26-12-2008, 11:22
Yeah, and the economics are exactly the same in the UK, I mean the population dentisy is almost excatly the same ...
In some parts of the UK it is indeed almost exactly the same - Japan also has its' rural areas too but easy to compare the entire UK with Tokyo / Kyoto / Osaka I guess, try a comparison of Greater London with the greater Tokyo area, the difference isn't that massive and depending on which areas you look at London actually has a higher pop density in some surveys.
Japan's population on most recent figures I could grab was 339 persons per square kilometre, UK's 246. Here's a nice little stat for you however:
Administrative Division Area Size(sq km) Population density 2003 (people per sq km)
England 130,281 383
Northern Ireland 13,576 125
Scotland 77,925 65
Wales 20,732 142
United Kingdom 242,514 246
So, again what is exactly the fundamental issue with at least doing such a deployment to the more heavily populated parts of the UK? Oh yeah there isn't one beyond that we're British and don't do such things as large infrastructure investment as most other things illustrate. Seems to me the economics aren't that different we just have no-one who wants to pay for it.
Ooo post 666 :)
And I am sure (well, fairly sure) that if the UK Government gave the same tax incentives to BB providers that the Japanese Government gave, and are still giving, that this may help in the provision of FTTH (imho).
Pages 19-20 of this (http://www.itif.org/files/Ebihara_Japanese_Broadband.pdf) explains.
Ignitionnet
26-12-2008, 11:31
And I am sure (well, fairly sure) that if the UK Government gave the same tax incentives to BB providers that the Japanese Government gave, that this may help in the provision of FTTH (imho).
We do the opposite - we actually tax every foot of fibre that's in the ground and active. There's a great investment driver for you...
http://www.computing.co.uk/itweek/comment/2140206/fibre-tax-blocks-bt-rivals
EDIT: Another driver was that NTT Japan's BT were told to either lay the fibre or face structural separation, be forced to spin off their equivalent of Openreach. They chose the former.
In some parts of the UK it is indeed almost exactly the same - Japan also has its' rural areas too but easy to compare the entire UK with Tokyo / Kyoto / Osaka I guess
Do you think the rural areas have high speed broadband though? The cities you've listed are the only ones in Japan where you'll get 100mb.
Japans high speed broadband market is simply a case of hooking up the cities, and forgetting everyone else.
Here in the UK you can't get away with that, we have a huge amount of people living in "rural" areas (essentially anywhere other than the big cities) who will also expect the same service, and it's these people that make rolling out a new network nationwide unprofitable.
It's basically the same as ADSL, but on a much larger scale, it's not profitable to supply ADSL to rural villages, but it gets done because BT have a duty to do it, the cheap exchanges to run (the ones in the cities) subsidise the rural ones.
With fibre you have the same problems, it's just not cost effective to connect all the rural housing, far more so than with adsl, because you don't even have the cable to the home to use, it all has to be laid new.
So, any company that offers fiber in this country will be the same as in Japan, big cities only, forget everyone else. Movement in this way is happening, fibercity for instance, they're starting with bournmouth, but will then be expanding into other cities. VM already cover the profitable areas, they just need to fill in the gaps from new builds (something they're slowly getting round to doing) The issue with BT doing it is that they don't want to have to foot the bill because they know that once they're done with the cities they'll be pressured by government to also roll it out to the rural unprofitable areas.
Ignitionnet
26-12-2008, 12:10
Do you think the rural areas have high speed broadband though? The cities you've listed are the only ones in Japan where you'll get 100mb.
Nope try again. Japan already has coverage of FTTH above 75% of population and expect it to be 90% by 2010.
Japans high speed broadband market is simply a case of hooking up the cities, and forgetting everyone else.
See above.
Here in the UK you can't get away with that, we have a huge amount of people living in "rural" areas (essentially anywhere other than the big cities) who will also expect the same service, and it's these people that make rolling out a new network nationwide unprofitable.
Do we? The point of them being 'rural' is that there aren't a huge amount of people there. I think you also overstate this - ignoring London..
South East England, an area covering the eight counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and East and West Sussex, is feeling the heat of a population explosion. Covering an area of 19,069 square kilometres, and with a population of 8,237,760 in 2005, its population density of 432 people per sq km makes it one of the world's most crowded regions - almost matching that of Puerto Rico (445).
