IBB Trials - Conclusions:- 2Mb or 3Mb?

julius

People dont like restrictions to be forced on them!!!

I would prefer a 1MBit with good service quality and no cap...rather than a 10MBit service with a 500MB a day CAP.

Im on iolBB+ so I know all too well of the misery of CAPS!!!!!!

julius

julius wrote:

rather than a 10MBit service with a 500MB a day CAP.

When has that ever happened? Having a 1GB cap is perfectly reasonable. The small percentage of bandwith hogs will be the only ones moaning. It allows everyone to have fair usage of their connection.

Mutant_Fruit

A 1 gig a day cap is less than some ISP's are already offering :P Didn't one of the ADSL resellers offer a 32 gig cap on their highest package?

Introducing caps would be a bad move from IBB. QoS tools are there to make sure everyone is getting a fair service. But they definately shouldn't be used to impose an artifical cap by limiting someone 24x7.

Random

Not with IBB yet but hoping to soon if you guys offer some free installs (it's the install costs killing me )

I'd say 3Mbit/3Mbit would be dam good, followed up by a (fairly relaxed) 1GB a day cap. By fairly relaxed I mean that you should have a bit of leeway each day and compare it to how much they've been downloading the few weeks previous etc. 1GB a day cap and then drop the speed to 1Mbit/1Mbit for the rest of the day seems perfectly acceptable to me aswell.

Random

Also, maybe offer an extra option of paying an extra E10(inc VAT) per month for unlimited downloads or something.....

Boston

I have to say the main attraction for me, would be the no cap. Going to a situation where I have to concern myself with daily caps would be a pain in the ass. I'd rather a 1mb constant service and unlimited rather then a daily cap. Simple reason being that I know that there will be days when such a cap will effect me, completely un avoidable, and I'm a user thats never exceeded his 16gig utv cap. Also thats going to be a pain in the arse for oyu guys to sell to people, complicates your product.

Lemming

I would be inclined to say uncapped over capped any day for two reasons. Consistency and reliability being one of them. The other is that whilst the practicalities of providing bandwidth (someone somewhere has to pay for it), part of the whole thing about broadband was not having to start "watching the clock" so to speak and this would equally apply to data transfer.

I've been with IBB over two years and have never really been a heavy downloader by any stretch of the imagination. But at the same time it's nice to know that I'm not going to get screwed when I decide to download a large file like an ISO image.

With that said, *IF* a cap were to be introduced with a high-bandwidth product in order to ensure decent throughput for users, I would be in favour of something that would be say, weekly, as opposed to daily. If someone maxes out a week's worth of data-transfer in two days then there is something seriously wrong and they're taking the piss and with no-one but themselves to blame. But at the same time, you're going to kill people trying to download things like new releases of *NIX distros with a daily 1GB cap. Granted, new releases aren't done everyday, but you should be seeing the argument I'm tryig to make.

Nephew

i have breeze 1mb nearly 6 weeks now and its been absolutely amazing.

i like the idea of a 3mb line but a 1 gig daily cap isn't winning me over, because on average i'm downloading 4gigs a week but the bulk of my downloading is usually over a couple of days so i'd be inclined to break the daily cap once or twice a week.

a 3mb line with a daily cap of 1.75 or 2 gigs would be more appealing to me.

Random

Cap it at something like 100GB a month? 90% of users won't go near this but it may lesson some concerns (mine anyway) about not having enough bandwidth.

Boston

With a 1 gig cap your taking about less then an hour a day where you will see full speed. So whats the bloody point of have a 3mb connection. On top of that I doubt all people could recieve 3mb, so they would be on something like 2mb but with a 1gig a day cap. Doesn't seem fair. No I don't like this at all, and if I was upgraded to this from a 1mb connection I'd ask to be downgraded again.

Mutant_Fruit

People, think of it this way.

3meg connection, with a 1 gig a day cap? Or a 2 meg connection with no cap. I think we all know which is preferable. Clock watching, or metre watching isnt what anyone wants. Thats why a lot of us moved to broadband, so we wouldn't have to watch the clock anymore. Why switch one constraint for another.

I'm all for limiting people who download 24x7. (Which can be me at times ) But i'm not in favour of caps in any way, shape or form.

