General : Traffic Management Changes - April 2nd

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

it's not good enough. When they announced the stm policy would be changing (but before they released the detail) they told everyone not to worry and that the new limits would be inline/reflect the speed doubling. It is common sense to me that double the speed = double the allowance but I could see them, doing it x1.5. Keeping it the same is a joke.

It seems common sense to me, mon General, that double the speed should go with half the allowance. The pipe may be doubled (is it?), but so will the number of customers taken on as they see these speeds advertised.

And what will happen when all those new customers sign up to this amazing deal? Presumably our speeds will not suffer ha ha!

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

those download limits are the doubled ones.

I quoted the 30mbit and 60mbit limits for doubled tiers.

so the new 30meg limit is lower than the old 30meg limit and the new 60meg limit is the same as the old 30 meg limit.

So now you only have to use your connection for 12-15 minutes before it's considered "excessive" instead of 24-30 minutes.

Course this throws their whole excuse of "top 5% of users" out the window

---------- Post added at 13:04 ---------- Previous post was at 13:01 ----------

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

It seems common sense to me, mon General, that double the speed should go with half the allowance. The pipe may be doubled (is it?), but so will the number of customers taken on as they see these speeds advertised.

Course they specifically said STM limits would go up in proportion to the increase in download speed, once again a load of made up nonsense like just about everything else they've spouted this year.

[carlwaring]

And yet you, as well as certain other serial complainers are still their customers.

If was as obviously upset as you are I would have left them already.

[qasdfdsaq]

I left ages ago. In fact I specifically said so on this forum at the time as well, so you seem to be particularly selective in your reading.

[carlwaring]

Okay. Fair enough. And yet you're still on here moaning about it. Got nothing else to do?

Sorry but it just seems to me that, for someone who has actually left the company (as a user I mean), you do seem to spend an awful lot of time talking about it.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

And yet you, as well as certain other serial complainers are still their customers.

If was as obviously upset as you are I would have left them already.

What a stupid observation ("certain other serial complainers"). Anyway you seem to be a serial fanboy - so what you doing here complaining about the complainers?

There are several reasons why complainers are still VM customers; for example the other available supplier is ADSL at 512K against VM's pathetic 3 meg on their "state-of-the-art fibre optical network". Why shouldn't they complain about not getting 90% of the headline speed that VM boast about?

I for one hope that the upcoming STM works effectively. That will localise complaints about STM to specific areas where infrastructure is insufficient.

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

That will localise complaints about STM to specific areas where infrastructure is insufficient.

The way things are going that looks like being everywhere...

Just checked and the Infinity cab I'll be on is powered up now.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

Okay. Fair enough. And yet you're still on here moaning about it. Got nothing else to do?

And you seem to spend a lot of time moaning about me. Got nothing else to do?

(And no, I'm off work on long-term sick leave, I don't actually have much else to do)

[carlwaring]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Anyway you seem to be a serial fanboy...

Of course. knowing the defintion (and the derogatory way in which you mean it) it should be perfectly obvious from my previous posts that I do not fit that description at all.

Why shouldn't they complain about not getting 90% of the headline speed that VM boast about?

They should; and loudly. However, on the other hand, those without the services really have no rights - or needs - to complain at all

I for one hope that the upcoming STM works effectively. That will localise complaints about STM to specific areas where infrastructure is insufficient.

And I agree completely.

---------- Post added at 15:45 ---------- Previous post was at 15:44 ----------

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

(And no, I'm off work on long-term sick leave, I don't actually have much else to do)

Sorry to hear that. I'm long-term unemployed myself; for reasons I will not be going into on here.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

It seems common sense to me, mon General, that double the speed should go with half the allowance. The pipe may be doubled (is it?), but so will the number of customers taken on as they see these speeds advertised.

I am starting to think that downstream high utilisation is not as rare as has been made out to be, my area was clearly downstream limited for the last few months because as soon as an extra channel got added my performance increased. However only able to use your connection full throttle for a dozen or so minuted before been classified as a heavy user smacks of desperation and is quite an extreme limit. This would indicate quite high contention of customers.

I am always of the belief that the product sold combined with capacity should be the prime management of bandwidth and traffic shaping should only compliment it to handle temporary congestion situations such as when a hardware failure causes temporary high utilisation eg. VM however now appear to have gone down the path of a permenent high utilisation and a ever increasing traffic shaping to manage it.

I still remember ignition some months back leaking that 8 channels are coming on the downstreams, the impression I got from his comment at that time it would be 8 channels in each area, he has now recently said it wont be 8 in every area and it would be based on the needs of the area. So either VM have backtracked yet again or ignition was just been clever the first time not letting it slip that it wasnt intended to actually mass rollout 8 channels.

5 channel is an odd number and I would love to know how 5 vs 8 channels saves VM money because I expect the line card needed to use 8 channels is the same line card used for 5 channels, I think I also remember ignition mentioning licensing in the past so is it the case whenever VM turn on more channels they have to pay some kind of fee for a license?

[qasdfdsaq]

More of anything costs money, regardless of whether the hardware is capable or not. But licensing can be an issue, for example Cisco sold us a pile of wireless LAN controllers capable of up to 500 WAPs each, but our licenses limit us to either 300 or 500 depending on what units we part-exchanged them with before (long story).

5 channels is not the limit and there are various areas with 6 or more.

Ultimately though the best and most reliable information we're going to get about the effects of these changes (and there have been a lot of big changes across the whole "superfast broadband" market) is the next OFCOM broadband speeds report. In previous reports it's already been shown VM suffers worse than the competition at peak times, even if average speeds end up higher. They still remain, as far as I know, the most accurate, reliable, and broadest set of data available in the UK, and the next set will hopefully be out within a month or two.

[Chrysalis]

ok so if I buy a 8 port switch and I have all the cables etc already at hand.

how much does it cost for me to plug in 3 more of the cables?

qas you know I didnt say 5 is the limit, what the limit is becomes irrelevant, whats relevant is how many are been turned on.

[qasdfdsaq]

No, what I meant was your post seemed to be implying VM were going to stop at 5 channels and not bother going up to 8, I was saying they've already gone beyond 5 in some places.

It's not like plugging additional cable into an 8 port switch though. What you really need is special equipment to run all 8 ports over 1 single cable.

Back to my example, we have a Cisco WiSM2 that can only handle 300 APs, while next to it we have another identical WiSM2 that can handle 500 - the only difference is the licensing. There's no physical cost to upgrade them both to 500 but Cisco want us to pay more (many thousands more) to get an email code to do so. It's not just about the physical hardware cost.

[Chrysalis]

if you saying each area will goto 8, based on what I have seen so far and what ignition last said I disagree.

However I am not going to say they will never ever go to 8 as they will do at some point but just that I dont think it will be in every area in the near future say within 18 months. I think some areas will stop at 5,6,7 for a while if VM feel they dont need to add more.