IOL breaching advertising standards?

fatherdougalmag

Looking at http://www.iol.ie/broadband/ (which, incidently, causes my CD drive to spin up ...) I notice that they have a Better Value table down near the bottom left. They seem to suggest that Eircom's free download/upload allowance is 4GB. As far as I'm aware Eircom's is download only - IOL's is 8GB of download/upload combined.

halenger

They may be playing around with wording but in all fairness IOL's may as well be a download cap.

I've had it since August I think and I've only just gone over 1gb of uploads.

Wouldn't be too sure of the legal side of things myself though but I'm sure the advertising people would have "legal" look over the ads before releasing the. At least that would make sense!

fatherdougalmag

At the end of the day it's probably true that the allowance is more generous from IOL. It's just that they aren't comparing like with like. I still can't fathom why the allowance exists. I presume it's some sort of management of their (ISP's) Internet feed rather than switch congestion. Maybe one day they'll upgrade and this will be a thing of the past.

longword

Originally posted by fatherdougalmag
At the end of the day it's probably true that the allowance is more generous from IOL. It's just that they aren't comparing like with like. I still can't fathom why the allowance exists. I presume it's some sort of management of their (ISP's) Internet feed rather than switch congestion. Maybe one day they'll upgrade and this will be a thing of the past.

The allowance exists because the DSL line you get is contented at a 48:1 ratio. That means there are up to 48 DSL users sharing one 512K block between them. The allowances are to discourage users from hogging the line to the detriment of the other 47 users with whom they are sharing.

fatherdougalmag

But the fundamental problem remains - they're trying to channel as much usability from their Internet feed. They do this by have a contention ratio. They then try to protect the other contended users by penalising heavy users. What I'm hoping is that one day they'll have a sufficient enough Internet feed where they can relax the contention ratio a bit and consequently raise the allowance or just do without it altogether. I reckon that'll be some time after decentralisation occurs

BigMoose

But surely the contention of DSL exists in every other European country but they manage not to have such expensive service with such small caps..... so why here? No competition I assume, so no incentive to do away with the caps...

Töpher

They have better lines? For example, whereas here may be 48 off at 10Mbps Lines, abroad it may be 48 off a 100Mbps line. Or not. Just an idea.

spongebob

the basic math indicates why there is a cap.

1. There is 48:1 contention on all 512k products

2. That means that if all users are d/l ing at the same time they actually geta speed of 10.66kbit, abouta fifth of a perfect modem connection.

3. That delivers 1.33KBYTE a second of data

4. Thats 4.8MYTE an hour or 115.2 Mbyte a day.

5. Meaning 3.45GBYTE a month for everybody on that contention group.

IOL are being generous really. Netsource are even nicer, 4GB a week and 16Gb a month.

M

andrew163

Which is it that's contended, the actual 512k DSL line, or the backhaul?
e.g. Is there 48 512kbps ports in a DSLAM sharing one 2mbps (just a random number.....maybe more, maybe less) backhaul link, or 48 phone lines jammed into each 512kbps port on a DSLAM? (or something like that............am I making any sense here? )

MickFarr

NTL is 1GB a day!! with a contention ratio of 20:1

MickFarr

with a 600kb line

MickFarr

40 euros incl Vat

OfflerCrocGod

Which is only avaiable in very few, select, areas of Dublin( Tallagh! ), cause NTL are lazy bastard5! :mad:.

longword

Originally posted by andrew163
Which is it that's contended, the actual 512k DSL line, or the backhaul?
e.g. Is there 48 512kbps ports in a DSLAM sharing one 2mbps (just a random number.....maybe more, maybe less) backhaul link, or 48 phone lines jammed into each 512kbps port on a DSLAM?

There's 512k uncontended from each user to the DSLAM. There's 512k for every 48 users from the DSLAM to the ISP - though typically the backhaul is done in 2Mbit chunks so you'd have 192 users sharing that. It's not always a simple path from DSLAM to ISP, there may be multiple hops involved that you won't be able to see, but at some point along that line the 48:1 contention kicks in. There's no point in the ISP providing more than 512k per 48 users from that point on since it can't be used.

Ripwave

Originally posted by fatherdougalmag
But the fundamental problem remains - they're trying to channel as much usability from their Internet feed. They do this by have a contention ratio. They then try to protect the other contended users by penalising heavy users. What I'm hoping is that one day they'll have a sufficient enough Internet feed where they can relax the contention ratio a bit and consequently raise the allowance or just do without it altogether. I reckon that'll be some time after decentralisation occurs

The contention ration has little or nothing to do with IOL or UTVs internet feed. Eircom decided what the contention ration would be (based on what made sense for eircom, not what would be best for consumers), and charge UTV and IOL for backhaul from each DSL enabled exchange to wherever IOL and UTV connect to the eircom network.

512K shared between 48 people comes to about 3G a month. For every one who uses all 8G of their "allowance", there are 5 other people who will only get 2G. Luckily, there are lot's of "normal" people out there who don't feel the need to have a fresh linux ISO every 2nd day, so there's a fair amount of "unused" allowance available, but there's not much IOL or UTV can do about it.

OfflerCrocGod

I'm normal but I need a fresh iso every 2 days!! , joking I dont it's every three days .