Nice post

Another geek vote here.

A sincere thanks to Kitz and others in this thread. It's a pleasure to see the forums returning to a place of reasoned, constructive criticism that adds real value.

The points raised will be taken on board. We aren't looking to alienate the very customers who have been recommending us over the years and we do recognise that our service is falling short in some areas at present.

I don't know where I come in with my internet habbits, basicaly I like to try new stuff, download software, I've just downloaded linux, fedore core 3 to be exact, but am yet, to get that box on the net, but as soon as I get me a vigger 2600G router, then that's what I'm going to try, I don't use p2p anymore although I used to, I sometimes read newsgroups but never binary ones, I do use FTP for downloads quite often, but never download more than about 6 to 8 gig per month, I have subscribed to BB plus, because, in my current situation, that of being a poor student, it's giving me what I want, not always fast, but that's just how the net is anyway, but at the right price, which counts. if kittz has any idea where I fit in, I'd be interested to know.

PS, good post by the way

Add Chesterfields "sermon" post to that Niel and I would wholeheartedly agree!!

Big thx to Dave for the time put into his very informative replies!

In my opinion that is a very silly thing to say. Are you suggesting that the internet industry is moving toward more restricted bandwidth for consumers?
Surely with services like VoIP and (legally) downloadable tv shows starting to take off in popularity the demands of consumers for more bandwidth is only going to increase.
For example:
The forthcoming iPod video, allows you to download episodes of TV shows the day after airing for a nominal fee via iTunes. Since iTunes is already responsible for a large amount of internet bandwidth using small files, what is going to happen when this is released and each file is >200MB ?
Steam, the client for Valve software (Half Life 2, Counter Strike etc) allows you to buy and download games directly to your PC. This is only the start of this and fairly soon many other software companies are going to employ a similar technique to distribute their wares (XP64-bit edition is still currently only available via download). This saves them money on packaging and distribution (which Valve are only too aware of since their wrangle with Vivendi :wink: )
Downloadable (legal) TV/Films are not a million miles away either. I've read of many systems in development allowing you to select exactly what you want to watch and download it straight to some sort of set-top-box.

Even the n00bs are going to want to get in on these services once they take off , and since all of these services are designed specifically to be accessible to "non-experienced" users (iTunes anyone?), they will begin to require more  bandwidth.

Hi,

Services like IPTV and VoIP and video on demand and iTunes, and TV via iTunes are all already factored into the equations.

With the different costing of  LLU and with a reduction in the wholesale cost of BT Centrals the bandwidth for these type of services can be provided.

When you think about about a TV show, at DivX quality something like an episode of Lost is about 350MB. Which on 8Mbps could be downloaded in about 8 minutes, on 24Mb you are down to less than 3 minutes.

I don't know exactly how the technology behind things like IPTV will work yet, but imagine if you can split the show into 3 parts the download becomes bursty traffic, just three 1 minute maximum downloads.

I think that the advent of faster speeds wil undoubtedly cause some increase in traffic - but on the whole I doubt it will increase in line with the speeds.

i.e. if I download 10GB a month now, I doubt I would download 200GB a month if someone upped my connection from 1mb to 20mb.

There may be a slight increase, but not too much.  Obviously you would see some users trying to download the planet, but they can be dealt with.

For myself the advent of faster speed just serves to make my internet experience more convenient - I can get what I want, when I want without having to wait for the downloads to complete.

The uptake of new services such as iptv, voip and the like will increase bandwidth yes, but as stated above, these are factored in.

The key for many of us, is when the uptake and reliance upon these services for day to day business and living becomes such that the government and BT have to start investing into new technology to deliver the likes of 24mb to all of us.

The whole broadband industry in this country is currently going through huge changes, changes that could have huge impact on many aspects of the British society. And not just Britain, but most of the world too is seeing similar changes.

2005 will be noted as the start of faster broadband. At the beginning of the year most people were on 512kbps or 1Mbps connections and by the end of the year 2Mb is now the standard (where possible) and we'll be seeing people on speeds up to 8Mbps and the start of up to 24Mbps.

It won't then be long into 2006 before the faster speeds start to become the norm and it's at that point that things start to get really interesting.

As Chesterfield says for most the increase in speeds probably isn't going increase usage by the same factor. For most people the increase in speeds will mean two things, one they can do the same things they do now quicker and two, they can take advantage of the emerging products and services.

The announcement of Apple's tie up with US TV network ABC is just the start of many similar types of service. The BBC in this country have a trial of their Integrated Media Player as well as multicast. Other companies are looking at similar types of service, the movie companies are looking at video on demand services for example.

VoIP services are just starting to take off, we recently launched phase 2 of PlusTalk, SIP phones are becoming available in the shops, router manufactures are creating products with phone support.

