Ntl Cutting Off High Usage Users

Foxwood

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

For 100ms latency and a webpage with 100 1k pieces

We're not talking about a web page with 100 1k pieces, we're talking about a single page that's over 100k (170k for the index page).

I have to say that it's blatently dishonest to contrive an example like that.

I've been using the Internet for over 20 years (yes, before TBL invented the web). I had a website up and running on a Vax within 6 months of NCSA releasing the first public betas of their web browser. So I know a little bit about latency and when, where and why it makes a difference. A 512kDSL connection felt fast 5 years ago, not because latency was lower, or because my expectations were lower, but because 5 years ago I wasn't encountering 200k index pages very often. The 2 second delay in loading a 200k index page on a 512k connection is far more aggravating than the fact that the streaming video I'm watching is downloading in the background faster than I can watch it anyway. (I won't even bother getting into http/1.1 and caching - I'd hate to confuse the issue with facts).

As for the "wad of cash" that you figure I'll save by putting up with constant one and 2 second delays, I figure the extra tenner a month might well be worth it for the couple of occassions a month when I do want to download something.

RangeR

Mojito wrote:

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.

My apologies. As you will see just one or two posts down from that, a very nice guy pointed out your sacrastic smile. I then replied but don't think I formally apologised.

I hereby apologise.

No harm, no foul

RangeR

Foxwood wrote:

We're not talking about a web page with 100 1k pieces, we're talking about a single page that's over 100k (170k for the index page).

We are going waaaaaay off topic here and yes I'm partly to blame. Can we get back on topic and I promise I'll let the above semi untruth slip

Foxwood

CiaranC wrote:

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

I understand why they're miffed. I don't have any sympathy for them, and I have a pain in the face reading the same complaints with no constructive suggestions (13 pages). Deal with it. UPC don't want your custom. They don't have any duty or obligation to provide you with an uncapped service, and they apparently don't think it's in their business interest to address the market segment that you represent. You might think that they're wrong, but you don't have access to their figures, and they do, so it's likely that they're right, and you're wrong.

Repeatedly stating the fact that NTL users in the UK can download 100G a month doesn't change anything.

6th

Foxwood wrote:

I have a pain in the face reading the same complaints

Dont read the thread so?

Moriarty

Everyone take a deep breath.

Relax.

Boomer23 banned for PMing people with hostile shíte. More bans will be thrown around for anyone else that steps over the line.

CiaranC

Foxwood wrote:

I don't have any sympathy for them

• People have been cut off for exceeding the cap by 5%
• There is no bandwidth monitoring tool provided
• There is no free, viable means of doing your own monitoring
• No cap existed when most signed up
• Network performance has seriously degraded, not due to the end-user, but to poor network management & planning
• On a service capable of 768KB/Sec, users are forced to average 16KB/Sec or face termination
• Using the service to its capacity for any 16 of the 720 hours in the month means users face termination
• There is absolutely no reason to have the MAX service other than to transfer large amounts of data, fast
• No higher allowance cap is available for a higher price, which most would gladly pay

Given the above, If you have no sympathy we have to consider the possibilty that you are an NTL shill. Personally, I dont see any other explanation.

Sponge Bob

CiaranC wrote:

• Using the service to its capacity for any 16 of the 720 hours in the month means users face terminatio

Thats pretty bad all right, you should not be able to get yourself banned in less than 1 day. Its actually worse than the original eircom cap of 4gb on a 512k line some 3 years back. IIRc it took 20 hours to bust that.

bk

Foxwood wrote:

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.

True, but even with cutting people off, they will need to invest in one or the other in the future if they expect to take on any new customers.

Plus people are constantly finding new and legal ways to use the internet. ISP's simply can't enforce caps any more, if they do like UPC is, I honestly believe that they will soon go out of business.

Foxwood wrote:

As a matter of interest, how long were NTL running the network before they got the INEX routing sorted out?

Well, I don't know how long it was going on, however it was fixed three days after I first noticed it and complained about it here on boards. At the time two NTL engineers regularly posted here.

It is interesting to note that they both left not long before UPC bought NTL and are now doing a great job with another well known and succesful Irish ISP.

