topic Re: When does ones tether end....?? in Plusnet Feedback

When does ones tether end....??

eckiem — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:35:05 GMT

Obviously I'm not alone in thinking all isn't right with PLUSNET....My story is a long one with lows followed by lower than lows along the way....
I've been on 20cn, then on 21cn then back to 20cn and still have broadband problems after 3 months..
Lets put it this way, broadband aint a new technology but things can go wrong...heh thats why we have support people isn't it....?? So where does that put the reputation of a so-called broadband champion when the support organisation fails to deliver when the chips are down ??IMHO, after a few years as an avid PLUSNET promoter, I've come to the conclusion the company aint worthy of that status any more.
3 months after tracert's captures/wireshark captures/dns timeouts/line synch problems/profile checks/engineer visits/cancelled engineers visits/forgotten call updates....the best the support organisation can up with again is wait for it......"let us logon to your profile between 11pm and 7:15am" to check it out....Now lets be fair here, my recent problem is down to opening up a browser page to a dreaded usenet site.....heaven forbid...."remember the traffic management system we have in operation..." they say.....unfortunately all I can answer is "....what about the £20 a month I'm paying for a priority service....??"
Yes I'll get my mac code...I'm sure I'll get that quicker than a response /resolution to a problem...so I'll move on with the final response from our "top rated" support person ringing in my ears......
"....We will furnish you with you MAC code so that should you choose, you can move your service to another provider and see if they dont managed traffic such as usenet and peer2peer but I would like to say most if not all these days, will always have some sort of traffic priority on these protocols...."
Now I know the end of ones tether has finally arrived....

Re: When does ones tether end....??

bobpullen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:52:13 GMT

Sorry to hear you feel your only option is to leave. So just to be clear, your latest problem is slow or intermittent access to a (Binary?) Usenet provider's site? As most Usenet is rate limited based on the originating IP, it's not unusual for access to some suppliers websites to be slow as well (depending of course on the package you're on).

Re: When does ones tether end....??

VileReynard — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:01:44 GMT

A tether (obviously) has two ends - one is attached to you.

Re: When does ones tether end....??

jelv — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:07:53 GMT

Quote from: eckiem
.what about the £20 a month I'm paying for a priority service....??"

What account type are you on? (I have my suspicions)

Re: When does ones tether end....??

Jonken — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:06:19 GMT

I agree with the OP there definitely is a very big problem with the way PlusNet rate limits binary usenet.
I appreciate that there is limited bandwidth available and that limits must be applied at times.
On the PlusNet Unlimited plan for example at 23:30 the speed would be limited to a MAXIMUM of 512Kbps that's fair enough and I would expect to get somewhere between say 128Kbps to 512Kbps but at that time this evening the speed is around 1 to 10 Kbps with such long gaps of 0Kbps that the servers keep timing out and it is taking over 45 minutes to download 10Mbytes of headers (in fact timeouts are occuring to such an extent that the operation cannot be completed). In my view providing speeds of less than a fiftieth of the quoted UPTO speeds really is stretching "upto" to breaking point. The thing is, in my experience, this situation is inconsistent, most nights there is no problem what so ever, everything comes in at the maximum expected speed but on the other nights (maybe about a quarter of the time) it's positively glacial (this is only feeds from binary usenet servers mind you).
Given all the new capacity we keep getting told about I would have expected the sevice to be getting better, but it's not; or is it just that the "load" isn't being spread out over the servers evenly leading some to give truely abysmal service whilst others work nomally?
Whatever it is I don't think the level of sevice is satisfactory.
John

Re: When does ones tether end....??

James — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:10:03 GMT

Hi John,
Your comment about load being spread isn't a million miles off the truth.
Our network is currently a bit unbalanced, which should naturally be restored after BT dropped one of our pipes late last week (I think). We may need to do some rebalancing work and we'll review that over the course of this week.

Re: When does ones tether end....??

eckiem — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:41:08 GMT

Quote from: Bob
Sorry to hear you feel your only option is to leave. So just to be clear, your latest problem is slow or intermittent access to a (Binary?) Usenet provider's site? As most Usenet is rate limited based on the originating IP, it's not unusual for access to some suppliers websites to be slow as well (depending of course on the package you're on).

