Plusnet - New Network

[#1]

No, no other significant exclusions apart from those on 20CN.
On the new platform most customers will be terminated in the way described by Dave (on the local MSAN/BRAS) however some will be still terminated on our BNGs via L2TP, mainly those with specific things associated with their account such as a static IP.  This is a limitation on the delivery product from Wholesale which may change down the line.
Hope that helps.

[#2]

Perfect !  Thank you for that detailed and concise reply. 
Interesting to see that the dreaded BNGs are to stay ! 
Does this imply that the traceroutes for customers on the "New Network" will be different depending on whether they have a static or dynamic WAN address ?.
Will the traceroute from connections using a static WAN IP, be the same on the "New Network" as they were on the old network ?
Does that further suggest that only connections on a dynamic WAN address will have the advantage of lower latency that the "New Network" is supposed to provide ?

[#3]

I don't think where the PPP connection is terminated affects latency, your traffic still has to go to the same place and back. I expect the "New Network" is the kind of thing that the vast majority of people won't notice the slightest difference with.
About two thirds of all Plusnet customers are (or were) on the BNGs, they probably aren't that bad, and are difficult to avoid at times. Anyway, if part or most of the problem was with parts of the WBMC Shared infrastructure (which was originally aimed at ISPs smaller than Plusnet's current size), then moving large numbers of customers to the new network should take the strain off the remaining parts of the old network.

[#4]

If you are terminated on the BNGs but delivered via the WBMC Dedicated platform you probably won't notice (traceroute wise) whereas if you are terminated on the BT kit you will see the 172.x.x.x addresses in the trace.
Neither option should provide a better service than the other, however, if you have been suffering from congestion on WBMC Shared the new platform should get rid of that regardless of how the connection is terminated.
Hopefully that answered your questions.

[#5]

Thanks again Paul, have a great weekend !

[#6]

Quote from: paulmh5

... however, if you have been suffering from congestion on WBMC Shared the new platform should get rid of that regardless of how the connection is terminated.

Just to be totally clear, this new network will NOT address local exchange congestion, as the new network is only (for the sake of the right terminology) a change to inter consolidation centre routing.  The load on the exchange backhauls to those centres will remain unaltered - correct?

[#7]

Thank you Dave and Paul for coming onto the forum and being more open in the last 3 days about the new network and its impact on all customers.
So if I've read it correctly then
ALL Customers will be on the new network at some point
EXCEPT
1. Anyone with a static IP
2. Anyone on 20CN exchange
And GATEWAY HOPPING for these exceptions on static IPs' should HOPEFULLY not be necessary as the load on the gateways will be lessened. (i have a vested interest in this bit as a static IP customer who suffers from the gateway enforced speed issues)

Updated thanks to Paul's feedback below

[#8]

I thought those with static IPs (on WBC) would be on the new network, just in a slightly different way, which would look the same as the old network in a traceroute.
I also thought it wasn't the Plusnet gateways that were the problem, it was parts of the WBMC Shared infrastructure, parts that are shared with Plusnet and other ISPs who use WBMC Shared.

[#9]

Hi
ejs is correct in regards to static IPs.  Customers with static IPs will be moved over to the new wholesale delivery but still terminated on the BNGs.  Overall by the end of the process there should be a lot less people per BNG but this isn't a quick process as mentioned further up the thread.
In terms of the congestion problems it very much depends on where the congestion exists.  There is some change with how the bigger exchanges connect back to us however if the issue is very local to your exchange then no, I don't think this will resolve that.

[#10]

as im going to be one of the customers testing the new network will plusnet send me a free cuddly toy

[#11]

Only if I can have one as well...

[#12]

Included in Dave's comprehensive post was this statement:

Quote from: dave

Also without having the gateways we're also removing a point of failure and piece of fragility - the L2TP session. There are certain types of maintenance work or certain types of outage that can cause a drop of the L2TP session meaning from a customer point of view they have to wait for their router to detect the session is down and re-establish it, in most cases that's quite quick but on the new network because we now see IP traffic the session won't drop and the traffic just fails over to another route without anyone noticing.

and we've also learnt this:

Quote from: paulmh5

On the new platform most customers will be terminated in the way described by Dave (on the local MSAN/BRAS) however some will be still terminated on our BNGs via L2TP, mainly those with specific things associated with their account such as a static IP.

So people on static IPs are going to be worse off with respect to outages causing L2TP session drops.
Also does this change the situation where after certain types of failure people can't reconnect due to stale sessions?

[#13]

Quote from: jelv

So people on static IPs are going to be worse off with respect to outages causing L2TP session drops.

No worse off than they are now
On a serious note, I'm not sure of the answer you're looking for. There's a high chance L2TP session drops will be a less common occurrence. Same goes for the stale session issues. For those without static IPs, I believe RADIUS authentication is handled a little differently.
Worth re-iterating what Paul said:

Quote from: paulmh5

On the new platform most customers will be terminated in the way described by Dave (on the local MSAN/BRAS) however some will be still terminated on our BNGs via L2TP, mainly those with specific things associated with their account such as a static IP.  This is a limitation on the delivery product from Wholesale which may change down the line.

[#14]

can we not get rid of the BNG,s ,,  and keep pcl-ag06. which for me is rather Good 

[#15]

Sorry, I didn't make it clear, I meant relative to the majority of other users.