Random

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

I'm all for limiting people who download 24x7. (Which can be me at times ) But i'm not in favour of caps in any way, shape or form.

Forgive me, but haven't you just contradicted yourself?

Boston

No, a one gig cap has nothing to do with people that download 24x7, an acceptable usage agreement is what would be used to deal with 24x7 downloaders.

Random

"i'm not in favour of caps in any way, shape or form."

"No, a one gig cap has nothing to do with people that download 24x7, an acceptable usage agreement is what would be used to deal with 24x7 downloaders."

an accept usage agreement (which limits usage) is a cap "in any way, shape or form".

Mutant_Fruit

Yup, gotta love those contradictions :rolleyes: In future, when i refer to caps, i mean download allowances. I dont like being told you can only download X GB a month.

QoS should only affect me if IBB are running low on bandwidth, and i'm a 24x7 downloader. If they do run low, i should be given lower priority, but as soon as bandwidth frees up, i should be allowed return to max speed. Thats the way QoS should work.

Thats the difference i see between caps and QoS. QoS is only temporary, caps are permanent.

EDIT: When i said "But i'm not in favour of caps in any way, shape or form." i meant it in the way that i don't like caps at all. There is no way you could get me to agree they are a good thing. I didn't mean it in the way that anything that limits your ability to download is bad.

enno

Narcom wrote:

And to be honest, customer service is one of the major failings with IBB, so this would only worsen the situation. To recap, a stable, reliable 2Mb is preferable.

I agree about the customer service.

I'd be happy with the 512k I'm paying for if they'd only stop dropping my packets when I'm using less than my contention-ratio share.

Random

@ Mutant_Fruit

Fair enough, seems I took you up completely wrong (or can we blame you? :P )

As for QoS I'll agree to that

enno

enno wrote:

... if they'd only stop dropping my packets ...

If they must drop packets, they could start with all those malware packets they insist on delivering!

Infini

Boston wrote:

No, a one gig cap has nothing to do with people that download 24x7, an acceptable usage agreement is what would be used to deal with 24x7 downloaders.

Or offering them their own private fibre optic line for E200 a month. Wonder if anyone will sell those in the future here.

OldTitan

OK, read the whole debate. The idea behind QoS /limiting 24/7 bandwidth is that we can offer a more stable service if we reduce the guys who are doing maximum downloads 24/7 during peak times. It gives the other users better service.

What I have seen above is:
a) totally against any form of a 'cap', but OK with QoS management
b) OK with a 'cap', but with greater flexibility.

Next debate, 2 scenarios:-
1) 3Mb symetric service replaces the 1Mb service, with 8Gb per week. Once you exceed that, you are rate limited to 1Mb. After a further 2Gb, you are ratelimited to 512kbps.
2) 3Mb symetric service. After 8Gb in a week you are ratelimited to 512kbps during peak hours, say 07h00 to 10h00 and after that you get full speed again till the next period commences. Assume each period starts on Friday at 18h00.

New comments?

Infini

The second option sounds much better than the first. At least any downloads I wanted to do could be done overnight and I'd still have a fast enough connection to surf webpages. Even having a 55kb/s transfer speed during the day is acceptable if I can get over 300Kb/s after 6.

Nephew

after i've had some time to think about it i'd much rather a 2mb line with the same conditions that apply to the present breeze 1mb package.

echoing bostons post, what use is a 3mb line with a daily cap of 1 gig if you can only get full speed for an hour or so?

by introducing a cap of 8 gigs a week (i.e. 32gigs a month) you're pretty much offering the same deal as all the other broadband providers. the reason i went with ibb was because of your fair usage policy, which most people here would agree with.

Skud

I dont like the idea of capping the service also. But if you give us a pretty decent service then ok. But you are only limited to 512kbs at 07h00 to 10h00 in the day time? If this is true then this seems to be a good service. I know businesses use the bb then but most home users won't. How strict will these quotes be enforced and also what system will be introduced to keep track? Like a login (same as esat bt?) When we ring up customer services will they know? You really are getting yourself into something here that needs to be considered and discussed strongly with cutomer services. If they dont know whats going on and we asking them (ppl who dont understand) then theres going to be problems. Also will the services be advertised as capped/throttled for going over the limits? Imo the second is attractive. The first is rate limited fully for the week after exceeding the cap? Definitely the second so.

