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Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

jelv
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

The products have been marketed and sold to a specification. For PAYG, BBYW Pro and Plusnet Pro where everything is supposed to be Gold or better we should not be seeing slowdowns, particularly when attempting to view a streaming video - but we are. I've seen a post earlier today from an BBYW 3 where he was getting stupidly low speeds mid-morning on Usenet - again the product is not performing to specification.
Quote from: Mand
That's why we're looking to reassess our forecasting and experience, and if this shows we need more capacity then we'll sort that. We're looking at the next segment, and possibly the next central.

You should only be looking at the experience - you have entered in to contracts with users with a very tightly defined expected experience. The products are not performing to specification. If that is because Plusnet got the forecasting wrong (whether it is because the demand has increased more than expected, or 21CN going so badly that you haven't managed to move users across as quickly as expected, or any other reason) then it is Plusnet that have to take the hit not the users. As it stands at the moment users would have very strong grounds for saying the stupid 12/18 month contracts are invalidated as Plusnet are currently failing to deliver.
Any consideration of forecasting should be purely for defining the expected speeds and pricing for the next product refresh - if you've got it wrong, that is the next opportunity to make a correction.
(In case anyone is wondering about why I am flagging this at this moment in time, I've been immune to the problems due to being on firstly RIN and latterly IPSC. Now both of these have ended and I'm back on the normal connection and I can see what's happening expect me to be on the case)
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
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Be3G
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

Quote from: jelv
As it stands at the moment users would have very strong grounds for saying the stupid 12/18 month contracts are invalidated as Plusnet are currently failing to deliver.

Problem is that, contractually, Plusnet never guarantee to deliver anything in particular... they tell us 'expected' speeds and they tell us that they 'expect' the network to be running normally (not in high demand/critical operation) for 94.9% of the year. So I doubt it's particularly enforceable... rather like 'up to 8Mb'.
VileReynard
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

If I buy a product with some reasonable expectations, then I can reasonably expect those expectations to be satisfied.
Having said that, I have no problems with speed limitations - but then I'm still on the BBY3 product.  Cheesy

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jelv
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

Jeremy, I believe you are ADSL 2+. This has it's own dedicated bandwidth coming in and Plusnet have not been moving people over as quickly as they intended so I think it's a pretty fair bet that there is surplus capacity on there at the moment. The problems will be for those on the normal BT Centrals.
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
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VileReynard
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

So I can expect future speed problems Smiley
What happens to all the old centrals as people gradually move over to 21CN?
Will I be able to see one in the Natural History Museum?

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

James
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

Hi Jeremy,
I would expect us to decommision our 622Mbps pipes as we move more customers onto the 21CN MSILs.  Of course we would expand capacity accordingly on the 21CN side of things.
jelv
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

Hence your current (understandable) reluctance to spend money on 622Mbps pipes when they will become redundant if BT ever get ADSL 2+ working smoothly.
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
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HairyMcbiker
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

@Crucibleofevil, well if you want to know what happens when an isp drops all its centrals and moves over to 21CN, have a look at Entanet. They forced everyone there on to the 21CN EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT FULLY WORKING, what happened was they lost 10,000's of customers due to this.
The state of the "New" network 6 months ago was terrible, there was no real capacity for people From Newcastle NORTHWARDS, every one was/is on a SINGLE node, which resulted in speeds like Plusnets MOST RESTRICTIVE all the time in the off-peak time. I speak from (poor) experience here.
James
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

Quote from: jelv
Hence your current (understandable) reluctance to spend money on 622Mbps pipes when they will become redundant if BT ever get ADSL 2+ working smoothly.

Not true at all.  If you look at the capacity that we have added so fat this year, you'll probably note that we've added more capacity during this period than at any other stage in the Plusnet Lifetime.
We can decommission pipes older than 12 months old, so I wouldn't regard this as an issue.
jelv
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

James, without any information about the growth in user numbers that statement is totally meaningless. (Also, due to the merging of Madasafish, I'm not clear exactly what the increase in capacity available to the Plusnet users actually is).
Earlier this year you launched new products with headline grabbing prices and a dramatic change of direction with the Unlimited product. Either that launch was a massive failure, or you have had a very significant increase in user numbers.
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
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James
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

That's a fair comment Jelv.
We're continuing to grow at a higher speed than the corresponding period of last year, so it's natural for us to add capacity in line with that growth.  The point that I was trying to make is that we're not shirking our responsibility of increasing capacity based on future plans to move to ADSL2+.
bobpullen
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

Quote from: jelv
I hope I'm wrong, but I'm very much getting the feeling that Plusnet has over-reached itself again.

