It could catch on...

watty

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29/virgin_media_daytime_restrictions/

smellslikeshoes

I actually think thats much nicer than they had to be, the limits are quite healthy, the throttled speeds are very usable (2mbit->1mbit, 10mbit->2.5mbit, 20mbit->5mbit) and you're only going to be throttled for 5 hours in any case.
If ISPS are going to throttle this is probably one of the nicest ways of doing it.

PogMoThoin

Better than throttling those who go over a certain limit every month. I don't run my torrents during the day, start them when going to bed and stop them in the morn so it wouldn't affect me if this was introduced over here.

The_Conductor

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Better than throttling those who go over a certain limit every month. I don't run my torrents during the day, start them when going to bed and stop them in the morn so it wouldn't affect me if this was introduced over here.

Ditto. The other benefit of this is you get the max no of seeds online from the US.

SlimDusty

:eek: ok, your paying for 20mb pipe & yet your throttled for 5 hours during the day then 3hrs in the evening... Plus the brakes are put on your uploads. Effectively you can only attempt to max out your 24/7 connection at a time deemed fit by the Telco.

Good move by the company, bad move for the consumer...

Guaranteed it will eventuate here.

24/7 unlimited broadband ala Branson.

smellslikeshoes

SlimDusty wrote: »

:eek: ok, your paying for 20mb pipe & yet your throttled for 5 hours during the day then 3hrs in the evening... Plus the brakes are put on your uploads. Effectively you can only attempt to max out your 24/7 connection at a time deemed fit by the Telco.

Good move by the company, bad move for the consumer...

Guaranteed it will eventuate here.

24/7 unlimited broadband ala Branson.

Lets get this straight, There is no such thing as a truly unlimited broadband package aimed at home users.

Having the throttling implemented this way is actually a good thing for customers. If Virgin didn't have some sort of cap on the highest users, the price of these packages to the consumer would be astronomical. Even for the heaviest users, its still not going to effect them that much, their connection is still very usable

Most people here would see this as a bad thing only because most of us have grown used to Eircom not enforcing caps. Like it or not, ISPs here will start enforcing limits at some stage, some like Digiweb already do and others like BT have started throttling the biggest offenders. In the case of both of these providers when they throttle you, they bring you down to ISDN style speeds.

For the lowest virgin package 2mbit, they are now going to throttle you to 1mbit for 5 hours if you go over 1350 megabytes in the space of 11 hours (simplified that a bit to make it clearer) and for the other 13 hours of the day you have all you can eat. I would personally much prefer that to the 2mbit service we get here from Eircom if they started implementing caps.

watty

When, not if. When p2p legal TV is started by RTE. On some networks p2p can consume 80% of traffic even though only 5% to 10% of users doing it. As it becomes more popular...

Onikage

watty wrote: »

When, not if. When p2p legal TV is started by RTE.

They still have the option of doing ip multicast streams within the ISPs network. Easy and cheap to deploy, less overhead than P2P, the option of STBs and more controllable by the operator.

SlimDusty

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Lets get this straight, There is no such thing as a truly unlimited broadband package aimed at home users.

Having the throttling implemented this way is actually a good thing for customers. If Virgin didn't have some sort of cap on the highest users, the price of these packages to the consumer would be astronomical. Even for the heaviest users, its still not going to effect them that much, their connection is still very usable

Most people here would see this as a bad thing only because most of us have grown used to Eircom not enforcing caps. Like it or not, ISPs here will start enforcing limits at some stage, some like Digiweb already do and others like BT have started throttling the biggest offenders. In the case of both of these providers when they throttle you, they bring you down to ISDN style speeds.

For the lowest virgin package 2mbit, they are now going to throttle you to 1mbit for 5 hours if you go over 1350 megabytes in the space of 11 hours (simplified that a bit to make it clearer) and for the other 13 hours of the day you have all you can eat. I would personally much prefer that to the 2mbit service we get here from Eircom if they started implementing caps.

No ****?

Not if you are paying for the 20mb its not. People paying for that package have agreed to a contract for a 20mb service. Not 20mb when the ISP see's fit.

Agreed.

So what?

I will simplify it for you. All Telco's around the world have not yet agreed on the perfect model to deal with the obvious growth in the consumers appetite for faster speeds/more content. They know they will eventually need to spend a heap of cash on their infrastructure to accomadate this & yet alot of them seem to be in no rush to do so. Personally I would prefer to have a quota per month that is (unlike Ireland) relative to the download speed package I am on. Once I reached this quota they could restrict my speed till the beginning of the next billing period. Of course if I used a bit of common sense I would be able to manage the quota effectively thus I wouldnt be throttled.

There is no easy solution to this issue as the growth of technology is outstripping the investment by the Telco's, every high end user will have their own preference to what their ISP eventually does but at the end of the day not every user is going to be completely satisifed. In my opinion there is alot better business models in other countries that an Irish ISP could follow rather than what Mr Branson & Co is going to be trialling.