Bob, to be fair my rant aint just about traffic mgmt.
The final straw is my current problem
To explain, I first started getting timeouts to an easynews web logon page (ports 80 & 81) away back in July - it was only apparent after 17:00 at night and seemed to go away around midnight. Sounds like traffic mgmt blocking me right ?? Well I'm on "Your Way Option 3 " (that's for you Jelv) which has predefined QOS for downloads so my original question to the support guys was.....why am I being blocked ?? According to the support guys, nah, you'll getting priority routing albeit at slower speeds.
The same puregig router kept coming back as the problem area (numerous tracert's later). Btw, I have access to business broadband (BT) and on their backbone, no issues from 17:30 onwards so it had to be PLUSNET.
Since then, I've been migrated to 21CN, had terrible line stability problems (see my turn-up/no turn-up/cancelled engineer visit comments) but strangely not easynews problems when I did try. Agreed to go back to 20CN because I couldn't live with the instability and we're back to square 1 - dns/web logon timeouts - jeez I was getting dns timeouts during nslookups to plusnet. Square 1 obviously seems to mean, lets look at your profile again between 23:00 and 07:15 in the morning - well what the hell is the point in checking a service when the problem actually exists sometime between 17:00 and midnight
What more can I do than b*gger off to someone else, I'm getting nowhere with plusnet who for some strange reason seem to think I'm some IT illiterate imbecile..maybe I am and 25 years of IT infrastructure management experience have no bearing on a broadband fault.
Bob, what would you do in my position.....??

alex

Re: When does ones tether end....??

pierre_pierre — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:21:58 GMT

BBYW 3 binary usenet are clamped see below

Re: When does ones tether end....??

eckiem — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:55:02 GMT

Quote from: pierre_pierre
BBYW 3 binary usenet are clamped see below

PP, clamped yes, blocked no....still expect some download capability if required....I'm not even getting that far.

Re: When does ones tether end....??

pierre_pierre — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:01:11 GMT

I never use Usenets, but I believe that they are max figures and if the system is busy they take a back seat, so it might look like they are blocked and you get time outs, but they are just severely throttled, not much help I know, but that is fairly recent as some of the Ex Brightview were not being throttled and now are on Binary - note pure text usenets are treated better

Re: When does ones tether end....??

eckiem — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:23:11 GMT

Thx PP,
Wouldn't surprise me in the least, although capacity must have deteriorated since July 09, never had this problem before then.
Of course that doesn't explain why I never had the problem when I was on 21CN either.
The whole point of paying that little bit more was to have access to a service -incl a subscription usenet community - when I need/want it. I certainly understand the need to put limits on abusers - well not really but I need to at least appear PC - but this in effect is a denial of service to me - while paying £20 a month.
If it is indeed a throttling issue, why can't PN just come out an say that, then I'd have a decision to make about whether PN are capable of providing me the service I require but instead they have you running around taking captures/traces/checking filters and all other forms of timewasting.
My last message is really this....PN you really need to up your game if you want your customers (and future cusomers) to take you seriously. This individual wont be recommending you any more.
Best of luck to all you long term contract folks, let's hope things improve for you soon.
Rant over (and out)
Alex

Re: When does ones tether end....??

James — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:29:21 GMT

Hi Alex,
Have you looked at our Pro product?
It gives you prioritised service (meaning your usenet downloads won't be slow). Whilst the usage allowabnce is lower (15GB), the price would be the same and you'd still have no limits on the amount you can download off peak.

Re: When does ones tether end....??

eckiem — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:58:28 GMT

Yes I have James but to be frank, I'm hardly going to sign up for an 18 month contract after the last 3 months experience am I ?
After all the problems, I would have thought someone at PLUSNET would have suggested a PRO trial for me to at least see whether it would resolve my issue or at least prove my issue was related to throttling.
Nope, never happened, the decision to just go round in circles and deny any problem exists seems to take precedence instead.
Alex

Re: When does ones tether end....??

jelv — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:31:05 GMT

What 18 month contract?