Short term we have three segments on standby. The first should be lit at some point next week, the second about three weeks after that and I'm not too sure about the third if I'm honest. As we're about to light a new segment things will be performing a little worse when compared to what it's like shortly after we've just introduced new capacity.
Quote from: paulgul
I don't think it's going to be long before we see this again the way PN are treating their customers. I have no usenet again today (well at speed of zero to 1.8kB/s). I keep complaining on here but just get fobbed off with excuses about the iPlayer.

I've replied in the other thread about your Usenet speeds.
Quote from: Oldjim
Just had a look at Packet Drop by Gateway http://www.plus.net/support/network_performance/broadband_packets_drop.shtml
Is there an equivalent graph for the new products which shows drops in the various gold/gold plated/silver/bronze/best effort categories

Kind of but it's not visible outside of the office at the moment:

Problem with that in it's current format is that you can't really see the lines that represent the drops as they're dwarfed by the bandwidth.
Quote from: jelv
I wonder if the reason we are being squeezed at the moment is 21CN. 21CN isn't delivered using 622 gateways, so if Plusnet is planning large scale migration of users over to 21CN they wouldn't want to be ordering more gateways and associated equipment.

Any large scale migration is some way off yet. In fact we've recently ended the limited IPStream Connect trials we were running and we're nowhere near the stage where we'd be willing to mass-migrate customers to WBC. In fact it's in our best interests to continue investing in IPStream capacity. We're currently migrating LLU customers back to IPStream, we will soon be pointing the RIN trialists back to the Plusnet network and acquisition via our 'Partner' avenues is projected to be pretty healthy too.
Quote from: ASBO
can any one remember if any one from PN confirmed that thn-ag2 packet drop graph does indeed show the 21cn data as well as the remaining LLU customers.

The graphs do *not* show drops on the 21CN platform.
Quote from: bobboulby
I noticed this the other day http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/a165634/ip-vision-launches-fetch-tv-freeview-box.html. Once this type of device hits the mass market, streaming TV will really take off.

I've got one of their boxes installed at home. I was part of the trials they ran last year (they let me keep the kit at the end of the trial). Not really related to this thread but I noticed this the other day that I thought was kind of sneaky  Shocked - http://iplayer.co.uk
Quote from: jelv
The golf keeps stuttering again this morning.

iPlayer really shouldn't be stuttering as long as your HTTP download speed is sufficient for the bitrate of the feed you're trying to view. If it is we need to ascertain why (although bear in mind that yesterday will *not* have been great and the network is still pretty out of balance).
Quote from: Crucibleofevil
So I can expect future speed problems Smiley
What happens to all the old centrals as people gradually move over to 21CN?
Will I be able to see one in the Natural History Museum?

We'll be decommissioning the Brightview 155's before we even think of doing anything with the 622's.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
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scootie
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

Quote
Quote
can any one remember if any one from PN confirmed that thn-ag2 packet drop graph does indeed show the 21cn data as well as the remaining LLU customers.


The graphs do *not* show drops on the 21CN platform.

dont suppose u have a graph with the 21cn packetdrops so we can have a sneaky peek at what there like at peak times
dannykos
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

+1 for that request.  It certainly feels like things are a bit snaggy most evenings when gaming.  I have stopped playing World Golf Tour (wgt.com) as I just can't get a smooth enough connection to use the power bar accurately Sad
abrooks
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Re: Plusnet are you short on capacity again?

Quote from: dannykos
I have stopped playing World Golf Tour (wgt.com) as I just can't get a smooth enough connection to use the power bar accurately Sad

But that's just the point, why should I suffer slow HTTP connections, bad YouTube and iPlayer connections and of course crap download speeds from the likes of iTunes? I pay for this service so it's not my problem when it doesn't work to specification. It's much the same as paying for power but it only working some of the time.
Get it sorted Plusnet.