Ntl Cutting Off High Usage Users

Drapper

PeakOutput wrote:

ye and i understand the frustration with the cap but i know that particular thing wont be an issue to me esat's cs is ****e aswell and everytime there is a problem they blame eircom but what i want to know is is there a problem with the actual broadband service ntl provides

ie
is it actually 6mbs 99% of the time and is it always on 99% of the time

as far as cs one is as bad as the other so at least if the above is true i wont have to call them as much

again is this is the wrong thread sorry but cant find another one

was perrfect up to recenlty but its suffers from:-

1. Routing through AMsterdam
2. Poor VOIp
3. VPN is acting up
4. Speeds not as advertised

and NTL has changed thier CAP policy ! go over the CAP (warned) and your turned off

PeakOutput

thanks man suppose i should have a good look around(so annoying magnet isnt in my area for another year)

for what its worth i think they should at least let you pay for the extra usage why lose a customer when they can hit you were it hurts charge a euro a gig and all you people would soon fall into line i bet lol

RangeR

PeakOutput wrote:

for what its worth i think they should at least let you pay for the extra usage why lose a customer when they can hit you were it hurts charge a euro a gig and all you people would soon fall into line i bet lol

I have no problem paying a little extra for more download / upload allowance or unlimited transfers. Not even going to get into the whole "Irish broadband is more expensive than other countries" thing.

FrankGrimes

I found out on the golf forum that Sky Sports were streaming their live coverage of the ryder cup from their website for €7.50 for the 3 days of competition.

I thought 'this is great, a perfect example of why I'm paying for a 6MB broadband line' and was delighted with the quality of the video, and someone in the house was watching it pretty much all weekend.

Just now, looking at this thread again, reminded me, that at 600KBs, this has probably sent me over the NTL cap for the month and I'll probably get a warning letter, which is ridiculous. Despite my stance being completely against NTL's caps and their despicable treatment of the very customers who were the early adopters who helped them establish their customer base, I don't actually download all that much and haven't gone over the cap before - well I haven't received any letters anyway. So now this simple act of using my 6MB broadband to its potential for a genuine reason will have NTL blackballing me. Outrageous.

The streaming left me thinking 'this is a perfect example of how great the net is, and it's something that was spoken about years ago that has now come of age'. But a reminder of NTL's policies has me thinking 'while the net has come of age, NTL are going backwards'.

I was going to leave NTL anyway as I disagree with their policy (though they haven't directly impacted me as of yet I'm not the selfish type who says 'don't care how they treat the rest of you, I'm grand' I will no longer be giving my business to a company who treats customers so deplorably), but now I'm even more eager to find a company who can offer me a service that is more in tune with the direction of net usage.

watty

It would be 600kbps. 600kBps is not feasible except on dedicated IPTV systems.

B = Bytes
b = bits about 8 in a Byte, but traffice not quite as simple as there is overheads.

20GByte approx 30hrs @ 600kbps ?

Reganio 2

Sorry if this is the wrong thread but I was thinking of getting NTL broadband as I already have the T.V. package. Would the NTL cap effect someone viewing regular websites or is it just to stop you downloading movies and stuff like that? Cheers.

DemonOfTheFall

Youd be hard pushed to hit 40 Gigs just viewing websites, unless you were on Youtube for about 10 hours a day.

Reganio 2

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Youd be hard pushed to hit 40 Gigs just viewing websites, unless you were on Youtube for about 10 hours a day.

Cheers!
Is their any way to check how many gigs I use up.

Mutant_Fruit

watty wrote:

It would be 600kbps. 600kBps is not feasible except on dedicated IPTV systems.

B = Bytes
b = bits about 8 in a Byte, but traffice not quite as simple as there is overheads.

20GByte approx 30hrs @ 600kbps ?

Nope, not even close

600 kbps ~ 66 kB/sec
30 hours @ 66 kB/sec = 66*60*60*30 kB = 7128000 kB
Approx 6.9 GB.
Round it up, and you're looking at ~7GB per 30 hours.

Prisoner6409

Reganio 2 wrote:

Cheers!
Is their any way to check how many gigs I use up.

I'm not sure if you can check you usage with NTL, you can with Eircom. However there is a little app called Du Meter(www.dumeter.com) that runs in the background and keeps a check of your download/upload usage.

JNive

for every 50kb downloaded, about 1kb is uploaded ( on TCP ).