Foxwood wrote:

What's your best estimate of the amount of NTL/UPCs traffic that will go through INEX once the peering is sorted out?

It is hard to say and it depends on who they peer with.

It should be noted that I believe they should also be peering in the UK for UK traffic and either out of Ireland or the UK for US traffic. Doing all of that would be cheaper then routing through Amsterdam.

Foxwood wrote:

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).

Nothing to do with BB, it is due to the strain on boards servers. Boards is slow on both my 6m NTL connection and my very fast work connection.

Foxwood wrote:

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?

I have three theories (unconfirmed):

1) They are using this opportunity to disconnect the heaviest users, while they are still called NTL, so they don't sully the name UPC when they finally change to it.

2) They messed up big time and due to incompetency they didn't have all the fibre, routing and peering agreements in place before their contract with NTL:UK ran out. Meaning they had to route everything through Amsterdam and it will take them a while to sort everything out.

Of course routing through a pipe to Holland is a major bottleneck and is causing a major drop in the quality of the network. As a stop gap measure they are therefore cutting off the highest users to give them temporary breathing room until they sort the problem.

3) They have decided to have little or no network staff and equipment in Ireland and instead just base it all in Amsterdam. This theory has some weight as read above how excellent engineers left when UPC took over.

Personally I'm guessing and hoping it is 2, if it is 3 then UPC is definitely f**ked and I'd predict will quickly become the worst ISP (not just for downloaders), you simply can't run an ISP from thousands of miles away.

Foxwood wrote:

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

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?

Hey, I was replying to your comments, you were the one that commented that Smart and Magnet have loads of local bandwidth and that was why they have high or no caps. I was just pointing out that NTL does as well, so the difference isn't there. The difference is their international pipes and routing.

It should be noted, that unlike Smart or Magnet, UPC actually own almost the whole network they use, so their costs should be much lower then both Smart and Magnet, who have to pay Eircom a lot of money.

In fact the cost of running a BB network on top of an existing HFC netowrk is actually very low. Most cableco's consider BB to be an excellent high margin business with relatively low costs.

I really do believe UPC's problems are technical, not financial.

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.[/QUOTE]

Sponge Bob

bk wrote:

2) They messed up big time and due to incompetency they didn't have all the fibre, routing and peering agreements in place before their contract with NTL:UK ran out. Meaning they had to route everything through Amsterdam and it will take them a while to sort everything out.

Confirm that in full.

Add point 4. Chorus in Limerick is running the show now.

This site (a) has been like this for ages...at least since late year ..... while this other site (b) has recently had a schnazzy makeover.

Welcome to Chorus Hell !

dub45

Sponge Bob wrote:

Confirm that in full.

Add point 4. Chorus in Limerick is running the show now.

This site (a) has been like this for ages...at least since late year ..... while this other site (b) has recently had a schnazzy makeover.

Welcome to Chorus Hell !

Shnazzy maybe but definitely useless! Where are the radio frequencies gone? They seem to be steering everyone towards their phone number:rolleyes:

Mojito

IrishTLR wrote:

My apologies. As you will see just one or two posts down from that, a very nice guy pointed out your sacrastic smile. I then replied but don't think I formally apologised.

I hereby apologise.

No harm, no foul

No need for to apologise just get NTL to sort out my cap!

FrankGrimes

Foxwood - there's a load of posts here suggesting that UPC peer in INEX as NTL used to do when they provided an excellent service. You can't get a more constructive suggestion than that, though I'm not really sure the onus is on the customers to solve UPC's problems for them. If my Vodafone service goes down or the net access on it is slow I ring them and tell them to sort it out quick smart or I will close my account and I'm pretty sure that's what most people do. Why should broadband be different?

The bottom line is people like me and many here have been paying a premium price for NTL's top package for many years now. All was well and nobody was losing out due to heavy downloaders. Then UPC changed everything and now the service is very poor - connection going down intermittently, speed reduced, and enforced caps which are too low for a 6MB product.

