How do you get service?

[#1]

Quote

It isn't during all off peak hours, just between midday and 4pm and midnight and 2am. Speeds between 2am and midday when the network isn't as busy will be up to line speed.

That seems to be saying that some off peak hours are more off peak than others. Which seems a little disingenuous to me, particularly if Gimpy has not exceeded his/her allotted download quota
I too understand the need for traffic management and prioritisation, but find the whole thing a tad confusing.

[#2]

When I get my full speed back in a couple of weeks I will be posting screen shots showing that at 3.55pm I will have at least 400KB/s.
In the last few years right up until last week, I have never had such a pathetic speed on usenet.
Dave, can you inform me of your internal complaints procedure? Apparently I need to know the correct method of complaint to get somebody in a higher position to even consider looking at my case.

[#3]

Quote from: astarsolutions

Quote I agree that the times I mention do line up with when Plusnet are busiest, it doesn't answer the question though. It does, did you look at the graph. The simply don't have the capacity to give you full bandwidth all the time, they will drop your low priority traffic in favour of others using the web, email or other high priority things.

Spot on, when the network starts to reach full capacity something has to give. Without any traffic management at all then as capacity starts to get reach you'd start seeing ping spikes and packet loss across the board on all types of traffic. It would make gaming unusable, make VoIP break up and make VPN/VNC/SSH connections drop. The only affect it really has on non-interactive traffic is to cause it to be slower and cause re-transmissions of dropped packets. Usenet and P2P can easily cope with a bit of packet loss or an increase in latency whereas VoIP and gaming can't.
On our network our traffic management is designed to stop this from happening, we can control what traffic sees the ping spikes and packet loss. With the queues I mentioned above we can ensure that only the non-interactive traffic is affected and we can also control which non-interactive traffic is affected first. So we can set it so that when the network is at capacity that the non-interactive traffic from Broadband Plus customers or Premier customers on peak time management is affected before everyone else.
We don't provision capacity so that everyone can get line speed on everything all the time, if we did then the monthly subscription would be a lot higher than it is. The wholesale cost of capacity comes in just under £200 per month per Mbps so we have to share it out as fairly as we can. For some people that will mean they don't get fastest speeds all the time just because some limitations have to be set.

[#4]

Quote from: Mr

That seems to be saying that some off peak hours are more off peak than others. Which seems a little disingenuous to me, particularly if Gimpy has not exceeded his/her allotted download quota I too understand the need for traffic management and prioritisation, but find the whole thing a tad confusing.

I think you need to seperate the idea of peak and off peak for when usage is counted from peak and off peak for when the network is busiest.
On Broadband Premier peak time is defined as 4pm to midnight for when usage is counted and off peak is defined as midnight to 4pm when usage isn't counted. However the amount of traffic on the network doesn't fit in exactly with these hours because different types of customers have different usage habits, as such the busiest time on the network is roughly midday to 2am and there's spare capacity between roughly 2am and midday.
That way peak time management takes place between 4pm and midnight but non-interactive traffic speeds may also be reduced between midday and 4pm and midnight and 2am because of the amount of traffic on the network.

[#5]

Quote from: Gimpy

Dave, can you inform me of your internal complaints procedure? Apparently I need to know the correct method of complaint to get somebody in a higher position to even consider looking at my case.

It's here in our code of practice:
http://www.plus.net/support/customer_service/contact_us/code_of_practice.shtml
I would though say that you'd get exactly the same response, the speeds you are seeing on usenet are exactly how it's designed to be and I can see that are clearly getting a lot better speeds overnight after 2am when there is capacity on the network.

[#6]

Just a couple of last points before I go off to find another isp - Dave, you said that you will get someone to review the email I received. How does that help me?
And you are now definitely saying that peak-time is between 12pm and 2am for a managed account. The email warning me that I might go over the 13GB said nothing about the time extension.
And "The only affect it really has on non-interactive traffic is to cause it to be slower" SLOWER? It'd be quicker for me to go back and forth to my usenet server with floppy discs.