Ignoring the oversimplification of regions you could likely deploy fibre in the UK to >75% of the population without touching anything with a population below 10,000 or at very least within a few KM of such an area. Villages tend to be comprised of homes quite close together, and in some cases more densely populated than suburbia.
It's basically the same as ADSL, but on a much larger scale, it's not profitable to supply ADSL to rural villages, but it gets done because BT have a duty to do it, the cheap exchanges to run (the ones in the cities) subsidise the rural ones.
BT have no such obligation to deploy DSL. It was done purely for 'political' reasons.
With fibre you have the same problems, it's just not cost effective to connect all the rural housing, far more so than with adsl, because you don't even have the cable to the home to use, it all has to be laid new.
So just don't? We're a capitalist country not communist last I checked? Places have DSL that don't have mains gas or sewage?
So, any company that offers fiber in this country will be the same as in Japan, big cities only, forget everyone else. Movement in this way is happening, fibercity for instance, they're starting with bournmouth, but will then be expanding into other cities. VM already cover the profitable areas, they just need to fill in the gaps from new builds (something they're slowly getting round to doing) The issue with BT doing it is that they don't want to have to foot the bill because they know that once they're done with the cities they'll be pressured by government to also roll it out to the rural unprofitable areas.
H2O are deploying Bournemouth because of a deal struck with the local council. They'll no doubt be delighted to do similar where they can strike similar deals.
A combination of municipal fibre deployment and commercial deployment will plug most of the gaps. Where this isn't possible in extremely rural areas either FTTC or high bandwidth wireless would have to do.
We do live in a capitalist, market driven country last I checked. Not sure why there's such a strong emphasis on broadband communism on behalf of the same people who have to drive a few miles to get to a doctor or shop for the month. Probably do-gooders for the most part :(
gunner45
26-12-2008, 12:35
From what I've read, some of the estimated costs look like this.
FTTH/PTP
Fibre to the home using point-to-point fibre connections. Capable of supporting symmetric connections of up to 1gbps. Cost: £28.8bn
FTTH/GPON
Fibre to the home using a Gigabit passive optical network. Each fibre is theoretically capable of providing up to 2.5gbps of download bandwidth to the customer premises. However, this bandwidth is typically shared between more than one customer. Cost: £24.5bn
FTTC/VDSL
Fibre to the cabinet using very high bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL). Such cabinets are typically within a few hundred metres of the customer premises. Active equipment is then deployed in the street cabinet that connects to the customer premises using existing copper cables. Depending upon the length of the final copper line, download speeds of 30–100mbps can be expected. Cost: £5.1bn
Bearing in mind the state of the public finances, it looks unlikely to me that the government will give much help in building even the cheapest fibre network.
BT's strategy is to deploy a mixture of FTTC and FTTH in the UK. Its plans involve covering ten million premises by 2012, with FTTH being reserved for areas of new build.
Interestingly, operators who do not currently use the existing BT infrastructure may have a different perspective on the business case for FTTH. For example, H2O Networks, which is laying fibre optic cables in sewer pipes, does not have existing ties with the BT network and is pursuing an FTTH strategy. For such operators the difference in economics between FTTC and FTTH may not be as pronounced, making FTTH more attractive.
cook1984
26-12-2008, 13:42
Do you think the rural areas have high speed broadband though? The cities you've listed are the only ones in Japan where you'll get 100mb.
Yes, by and large they do. They are aiming for 98%+ coverage of high speed broadband (50Mb+) by 2010. Like with BT, the government there mandates NTT do it.
The current average speed of BB in Japan is 98Mb/sec. In the UK is to 2Mb.
---------- Post added at 13:42 ---------- Previous post was at 13:33 ----------
From what I've read, some of the estimated costs look like this.
Your figures are way, way off.
They would make sense if someone was going to lay a brand new fibre network to every home in the UK. In reality, there is no need to do that.
There is lots of fibre already laid by BT and VM, and by other network providers. It only needs to be extended to homes. What's more, the cost of laying new fibre is greatly reduced because much of the infrastructure (underground pipes or sewers, telephone poles etc) already exists.
Bournmouth is using it's sewer network to lay fibre cheaply, for example.
In Japan they unbundled the phone network, the cable network and the new fibre network. They made it clear that they wanted a fibre network, and they got one. In the process they became the world leader in broadband and stimulated their economy with it.