This was caused by their incompetence and/or a very poor strategic decision to peer in Amsterdam. Customers are not the problem, the service provider is the problem. They then realised they couldn't get the service back to the same level it used to be at without a large expenditure so they have decided to demonise the heavy downloaders for actually using the product to its potential. I'd imagine management made this decision in full knowledge that some day they might have their network back to a state where they can accommodate the same people they are cutting off now and indeed they'd love to have them back cos by then they might even be able to charge an increased premium for an increased cap or per GB in excess of the cap. However, I'd say the decision has been forced on them by their incompetence and they had to take this hit.

By the way, I'm yet to see a convincing argument as to why they don't have a way for customers to monitor usage - they surely have a CRM system in operation and leveraging information from this through a web app would be relatively simple. If the likes of Vodafone didn't offer a way of checking remaining minutes I'm sure ComReg would have an issue with it.

And lastly - Foxwood - do you, or any of your family or friends, work for, or have a commercial interest in, NTL/UPC or any other ISP?

MiCr0

FrankGrimes wrote:

And lastly - Foxwood - do you, or any of your family or friends, work for, or have a commercial interest in, NTL/UPC or any other ISP?

what does this have to do with anything?

Please keep discussion on topic

sham69

Well Said Frank Grimes.
I think it has a lot to do with it, if you read over the thread properly
you will see that Foxwood has constantly tried to condone what NTL are doing. My first instinct was that he either works for NTL , knows someone who does or wants to work for them.
Bottom line is as stated NTL provided a service which has now changed and with the effect that people are getting disconnected for doing what they have been doing for months.
Sorry if that sounds basic and apologies is anyone is insulted.

Vadrefjorde

I second that.... Well said Frank Grimes
This thread had gone off topic beacuse Foxwood tried time after time to defend NTL/CHORUS/UPC's actions and service. I guess this led to Frank Grimes asking his valid question at the end of his post.

MiCr0

how can that be a valid question?

i know some one who works for ISPs - does that make a difference?

I know many people who have ntl - does that make a difference?

You are discussing NTL cutting people off here - not who foxwood knows or even what he thinks

FrankGrimes

MiCr0 wrote:

what does this have to do with anything?

Please keep discussion on topic

I think it is a very valid question in the context of this thread. If Foxwood can answer No to that question then his/her points should be given equal consideration and respected as an individual's decision.

If the answer is Yes it means Foxwood has a vested interest which would be a very helpful insight into his/her points.

watty

Metro is same protocol as UPC/NTL cable. The two systems can even use the same modems! So we have an example of a different supplier in same market that does allow traffic monitoring and day, 7 day, 30 day rolling /sliding usage graphs

MiCr0

FrankGrimes wrote:

I think it is a very valid question in the context of this thread. If Foxwood can answer No to that question then his/her points should be given equal consideration and respected as an individual's decision.

If the answer is Yes it means Foxwood has a vested interest which would be a very helpful insight into his/her points.

there is no need for any user to justify their opinions in any situation

jor el

sham69 wrote:

Bottom line is as stated NTL provided a service which has now changed and with the effect that people are getting disconnected for doing what they have been doing for months.

The service hasn't changed, it was always against the terms to break the cap. NTL are just enforcing that policy now. It seems unfair that they choose to enforce it without giving the user any way to check their bandwidth though and I would have a problem with this.

Whether or not Foxwood works for NTL, or any ISP, has absolutely nothing to do with what's happening here. He may be of the opinion that NTL are justified in their decision, which technically they are, but that doesn't have to mean he works for them. And even if he does, so what, it's still just his opinion.

I don't agree with NTL's decision, however they have the right to enforce the rules that all their customers signed up to.

dub45

The logical thing for ''NTL'' to have done would be to remind everyone that they had signed up for a cap - acknowledge that they (NTL) had been lax in the past but that caps would be enforced from a date say a couple of months away and introduce some method for a customer to 'read' his downloads. They could also have introduced say an extra fee for unlimited downloads as UTV have done or a charge per unit for going over the cap.