[#7]

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I think you need to seperate the idea of peak and off peak for when usage is counted from peak and off peak for when the network is busiest.

Fair enough, bit I think most people think off peak refers to a set  time period of the day, rather than when the network capacity is considered to be off peak. I certainly did, but perhaps I am in the minority.

[#8]

Quote from: Gimpy

Just a couple of last points before I go off to find another isp - Dave, you said that you will get someone to review the email I received. How does that help me?

It won't but it will make it clearer as to what to expect.

Quote from: Gimpy

And you are now definitely saying that peak-time is between 12pm and 2am for a managed account. The email warning me that I might go over the 13GB said nothing about the time extension.

No, peak time as define by when usage is measured is as it was 4pm to midnight. That's when your usage is counted and that's when peak time management occurs.
Midday to 2am is just when the network is busiest. The confusion is that you would expect the network to be busiest at the same time as the period that is measured for peak time, but it isn't the network is busy outside of these hours as well. Hence why people see slower speeds during the off peak hours because the network is busy.

[#9]

I'm trying to view the terms and conditions but I can't work out which one applies to me.
I know that I have been a customer of Plusnet since at least August 2000 (I'm sure it was longer ago than that) but each of the options says "if you signed up ... and have not changed product". I know I have changed product but don't know when and if I changed product in May (even though I didn't) do I take that into account?

[#10]

Are you seriously telling me that peak-time can have many different meanings within Plusnet that most ordinary people are unaware of?
If so, that would explain why you understand what you are saying and I don't. It still doesn't excuse it though

[#11]

Quote from: Mr

Fair enough, bit I think most people think off peak refers to a set  time period of the day, rather than when the network capacity is considered to be off peak. I certainly did, but perhaps I am in the minority.

It's one of the reasons why for Broadband Your Way we've stepped away from saying peak and off peak because of the confusion it can cause. Peak in terms of Premier is 4pm to midnight but as I say if you define peak by the time when the network is busiest that's roughly midday to 2am. We don't measure any account based on midnight to 2am but just note that when the network is busy non-interactive speeds will be reduced hence why usenet speeds on level 1 management are slower between midday and 4pm than they are between 2am and midday, because the network is busy between midday and 4pm.

[#12]

Quote from: Gimpy

I'm trying to view the terms and conditions but I can't work out which one applies to me.

The only T's & C's in effect are the current T's & C's
http://www.plus.net/info2/legal/index.html
all others have been superceded by these.

[#13]

Is there anything on Plusnet an ordinary person is supposed to understand?
The first line of the conditions says "These terms and conditions apply to all new customers that registered from Wednesday 11th April 2007" I'm not a new customer.

[#14]

Quote from: Gimpy

Are you seriously telling me that peak-time can have many different meanings within Plusnet that most ordinary people are unaware of? If so, that would explain why you understand what you are saying and I don't. It still doesn't excuse it though

What I'm saying is there are two concepts to understand.
The first is peak time as defined for Broadband Premier which is 4pm to midnight 7 days a week. Any usage during this time is counted towards your allowance and peak time management applies between these hours.
The second is how busy the network is overall. How much traffic there is on the network will vary from day to day and the type of traffic will vary from day to day. Weekdays will see more VPN traffic from business, weekends more gaming for example. As a general rule the network is busiest. By busiest I mean when the traffic at or close to the maximum amount of traffic it can carry, the traffic graphs show that the network is busiest between roughly midday and 2am. Whilst between 2am and midday there is spare capacity. One day it might to 11:45am to 2:15am the next day it might be 12:05pm to 1:50am when it's busiest. But when the network is busiest some customers will start to see reductions in speed simply because something has to give when the capacity is reached.

[#15]

It is coming up to 12am. Dave says that everybody should be receiving reduced speeds between 12am and 2am. I will post my speed after 12 and I would really like it if other people could post their usenet speeds as well.
My betting is that my speed will be a lot slower than anybody elses. I might be on management level 1 but the email clear as day says that restrictions only apply during peak time. Dave says that peak times aren't what most people think they are, and it really means when the network is busy. If it's busy for me its busy for everybody.