The way to think of it is as an essential public service like the road network. It's not just nice being able to drive places, it's actually a huge benefit to the economy in general and essential for any modern country. The existence of roads generates new business.
Ignitionnet
26-12-2008, 14:43
Quick note, BT have not committed to anything yet, they have announced plans and are still trialling:
Is this investment dependent on Ofcom creating a new regulatory framework?
Yes. The right regulatory environment is vital for anyone seeking to invest. The funds required are extremely large and companies need confidence that risk-taking can be appropriately rewarded.
Impz2002
26-12-2008, 17:52
I don't know why people give VM a hard time over claiming to be fibre optic. The fibre to the streetcab then coax setup dosnt really limit the product in the short term as coax can provide the max 444Mbit/s downstream connection on DOCSIS 3 euroDOCSIS as far as i am aware! until the government start investing in a worthwhile programme of fibre deployment with real public funded projects rather than just private funded projects the outlook will not change very much. The cost vs reward aspect of fib re is at the moment out of balalnce especially in rural area's. if you look into foreign fibre rollouts you will see a lot of government backed schemes.
A shame i know but that's the score peeps!
Impz
Ignitionnet
26-12-2008, 18:29
I don't know why people give VM a hard time over claiming to be fibre optic. The fibre to the streetcab then coax setup dosnt really limit the product in the short term as coax can provide the max 444Mbit/s downstream connection on DOCSIS 3 euroDOCSIS as far as i am aware!
It's not fibre to the street cabinet it's fibre to the neighbourhood, and relative to full on fibre to the home it's a big limitation, especially as current DOCSIS 3 chipsets limit to between 4 and 8 downstream tuners, giving a limitation of 200 - 400Mbit/s, it's not quite the 1Gbps that GPON/GEPON are delivering over a full fibre network and certainly is a huge limitation on upstream, coaxial networks being limited to somewhat less than the 622Mbps / 64 homes maximum or less usually that GPON delivers.
That coaxial is why the service is 50/1.5 not 50/50 so it certainly does limit the product in both short and long term.
---------- Post added at 18:29 ---------- Previous post was at 18:21 ----------
Yes, by and large they do. They are aiming for 98%+ coverage of high speed broadband (50Mb+) by 2010. Like with BT, the government there mandates NTT do it.
The current average speed of BB in Japan is 98Mb/sec. In the UK is to 2Mb.
Minor points, the average speed in Japan is certainly not 98Mbit/s, nor is the average in the UK 2Mbit.
If you're using the OECD data on average advertised speeds Japan is 93Mbps and the UK just over 10Mbps - the actual achieved speeds are far lower, Japan's average at the time of release of that OECD report being 10.6Mbps and the UK's 3Mbps.
Moreover the target by 2010 in Japan is 90% not 98% having access to ultra high speed services.
cook1984
27-12-2008, 00:35
Minor points, the average speed in Japan is certainly not 98Mbit/s, nor is the average in the UK 2Mbit.
If you're using the OECD data on average advertised speeds Japan is 93Mbps and the UK just over 10Mbps - the actual achieved speeds are far lower, Japan's average at the time of release of that OECD report being 10.6Mbps and the UK's 3Mbps.
That isn't correct. The OECD data is now nearly three years old anyway.
The average line speed that a customer in Japan receives (i.e. their connection is capable of) is just short of 100Mb. That falls to about 30Mb if you go by recent stats from SpeedTest.net, but they are probably unreliable since it's doubtful any single site could supply 100Mb for the test, let alone 1Gb.
You can argue that someone with a 1Gb connection will never actually be able to download or upload at 1Gb/sec, and to be fair that is certainly true. It also misses the point of such high speed connections. A 1Gb connection can supply a number of services including HD on demand, phone, PVR in your house to your mobile, HD video calls, BluRay downloads, the ability to email HD home videos etc. Also, because fibre is basically a different physical layer for ethernet (you don't have a modem as such, just a transceiver) there is a massive amount of "local" bandwidth. All unlimited.
It's basically an entirely different level of connection. You can't really even compare it.
In the UK, largely because we rely on ADSL, the average line speed is a little over 2Mb. Higher speeds are expensive and not available to a large section of the population. We have a mixture of bandwidth caps, throttling, transparent proxies and other nonsense to deal with.
