Is FTP traffic being throttled/Incorrectly managed at peak times?

[#1]

I ask this because lately my upstream throughput has been slower than normal during peak times  it will sometimes dwindle down to around 50% of the throughput  i normally see, there is too much fluctuation during peak times , not congested ? well it is somewhere  
Yes i'm aware that plusnet keep increasing capacity , but is this sufficient  for the demand from my observations it would appear not to be so, IMO plusnet are only playing catch up in stead of being ahead of the demand , sorry but that's my thoughts on this , And if that isn't the case then someone at plusnet should be kicking some BT wholesale buts on this  because  i know that the cab isn't full  ,it probably never will be ,  So that leaves from exchange onwards

[#2]

plusnet cant do anything about contention shifting in the local cabinet range though, unlike the old dsl product where it was there problem from the exchange fibre is load shared locally from the cabinet to the end user and that's a dynamic system which causes fluctuations based on load in the local area,
bt throttled my connection back from 76/20 to 53/20 and every time a new customer gets added to the cabinet my speed +profile drops a tiny bit more, which is of course fine so long as it remains above 45/15 however if it keeps being load ratio shifted downwards as more n more people transfer to fibre then I do sincerely hope bt gets kicked in the arse for there extremely poor foresight and worse distribution system.. adding new users shouldn't affect my connection speed and nor should it affect my throughput but thanks to the way bt shares out fibre pipes with multiple end users on copper it does

[#3]

Quote from: deathtrap

Yes i'm aware that plusnet keep increasing capacity , but is this sufficient  for the demand from my observations it would appear not to be so,

We add capacity ahead of demand, so I'm confident it's not going to be a problem with sheer capactity. If it was then you'd have probably be seeing more significant issues on the downstream.
Additionally we don't traffic manage upstream traffic, so it's unlikely to be that causing the issue.
Have you changed your MTU settings at all?

[#4]

MTU is set to the max size for PPPOE  1492, & this is also the limit set ny the router  and has been since day 1, It is only recently that i have been seeing this degraded upstream throughput,
I tested again last night same number of files and FTP client  using the same FTP server , as well as same gateway  after 12am and guess what i had the max throughput  which was consistent unlike it was during peak time There  has to be  congestion some where, as said the cab isn't full  so unlikely to be that, So it's either BT 's side of the ship  or plusnet's  also i just tested again and again i get the max throughput which is consistent as it should be , so it has to be a peak time capacity issue, or something linked to that,

[#5]

that sounds unerringly similar to the old DSL local contention ratio problems, friends of mine who lived in an area of London couldn't even use there 12mbps connection's at peak times for anything, what made it apparent it was BT's equipment causing the issue was when they each chose different providers and still had the exact same problem until the fibre upgrades started to roll out, something to do with how BT load share the local traffic into the backhaul, bearing in mind that both fibre and DSL products use the same backhaul whilst our individual product will be getting a much higher rating your available bandwidth will still be based on local load sharing algorithms and the capacity available at the local backhaul interface.
in other words PlusNet's capacity is fine but due to the sheer number of customers utilising the internet at the time period BT are lowering available throughput to each customer at the over subscribed hop in the network loop (bit like a roundabout and traffic lights ....) which will in all probability be the exchange in your area, hence why the available bandwidth bounces straight back to where it should be once the traffic levels disappear, if it was a throtteling issue then the problem would be present throughout all peek times and not just a select period within it

[#6]

From what i can see, is that the lower throughput co-insides within plusnet's peak time window ie usually 19:30-20:00 till 23:00 -midnight  (latency hump) that also has been reduced is still there also throughput will sometimes take a bigger hit on Sunday or Mondays as for some unexplained reason plusnet customers  use their connections more on those days  which i find a bit odd
on those days i have also seen a 20mbps or more drop off in downstream throughput  some weeks, But the other thing i have noticed is a subtle difference (increase)in throughput speeds at peak times  following a bandwidth increase announcement  which fades away again within a few weeks

[#7]

Plusnets peak time is when more people are using their connections and therefore the network is buiset.  Plusnet users are most likely to be fairly normal in their usage patterns, so by that most ISPs peak times (and also the Backend BT network), which could result in what nanotm was saying.

