Ntl Cutting Off High Usage Users

Mojito

rogue-entity wrote:

I have to ask again, how in Gods name do you manage to exceed a 20Gig Cap let alone 40? I mean, unless you are (illegally) downloading loads of movies and music from bittorrent/p2p services, I honestly cannot see how you could download so much. I had my broadband a/c for 11 months and have only managed to pull down 59.88GB (roughly 5Gigs a month).

59.88GB!!! That must be all illegal downloads!! I've had my broadband for 12months and I've only managed to download 32.31GB

:rolleyes:

RangeR

Mojito wrote:

59.88GB!!! That must be all illegal downloads!! I've had my broadband for 12months and I've only managed to download 32.31GB

:rolleyes:

I really fail to see how some people cannot see past their own usage. It maybe be cause you are comparing everyone else to yourself or you just don't know what services available on the internet. The internet isn't just about briwsing and email. There is a whole different world out there. I'm not just saying this to you, Mojito, but to everyone who thinks that anything ofer 3 or 4 GB a month HAS to be illegal stuff. My gawd, I could download ONE file today that would be over 3GB, pourely legal no warez stuff. Add to that, your PS2 or XBox on line. HD video takes a LOT of bandwidth. Transfering files [VPN/FTP] bweteen two remote computers [my work to.from my home] takes a huge chunk also.

These are only TWO examples. there are hundreds more. People need to open their eyes and not assume that just because someone downloads close to [or exceeds] their cap, that it has to be illegal.

www.pandora.com, Apple video downloads [iVideo?], Amazon video downloads, Napster al you can eat music [and the likes], streaming radio, VoIP, online gaming, webcams, site to site VPN/FTP [friend to friend], etc.

The list is almost endless. I don't mean to come across in a bad way, but wake up and see what's outside the world YOU live in.

This has been mentioned SO many times within the past week or two alone. It is VERY easy to exceed a 40GB cap a month while doing normal stuff, not illegal.

PixelTrawler

Ive a feeling you missed the point of Mojito's post ( note the :rolleyes: - check the post at the very top of this page! )!

Think he was making your same point only shorter!

RangeR

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

Ive a feeling you missed the point of Mojito's post ( note the :rolleyes: - check the post at the very top of this page! )!

Think he was making your same point only shorter!

You're dead right, Joe. And I do tend to ramble on sometimes [and not check my spelling].

6th

I'm getting credited for my last bill cos I explained that I have not been receiving the service or the speeds I am paying for.

Have to ring back when i'm at home in front of the mac to do some "tests".

PixelTrawler

IrishTLR wrote:

You're dead right, Joe. And I do tend to ramble on sometimes [and not check my spelling].

i suffer from the same thing

Foxwood

IrishTLR wrote:

This has been mentioned SO many times within the past week or two alone. It is VERY easy to exceed a 40GB cap a month while doing normal stuff, not illegal.

That's grand so. There's obviously enough customers for a no-cap "product" out there that any day now someone will come along and provide one, at an appropriate price.

In the meantime, it sounds like you'll just have to stick with the terms and conditions that just about every established ISP imposes.

RangeR

Foxwood wrote:

That's grand so. There's obviously enough customers for a no-cap "product" out there that any day now someone will come along and provide one, at an appropriate price.

In the meantime, it sounds like you'll just have to stick with the terms and conditions that just about every established ISP imposes.

Thanks for the sarcasm but there is NO WAY to know that you are inside your cap allowance because some ISP's DO NOT provide this service. There is NO software that you can install on ANY computer in your house to give accurate stats of your usage. When you move away from one computer in the home to multiple ones, and multiple harware devices it DOES become impossible. Correct me if I'm wrong. DUMeter is NOT accurate. Even if it was accurate on a single machine, how can you install it on your ATA or wireless devices that route through your Access Point etc?

Is everyone meant to install a seperate [possibly high expense] firewall in their homes, just to do a job that NTL / Chorus / AN Other should be providing.?

Foxwood

IrishTLR wrote:

Thanks for the sarcasm but there is NO WAY to know that you are inside your cap allowance because some ISP's DO NOT provide this service. There is NO software that you can install on ANY computer in your house to give accurate stats of your usage. When you move away from one computer in the home to multiple ones, and multiple harware devices it DOES become impossible. Correct me if I'm wrong. DUMeter is NOT accurate. Even if it was accurate on a single machine, how can you install it on your ATA or wireless devices that route through your Access Point etc?