So if you are streaming 600kbps
Thats a download rate of 75kb/sec and upload of 1.5kb/sec
24 hours = 6.18 GB Downloaded and 126.56 MB uploaded
Total per day = 6.30 GB per day ( thats 7.88 GB every 30 hours though )

Sponge Bob

that d/l u/l ratio seems low to me jnive. I would assume a ratio of 1:10 or 1:8 and not 1:50

FrankGrimes

Reganio 2 wrote:

Sorry if this is the wrong thread but I was thinking of getting NTL broadband as I already have the T.V. package. Would the NTL cap effect someone viewing regular websites or is it just to stop you downloading movies and stuff like that? Cheers.

Have to laugh at that "anyone using a lot of bandwidth is downloading illegal movies" attitude.

Reganio - there's a whole world of legal stuff the net has to offer that require lots of bandwidth. Clearly you just need a basic package as you only want to browse websites, so I'd recommend you get the smallest available broadband package, cos anything above that is a waste of your money. Not sure what NTL's basic package is, though I thought Eircom might have some light usage package. The cap is not the only issue with NTL's service lately - users from a wide range of areas have reported problems here with connection dropping or slowing down.

Jumpy

FrankGrimes wrote:

Have to laugh at that "anyone using a lot of bandwidth is downloading illegal movies" attitude.

Reganio - there's a whole world of legal stuff the net has to offer that require lots of bandwidth. .

Maybe there is, but this isnt what people are doing. 24hr a day torrenters are hogs. There isnt any other word for it, that I would use here anyway.

bk

Jumpy wrote:

Maybe there is, but this isnt what people are doing. 24hr a day torrenters are hogs. There isnt any other word for it, that I would use here anyway.

But that is the problem, it isn't just hogs, this is a far too low cap for such a fast service and there are dozens of legal ways to easily break the cap:

- Game demos, patches (multi gig each)
- youtube watching
- downloading iso's
- Working for home (VPN/VNC)
- Streaming radio and TV.

00sully

NTL blow chunks now - tragic how their service has fallen by the wayside. I am only getting at most 1/3 my payed for speed - steer clear if you can get a better even more expensive alternative

Jumpy

---

But that is the problem, it isn't just hogs, this is a far too low cap for such a fast service and there are dozens of legal ways to easily break the cap:

- Game demos, patches (multi gig each) - Demos yes, but you would need to download a massive amount, patches are tiny, compared to that cap they are miniature.
- youtube watching - Compressed video, low bandwidth.
- downloading iso's - Contrary to popular belief very few people ever do this.
- Working for home (VPN/VNC) - Very low bandwidth if configured correctly.
- Streaming radio and TV.[/QUOTE] - Radio is negligible, TV is a little higher, but it is still quite compressed.

---

You will still find 99% of the people over cap are Torrent hogs.
Unless you are on the lowest service, and to be honest I had a bit of a laugh at that, 2 gig is pretty small by anyones standards, would only be for the absolute lightest of users.

RangeR

Jumpy wrote:

You will still find 99% of the people over cap are Torrent hogs.
Unless you are on the lowest service, and to be honest I had a bit of a laugh at that, 2 gig is pretty small by anyones standards, would only be for the absolute lightest of users.

An example of yet another person missing the point of this thread. The main argument here is thatthe NTL service was 100% before it was taken over and raped by UPC. I doubt it has anything to do with your "hogs" but more to do with UPC messing up an otherwise almost perfect network.

00sully

I dont know how anyone can argue otherwise - regardless of what "ntl" are doing now or what us users have or have not been doing, its 100% clear that their overall service has become absolutely and utterly pathetic. abysmal - would love to meet the exec who made this decision - i'd laugh at him like a hyena smoking grass and then give him/her their p45

Jumpy

IrishTLR wrote:

An example of yet another person missing the point of this thread. The main argument here is thatthe NTL service was 100% before it was taken over and raped by UPC. I doubt it has anything to do with your "hogs" but more to do with UPC messing up an otherwise almost perfect network.

Read the title of the thread.

"NTL Cutting off high usage users" not "How cool was NTL before UPC"

00sully

ahhh yes but its still a relevant point - before NTL was taken over they couldn't give a hoot about over use and in fact were giving users like myself a faster connection than I was paying for - its all related. the title is just that, a title. didn't your mother ever tell you never to judge a book by its title?? er i mean cover :P

RangeR

Jumpy wrote:

Read the title of the thread.

