Plusnet Pro and Prioritising Gaming Traffic
Hi all,
We've been with Plusnet for the past few months now, and on the whole we're quite happy with it (well, I could do with more than 20Gb usage per month, but whatever) but I've got a question about the Pro package.
When we first signed up for the Pro package we did so because the master of the house was under the impression that gaming and time-sensitive traffic would be prioritised over other types of traffic, such as web browsing, emailing, and peer-to-peer etc. However, on looking at the product page, it says that "all traffic is prioritised at all times" which suggests that the prioritisation simply means that our traffic is given priority over people on a 'lower' package, rather than some of our own traffic being prioritised over the rest of our traffic.
So which is it? Does it mean our time-sensitive traffic gets given priority over our other traffic (such as web browsing), or does it mean that all of our traffic (regardless of type) gets given priority over the traffic from other non-Pro customers?
Either way, I have a small gripe, but I'd like to know what the answer is before going into any more detail.
Thanks for your help!
We've been with Plusnet for the past few months now, and on the whole we're quite happy with it (well, I could do with more than 20Gb usage per month, but whatever) but I've got a question about the Pro package.
When we first signed up for the Pro package we did so because the master of the house was under the impression that gaming and time-sensitive traffic would be prioritised over other types of traffic, such as web browsing, emailing, and peer-to-peer etc. However, on looking at the product page, it says that "all traffic is prioritised at all times" which suggests that the prioritisation simply means that our traffic is given priority over people on a 'lower' package, rather than some of our own traffic being prioritised over the rest of our traffic.
So which is it? Does it mean our time-sensitive traffic gets given priority over our other traffic (such as web browsing), or does it mean that all of our traffic (regardless of type) gets given priority over the traffic from other non-Pro customers?
Either way, I have a small gripe, but I'd like to know what the answer is before going into any more detail.
Thanks for your help!
Hi there,
The answer is both, but one doesn't make a lot of difference.
Let's take your individual traffic first, all of it is prioritised as Gold, with the exception of Gaming and VoIP, which is prioritised as Titanium (and therefore gets priority over Gold traffic).
With the rest of the network, Titanium and Gold take precedent over other traffic, so your traffic would take precedent over other non-Pro customer traffic classified as less than Gold (http downloads, p2p, ftp, etc etc).
Onto the gripe now then? Let me know what it is and I'll try and help.
The answer is both, but one doesn't make a lot of difference.
Let's take your individual traffic first, all of it is prioritised as Gold, with the exception of Gaming and VoIP, which is prioritised as Titanium (and therefore gets priority over Gold traffic).
With the rest of the network, Titanium and Gold take precedent over other traffic, so your traffic would take precedent over other non-Pro customer traffic classified as less than Gold (http downloads, p2p, ftp, etc etc).
Onto the gripe now then? Let me know what it is and I'll try and help.
Thanks for the quick answer!
Well I suppose the problem was our misunderstanding about what got prioritised over what. It's good to know that all of our traffic is given priority over anything that's not Gold traffic or higher, but how much of a difference will that make to us, seeing as we can only ever get 1mb speeds (about 120Kbps) on our line? If we had much higher speeds, I can see it making a bigger difference, but as we only get 1mb anyway, does having high priority traffic make much difference?
If we got close to 8mb on our 'up to 8mb' line then yeah, I could understand people wanting high priority traffic to make sure they get full speed even if they're being a bandwidth hog. But if we were to downgrade to the Premium package where our traffic might not get such a high priority, would that really make much of a difference?
But the main thing that I thought was strange is that the time-sensitive traffic doesn't seem to be given priority over other traffic, as we'd previously thought when we signed up. There are two World Of Warcraft players in the house, and when nobody else is doing anything on the internet (aside from browsing, for example) then the games run fine. But if I started using peer-to-peer services while they were playing, they noticed a large amount of lag in their games, to the point that they become unplayable. I thought the idea of traffic prioritisation is that the peer-to-peer traffic would be slowed as much as needed to allow the games to run properly? But that clearly isn't happening. And it's not just a one-off. A number of times I've opened a Bit Torrent client, or have had to download a patch for some software or something, and as soon as my (low-priority) download starts, I hear screams of nerd rage coming from the other rooms.
So, am I just misinformed about what types of traffic are given priority over others, or is the whole thing really just a marketing ploy? Because it doesn't seem to be working as far as I can tell!
Thanks again for your help.
Well I suppose the problem was our misunderstanding about what got prioritised over what. It's good to know that all of our traffic is given priority over anything that's not Gold traffic or higher, but how much of a difference will that make to us, seeing as we can only ever get 1mb speeds (about 120Kbps) on our line? If we had much higher speeds, I can see it making a bigger difference, but as we only get 1mb anyway, does having high priority traffic make much difference?
If we got close to 8mb on our 'up to 8mb' line then yeah, I could understand people wanting high priority traffic to make sure they get full speed even if they're being a bandwidth hog. But if we were to downgrade to the Premium package where our traffic might not get such a high priority, would that really make much of a difference?
But the main thing that I thought was strange is that the time-sensitive traffic doesn't seem to be given priority over other traffic, as we'd previously thought when we signed up. There are two World Of Warcraft players in the house, and when nobody else is doing anything on the internet (aside from browsing, for example) then the games run fine. But if I started using peer-to-peer services while they were playing, they noticed a large amount of lag in their games, to the point that they become unplayable. I thought the idea of traffic prioritisation is that the peer-to-peer traffic would be slowed as much as needed to allow the games to run properly? But that clearly isn't happening. And it's not just a one-off. A number of times I've opened a Bit Torrent client, or have had to download a patch for some software or something, and as soon as my (low-priority) download starts, I hear screams of nerd rage coming from the other rooms.
So, am I just misinformed about what types of traffic are given priority over others, or is the whole thing really just a marketing ploy? Because it doesn't seem to be working as far as I can tell!
Thanks again for your help.
Thanks for your reply, although I've already throttled the available upload bandwidth to ~6Kbps!! 
I don't actually use peer-to-peer software very much these days simply because it caused so much grief to everyone else. But knowing that I used to use it quite heavily is the reason that we wanted the gaming traffic to be prioritised over peer-to-peer traffic etc. I knew that torrents saturated the bandwidth under normal circumstances but I was hoping that the priority system would stop that from happening, and that I wouldn't have to manually set schedules and bandwidth throttles etc.
But it's not so important now anyway, as I say.
I don't actually use peer-to-peer software very much these days simply because it caused so much grief to everyone else. But knowing that I used to use it quite heavily is the reason that we wanted the gaming traffic to be prioritised over peer-to-peer traffic etc. I knew that torrents saturated the bandwidth under normal circumstances but I was hoping that the priority system would stop that from happening, and that I wouldn't have to manually set schedules and bandwidth throttles etc.
But it's not so important now anyway, as I say.