Is everyone meant to install a seperate [possibly high expense] firewall in their homes, just to do a job that NTL / Chorus / AN Other should be providing.?

A WRT56GL isn't that expensive! Stick DD-WRT on it, and you can monitor to your hearts content!

But that's not the point. There's a reason that ISPs aren't falling over themselves to serve customers like you. You cost more to service, and you don't generate any extra revenue.

When the network you are on was owned by NTL, you were able to benefit from NTLs big links to the internet backbone in the UK. Chello have similiar big pipes, but they obviously don't have enough bandwidth to link you back to their network in Amsterdam. It's going to cost real money to upgrade that link. It will also cost real money (though probably less money) to upgrade their peering at INEX.

As for disparaging users who only use a coupe of Gig, if it wasn't for the fact that the vast majority of users fall into that category, you wouldn't be able to get your 40G in the first place!

UTV say that 30% of their peak time bandwidth is used by 1% of their customers. NTLs usage patterns probably aren't that different.
(http://u.tv/utvclicksilver/usage_policy.asp)

Boomer23

Foxwood wrote:

That's grand so. There's obviously enough customers for a no-cap "product" out there that any day now someone will come along and provide one, at an appropriate price.

In the meantime, it sounds like you'll just have to stick with the terms and conditions that just about every established ISP imposes.

bravo, finally, someone talking sence

RangeR

Foxwood wrote:

A WRT56GL isn't that expensive! Stick DD-WRT on it, and you can monitor to your hearts content!

That's not a viable option. The majority of people don't even know what a DD-WRT [or similar flavour] is.

There's a reason that ISPs aren't falling over themselves to serve customers like you. You cost more to service, and you don't generate any extra revenue.

Very puzzeling quote. Do ANY users of broadband packages generate extra revenue? If you are talking extra services, I also take my Digital TV AND multiroom on top of my broadband. If you are talking about not using up the cap, I don't think I ever said that I went over the 40GB cap anyway. How am I to tell? Either way it's irrelevant. I'm paying to use a 40GB cap.

I have seen no solution provided that would give me an acurate measurement. I am NOT going to spend money on a service [WRT56GL] that the ISP should be providing. Why should I. The ISP's want us to stick within the cap so they should give us the tools needed to do so.

The ONLY two solutions my ISP provided me with was DUMeter [not a solution] or to ring them every now and then to check my usage. Again, not a viable solution.

I'm all in favour of staying within the T's&C's of the contract I signed up for. But I have no real way of knowning when I'm coming close to my allowance.

In the meantime, it sounds like you'll just have to stick with the terms and conditions that just about every established ISP imposes.

and just about every ISP that does impose these caps offers a tool to check your usage. The bitstream suppliers anyway.

watty

The Cap is not a target but a limit. If everyone was determined to use up a 40G Cap they would have to double or triple the subscription charges.

FrankGrimes

I'm pretty sure one of the ISPs, is it BT, charge 50 cent extra per gig above the cap - there's a pretty clear example of high users generating extra bandwidth.

I'd imagine people on the 6MB package fall into two groups: those who are serious internet users and so have chosen the right package for their usage patterns and so are likely to be downloading in or around the cap. Then there's the group, possibly even the majority, who are just on the 6MB package cos the sales guy did a good job on them, or more likely, they started out on the max package cos it was free for 3 months, and have never remembered to downgrade it to suit their needs. These people are probably downloading nowhere near their cap and are underutilising the service they are paying for. In my opinion these people are suckers as they're paying for something they don't use.

Let's take an analogy of the mobile phone market. If you're an infrequent user you go on a small package, if you're a serious user you go for the top package giving most inclusive minutes. If you're a light user on the top pacage you are a muppet imo. If you're a heavy user who goes over the total included minutes you pay for the extra time you used, you don't get cut off. As mentioned above you'd never expect a heavy talker to be cut off just cos the provider's system can't handle their usage.

If the consumer association or whoever it is that has the site where you put in your phone usage and it recommends a package had a site for putting in your broadband usage and figuring out the best package for you, very few of those on 6MB packages would be recommended to actually be on the 6MB package. It's a package designed for high users but used largely by light users. As with mobile phones, people who use more should pay more, but people who use more should not be kicked off the service, it's just bad business.