[#8]

Quote from: deathtrap

From what i can see, is that the lower throughput co-insides within plusnet's peak time window ie usually 19:30-20:00 till 23:00 -midnight  (latency hump) that also has been reduced is still there also throughput will sometimes take a bigger hit on Sunday or Mondays as for some unexplained reason plusnet customers  use their connections more on those days  which i find a bit odd on those days i have also seen a 20mbps or more drop off in downstream throughput  some weeks, But the other thing i have noticed is a subtle difference (increase)in throughput speeds at peak times  following a bandwidth increase announcement  which fades away again within a few weeks

i'd check maint announcements for both bt and plusnet to see if they co-incide with the changes, back when I was with bt they always did network maint on a weekend and half the time that involved them shutting down the core nodes one after another severely affecting bandwidth not to mention the huge ammounts of line damage that occurs on weekends causing a lot of traffic to get shunted through different relays (where possible) to enable at least a minimum service level to be given to the affected area customers
its also worth noting that a lot of business customers will have there automated runs take place to shift files overnight between sites so there network runs at normal pace during the day when all there workforce is logged in, this in itself can exacerbate the problems particularly for people who are in areas affected by the load sharing systems (this is totally outside of PlusNet's control though), and of course because business customers typically pay for a guaranteed service there traffic will hog resources until there finished at which point they will be freed up for normal use by residential (non guaranteed service users) nevermind the fact that the servers your connecting to can be behind an overloaded hop or indeed the destination can be oversubscribed which will also delay things greatly.
a few years ago there was a problem with a router advertising itself as underused when in fact it was so full up everything was buffered to the max and dropping half the data sent to it, it took weeks to find and replace that unit as the traffic flow system couldn't "see the problem" because everything was working within tolerance, similar problems are caused frequently by dodgy DNS servers, and that's without taking into account different modulation methods circuit hopping from old to new equipment and a of course the problems caused by nefarious groups or individuals
when all else fails your best bet is to hold off on the uploads until these less on the network

[#9]

Well I am trying to work tonight using FTP on my business account - a lo of my work is in the evenings.
I am seeing download speeds of 200k to 400k on a remote connection that normally achieves 1800k to 2000k during the day.
My upload speed to other places  is 1800k to 2000k. I am not downloading huge amounts but it is hampering the speed of my work since I distribute what I download to other places. This seems to be a recent thing.
I am on an 80/20 fibre connection.
As if by magic normal speed is back at 22.00

[#10]

Hmm. Well, purely on HTTP download (of the 100MB zip from thinkbroadband, using cURL) I'm getting 61.34Mbps, and that's on 100Mbps FTTP, so it looks like we're suffering capacity issues rather than QoS issues. When things are as they should be, I get 90Mbps - so that's basically throughput slashed by a third.

[#11]

aye but its more likely that the capacity issue is with BT than with PlusNet because were not getting re-sync'd (or was that just an feature with adsl ?) oh its not just plusnet that's having the problem it seems in the locations its occurring its affecting most isp's (that's assuming the customers consider it a fault and moan about it)
the guy next door to me has the BT 120 product and he achieves the same download speed  as I do, in fact only last night we were discussing and testing speed to see if it was ISP or backhaul related (we had people on 6 different isp's in different parts of town do the test) and discovered we were all achieving exactly half of our sync speed at best
now what we didn't know was is it just a local lack of backhaul cable or is it a nationwide problem .....BT have announced many changes in the last few years but not since before the introduction of adsl2+ have they announced a change in the number of backhaul pipes, so either they somehow managed to change there terabyte pipe into 100terabyte pipe or there overselling the capacity and lying to everyone about it ....

[#12]

I did a little digging and came across this thread.
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,108269.0.html
The response from Mr Richardson
" On your product, we operate restrictions down to 2Mb/s between 8pm and 10pm only. At all other times, the product is intended to allow up to your lines speed. We also operate external FTP in our Gold queue, so should not be squeezed, certainly at this time of day."
Now I saw a drop from 1800-2000k to 200-400k on a business unlimited fibre line 80/20 where I achieve very good speeds. In fact as soon as I noticed the low speed I did a speed test.  http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/2973463065. this leads me to believe that Other FTP is being managed severely even on a business account  ..from 1800k to 400k is a huge drop.
As I said previously .. As if by magic normal speed is back at 22.00.
Unfortunately the my work usage starts at  19.00 weekdays and ends at 23.00 but the essential part is early on as I am working with a deadline for the newspaper industry.

[#13]

@moemoff that relates to particular services and products not a general though
and even on there the guy you quoted has said in the final post of the thread the info given in the ticket was inaccurate (meaning wrong)
as for the business service surely that would depend on the contract option taken, pretty sure a business pays for what it wants and gets what it pays for (so if they want a dedicated ftp service they would get one but if they want other traffic given priority it will be)
if its your business then perhaps you need to read your contract to see what you signed up for, my dads service gave him unlimited http but only allowed data streaming outside of certain hours .....

[#14]

Your supposed to have line speed all day on unlimited business fibre with External FTP on gold. That does not equate with a speed drop down to a quarter or less. You can tell it is managed because it starts at a very low speed and builds up as opposed to reaching a higher speed and slowly settling down. That harks back to the very old days of Plusnet when they did not admit they were traffic shaping.

[#15]

@moemoff
What is the full name of your account type and when did you sign up to it? (It will be shown at https://portal.plus.net/my.html?s=0&action=account_summary)