Ignitionnet
27-12-2008, 10:50
The OECD data was from a year ago and indicated the average 'as sold' speed in the UK was 10Mbit/s and Japan 93.3.
Most UK broadband is sold at 8Mbit, and remember that a good part of Japan is still not using FTTH but VDSL / cable.
Comparing the achieved UK speed with the advertised Japanese one is a little unfair.
That said, certainly they are different worlds.
Fibre in Japan is not a different physical layer for ethernet and there's no concept of local bandwidth being available as it's not point to point and switched, it goes back to a local CO / OLT. It's also riding over PPP which needs teminating on an LNS, this is how multiple ISPs are able to use NTT's GPON/GEPON network. It's also not unlimited locally as there's TDMA upstream and a limited amount of bandwidth downstream.
FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network - OLTs and ONUs are a tad more than a simple transceiver, indeed apart from the lack of an RF tuner they work in a similar manner to a DOCSIS modem with regard to upstream MAPs and request / grant cycles, try hooking up to one using straight gigabit ethernet you won't get too far, GEPON just uses straight ethernet framing instead of ethernet over MPEG2 which DOCSIS uses :)
There are speedtesters that happily deal with 100Mbit+ from single clients, even in the UK we have a couple that will merrily do this! Try www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk or the Thinkbroadband speed tester.
Being an IT outfit we pulled a lot of bandwidth. Drivers, applications, Windows Updates (200MB+ on a fresh Vista SP1 install) etc so at about 9:30AM we were automatically pushed onto the "slow pipe" with all the other "bandwidth hogs".
It was so bad we couldn't even browse the web, let alone download anything. Our business ground to a halt. We called our ISP and spent three hours complaining and demanding the service we paid for before they put us back on the "fast pipe". It was still as slow as it ever was, but at least we could work.
If it's causing that many problems, I would recommend you do as we have done and use a local Windows Update caching system, such as Microsoft's WSUS ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx ) or Autopatcher (http://www.autopatcher.com).
Note: WSUS is integrated better within windows (you can set it up so that Windows Update on the PCs will download from your WSUS server). The way you would use Autopatcher in this instance is to store it on a network drive, run the downloader (apup.exe) to check Windows Update, and download any updates. You would use the client software (autopatcher.exe) to install the updates on the client machine.
The advantages of WSUS are that it integrates well with Windows Update, but also allows you to decide which update(s) you want to download (so you can block any service packs easily). The disadvantage is that it can be a bit tricky to learn. It also needs to be installed on with Windows Server 2003 SP1 or Windows Server 2008.
cook1984
27-12-2008, 21:21
Comparing the achieved UK speed with the advertised Japanese one is a little unfair.
I wasn't, and you can't anyway because there is are no reliable achieved speed stats for Japan.
Also, don't forget that it's symmetrical 100/100, and an average of 5Mb upload on non-fibre platforms. I dread to think what the average advertised upload speed in the UK is.
That said, certainly they are different worlds.
On that at least we are agreed :)
Fibre in Japan is not a different physical layer for ethernet and there's no concept of local bandwidth being available as it's not point to point and switched, it goes back to a local CO / OLT. It's also riding over PPP which needs teminating on an LNS, this is how multiple ISPs are able to use NTT's GPON/GEPON network. It's also not unlimited locally as there's TDMA upstream and a limited amount of bandwidth downstream.
That isn't the system I have experience of, but then again it wasn't using NTT's lines IIRC. It is true that there is a limited amount of bandwidth from the local CO out to the wider internet and limited per-fibre upstream bandwidth but the network diagram they had on the web site showed that they had switches and servers for things like on-demand video there too. This was a couple of years ago mind you. It was called "Hikari" (natch) but the web site seems to have changed a lot. It was in Nakano.
I remember it well because I have friends living there, and one of them is married to a French guy. Her sister has an STB and she can watch Japanese TV via the internet in France with it. The biggest problem is the difference in time zones but it has PVR functionality to help with that. She likes it because she can get all the channels available in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area, where as in Europe JSTV is the only channel available and it's about £35/month.
FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network - OLTs and ONUs are a tad more than a simple transceiver, indeed apart from the lack of an RF tuner they work in a similar manner to a DOCSIS modem with regard to upstream MAPs and request / grant cycles,
Again, all true, I should really have been clearer about what I meant. It's more like ethernet in that it's a "best effort" system and doesn't have any of the problems traditionally associated with modems (upload queues/buffers, increased latency due to interleaving like on ADSL etc).
