It's one of those things where we have a real balancing act to get things right. The speed problems last night were just on one particular gateway (pte-ag2) as has been said above. The route cause is that on Saturday every customer was disconnected from that gateway and then compounded by a second disconnection on Tuesday.
When they were disconnected people would have reconnected immediately on one of the other gateways and then only new sessions after that would connect on pte-ag2.
We set pte-ag2 so that a higher percentage of customers connected to that gateway than normal to try and bring it back in balance but the problem with doing that over a shortish period of time is that the percentage of "transient customers" that are connecting to it is higher than normal.
If you imagine there are two main groups of customers, ones with routers who leave the router connected all the time and ones who connect whenever they want/need to. When the customers were disconnected all the customers on that gateway that stay connected all the time would immediately have reconnected on the other gateways so only those rebooting/disconnecting after that would reconnect on pte-ag2.
Those that are more transient are also more likely to be active when they connect and doing something like browsing or gaming so using higher priority traffic.
Our other main option is this situation is to disconnect customers and try and get a better spead of customers when they reconnect. This is the least preferred option and only really done when there really is no alternative as forcing a disconnection is at the very least intrusive to the customer and could put off a VoIP call or a gaming session for example.
The extra RADIUS entries though have had a good effect in getting pte-ag2 back in balance, it's looking a lot better now and the speeds should be better, but if you are still seeing any slowdown please try a disconnect and reconnect and that should resolve it.

Quote from: Spider

I realise it will take a while to balance everything out again but at present it does not seem a very efficient mechanism of distribution.

Unfortunately it isn't. We have three tools for balancing the network, extra RADIUS entries to get more people to connect on a particular gateway, a drain to stop people connecting to a particular gateway or forced disconnections. And that's really about it, to get the platform balanced there are limitations. For example we can't apply too many drains because then customers may not connect, for the RADIUS entries to be effective they have to be done longer than you'd really like and of course we all know about the kicking.

Thanks for the clarification dave.

Hi,
Was getting very poor peformance on pte-ag2 for web browsing, youtube etc
Reconnected and am now on another gateway (thn-ag1) and things seem fine again.
Correction it seems as bad on thn-ag1 for youtube etc. I have never had any problems with it before and nothing has changed my side.

Quote from: dave

The extra RADIUS entries though have had a good effect in getting pte-ag2 back in balance, it's looking a lot better now and the speeds should be better, but if you are still seeing any slowdown please try a disconnect and reconnect and that should resolve it.

Judging by some of the comments on here tonight, it's still bad though.  😐

If we still have a significant platform balance problem, there should be a problem open for it, and possible a service status message.
I've raised this and called a network engineer to have a look.
Online Priority Problem

Ok, it looks like the platform is close to normality now, so we've downgraded the problem.  Let us know if you are still seeing slowdowns.

Quote from: Mand

Our aim is to have no Gold drops, so we will be doing anything we can today to improve the situation.

Well, for as long as I can remember ... I an old time customer from 2001! PN have stated there should be no Gold dropped packets.
The Ellanoya can be configured to make this happen, by dropping more and more Silver and Bronze. This would make Gold == Titanium. As a PAYG customer this is what I expect!
There has been talk about 'the next implementation of Ellanoya' when is this due and what are the changes or are you still waiting for fixes from the supplier to match PN requirements ?
SW.

i am having awful connection speeds and have been for the past few days... its showing me im getting 282mbps download and I have the 8mb package.
can someone please give me an idiots guide of how to reboot and change the port?
i use and ADSL modem..

Quote from: mattdeb

i am having awful connection speeds and have been for the past few days... its showing me im getting 282mbps download and I have the 8mb package. can someone please give me an idiots guide of how to reboot and change the port? i use and ADSL modem..

I take it you mean 282kbps which is extremely slow. I would strongly suggest raising a fault ticket at http://faults.plus.net.
Make sure you complete 3 speed tests at http://www.speedtester.bt.com first so the results are logged in the BT Wholesale database.
One of our Faults agents will then pick this up and investigate this for you.

thanks Brad.
ive tried the "test" and it is saying invalid logon?
what is my logon name? is it my email address? whats my CP?
sorry, I dont know much about this sort of thing..
thanks in advance.

To use the BT speedtester the first page requires your broadband-service telephone number, which I assume (after a lengthy wait) passed you onto the second page where you needed to supply broadband login details.  These are the same as entered on your router:
yourusername@plusdsl.net   (for PlusNet users)
CP means Communications Provider, i.e. PlusNet.

Quote from: spraxyt

To use the BT speedtester the first page requires your broadband-service telephone number, which I assume (after a lengthy wait) passed you onto the second page where you needed to supply broadband login details.  These are the same as entered on your router: yourusername@plusdsl.net  (for PlusNet users) CP means Communications Provider, i.e. PlusNet.

Thanks for your help.
the results its come up with is:

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.
    IP profile for your line is - 5000 kbps
    DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)  6720 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 4512 kbps
If you wish to discuss these results please contact your ISP.
what does that mean?

Ive just retaken the www.mybroadspeedtest.com and it is bringing up the correct speed now, about 4500kbps, which I am assuming is correct. and Im Happyy with! 
thanks for everyone who replied, its great to know there are people on hand with the patience and are willing to help out others.
regards
Matt & Deb