"NTL Cutting off high usage users" not "How cool was NTL before UPC"

This whole NTL debacle has only been going on for the past 3 to 4 weeks. Yes NTL are cutting off high users but this is only since UPC bought NTL. The only thing that has remained the same in the company is the name "NTL". Their policies and network have changed for the worse. It's nothing to do with the so called "hogs".

Clearly UPC have tightened the ropes and routed through Amsterdam to save money to the detriment of a lot of customers.

But this is re-hashing stuff that has been said numerous times here.

DemonOfTheFall

IrishTLR wrote:

This whole NTL debacle has only been going on for the past 3 to 4 weeks. Yes NTL are cutting off high users but this is only since UPC bought NTL. The only thing that has remained the same in the company is the name "NTL". Their policies and network have changed for the worse. It's nothing to do with the so called "hogs".

Clearly UPC have tightened the ropes and routed through Amsterdam to save money to the detriment of a lot of customers.

But this is re-hashing stuff that has been said numerous times here.

Probably because they would lose loads of money to keep paying NTL for its lovely fiber ring network.

Can't blame them for changing the routing really, although what they've changed it to is definitely unacceptable.

Reganio 2

FrankGrimes wrote:

Have to laugh at that "anyone using a lot of bandwidth is downloading illegal movies" attitude.

Reganio - there's a whole world of legal stuff the net has to offer that require lots of bandwidth. Clearly you just need a basic package as you only want to browse websites, so I'd recommend you get the smallest available broadband package, cos anything above that is a waste of your money. Not sure what NTL's basic package is, though I thought Eircom might have some light usage package. The cap is not the only issue with NTL's service lately - users from a wide range of areas have reported problems here with connection dropping or slowing down.

Sorry I didn't mean that people were downloading illegal movies I just meant something that would take a lot of gigs and movies was the first thing that popped into my head. I also didn't know about the problems with the service lately I just thought people were only complaining about the cap.
Cheers for that.

Edit would the cap let you play Xbox live would anybody know lets say for 15 hours a week. Not sure how much bandwith it uses.

DemonOfTheFall

Yeah you'd be fine for definite.

Reganio 2

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Yeah you'd be fine for definite.

Cheers for that.

mollser

this topic seems to have died down? Have ntl stopped sending these letters??

po0k

95 percentile.

6Mbps connection should have a "recommended max monthly transfer of 60GBs per month".
Couple that with a simple enough bit of traffic logging on their end and/or a simple free traffic logging tool for the end-user (who isn't using smoothwall/mrtg/ip traffic stats) = a fair system of letting users manage their bandwidth usage.

You cannot let a marketing department whore out the 'speeeeed' aspect without making some effort to help users quantify and understand what a Gigabyte actually is. I'm after digging around and am about to try and install this on my smoothwall box, as although I have a rough idea of my usage, I cannot speak for my housemates. Per-IP traffic accounting is almost mandatory these days (next smoothie mod on the list).

60GB a month is sufficient, 1GB a day is about average I'd wager, 2GB is a healthy margin for those who pay for the top-end service. People's per-month usage varies. If you're consistently pushing above the cap for 2-3 months running with freely available methods to monitor your usage, then bye-bye.

I watch more stuff off the net than I do on TV. I don't like sitting through ads every 10minutes, particularly when those ads make me fear for the future.

I'm more concerned about NTL/UPC's routing of my traffic tbh.

Mistmyr

mollser wrote:

this topic seems to have died down? Have ntl stopped sending these letters??

Well its the start of a new month so we should see over the next dew days if any new letters go out for the month of Sept.

I must say that im still pissed at the lack of official info on this.

Is the Cap Download only or down & upload and where is our ability to measure our usage.....

Ok this is all old news so ill shut-up now .......

Misty

po0k

SyxPak wrote:

I'm after digging around and am about to try and install this on my smoothwall box, as although I have a rough idea of my usage, I cannot speak for my housemates. Per-IP traffic accounting is almost mandatory these days (next smoothie mod on the list).

The packs in that link are missing/broken.
Found this shortly after.
Bit of manual fiddling about, but it looks like it'll do the job for me.

If anyone has any better/more user-friendly options, please post for the Benefit of All.