However, you are right in that from a network point of view it is like a modem due to it using PPP. Maybe I wasn't clear in that I didn't mean there was local bandwidth on the same fibre, but rather at the CO.
There are speedtesters that happily deal with 100Mbit+ from single clients, even in the UK we have a couple that will merrily do this! Try www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk or the Thinkbroadband speed tester.
Well, I only have 10 meg so... :)
I certainly couldn't find any a couple of years ago, and people on 2ch regularly complain that there are no good sites to use. Maybe there are similar sites in Japan but due to 100Mb+ BB being common they are more heavily loaded?
I have pulled 90Mb+ one of of those connections while uploading in the 60Mb range. All the routers in the shops have "99Mb+" on the box now, although even the really expensive gigabit ones often don't mention their maximum speed. Saying that, few gigabit network cards can handle a full 1Gb load and you would need a lot of RAM and a really fast RAID array behind it :)
keyholder
31-12-2008, 12:31
VM say .. "Broadband has become integral to delivering home entertainment services and with data consumption growing rapidly, we are exploring new ways to enhance our product offering. Part of this involves intelligent monitoring and understanding the way people use our broadband service."
NOW quote - Part of this involves intelligent monitoring and understanding the way people use our broadband service.
WHAT A JOKE. Limiting 10 meg conections to 3 meg when they have only downlaoded less than 1gb in a whole 24 hours.
Inteligent monitoring. whats that mean, turn on a script monitoring program and thats it.
Bunch of cowboys.
Personally they can shove thier 50 meg, and thier throttling. Vm say we can realse 100 meg, even 200, well do youself a favour, stop the STM, and go with the 100, Untill then SHUT UP PLEASE :D us the customer want results not some lame ass speech from youre over paid trap !. i personally wud say that over 60% of the vm users get thier stuff from torrent sites/ ftp , and if they are going to restrict them then they will loose custom.
They say that they are cutting 2200 jobs , PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET RID OF INDIAN BASED CALL CENTRES!
VM are just diggin themselves ONE BIG HOLE !!! even with the amount of bull they spill they still wont be able to climb out of it !
General Maximus
31-12-2008, 12:52
that is the problem, what they say and what they do are two completely different things. I hate hipocracy.
"we are exploring new ways to enhance our product offering..................Part of this involves intelligent monitoring and understanding the way people use our broadband service".
Hmmm, well this means that they realise what everyone is primarily using their connection for and instead of screwing us over with application throttling, you come up with a way to improve the service and provide sustainable speeds for everyone.
They make it sound like they are putting the customer first and offering a 5* service when in actual fact they are doing everything they can to stop us from using our connection how we want to.
that is the problem, what they say and what they do are two completely different things. I hate hipocracy.
"we are exploring new ways to enhance our product offering..................Part of this involves intelligent monitoring and understanding the way people use our broadband service".
Hmmm, well this means that they realise what everyone is primarily using their connection for and instead of screwing us over with application throttling, you come up with a way to improve the service and provide sustainable speeds for everyone.
They make it sound like they are putting the customer first and offering a 5* service when in actual fact they are doing everything they can to stop us from using our connection how we want to.
That is a very good post.
Im very happy with my VM 20MB service but when they release and word crap like the above it makes my blood boil.
brundles
31-12-2008, 19:15
that is the problem, what they say and what they do are two completely different things. I hate hipocracy.
"we are exploring new ways to enhance our product offering..................Part of this involves intelligent monitoring and understanding the way people use our broadband service".
Hmmm, well this means that they realise what everyone is primarily using their connection for and instead of screwing us over with application throttling, you come up with a way to improve the service and provide sustainable speeds for everyone.
They make it sound like they are putting the customer first and offering a 5* service when in actual fact they are doing everything they can to stop us from using our connection how we want to.
As Rik says, that's a good post. The only thing I'd add it's that it's worse than them trying to stop people using connections how they (the customer) wants. They're trying to encourage people to use connections how they (VM) want. i.e. Maximum revenue for minimum use.
gunner45
31-12-2008, 20:16
Let's face a few facts. VM's 2mbps customers comprise 71 percent of users, doing little more than emailing, browsing and a bit of downloading. Yet it is these people who would pay the bulk of the cost for a major upgrade to the network which would enable the minority to enjoy unlimited downloading. And the benefit of such a network upgrade to these 71 percent? Not a lot.