These are the type of services that will become mass market services that go hand in hand with the faster broadband connections.

Faster broadband that with the changes in technology will spread to an ever widening audience. DSL Max is going to cover thousands of exchanges and be available to millions of people, LLU is growing to every more exchanges, ADSL2+ will see even faster speeds, VDSL with the Fibre to the Cabinet trials will see the copper run shortened and the faster speeds become available to even more people.

Behind the scenes at BT they have invested heavily upgrading their exchanges and the backhaul capacity to allow for the faster speeds. The money to pay for this investment has largely come from the fees they charge the ISP's for central pipes on CBC and UBC. Once the upgrade programme is complete they will be able to see the prices reduce for central pipes. This is one of the ways services such as the above will be able to grow.

Secondary to that is LLU, with a different cost mechanism the economies of scale with multiple ISP's using an LLU platform will bring benefits again to allow for the types of service like IPTV.

An finally the building of a managed broadband platform. WIthout proper management of the traffic and usage a service can easily be allowed to be affected by a tiny minority. Without any kind of checks on the network, just 20 customers maxing their connections 24/7 could fill a £400k per year central pipe. That sort of usage just can't be allowed, that type of usage threatens every other application and every other customer.

As we've seen most of the industry is moving away from this type of model, moving away from the "all you can eat P2P". We are only part way down the Yellow Brick Road, it may be bumpy for some, there may be missing bricks, and there may be flying monkeys, we may meet a Scarecrow, Tinman or Lion, some people may take the red brick road and that's fine, but we'll get to Oz, we'll get the faster broadband services, we'll get the applications and services and build a platform for the future. Who knows we may even meet the wizard

:roll: OMG I have just been reading that post with great interest, then came to the last paragraph..................what on earth Dave? Have you had mushrooms for tea? "flying monkeys" :lol:

Sounds like an exciting time ahead! Thanks for the info fella  :!:  

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Agreed m8, but I must say that I find myself downloading big files these days that back in the 512k days, I would probably have just left alone. So I guess with a faster still connection, I would go for huge files Although these would be few and far between, and I can understand that the fact these would come to me so much quicker means that the vast majority of my time on line would be very short and bursty as Dave mentioned!

Increasing the bandwidth by an order of magnitude is going to open the door to services that are currently not viable. For example, renting dvds delivered by download becomes more attractive with increases in bandwidth, and once we start to see the likes of Starz and Movielink take off in the UK then the potential for the average user to significantly increase their usage will no longer be a fantasy.

Nah, one of my colleagues said I hadn't done a crazy analogy for a while, so I tried to fit in The Wizard of Oz.

kitz

As always very succinctly put as always and a real pleasure to read and so very true.

LoL! First time around, I managed to get a PM posted here   :roll:

Anyways, Just thought I'd comment and say that this is the sort of thread I LOVE to read. It's reasoned, well presented, properly discusses issues, and even PN staff are involved and speaking openly offering some real insight ito what's being attempted behind the scenes. The faith I had in my impression of PN when I first joined in may has been somewhat restored. Thankyou.

lol@dtomlinson - keep them coming Crazy analogies are great in my book

It realy is nice to see such a topic, a bit like the old days  
I hope this will be the way forward.

I for one fall into the hobbist and geek catagory, with a lot of noob at the base core

I think Dave has explained a number of key points very well.

I, myself, am very interested and excited about IPTV, VoIP etc... and I look forward to being able to harness them in the future. But development work needs to be done now.

Traffic Shaping on applications such as P2P is going to be necessary to ensure QOS for usage such as VOIP and IPTV. After all, would you prefer to watch crystal clear, uninterrupted TV streams with a slight reduction in P2P. Or would you prefer, unthrottled P2P and jerky, interrupted, TV and VOIP telephone calls.

It's good that Plusnet have admitted there are a few bricks missing, but we're lucky that they've started building these inroads already, ahead of the game - as we're the ones who are going to benefit from the new technologies first.

I agree Liam, that I would prefer to see uninterupted quality of service regarding such things as voip IPTV at the expense of P2P and NNTP. However the current trade off at peak times is obviously way too much! I would be perfectly happy to see a degredation of say between 30%-50% on P2P and NNTP at peak, so as to enable uninterupted service in the latency sensitive apps. The current 80%-90% degredation a lot of us are seeing is just toooooooo much!
So it's good to here from Dave that this is being addressed atm, hopefuly we won't have to wait too long to see improvements!
Good information makes all the differance!
Keep up the good work please Dave, and lets hope that if your next analogy mentions a wizard, it's because you have worked some magic! :lol: Heh!



I certainly fall into the same bracket as yourself there!!!  :lol:

We could start a Group here! The "No longer a n00b, not quite a geek" club