Plusnet cheating on traffic shapping.

[#1]

Hello everyone.
I'm Broadband Premier 1 customer (20GB peak usage allowance).
Few month ago, I noticed that after reaching level 1 traffic management (13GB peak usage) my line was capped at 1Mbps instead of 2Mbps. I checked Plusnet page http://portal.plus.net/support/broadband/products/archive/bb_premier1.shtml and it still shows 2Mbps for normal HTTP traffic on level 1. I reported this and was pretty much ignored, but I didn't care much back then as my usage was about to reset in few days.
Last month it happened again and I decided to pursue this with Plusnet CSC. First they said they cannot do anything while I'm on traffic management, which is absurd as this was the actual issue I tried to resolve. Then they confirmed that I should get speeds up to 2Mbps but it's not guaranteed and my traffic is subject to prioritisation. The problem is that prioritisation doesn't work by just capping your line at fixed speed. My line worked at "Up to 1Mbps" and it gets worse, at the end when my usage was 16GB (still level 1) and they capped my line at 0.5Mbps! This is not prioritisation, I was getting speeds up to 512Kbps instead of 2Mbps, these were fixed limits.
For me it looks like they decided to lower those limits without notifying anyone, save some bandwidth cost and hope no one will notice. All my claims were met with either gross incompetence or blunt ignorance, no one ever bothered to check if the traffic shaping system is configured properly, which suggests that they know what's going on and chose to hide it.
I urge everyone to check if you are affected by this and press Plusnet to stop this shameful practice.
I'm not happy about paying £21.99 for 512Kbps, are you?
Cheers

[#2]

i'd be livid, especially as i'd signed up for an unlimited account and the first i'd known about 'fair use' policy was a snotty email telling me i was reaching my limit.
incidentally, although there is a putative limit of 20gb (19+), you get the email at 11gb and are told that traffic 'shaping' (what a weasel word that is) would begin at 13gb.  so where's the 20gb limit?  it doesn't exist.
while i can understand the logic and necessity for a fair use policy, the way it was implemented leaves much to be desired.
how come you're only getting 2mb max?  is your line that bad/far away from the exchange?  premier 1 is up to 8mb.  i know of only one person who got as much as 7mb.  my line's not too bad at a wildly fluctuating 3-5mb.

[#3]

artificer
I had similar experience when I discovered that management starts at 13GB despite the limit being 20GB. They "help" us this way to stay within the limit, which is a joke. Nevertheless, 2Mbps is still acceptable, you can still have good browsing expierience and stream video. It's not so pretty when they cap your line at 1Mbps or 0.5Mbps.
As for my normal line speed, it works great, I have solid 7Mbps and I'm happy with it. That's why I don't want to change products or providers, I just want them to adhere to their own rules and give me 2Mbps on level 1 management.
Here's the speed I got just before my usage reset:
Today 23:56 511 kbps (63.9kB/s) 91 kbps (11.4kB/s)
And after:
Today 00:00 7178 kbps (897kB/s) 380 kbps (47.5kB/s)
Cheers

[#4]

[quote=artificer]how come you're only getting 2mb max?  is your line that bad/far away from the exchange?  premier 1 is up to 8mb.  i know of only one person who got as much as 7mb.  my line's not too bad at a wildly fluctuating 3-5mb.

Referring to traffic management speeds not sync speeds, see below

[#5]

Quote from: itsme

Refering to traffic management speeds not sync speeds, see below

I'm not sure what you mean. I was never talking about sync speeds. My modem connects at 8128 Kbps all the time, but this is irrelevant. Those limits were imposed on my regular web traffic.

[#6]

Have edited my post to make it clearer to what I was referring to.

[#7]

I'm on premier option 1 and do experience the 1mbps cap when I reach level 1 management, I find it pretty annoying at times however it's just about enough for general web use etc. so I put up with it.
However just wanted to confirm that the problem isn't isolated to you.

[#8]

i was misunderstanding.  rick gets the decent speed when he's not being squeezed.  it's the squeezed down speed that needs looked into.
i do think that 20gb should mean 20gb and not some figure in between and squeezing introduced at 13gb.  in effect, the limit is 11gb, so why not say so?
plus.net is usually straightforward in its dealings with customers and i've always found them unfailingly courteous and helpful (except for that one snotty email), so i'm surprised that they practise such obscurantism with the peak allowances.

[#9]

I believe that's why the BBYW packages were introduced to avoid it, I would switch but I'd prefer the longer off peak times.
To be fair to PN, when I signed up they were clear enough (well it took a while to understand it) on the traffic management they'd use.
The issue here just seems to be keeping to the 2mbps stated limit.

[#10]

AFAIK there are no restrictions when you hit 11GB. Regarding the rate limits when you do hit the management levels though, these aren't necessarily fixed at a set speed and are subject to variation (thus the 'up to' term on the help pages).
Check out the following which is from this page:

Quote

*The speeds you receive are still affected by traffic prioritisation and the activities of every other customer who is sharing the network. We constantly adjust these restrictions to match current network traffic levels. This gives Broadband Premier customers the chance to gain higher speeds when the network is less busy.

[#11]

Quester
Thanks, I suspected that based on conversations with CSC agents. I immediately felt they know exactly what I'm talking about and they don't intend to do anything about it. Obviously someone decided to change traffic management policy and hide it from customers. I'm sure it affects everyone but Plusnet is counting on most of their customers not noticing it. I bet most users don't know what the limits were or should be, or how to tell if the line is capped. I'm really disappointed with this practice and their arrogance.  I'd like to make more people aware of this so we can fight for what we pay for.

[#12]

Bob
Fixed 0.5Mbps limit is not "Up to 2Mbps" it's "Up to 0.5Mbps". Capping the line is not prioritisation. If you state that the limit should be 2Mbps then no matter the priority of my traffic the theoretical maximum speed should still be 2Mbps. And this is what it used to be, before you decided to rip people off.

[#13]

Traffic shaping is applied to all accounts. Every single user's traffic is restricted by a variety of factors including prioritisation of different traffic types. Rather than slinging insults and half-truths around, why not try to learn a little bit about the service you pay for and the complexities of the various accounts available?
Let's see if we can help you get a better understanding of the situation.
What do you use your connection for? What sort of downloading/uploading are you doing when experiencing slower than expected speeds?

[#14]

geewizz
I'm here exactly because I know about my service, I know what it should be and what it isn't. There are no insults or half-truths here, it's a very simple matter of traffic management limits that were changed behind our back. Your questions were already answered, I made it clear that I'm talking about ordinary web traffic, HTTP and video streaming. I don't know what else I can do to help you understand the situation. It's as clear as it can be.

[#15]

Quote from: randomnick

Your questions were already answered, I made it clear that I'm talking about ordinary web traffic, HTTP and video streaming. I don't know what else I can do to help you understand the situation. It's as clear as it can be.

I was only trying to get clarification on what type of traffic you were using. You mentioned HTTP but if you read what you posted it is just a reference to what is in the page you linked to. You didn't make it clear that all your traffic is HTTP.
Enough about semantics though, you have an axe to grind and I'm getting in the way. I'll leave you to it.