And there isn't going to be a big network upgrade any time soon as VM is is in debt and, in any case, the recession is hardly likely to encourage major capital expenditure.
So, the issue to me is not STM as such but how best to make use of the network. VM has chosen to limit the heaviest downloaders in a certain way. There are more intelligent ways of doing this, and this is what we should be pressing VM to do.
Ignitionnet
01-01-2009, 12:43
The 50Mbit wasn't a massive upgrade, however it came on the back of other upgrades. The switching off of analogue releases both bandwidth downstream and gives cleaner networks indirectly increasing available bandwidth upstream as well.
VM are rather fortunate in that, due to past investments, the kind that BT ignored to commence a £2.5bn share buyback, they were able to deploy DOCSIS 3 at a relatively small cost.
That said of course the deployment is in a very early phase still.
Reminds me I must get in touch with the network bods... my own hubsite, Mortlake, has 3.5 CMTS filled up, the entire hubsite could be taken off the legacy platform and put onto a shiny new CMTS if they were up for it, be cheaper and easier than running 4 chassis + DOCSIS 3 chassis eventually.
gunner45
01-01-2009, 14:12
A bit of nostalgia ... I used to live in Hornsey and I remember from the late 1980s the streets and pavements in the London Borough of Haringey being dug up by Cable London (later bought by Telewest) to lay the green ducts. By 1999, the cost of the cable network in Haringey and Cable London's other four London boroughs amounted to £300m. We are not seeing this sort of investment any more, which is why about half of Britain's households have no cable service.
On another subject entirely: my regional headend is Hayes, is there a way of determining where my hubsite is?
cook1984
01-01-2009, 14:30
If it's causing that many problems, I would recommend you do as we have done and use a local Windows Update caching system, such as Microsoft's WSUS ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx ) or Autopatcher (http://www.autopatcher.com).
It's a nice idea, but we looked into both of those and rejected them.
Autopatcher is on legally iffy ground. It's probably okay for Joe Bloggs but as you know MS are stricter when it comes to businesses. We had to argue with them after they initially said we should not keep copies of service packs and .NET installers on our NAS, despite them being freely available for download. Their initial position was that they should only be installed via Windows Update and the downloads are for VLK users only. In the end they decided it was okay though.
As for WSUS, we did run it for a while, but dropped it for a couple of reasons. It was too much hassle to set up on every PC that comes in - since we are typically repairing several machines at once it's easier to just hit Windows Update and leave it running while working on another PC. Also, an important part of the repair process is to make sure Windows Update is working via the MS web site and Automatic Updates, as a lot of HDD failures and viruses break these two services. The best way to test if it works is to actually do it.
Ignitionnet
01-01-2009, 17:15
A bit of nostalgia ... I used to live in Hornsey and I remember from the late 1980s the streets and pavements in the London Borough of Haringey being dug up by Cable London (later bought by Telewest) to lay the green ducts. By 1999, the cost of the cable network in Haringey and Cable London's other four London boroughs amounted to £300m. We are not seeing this sort of investment any more, which is why about half of Britain's households have no cable service.
On another subject entirely: my regional headend is Hayes, is there a way of determining where my hubsite is?
£300m. It's really not that massive an amount when you think about it however the maths for how long companies are prepared to wait for a return on their investment are a bit different now.
Regarding your other enquiry, yep!
Click Connection at the top here and it'll give you an output, being on Hayes RHE you'll be ex-Telewest so will see something like this:
Host 82-43-x-x.cable.ubr02.mort.blueyonder.co.uk
In my case I'm interested in the mort part.
Quick hop over to http://help2.virginmedia.com/help/getContent.jspx?page=h_internet_advanced_dns
Shows mort = Mortlake which is a hubsite of Croydon RHE.
There do not appear to be any hubsites coming from Hayes, your CMTS / uBR is at the Hayes RHE!
General Maximus
01-01-2009, 17:48
I am very confused, i have done the same thng myself and it doesnt look anything like above or what VM give as an example.
