Usenet chronic connectivity

[#1]

Every Sunday it's the same, about 9:30am speed drops over a period of several minutes from lightning to a fraction of dial-up or zero. I have a GigaNews account & they have checked & say it's not them. I have a PlusNet bronze account & only download a few binaries at a time so it should be OK at this time. I have raised tickets on this to no avail. Would PlusNet please give this some attention as there is little point in staying with PlusNet if this issue is not cleared. Thanks....

[#2]

Morning and welcome to the forums.
When you say bronze do you mean Option 1? If so this is not designed for USENET and get's the lowest priority aswell as speed restrictions 24/7
You Should be getting around 20-25k/second right now - this is according to the charts here, which shows option 1 is restricted to 256kbps
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/speed.shtml#Option1speeds
This list also gives you the expected speeds up and down for all of the other BBYW options.
As you will see from the charts the higher you go up the options the less the restrictions are. e.g Option 2 which is £14,99 a month with 8GB allowance gives no restrictions between 12am and 12pm daily on USENET & P2P.
I know giganews are a very fast service from experience
Pete

[#3]

Hi, no I'm on option 2 at £14.99 a month which according to the chart should give me NR between 12pm - 2pm.

[#4]

Hi there,
I've checked your profile on the Ellacoyas and that checks out OK. Does this only happen on a Sunday and do the speeds pick up at any point during the day?

[#5]

Every Sunday, & it happened at about 10:30am before the clocks changed, so it seems a time related thing. Speeds can sometimes pick up later in the day to b/w restricted levels. It also was bad at 00:01am Sun am one time I tried it but it cleared after an hour or two. I have a day off today (monday) and it's 11:23 now & it's been v. fast & no complaint if it was always like this!

[#6]

Hi,
Simple answer to this is that it's a Sunday morning and between about 10am and midday the amount of gold and titanium traffic on the network increases dramatically very likely because everyone's at home rather than being at work. Because of the way the network prioritises different types of traffic the higher amount of browsing and browsing will mean that lower priority traffic like usenet will get reduced. Dead on midnight I'm not altogether surprised it's slower simply because everyone's scheduled downloads start then but it will pick up quite quickly most evenings.

[#7]

If this is really the case then I feel the prioritisation is being set very unfairly. The tables on your web site say 'No Restriction' and yet I get 'Total Restriction' i.e. time outs. (It's now Mon at 16:48 & I'm getting time outs now too).  What is the point in paying for a broadband service that not only gives less than dial-up b/w, but nothing at all, when it's sold as NR? I've been a loyal customer of PlusNet with two accounts for a number of years but now I'm getting fed up....
Please review this contradiction.

[#8]

Since usenet is a semi-interactive service - the headers have to be downloaded in real time, surely usenet (text only) is deserving of a higher priority?
If subscription were via the defective Google groups interface (and this is possible) usenet would presumably be given the highest possible PlusNet priority?

[#9]

Text only usenet servers (including usenet.plus.net amongst others) do get a high priority (gold) on the network. Binary usenet traffic gets a lower priority on the network on most account types (it's gold on BBYW Pro), BBYW Options 1 and 2 get the lowest priority and performance will be reduced depending on network load.

[#10]

Quote from: dave

BBYW Options 1 and 2 get the lowest priority and performance will be reduced depending on network load.

I'm on option 4 and that was also unusable yesterday (and the previous weekend)
Paul

[#11]

Quote from: paulgul

Quote from: dave BBYW Options 1 and 2 get the lowest priority and performance will be reduced depending on network load. I'm on option 4 and that was also unusable yesterday (and the previous weekend) Paul

And I'm on option 3 - it is almost always quite usable - but typical header downloads take 10+ seconds, which would appear to be in the FTP & P2P priority region.