By the way, if anyone on here has links to any ISP they should call it out, cos a fella who joins a discussion forum and spends his first few posts on a thread like this is very likely to have vested interests in my opinion.

bk

Foxwood wrote:

When the network you are on was owned by NTL, you were able to benefit from NTLs big links to the internet backbone in the UK. Chello have similiar big pipes, but they obviously don't have enough bandwidth to link you back to their network in Amsterdam. It's going to cost real money to upgrade that link. It will also cost real money (though probably less money) to upgrade their peering at INEX.

But you see, that right there is the problem, it would be much cheaper for them to peer at INEX and in the UK, then to buy a big pipe back to Amsterdam that they simply wouldn't need if they got the routing right.

That is the whole idea of INEX in the first place, very cheap routing amongst Irish ISP's. It is vastly cheaper to lay a fiber optic cable a few miles to the INEX in City West, then it is to send traffic all the way to Amsterdam, only to come straight back. It is completely stupid.

There is absolutely no technical reason why you need to be connected back to their network in Amsterdam, 95% of all Irish traffic heads to Ireland, UK and US. It is hardly surprising as we are an English speaking country. Very little Irish traffic heads to mainland Europe, so why in gods name do they have to route through Amsterdam?

Foxwood

IrishTLR wrote:

That's not a viable option. The majority of people don't even know what a DD-WRT [or similar flavour] is.

What, are you telling me that there isn't a HD video out there explaining exacty what's involved, and that people would actually have to take time out from downloading to actually READ text based webpages explaining what's involved?

Wouldn't it be ironic if watty, who doesn't need to know how much he has downloaded, because he's nowhere near the cap, might be the ony one in this thread who could install and use DD-WRT

bk

Boomer23 wrote:

bravo, finally, someone talking sence

No, he is not talking sense.

Why did NTL:UK have a 75GB cap, and now non.
Why does Smart Telecom have no cap.
Why does Magnet have a 150GB cap.

It is quiet clear that NTL/UPC's cap is far too small for the speed of the product. This has all been caused purely by the technical incompetency of NTL/UPC. If they fixed their routing, they could have a much higher cap.

bk

Foxwood wrote:

What, are you telling me that there isn't a HD video out there explaining exacty what's involved, and that people would actually have to take time out from downloading to actually READ text based webpages explaining what's involved?

Wouldn't it be ironic if watty, who doesn't need to know how much he has downloaded, because he's nowhere near the cap, might be the ony one in this thread who could install and use DD-WRT

Well it is unreasonable to expect people to go off and buy a new router, in fear that they might be cut off.

If NTL/UPC wants to enforce the cap, they really should have a site to check your usage. You can't really argue with that.

Foxwood

bk wrote:

No, he is not talking sense.

Why did NTL:UK have a 75GB cap, and now non.

Because the vast majority of their users use their 10MB connections to download web pages and e-mails faster, and don't hog the whole network downloading hundreds of gigabytes of data, most of which is thrown away anyway.

Why does Smart Telecom have no cap

Because they had to put fibre into the exchanges anyway, and there's loads of capacity from each exchange back to Smarts own data centre, right here in Dublin (which has oodles of relativelt cheap access to the internet).

Why does Magnet have a 150GB cap.

Because they only have a couple of thousand customers.

It is quiet clear that NTL/UPC's cap is far too small for the speed of the product. This has all been caused purely by the technical incompetency of NTL/UPC. If they fixed their routing, they could have a much higher cap.

If they spent money to change their routing, and run new fibre to various nodes that are overloaded, they could offer a bigger cap. They don't seem to think that they'd get a return on that investment, because putting up the price of the service, for the sake of the 5% who are causing all the problem, would probably cost them more than just getting rid of the 5%.

If you want a bigger cap, pay for it. If you can't find an alternative provider, tough. I'm sure all the whining going on in this thread must be really encouraging alternative providers to get into the market. NOT!

Mutant_Fruit

Foxwood wrote:

Because the vast majority of their users use their 10MB connections to download web pages and e-mails faster, and don't hog the whole network downloading hundreds of gigabytes of data, most of which is thrown away anyway.