Quote
Previously we had 18 month contracts on our 'Value' and 'Unlimited' products which meant that if you left before the 18 month contract ended, you would have been liable to pay an early termination charge which was calculated as any outstanding subscription charges until the contract end date
We have now changed our cancellation policy so that if you leave Plusnet in your first 12 months after receiving a free set-up, router or house move, we'll charge you for these. If you remain with Plusnet for 12 months after receiving a free set-up, router or house move these charges will be waived. You can also choose to pay for any of these up front if you want more flexibility.

Re: When does ones tether end....??

eckiem — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:05:28 GMT

sorry Jelv you got me - I should have said 12 month contract

Re: When does ones tether end....??

Oldjim — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:10:20 GMT

As from 22nd October all customers will be on a 12 day notice the only proviso being if you took a free router/house move/set up you would be liable for the cost of those.
So if you migrated in and didn't take any of the freebies then you would not have any long term tie in after the 22nd of this month.
Put it another way - your situation will be exactly the same as it is now as moving products won't create any new tie ins.

Re: When does ones tether end....??

bobpullen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:19:01 GMT

Quote from: Oldjim
As from 22nd October all customers will be on a 12 day notice the only proviso being if you took a free router/house move/set up you would be liable for the cost of those.

That should be 10 days Jim, not 12.
From here:
[quote author="Terms & Conditions"]Ending the service
16. Once we have provided the service, you may tell us to stop providing it at any time by giving us 10 days' written notice, unless the service terms say otherwise. We can stop providing the service by giving you 10 days' written notice.

Quote from: eckiem
To explain, I first started getting timeouts to an easynews web logon page (ports 80 & 81) away back in July - it was only apparent after 17:00 at night and seemed to go away around midnight. Sounds like traffic mgmt blocking me right ?? Well I'm on "Your Way Option 3 " (that's for you Jelv) which has predefined QOS for downloads so my original question to the support guys was.....why am I being blocked ?? According to the support guys, nah, you'll getting priority routing albeit at slower speeds.

The problem here is a combination of the rate limits that are in place (see pierre_pierre's post) and the fact that Usenet traffic is in the lower priority traffic queues (Bronze I think on BBYW3). If the network is busy and the Bronze queues are getting squeezed then this is going to result in your experience being significantly below the 320kbps that's advertised. You'd notice this less if you were actually downloading binary content using NTTP and multiple threads but because accessing a website is a single threaded exercise the situation is amplified.
It's certainly worth you trying PRO IMO given the fact that you'll technically be on a rolling 10 day contract (well, in a few weeks time you will be).

Quote
The same puregig router kept coming back as the problem area (numerous tracert's later). Btw, I have access to business broadband (BT) and on their backbone, no issues from 17:30 onwards so it had to be PLUSNET.

I'd agree that your problem is likely to be related to our traffic management policies. The reason we throttle access to the website too is because you can download binary Usenet posts via Easynews' site IIRC.

Quote
Since then, I've been migrated to 21CN, had terrible line stability problems (see my turn-up/no turn-up/cancelled engineer visit comments) but strangely not easynews problems when I did try.

We've more spare bandwidth on the 21CN hostlinks compared to what we have on the BT Centrals.

Quote
Agreed to go back to 20CN because I couldn't live with the instability and we're back to square 1 - dns/web logon timeouts - jeez I was getting dns timeouts during nslookups to plusnet. Square 1 obviously seems to mean, lets look at your profile again between 23:00 and 07:15 in the morning - well what the hell is the point in checking a service when the problem actually exists sometime between 17:00 and midnight

There's a number of other posts on this forum about similar problems of late. It's worth reading this and this if you haven't done so already.
Judging by the reports from some of our other customers, we might still have a bit of work to do.

Quote
Bob, what would you do in my position.....??

Give PRO a try.

Re: When does ones tether end....??

dratddestroyer — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:16:48 GMT

I'm on Pro and I have an Easynews account.
No problems here with Easynews on NNTP or HTTP.