The_Conductor

Not true. People have signed a contract for a maximum of a 20Mb service. Unless its uncontended, they will never actually see this 20Mb, and even then the 20Mb is a theoretical maximum, subject to state of cabling, distance from exchanges, interference and a whole slew of other factors.

While in an ideal world you would get what you pay for- here, you most certainly do not........

Blindpew

Being throttled for a few hours a day wouldn't be too bad, especially with those speeds. Being throttled in this country means over three weeks at a time at double dial up speed, thats real throttling. I can't understand why ISPs are trying to increase speeds so much when they can't allow users to use the current service as one sees fit. BTs new 8mb service is a joke with a 30gb cap. One doesn't need 8mb speeds to open web pages so downloading files is the only use for it, but if you use it they'll restrict you to dial up speeds. It's all a con job making people think they have something they don't.

smellslikeshoes

SlimDusty wrote: »

No ****?

Not if you are paying for the 20mb its not. People paying for that package have agreed to a contract for a 20mb service. Not 20mb when the ISP see's fit.

Agreed.

They have agreed to a contract of UPTO 20mbit, SUBJECT TO FAIR USE POLICY. They are getting exactly what they signed up to. If you want a full 20mbit with unlimited bandwidth you pay the 10k euro or so a year for it. This is the way it is. The fact is the throttling measures Virgin have put in place are actually very very fair to the customers compared to what most other ISPs consider throttling.

SlimDusty

yeah, yeah we know. Its UP too.

Your missing my point though. What you Lads are basically saying is that you want your ISP to manage your download quota rather than taking responsibility for it & managing it yourself.

smellslikeshoes

SlimDusty wrote: »

yeah, yeah we know. Its UP too.

Your missing my point though. What you Lads are basically saying is that you want your ISP to manage your download quota rather than taking responsibility for it & managing it yourself.

I don't think you understand the context of this really. If it was a case of just managing your quota they wouldn't have to throttle anyone, the point is they have to throttle people who take too much from the service. ISPs have to limit the heaviest users who take too much and if they are going to do it this is the nicest way of them doing it, most fair use policies let the ISPs do what they see fit, if thats charge, throttle to a greater degree (see blindpews post above for example harsher throttling) or cut off, what Virgin are doing is just about as nice to the customer as possible and I think its a great way of doing it.

SlimDusty

Mate this is getting boring. You can actually tell that broadband is still in its infancy here in the Emerald Isle when you keep on banging out the same stuff again & again & again… This is not a competion to quote & then re-quote & then quote again what you have read on these boards/telco/tech sites etc..

Do a bit of research in how it works in other countries before you start singing. "what Virgin are doing is just about as nice to the customer as possible and I think its a great way of doing it."

For example you have a high end plan 20,000kbps - 24,000kbps. Your allowance is 80GB in peak hour (say for arguments sake 1200 - 0200hrs) & then 80GB for off peak (0200 - 1200hrs). Now there is no shaping on said traffic until you hit your quota. If you are throttled in peak you still have full whack in off peak until you max that out , the next billing period it all resets. This is just one of the many examples of how an ISP manages contention on their network.

It is basically the same thing yet a 'nicer' way of doing it, in my opinion of course...

You understand the 'context' now? :rolleyes:

Praetorian

At the moment the reality is that there are only two significant companies offering the kinds of speeds that might necessitate such harsh throttling; UPC might think about it but I doubt Smart will. Eircom and BT aren't offering extraordinary speeds even taking the new speed bumps into consideration. Most of their customers will be staying on 1 & 3 packages which are relatively slow in this day and age. I think all the other providers are too small to make a negative move like this unless they are once again playing follow the leader.

I think enforcing download caps is more likely in Ireland for the time being.

[edit: added the word significant]

smellslikeshoes

SlimDusty wrote: »

Mate this is getting boring. You can actually tell that broadband is still in its infancy here in the Emerald Isle when you keep on banging out the same stuff again & again & again… This is not a competion to quote & then re-quote & then quote again what you have read on these boards/telco/tech sites etc..

Do a bit of research in how it works in other countries before you start singing. "what Virgin are doing is just about as nice to the customer as possible and I think its a great way of doing it."

For example you have a high end plan 20,000kbps - 24,000kbps. Your allowance is 80GB in peak hour (say for arguments sake 1200 - 0200hrs) & then 80GB for off peak (0200 - 1200hrs). Now there is no shaping on said traffic until you hit your quota. If you are throttled in peak you still have full whack in off peak until you max that out , the next billing period it all resets. This is just one of the many examples of how an ISP manages contention on their network.

It is basically the same thing yet a 'nicer' way of doing it, in my opinion of course...