But 99% (and i **** you not, i mean 99%) of webpages won't load any faster on a 10 meg connection as opposed to a 3meg connection. The bandwidth isn't the issue, it's the ping that's holding you back, and more bandwidth does not decrease ping. Any user paying for a 10meg connection for browsing and emails is getting ripped off (sorry if this is you).

Foxwood wrote:

If they spent money to change their routing, and run new fibre to various nodes that are overloaded, they could offer a bigger cap. They don't seem to think that they'd get a return on that investment, because putting up the price of the service, for the sake of the 5% who are causing all the problem, would probably cost them more than just getting rid of the 5%.

Well, NTL had some great (ish) peering in INEX originally... what happened to that? I'm pretty sure that could easily be reinstated...

Foxwood wrote:

If you want a bigger cap, pay for it. If you can't find an alternative provider, tough. I'm sure all the whining going on in this thread must be really encouraging alternative providers to get into the market. NOT!

Well, it does. If i were a new company and i was reading this, i'd know exactly what people are looking for. Why do you think smart/magnet (new companies) offer such a large cap? It's not just because they have bandwidth, it's because there is demand for it! If people don't bitch, then no-one knows something is wrong. The only way to get improvements is to get outspoken people to hassle people in power until whatever thing it is they want gets done.

CiaranC

Foxwood wrote:

That's grand so. There's obviously enough customers for a no-cap "product" out there that any day now someone will come along and provide one, at an appropriate price.

We already did thanks, its called NTL Broadband MAX. Ive been on it for 6 years. Theyve made some changes recently, which we object to.

When the network you are on was owned by NTL, you were able to benefit from NTLs big links to the internet backbone in the UK. Chello have similiar big pipes, but they obviously don't have enough bandwidth to link you back to their network in Amsterdam. It's going to cost real money to upgrade that link. It will also cost real money (though probably less money) to upgrade their peering at INEX.

This has repeatedly been stated in the thread, we all understand it already.

Try reading before bringing us your pearls of wisdom, captain obvious.

If you want a bigger cap, pay for it. If you can't find an alternative provider, tough.

This statement is nothing short of moronic. The mind boggles.

Because the vast majority of their users use their 10MB connections to download web pages and e-mails faster

Amazingly enough, those of us who use the internet the most actually know something about it. A 10mb connection doesnt download webpages or email any faster than a 512k one. Which Ive already said.

Foxwood

CiaranC wrote:

This has repeatedly been stated in the thread, we all understand it already.

Try reading before bringing us your pearls of wisdom, captain obvious.

I'm sorry, but it's pretty obvious that judging by the continuous, monotonous (and lets throw in "moronic", now that you've brought it up) whinging about the issue, that more than a few people obviously don't "get it". And if you have a problem with the principle of the same "pearls of wisdom" being repeated, ad nauseam, why weren't you complaining earlier in the thread, when it was full of repetitive whinging? Or is repetition okay, as long as you agree with it?

This statement is nothing short of moronic. The mind boggles.

I love taking quotes out of context. Maybe you make morninc statements because your mind is boggled.

Amazingly enough, those of us who use the internet the most actually know something about it. A 10mb connection doesnt download webpages or email any faster than a 512k one. Which Ive already said.

Speaking of moronic statements. How about a 56k connection? As a matter of interest, what's the magic point between 56K and 512K at which a faster connection stops downoading things faster?

You mightn't notice the speed difference when downloading a simple text webpage. But the index page for the Broadband forum is about 120k-180k (without the graphics). You can feel the difference when repeatedly loading that (Unless all your neighbors are bandwidth hogs that are making your 6MB connection slower than a 512K DSL line).

CiaranC

Im not arguing the toss with someone who thinks the purpose of a T1 speed connection to the internet is to make browsing ryanair.com 'feel' faster.

The amount of ms latency added to the connection since the new peering arrangements makes a nonsence of this argument anyway. Its higher than the amount of time in ms taken to transfer 120KB in the first place. But I suppose we'd better stop 'whining' and learn to live with it. Its the Irish way. :rolleyes:

bk

Foxwood wrote:

I'm sorry, but it's pretty obvious that judging by the continuous, monotonous (and lets throw in "moronic", now that you've brought it up) whinging about the issue, that more than a few people obviously don't "get it". And if you have a problem with the principle of the same "pearls of wisdom" being repeated, ad nauseam, why weren't you complaining earlier in the thread, when it was full of repetitive whinging? Or is repetition okay, as long as you agree with it?

