Level 1 management problem

[#1]

Wonder if someone can help me with this
I am on an old product ( premier option 1) and I am on level one management having used over 13 gig in peak time. However since being managed general internet browsing is slow and some sites in particular are very slow (paypal and ebay both taking 2min to load the home page) youtube contantly buffers and is unusable. I have submitted a ticket for this  (38642384) and supplied wireshark captures showing how at 23:59 youtube is buffering contantly and at 00:01 youtube works fine. I also submitted a wireshark of downloading wireshark from media-2.cacetech.com this comes down at 12KB/Sec at 11:55 and at 00:05 will download at 650KB/Sec. My normal sync speed is 8128 with no drops or disconnections, strange thing is that BBC Iplayer is fine while I am managed but youtube is unuseable. The product design states that on level 1 management the speed of P2P,Usenet and file transfer is up to 256Kbps and all other activities is up to 2Mbps, so downloading wireshark, which I dont think is classed as a download site or server should be rate limited to 2Mbps or at worst 256Kbps? You tube should run fine at 2Mbps I would think. It seems that this over enthusiastic rate limiting hits sites like ebay and paypal because of the pictures or video contained in the pages making them load very slowly.
I had the comment pictured below added to my ticket, not quite sure what it means so called support and asked, I was told by the agent (who was actually helpful) that he didnt know, I asked to speak to someone who could explain what this means and was told that this was not possible as 2nd line support dont speak to customers. Can anyone tell me if this means that anything has been done to fix the problem because nothing has changed. Perhaps someone from plusnet could let me know why youtube and some websites are painfully slow between 16:00 and 00:00 and iplayer works fine?

[#2]

It just shows what you've already confirmed yourself i.e. that you're on level one management.
The table shows the default and current 'service offers' for your line as seen by our traffic management accounting platform.
The speeds quoted on our traffic management pages are maximums, however I wouldn't expect your speed to be below around half of what's stated.
Your due to be billed in a couple of days by the looks of things so the problem should sort itself out then.
The only thing that seems odd is the statement that the traffic (YouTube?) is classified in the 'Silver' traffic queues (Should be 'Gold'). I can't really elaborate too much on that though without looking at the packet capture myself.

[#3]

Bob
Thanks for the comments I accept that I will be managed after 13Gigs in peak time but something is wrong its just taken me 7 minutes to get to the acrobat reader download page and start the download, the download has been running now for nearly half a hour and its just got to 28%. Last night I was trying to download microsoft security essentials and started the download at about 21:45 by midnight it had got to about 60% then about 1 minute after midnight it finished, its only 9.5Mb. Just tried security essentials again and it has taken about 3 mins to open the page and then its downloading at 6.7KB/sec. I can email you the wiresharks if you would be kind enough to look at them or they are attached to the ticket. Although from my limited understanding it seems that the traffic is classified in the correct que but it seems to be rate limited very heavily except iplayer which works fine!. I realize that on the 15th it will be reset but I normally go over the 13gig limit a few days befor billing but i hit the 13gig on the 5th this month and the web browsing has been really slow since then. Would really like to get this sorted. Thanks

[#4]

I've gone over 13Gb quite a few times, and yep, the internet generally becomes unusable for anything other than surfing with speeds of downloads from download sites dropping to 10K/sec if I'm lucky, I dread to think how bad it'd come after 17Gb.  I do try to make sure I don't go over 13Gb which I consider a hard cap and not a soft cap because, as you say, youtube becomes unwatchable, having to wait an hour to watch a 20 minute programme is also a bit silly.

[#5]

I've gone over the 13GB limit once, for one day, and agree - the effect it had on even browsing seemed (subjectively) to be a lot worse than it ought to have for the traffic management controls reported (or even half those values). But because it was for one day, on a Sunday, I wasn't motivated to figure out what was happening.
If it was like that every time, I too would consider it to be a hard limit.
And having the traffic classified as "silver" is very strange - there seems to be almost *no* standard activity that should be classified that way!
BTW - one reason that Paypal & Ebay would be perceived as slow is because both of those sites rely on CDN servers for some of their content - and CDN servers are slowed down according to the "download servers" limits, not the standard "browsing" limits.

[#6]

Thanks for the replies at least I know that other people are seeing this as well its not me there is definitely a problem here. Anyway doesnt look like this is going to get fixed this billing period, posted my ticket about this on the 9th Jan still waiting for a reply, it says our support team will respond to your question soon, sort of get the feeling that its being ignored untill the 15th when it will be fixed by my account being reset. Well when I go over next month will try harder to get this looked at.

[#7]

this practise annoys me.  on premier one we supposedly have a 20gb allowance, so why the 'shaping' at all?  by all means advise on reaching 11gb, 13gb, etc., but leave us alone to manage our own usage.  the way that the speed is limited makes it impossible to ever reach the 20gb, making a nonsense of the allowance.  as far as i'm concerned we have a 13gb allowance.

[#8]

it was done at a time when PN were experimenting with traffic management and allowances by varying the speeds as you got closer to your allowance limits. At the time PN were not part of BT and had stiff competition meaning they could not afford the millions of pounds needed to lite up more pipes. They tried to get as much income from their pipes as they could.
Since then they have gained more experience in how customers use their allowances, been bought by BT Retail (who have much bigger pockets and networks)  and stuck with the hard caps we have now.
I'm just surprised you have not switched to Broadband Pro which has the same allowances, better traffic management and is cheaper - OK maybe the peak period are less but does that matter?

[#9]

Quote

OK maybe the peak period are less but does that matter?

yes.  rather a lot, in fact.  i still regard premier 1 as the better value for money.

[#10]

Thanks for the reply Peter,  as i dont live in a low cost area its going to cost more, option 1 was originally  £21.99 ( i think) I would have to pay £22.99 for 20 Gig on pro and as I normally get through about 50gig a month its going to cost another £30  on top of that (assuming it an extra £5 for 5 gig over the 20gig allowance)  as most of my downloads are during the daytime. Anyway all I want is for someone to fix the management so that it works correctly. After 13gig I should be rate limited to 2Mbps however I am seeing speeds that are more like when I was on dialup. I tried to download microsoft security essentials again tonite and after 10mins of 1KB/sec the server timed out! its not just downlaods its waiting minites for pages to load on ebay or paypal and other sites as well. As I said I would be happy if the product worked as the product description but no one seems to want to fix it.