Their behaviour seems incredibly heavy handed and uncustomer friendly. They must be under fierce pressure for bandwidth because surely no matter how many heavy downloaders they get rid off it can only make a small difference overall to an isp of their size? (and I mean the latter point as a question for the experts:) )

JNive

on 95th percentile - type billings it would make a differrence lol. if most of the peak traffic is from a small minority of users, daily, then in the month, the 95th percentile mark could be lowered a lot by getting rid if that 1% for example.

CiaranC

MiCr0 wrote:

there is no need for any user to justify their opinions in any situation

You might think its tinfoil hat stuff, but there have been many instances where people have been exposed as marketing shills for companies, even here on boards. The phenomenon is huge all over the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/searchbt.php?search=shill&order=0&user=&scope=4&cat=1&frm=-1

All the above were situations where people had to justify their opinions. Not saying Foxwood is, but it seems a little wierd.

CyberGhost

Got a letter today, I did 130GB in August...

But that's why I chose ntl's 6 meg product, I download a lot!(and not all of that is illegal)

Anyways 40GB cap is ridiculous for a 6 meg product, and this gets more obvious with so many people getting those letters.

150-200GB would be more appropriate.

Size of everything is getting bigger(look at BF2 patches, 500mb!, HD trailers 150 meg atleast), but the cap stays the same...

But I guess ntl just want to leech off their 6 meg product and sell it to grandmas and grandpas who send emails to their grandkids once a month.

And whoever defends them, why are you doing it? why are you trying to put Internet in Ireland back into the stone age? do you like to be controlled and commanded or something?

ntl is constantly screwing something up in my neighborhood, it's either tv service or broadband service..... why do I never get appology letters for that?

Mutant_Fruit

Foxwood wrote:

We're not talking about a web page with 100 1k pieces, we're talking about a single page that's over 100k (170k for the index page).

I have to say that it's blatently dishonest to contrive an example like that.

Well, you'll see a *lot* more pages with 100 1k items than pages with a single 100k item. In fact (to show how uncontrived my example is) When you click the link to post a new reply, there are no less than 70 "media" files on the boards.ie page (meaning images). Each of these images is less than 1K in size (but for the point of my example, they can be considered to be 1k). That's not counting the buttons, radiobuttons, dropdownlists and the main title bar at the top of the page.

Of course, taking 10 seconds to load the page could be considered to be contrived as there are a lot of latency hiding techniques such as caching which are used to make pages load faster. Caching isn't just to save your bandwidth anymore, it makes pages load considerably faster. Other techniques such as using multiple connections to get information from the server or requesting multiple pieces of information over a single connection hide latency making your connection appear to have less latency than it actually does.

But the fact is, 100meg or 3 meg won't affect your browsing. A 3meg connection can download 100kB in less than 1/3 of a second. A 100meg would do it in probably 1/6-1/10th of a second (latency playing a huge part here). I somehow doubt anyone would notice the 200ms difference. With tabbed browsing becoming so popular, neither bandwidth or latency are becoming huge problems anymore.

Even if you browse sites like youtube or google videos, 3meg or 100 meg makes no difference as the server just won't send you data fast enough to saturate even a 3meg connection, not even close.

EDIT: Just while we're on the point of pages with 1 item thats over 100kB in size (for example those horrible 100% flash sites), they need a serious redesign. There's a lot of users out there still on dialup, and they sure won't appreciate having to wait 20 or more seconds for anything to appear on the screen. HTML webpages can be rendered as they arrive, making them "feel" faster.

MiCr0

for the final time
there is to be no debating/finger pointing/suggestions being made about any of the other posters here

if you believe that a user is a shill - say it - and backup the statement.

It isn't enough that a user supports a provider when they follow their terms.

SHould all users have to post their "credentials" every time they post?

I work for a global telecoms company and have esatbb - and a vodafone phone. Do you need to know who my banking is with too?

Discuss the topic and not the user - any posts that dont do this will be deleted

FrankGrimes

MiCr0 wrote:

for the final time
there is to be no debating/finger pointing/suggestions being made about any of the other posters here

if you believe that a user is a shill - say it - and backup the statement.

It isn't enough that a user supports a provider when they follow their terms.

SHould all users have to post their "credentials" every time they post?

I work for a global telecoms company and have esatbb - and a vodafone phone. Do you need to know who my banking is with too?