No, you are the one not getting the point. It costs NTL/UPC vastly more to route to Amsterdam then to peer in INEX. There is absolutely no logical reason not to peer in INEX. If they did peer in INEX there would be no problem with having a much higher cap.

BTW UPC actually already have fibre running to INEX, they are listed as a new member on the INEX site, so they are currently paying that cost now anyway. They just haven't sorted the routeing yet.

Foxwood wrote:

Speaking of moronic statements. How about a 56k connection? As a matter of interest, what's the magic point between 56K and 512K at which a faster connection stops downoading things faster?

Dial-up typically has latency well over 100ms, BB has latency typically closer to 20 - 40ms, that is what makes the difference in web pages loading.

A typical web page comes in under 100k (for instance this page is 79k). A 100k page is going to take exactly the same time to download on a 512k connection as it will on a 6m connection.

You would only see a difference, if you tried to open 10 100k pages at the same time (with tabs) then yes, the 512k connection would take twice as long as 6m, but that is unusual, you won't see that during normal browsing.

Foxwood wrote:

Because the vast majority of their users use their 10MB connections to download web pages and e-mails faster, and don't hog the whole network downloading hundreds of gigabytes of data, most of which is thrown away anyway.

What a load of bollocks.

NTL:UK would have much the same demographic mix of heavy and light users on their 10m service as UPC. Why would there be a difference?

I can put you at numerous threads on UK forums of NTL:UK users, happily downloading over 100GB per month, no problems.

If NTL:UK can afford to run a good network, with much the same costs and tech involved, why not UPC?

Foxwood wrote:

Because they had to put fibre into the exchanges anyway, and there's loads of capacity from each exchange back to Smarts own data centre, right here in Dublin (which has oodles of relativelt cheap access to the internet).

FFS, and what do you think NTL/UPC use. NTL/UPC have what is called a Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network. That means they have fibre to each Broadband enabled node. A node is equivalent to an exchange, just that in the case of a node, it tends to be much closer to the customer and services less customers (it is more like a FTTC DSLAM setup). Therefore there should be even less strain and cost on the NTL/UPC network.

And of course NTL/UPC have their own data centre, with oodles of backbone connectivity, what do you think they used, a shed?

RangeR

Foxwood wrote:

What, are you telling me that there isn't a HD video out there explaining exacty what's involved, and that people would actually have to take time out from downloading to actually READ text based webpages explaining what's involved?

You are plainly not understanding a lot of what is being said. For my part, if you read my comment properly, I said

The majority of people don't even know what a DD-WRT [or similar flavour] is

If someone doesn't know what DD-WRT is, how the hell are they going to know what to look for. They don't know it exists so they don't know what "HD video" to look for. Basically, non techies will never of heard of it and would scare the cr@p out of themselves if they felt they had to flash their devices. To most people, these are just little boxes that sit on or under their desks, never to be touched.

But this is straying off the main topic.

Wouldn't it be ironic if watty, who doesn't need to know how much he has downloaded, because he's nowhere near the cap, might be the ony one in this thread who could install and use DD-WRT

That would be quite funny.

Foxwood

CiaranC wrote:

Im not arguing the toss with someone who thinks the purpose of a T1 speed connection to the internet is to make browsing ryanair.com 'feel' faster.

You're not arguing the toss with anyone - you're trying to change the argument by claiming that I made statements that I didn't make. I know that that's easier than admitting that you're wrong, or actually backing your assertions up with facts, but it's still no way to win an argument.

The amount of ms latency added to the connection since the new peering arrangements makes a nonsence of this argument anyway. Its higher than the amount of time in ms taken to transfer 120KB in the first place.

It's a bit "moronic" to complain about latency, given how slow boards.ie is to respond most of the time. Would it be asking too much to acknowledging that I was giving an example that shows that web pages are no longer a couple of K, and that many of the sites that broadband users frequent now generate pages that are hundreds of K, and that latency hasn't changed much for sites in Europe or the US?

But I suppose we'd better stop 'whining' and learn to live with it. Its the Irish way. :rolleyes:

No, actually, whining about it and doing nothing about it is the Irish way.

Which is what the vast majority of the moaners in this thread will be doing, unless a change is forced on them (by being disconnected). I don't see a single suggestion from any of the moaners of any sort of constructive response to NTL.