You understand the 'context' now? :rolleyes:

Try to be more condescending, it really makes you look like you know what you are talking about.
In the example you described you could still be left throttled for weeks if you go over the limit early in the billing period, in Virgins case you will only be throttled for 5 hours.Yes broadband here is still in its infancy, I wouldn't deny that but saying that the approach Virgin has taken wouldn't be welcome over here rather than the current approach to throttling here is absurd.

watty

Onikage wrote: »

They still have the option of doing ip multicast streams within the ISPs network. Easy and cheap to deploy, less overhead than P2P, the option of STBs and more controllable by the operator.

Broadcast does what you say (and is generally unsupported). Multicast really only saves server bandwidth.

PPPOE DSL traffic would all be effectively unicast and all Wireless and Cable traffic is inherently unicast (even though it pretends to be Multicast).

Nice idea. Sorry

rogue-entity

To this day, I am surprised by the number of people that can regularly download 60-100GB in a month. My cynic-senses are telling me most if not all of these people are using BitTorrent, and a fair large number of them are downloading illegal material. Then I say this, because the only time I am not on the internet, is when I am sleeping, or away from the house.

Another bright idea that took off in the UK, is the ISP giving you the fastest connection they can supply you (up to 8 or 24Meg), and charging you by your data allowance instead, mobile operators are doing this already, so whats stopping the fixed line operators from doing the same? Or am I safe to blame Eircon for our usual abismal broadband mess.

Blindpew

rogue-entity wrote: »

Another bright idea that took off in the UK, is the ISP giving you the fastest connection they can supply you (up to 8 or 24Meg), and charging you by your data allowance instead, mobile operators are doing this already, so whats stopping the fixed line operators from doing the same? .

That would be a fair enough set up if they charged a realistic amount like 50cent a gb. This threat of maybe getting charged 1cent per mb over the cap is silly, they would be looking for a 1000 euro for a 100gbs. I'd go to jail first before I'd pay.

rogue-entity

Blindpew wrote: »

That would be a fair enough set up if they charged a realistic amount like 50cent a gb. This threat of maybe getting charged 1cent per mb over the cap is silly, they would be looking for a 1000 euro for a 100gbs. I'd go to jail first before I'd pay.

I'd say more like €1/GB (or more likly €1/MB)...

But I would agree with you strongly.. but in the UK, they also provide completely unlimited packages for those willing to pay extra for them.

So this way people like me, can get away with paying say, €10-20/mo and the BitTorrent crowd are encouraged to fork over 5 times that for an unlimited package, making the user pay for their bandwidth, not their usage.

As for throttling.. wouldnt it not make more sence for the ISP to just charge by data allowance and pass on the increased costs of additional bandwidth to the customer in some way, rather than slowing down their internet connections. Just looking at those caps.. downloading a single DVD ISO file, will stick you on a 5 hour slow-list.

godskitchen

They have had this in place for a while now in the UK. To be honest it doesnt really effect me all that much. I dont use torrents anymore (Newsgroups all the way!) and I just leave stuff downloading over night. Its not a problem, plus you are sure to get good surfing speeds in the evening or decent downloads if you do need a smallish file quickly.

It will be interesting to see what they do when they offer 50Mb, which they say will be by the end of the year...............

cgarvey

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Lets get this straight, There is no such thing as a truly unlimited broadband package aimed at home users.

Amen. Anyone who thinks otherwise, or expects otherwise for €30/mo is living in a dream land feeding of urban myth.

cgarvey

rogue-entity wrote: »

but in the UK, they also provide completely unlimited packages for those willing to pay extra for them.

Subject to AUP. Max out a fairly well contended DSLAM 24/7 and you won't be a customer for much longer.

rogue-entity wrote: »

making the user pay for their bandwidth, not their usage.

Am liking the idea, and hope it takes (back to the old argument "why should 95% of customers pay for 5% of users"), but there's still the issue of contention management. If the high 5% are all doing their stuff during peak time, it still badly affects the other 95%. There has to be an incentive not just on the transfer limits (to manage upstream costs) but on the time of day as well (to manage contention).

rogue-entity wrote: »

As for throttling.. wouldnt it not make more sence for the ISP to just charge by data allowance and pass on the increased costs of additional bandwidth to the customer in some way

Yes and no, see above point.

watty

More interesting info on "Fair usage Policy" (FUP /AUP = secret caps) vs metering
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/03/time_warner_metered_internet_trial/

smellslikeshoes

watty wrote: »

More interesting info on "Fair usage Policy" (FUP /AUP = secret caps) vs metering
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/03/time_warner_metered_internet_trial/

The caps they are talking about are pretty tough but one thing thats worth noticing is the reasonable price per extra gigabyte of usage. At one dollar per Gigabyte its not going to break the bank if you go over by 10 or 20 gigs.

watty

Personally I think it's fairer than an unwritten cap (FUP) or simply one fixed cap and more sensible than "unlimited".

Improves performance for the 90% and the other 10% either cut back because they don't really need it (It would take me 450 years to listen to all of my PMP if I filled it with 320kbps MP3, OK video at 720x576 would take less )
The few % that really really need it then pay and get better performance.

watty

Latest Comcast developments 5th June 2008
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/05/comcast_blacklists/