Discuss the topic and not the user - any posts that dont do this will be deleted

Hi Micro,

I'll just add this last post and then leave it at that so this can stay on topic - but is there somewhere in the charter that backs up what you are saying? I'm not saying there's not its just I was under the assumption that the charter said something like 'if you have a vested interest in a particular topic you should disclose it when discussing that topic' as that's pretty standard practice for most discussion forums, but I may be remembering that from elsewhere.

For example, if you were posting in a thread defending your telecoms company I think disclosing the fact that you work for them is the right thing to do. Fair enough, if it's a different telecoms company it's not as relevant, but it's surely very relevant if you are closely involved.

For example, if a poster says 'I work for NTL and I think there policy is fine' I'll treat that a certain way, whereas if a poster says 'I'm a normal punter and have nothing to do with NTL but I think their policy is fine', I'll take that another way. If I'm launching into a defence of a particular company and have nothing to do with them I'll always point out I have no involvement, as I actually think it strengthens my case.

If we had 100 posters on here all backing up Foxwood's viewpoint it would appear that popular opinion was that NTL's policies are fine. If each of these posters revealed that they worked for NTL most people would not regard it as an accurate portrayal of public interest as it would just seem like employees defending their vested interest.

bk

MiCr0 wrote:

SHould all users have to post their "credentials" every time they post?

Strangely, this forum doesn't have a Charter, but the normal rules of boards.ie are that if you are discussing a topic for which you have a conflict of interest (work for the company) then yes, you are supposed to disclose it.

For instance from the IOFFL charter:

7. All participants are required to declare their interests up front, when participating in discussions directly affecting them or their company

Interestingly in the past, a person from BT came on the IOFFL forum, pretended to be a customer of BT and said how great BT were. However it was discovered who the person really was (she had made a previous post a while earlier saying she worked for BT!!) and it was brought to the attention of BT who apologised.

Now I'm not saying that Foxwood does work for NTL, I don't know and I'd be surprised if he is, but if he is, he should declare it.

slightly lost

antor wrote:

I got a disconnection notice form ntl saying that I downloaded in excess of 194 GB during the Month of August Well I'm of to magnet, So long Ntl

We have a winner! I thought I was bad. I have no scanner but here is the latest version of the letter. Dated 15/9/06

Dear Customer,

We are writing to you because, unfortunately, some of our broad band customers in your area have been experiencing deterioration in the service we offer them. We have found that this is most often caused by a small number of our broadband customers who are continually uploading and downloading extremely large files, which has a detrimental effect on our network.

The usage guidelines for ntl Broadband Max is up to 40GB of data transfer monthly. Our systems show that your usage during August was 120+(not real) GB. The following provides a rough guide* to the usage for normal Internet activities:
100 emails – 5Mb
100 WebPages = 10Mb
I hour chatting online = .04Mb
1 hour online gaming = 1.5Mb
1 video clip downloaded = 25Mb
1 MP3 music file = 4Mb

Please, for the sake of all our broadband customers, reduce the bandwidth utilised through your cable modem. We do not wish to impose restrictions on your broadband service, however if your usage continues to exceed the usage allowance we may be forced to upgrade you and charge accordingly. Suspend or disconnect your service for continued high usage.

Ntl’s broadband services are intended for normal recreational or educational use by individuals and families and our pricing and network architecture have been designed accordingly.

“Normal letter ending”

Nial Mc Nally

PS To view the Acceptable usage policy for ntl visit www.ntl.ie

*This should only be used as a guide

Maybe they are perfecting it from reading this thread? And is the whole educational and family thing is true no real need for 6mb lines tbh.

As for me.... I joined NTL BB about 4 years ago. I recall the sales pitch being "Unlimited"

I shall be asking them later in the week to tell me what has changed. But please note I lost a lot of files in August and the 120+gigs was me replacing them. So I would say over the 4 + years or what ever I have averaged <1 GB a month... if even that. Hell I have gone for months without donloading anything.

/goes off to find original contract...

[edit] I didn't put my exact dl in GB' for ntl to track me down from boards.ie