Mutant_Fruit

Foxwood wrote:

You're not arguing the toss with anyone - you're trying to change the argument by claiming that I made statements that I didn't make. I know that that's easier than admitting that you're wrong, or actually backing your assertions up with facts, but it's still no way to win an argument.

It's a bit "moronic" to complain about latency, given how slow boards.ie is to respond most of the time. Would it be asking too much to acknowledging that I was giving an example that shows that web pages are no longer a couple of K, and that many of the sites that broadband users frequent now generate pages that are hundreds of K, and that latency hasn't changed much for sites in Europe or the US?

For 100ms latency and a webpage with 100 1k pieces on it, a bad browser will take 10 seconds to load the page on a 3meg connections, 10 seconds on a 100meg connection and (amazingly enough) 10 seconds on a 0.5 meg connection. A good browser should be able to cut that time in half (at the best). The problem being is that the browser has to contact the server for *every* piece it wants to receive and then has to wait for that piece to be sent, then it has to send *another* request for the next piece. At no stage is even a 512kbps connection near saturated, yet it still takes 10 seconds to load. Thats how important latency is for browsing.

Take the same scenario, but cut the latency down to 20ms (less than your typical ping to a website). You're quite close to saturating a 512kbps connection in this case, but a 3meg connection still downloads at exactly the same speed as a 100meg connection.

Now, the point behind this (contrived) example is to show that increased connection speeds affect page browsing very, very little once you reach speeds faster than 2meg. The point behind a fast line is to *download* faster, not browse faster.

If you are paying for a 6meg or more connection while barely touching your 40gig a month allowance, i'm sorry to say you are being severely ripped off. Drop to a slower package, it won't affect your browsing speed one bit, but it will save you a wad of cash.

Boards is slow because the servers are overloaded (iirc), not because they are massive webpages. In fact an edit page is a mere 100kB (with 25% of that being the Digiweb ad currently being displayed).

Foxwood

bk wrote:

No, you are the one not getting the point. It costs NTL/UPC vastly more to route to Amsterdam then to peer in INEX.

No, it would cost them vastly more to upgrade their link to Amsterdam than it would to get their peering at INEX working - as I pointed out. But neither solution is free. Any additional capacity added to their network is going to cost them money. Apparently, they've decided that it's a cheaper to shed load than to upgrade.

I haven't seen a single argument or data point in this long, monotonous thread to disprove that assumpton.

There is absolutely no logical reason not to peer in INEX. If they did peer in INEX there would be no problem with having a much higher cap.

BTW UPC actually already have fibre running to INEX, they are listed as a new member on the INEX site, so they are currently paying that cost now anyway. They just haven't sorted the routeing yet.

As a matter of interest, how long were NTL running the network before they got the INEX routing sorted out? What's your best estimate of the amount of NTL/UPCs traffic that will go through INEX once the peering is sorted out?

You would only see a difference, if you tried to open 10 100k pages at the same time (with tabs) then yes, the 512k connection would take twice as long as 6m, but that is unusual, you won't see that during normal browsing.

Funny you should mention that - it's about the only way to use boards.ie these days (which only makes the load on the boards servers worse, I know).

What a load of bollocks.

NTL:UK would have much the same demographic mix of heavy and light users on their 10m service as UPC. Why would there be a difference?

I can put you at numerous threads on UK forums of NTL:UK users, happily downloading over 100GB per month, no problems.

If NTL:UK can afford to run a good network, with much the same costs and tech involved, why not UPC?

If UPC could afford to run a good network, with much the same costs and tech involved, why would they be cutting users off for going over 40GB?

That's about the only undisputed fact in this whole thread - UPC are cutting people off for going over their cap. If anyone has posted a single suggestion as to why UPC are doing this, other than the cost of supporting these users, I must have missed it.

Maybe you can tell me, bk, why they're cutting users off, as you're so sure that there's almost no additional cost involved in keeping them on as customers?

FFS, and what do you think NTL/UPC use. NTL/UPC have what is called a Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network. That means they have fibre to each Broadband enabled node. A node is equivalent to an exchange, just that in the case of a node, it tends to be much closer to the customer and services less customers (it is more like a FTTC DSLAM setup). Therefore there should be even less strain and cost on the NTL/UPC network.

And at what point does all this bandwidth at the customer end get to somewhere useful?