As nephew said you are offering what the other companies are if you are going to introduce a 32gig a month cap. Expect some kind of backlash from the other companies in the form of them raising their cap at some stage. This will again leave you behind unless you deal with it.

jesus_thats_gre

The 2nd option seems like a decent alternative to me.

512kb is still a decent bit of bandwidth and is still sufficient to play online games and browse..

While I would like full access to my bandwidth whenever I want, one has got to be realisitic and realise that this offering is considerably better than the alternatives out there.. Decent pings to game servers are a must for me so if it means the above meassures need to be inplemented to maintain the existing times, I can force myself to accept it..

Once again though, any consideration given to offering a limitless service for an extra fee?

Makaveli

2Meg uncapped please.
Pretty much agree with everything Mutant_Fruit has said, so I wont rehash it all.

Blaster99

I would go for scenario 1.

pete

OldTitan wrote:

Next debate, 2 scenarios:-
1) 3Mb symetric service replaces the 1Mb service, with 8Gb per week. Once you exceed that, you are rate limited to 1Mb. After a further 2Gb, you are ratelimited to 512kbps.
2) 3Mb symetric service. After 8Gb in a week you are ratelimited to 512kbps during peak hours, say 07h00 to 10h00 and after that you get full speed again till the next period commences. Assume each period starts on Friday at 18h00.

I'm guessing that should read "07h00 to 19h00"?

Random

xGB of "peak" usage and UNLIMITED offpeak usage sounds dam fine to me... not problem getting things to download overnight and grab them in the morning, seems fair all round

Narcom

OldTitan wrote:

What I have seen above is:
a) totally against any form of a 'cap', but OK with QoS management
b) OK with a 'cap', but with greater flexibility.

Eh? I think the conclusion reached here is a little ropey. If I was being cynical I would now say that the original questions had an agenda regarding the introduction of caps, as the second set of questions take the debate onto a different level.

My reading of the responses was:
A) 2Mb with a reliable service no caps, might live with 'some' QoS
[a] 3Mb+ with possibly a cap or 3Mb unlimited and willing to pay slightly more

OldTitan wrote:

Next debate, 2 scenarios:-
1) 3Mb symetric service replaces the 1Mb service, with 8Gb per week. Once you exceed that, you are rate limited to 1Mb. After a further 2Gb, you are ratelimited to 512kbps.
2) 3Mb symetric service. After 8Gb in a week you are ratelimited to 512kbps during peak hours, say 07h00 to 10h00 and after that you get full speed again till the next period commences. Assume each period starts on Friday at 18h00.

New comments?

What is the end result of this debate - are people basically going to be presented with 'Hobson's choice' of caps or, em caps? Both of the new debate options are a fractional improvement on the original 1 gig a day (although weekly is fairer than daily) and option 2 is preferable to some like me, but worse for others.

It is worrying that if we debate this to the logical conclusion we may have tacitly accepted a pretty serious change in the product now with heavy QoS or capping, which looks like what may be on the cards here. Perhaps I'm being overly paranoid?

Given that the 1Mb service is very very frequently not a 1Mb service (more like 5-600kb, I hate to think what 512 will look like, I remember how bad the old equipment on 512 was.... :mad:

If each period starts on Friday evening then your limit will be gone possibly by Saturday which means your service is fecked until the next weekend, starting on a monday would be preferable.

Can you please articulate the reason again why the infrastructure cannot handle 2Mb/3Mb natively, doesn't the original equipment spec for Alvarion not permit this? If so, then is the issue here not the backhaul from the towers and network setup, and is this why you are considering QoS/capping? I may be getting my limited tech understanding mixed up so apologies in advance..

Random

Narcom - I think what he's trying to do is (correct me if I'm wrong) get some opinions on some other scenarios, rather then replacing the existing ones. So now in effect we have 4 scenarios in front of us for comments on.


Having said that, let's try not to cap

2Mbit/2Mbit constant quality service bits a scrapy 3Mbit/3Mbit one...