Mine is cpc2-linc1-0-0-custxxx.nott.cable.ntl.com
I know I am Lincoln and my hub (or whatever you call it) is in Nottingham, but what is cpc2. Is it like what we have been talking about before where there are 1s and 2s for UBRs and each has an a and b?
gunner45
01-01-2009, 17:49
Click Connection at the top here and it'll give you an output, being on Hayes RHE you'll be ex-Telewest so will see something like this:
Host 82-43-x-x.cable.ubr02.mort.blueyonder.co.uk
In my case I'm interested in the mort part.
Quick hop over to http://help2.virginmedia.com/help/getContent.jspx?page=h_internet_advanced_dns
Shows mort = Mortlake which is a hubsite of Croydon RHE.
There do not appear to be any hubsites coming from Hayes, your CMTS / uBR is at the Hayes RHE!
Yes, you are right. My host is 82-44-xxx-xxx.cable.ubr02.haye.blueyonder.co.uk. This suggests that the west London region is small, so that there is no reason to build hub sites to split the region into geographical catchment areas.
Ignitionnet
01-01-2009, 18:05
Yes, you are right. My host is 82-44-xxx-xxx.cable.ubr02.haye.blueyonder.co.uk. This suggests that the west London region is small, so that there is no reason to build hub sites to split the region into geographical catchment areas.
Not necessarily, just the way the networks are laid out. There are 17 CMTS in Hayes so it's a pretty large area.
Axegrinder
01-01-2009, 23:50
I am very confused, i have done the same thng myself and it doesnt look anything like above or what VM give as an example.
Mine is cpc2-linc1-0-0-custxxx.nott.cable.ntl.com
I know I am Lincoln and my hub (or whatever you call it) is in Nottingham, but what is cpc2. Is it like what we have been talking about before where there are 1s and 2s for UBRs and each has an a and b?
The CPC (Customer Premise Card) is the UBR card your connected to ;) In your case you are on card 2 of your UBR.
General Maximus
02-01-2009, 00:28
sweet, so as it says card 2 of Linc1 am I assuming that there is more than 1 UBR in Lincoln?
Ignitionnet
02-01-2009, 10:44
The CPC (Customer Premise Card) is the UBR card your connected to ;) In your case you are on card 2 of your UBR.
Naughty Axe, you made that up. :nono: CPC has never been a reference to the uBR card it was a reference to which DHCP scope that IP range was in.
In ye days of old it used to be that for example linc1-4-1 would translate as hubsite name, cmts number - card - downstream port, so 1-4-1 would be CMTS 1, card 4, downstream 1, however this is now redundant and doesn't translate.
It just means DHCP scope 2, CMTS 1, Lincoln.
EDIT: There are presently 11 CMTS / uBRs in Lincoln.
Axegrinder
02-01-2009, 14:09
I stand corrected :blush:
Reminds me I must get in touch with the network bods... my own hubsite, Mortlake, has 3.5 CMTS filled up, the entire hubsite could be taken off the legacy platform and put onto a shiny new CMTS if they were up for it, be cheaper and easier than running 4 chassis + DOCSIS 3 chassis eventually.
Also dont forget to mention to the network bods that they should be upgrading Luton/Hemel area to 50Mb before anyone else, remember we spoke about it the other day? :D:D
Ignitionnet
02-01-2009, 21:10
Must've slipped my mind, I suspect a financial reminder would work!
LOL!
Ive got £1.40 in my Paypal account!! :D :D :D
Chrysalis
03-01-2009, 08:08
Let's face a few facts. VM's 2mbps customers comprise 71 percent of users, doing little more than emailing, browsing and a bit of downloading. Yet it is these people who would pay the bulk of the cost for a major upgrade to the network which would enable the minority to enjoy unlimited downloading. And the benefit of such a network upgrade to these 71 percent? Not a lot.
And there isn't going to be a big network upgrade any time soon as VM is is in debt and, in any case, the recession is hardly likely to encourage major capital expenditure.
So, the issue to me is not STM as such but how best to make use of the network. VM has chosen to limit the heaviest downloaders in a certain way. There are more intelligent ways of doing this, and this is what we should be pressing VM to do.
my sister on 2mbit VM does a lot of downloading on utorrent, sorry to burst your bubble. Dont assume because someone is on the 2mbit package they a light user.
cook1984
04-01-2009, 22:35
my sister on 2mbit VM does a lot of downloading on utorrent, sorry to burst your bubble. Dont assume because someone is on the 2mbit package they a light user.