And of course NTL/UPC have their own data centre, with oodles of backbone connectivity, what do you think they used, a shed?

If NTL/UPC have oodles of backbone connectivity in Dublin, why are they routing through Amsterdam instead of using all that backbone connectivity that they have in Dublin?

I'm assuming that UPC figure that there are economies of scale to be made by connecting the network that they just bought into the network that they already own (just as NTL did before them), rather than building a completely seperate network and infrastructure and backbone connection for the Irish network.

CiaranC

Foxwood wrote:

Would it be asking too much to acknowledging that I was giving an example that shows that web pages are no longer a couple of K, and that many of the sites that broadband users frequent now generate pages that are hundreds of K, and that latency hasn't changed much for sites in Europe or the US?

Thats great, but its completely irrelevant.

Several posters have pointed out that you are missing the point.

Heres a chart.

http://www3.registrar.uwo.ca/LoadTime.cfm

After 2MB, there is *no* difference in downloading todays webpages. Even with the lowest available (512k), the difference is negligible.

The *only* purpose of a high bandwidth connection is to transfer large amounts of data, quickly.

You've come into this thread disparaging people for complaining about changes to their service, while fundamentally misunderstanding why they are miffed.

JNive

the speed a page downloads its determined really by 3 elemetns. On first access to the site, it is dependadnt on the ISP DNS server, and your ping to it, say this process takes 200ms on 56 K ( including transfer of dns info to you ), it would take 60ms say on a 512K and the same on a 3meg ( since its literally a minute piece of info transmitted, and msotly determined by time for the request to send be recieved ).
then you have a slight delay for the webserver to start sending the info once you make a request to it ( this request time is say 80ms on dial up, 30ms on broadband ) the data is then sent to the customer, say its 100kb including graphics. this requires 30 seconds on 56k conection, and about 2.5 seconds on 512k, and about 1.2 seconds on 3meg ( about 800ms since you probably have about 20 files referenced in the page, each request requiring 40ms to send/recieve say ). Then you have the rendering time to display all this on your computer, say .5 seconds minimum for the average user.

Total Load times.
56K = 25sec ( page loads ) + ( 200ms DNS lookups ) + ( 2 seconds webserver requests ) + ( 1000ms render time ) = 28.20 seconds. Connection Speed Dependant components = 25/28.20 = 89%
512K = 1.8 seconds ( page loads ) + ( 60ms DNS Lookups ) + ( 700ms webserver requests ) + ( 1000ms render time ) = 3.56 seconds. Connection Speed Dependant Component = 1.8 / 3.56 = 51%
3MB = .4 seconds ( page loads ) + ( 60 ms DNS Lookups ) + ( 700ms webserver requests ) + ( 1000 ms render time ) = 2.16 seconds .Connection Speed Dependant Component = .4/2.16 = 19%

Going from dial up to 512K ( 10 times the speed of dial-up ), time comes from 28 to about 3.5 seconds, Its obvious this is desirable and worth the money ( 8 times faster in loading pages )
Going from 512K to 3MB ( 6 times the speed of 512K ), time comes down from 3.5 seconds to 2.16 seconds ( 1.6 times faster in loading webpages ).

In terms of user experience, the difference between something taking 2 seconds and 3 seconds isnt all that big, and not worthy of probably a EUR30 difference in broadband price ( if not more ) , really. so as opthers are saying, you would be mad to pick the 3mb package to experience the reduction between 3 and 2 seconds. Much better offa sticking with a 512K package and expereience the difference between 30 seconds and 3 seconds lol.

Mojito

IrishTLR wrote:

I really fail to see how some people cannot see past their own usage. It maybe be cause you are comparing everyone else to yourself or you just don't know what services available on the internet. The internet isn't just about briwsing and email. There is a whole different world out there. I'm not just saying this to you, Mojito, but to everyone who thinks that anything ofer 3 or 4 GB a month HAS to be illegal stuff. My gawd, I could download ONE file today that would be over 3GB, pourely legal no warez stuff. Add to that, your PS2 or XBox on line. HD video takes a LOT of bandwidth. Transfering files

Re-read my post. I was being sarcastic to the poster I was quoting.

I think you should have a choice of a cap or no cap like you can have a choice of different speeds. Also if you have read through this thread you would have seen my earlier post where I said I recieved the high usage cap.