That's the problem with the state we are in at the moment. Due to a lack of high bandwidth services (streaming HD video, movie rentals, online storage etc) there is little call for high speed connections, other than for downloading via P2P or usenet.
Once the average speed in the UK gets above 10Mb I expect we will start to see those kinds of services, but until then the only reason to get a fast connection is if you are a heavy user.
Chrysalis
05-01-2009, 10:12
yeah noone is going to provide a hd streaming service whilst there is no infrastructure to provide mass usage of it.
Ignitionnet
05-01-2009, 10:28
I'm pretty sure that HD Streaming is available at the moment - there have certainly been demos and trials of it and some services do offer HD varieties.
In ye days of old it used to be that for example linc1-4-1 would translate as hubsite name, cmts number - card - downstream port, so 1-4-1 would be CMTS 1, card 4, downstream 1, however this is now redundant and doesn't translate.
Phew, that's a relief..
Since I'm on linc7-0-0 I was thinking I'm not actually connected to anything.
weesteev
06-01-2009, 15:58
Surely the 3 number locator codes are for the new line cards in a Docsis 3 CMTS (for example Hudd uBR3 3/0/1)
Lincoln is however still not Docsis 3 so reverts to the 2 number locator codes (i.e Linc uBR1 3/1).
7/0/0 doesnt make sense as there are only 6 downstreams per uBR not 7 and you cant get 0 numbered cards either? Where did you get that info?
General Maximus
06-01-2009, 16:20
In ye days of old it used to be that for example linc1-4-1 would translate as hubsite name, cmts number - card - downstream port, so 1-4-1 would be CMTS 1, card 4, downstream 1, however this is now redundant and doesn't translate.
It just means DHCP scope 2, CMTS 1, Lincoln.
EDIT: There are presently 11 CMTS / uBRs in Lincoln.
There you go, God has spoken. I am Lincoln 1-0-0 which means I am on ubr 1 and whatever else that comes after doesn't matter anymore :)
cook1984
06-01-2009, 18:04
I'm pretty sure that HD Streaming is available at the moment - there have certainly been demos and trials of it and some services do offer HD varieties.
Try using those, even on 20 or 50 meg services, during peek times (i.e. when you actually want to watch TV).
broadbandking
06-01-2009, 19:02
Well I must say I am not looking forward to the future of Virgin Media broadband, no doubt they wont release the full specs of this so customer are fully aware
Ignitionnet
06-01-2009, 20:08
Surely the 3 number locator codes are for the new line cards in a Docsis 3 CMTS (for example Hudd uBR3 3/0/1)
Lincoln is however still not Docsis 3 so reverts to the 2 number locator codes (i.e Linc uBR1 3/1).
7/0/0 doesnt make sense as there are only 6 downstreams per uBR not 7 and you cant get 0 numbered cards either? Where did you get that info?
No, those 3 number codes are for MC28 cards and, as deployed on the networks for a few years, and include CMTS ID.
There are not 6 downstreams per uBR there are 6 card slots in the uBR, of which 4 are usable for CMTS line cards (slots 3, 4, 5, 6).
The MC28 line cards have 2 downstreams per card, requiring 4 bits of info to find a downstream (Site name, CMTS, Card Number, downstream).
The 10k line cards if they were to follow that format could be expressed in a similar amount of information, just that they have 5 downstreams instead of 2 per line card and more cards per chassis.
I think you're a bit confused, we were discussing DNS, not what the internal tools might show as they will also show upstream, which of course DNS could never do.
In any case it's all academic now, the DNS for things like linc1-0-0 simply indicates that that CMTS is using cable bundling, so all IP ranges are homed from a single virtual interface rather than from IP interfaces on individual downstreams / service groups as previous, meaning more efficient use of IP addresses as a single large scope can span all 8 downstreams instead of smaller scopes covering just 1.
Incidentally if you're looking for a 10k to look at try CMTS 19 in Croydon or Warrington 6 :)
7/0/0 doesnt make sense as there are only 6 downstreams per uBR not 7 and you cant get 0 numbered cards either? Where did you get that info?
From the widget at the top of the page ..
cpc2-linc7-0-0-custxx.nott.cable.ntl.com
:confused:
Be use something similar already to manage their broadband, in fact their technology on application throttlling is the most adavanced avaiable, even BT are looking to buy the tech from them.
In my opinion I think within 5 years time this is the way that all management of capacity will be done no matter which ISP you use.
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