BT Infinity - anyone got it yet?

[yamangman]

That's awful. I'd rather they limit the total capacity of a my fibre DSL to say 10Mb rather than shape specific protocols. It'd be a big improvement over the 3Mb or so I get already, and it wouldn't adversely impact others.

The most irritating problem is finding an official source of information about what occurs on their product. I think ofcom should step in and get these providers to spill the beans about their service so consumers can make an informed decision before getting tied into 1/2 year contracts.

[neonplanet40]

Its a joke about how you can never get a straight answer about anything anymore. Really it is

Wonder what it will be like in say ten years..... Companies getting away with more and more every year. Unlimited really takes the biscuit in my mind because somehow companies have took a word which means no ending, or limitless and have slapped a limit on it. And according to ofcom this is ok.

[chrestomanci]

That's awful. I'd rather they limit the total capacity of a my fibre DSL to say 10Mb rather than shape specific protocols. It'd be a big improvement over the 3Mb or so I get already, and it wouldn't adversely impact others.

Agreed. It is not just torrents, or even file sharing protocols in general that can suck up bandwith.

When I downloaded 8Gb in one day because there was a new Ubuntu release (see my post above), I was not downloading the release via Bittorrent. The release got downloaded in the form of several thousand package files via normal http. The kind of traffic that would not normally be throttled at all.

The most irritating problem is finding an official source of information about what occurs on their product. I think ofcom should step in and get these providers to spill the beans about their service so consumers can make an informed decision before getting tied into 1/2 year contracts.

Definitely agree with that.

The good news is that all the stuff related to throttling or traffic shaping is policy of the ISP. I am currently with Zen, and their traffic shaping policies are well understood, and fairly friendly. (The trade off is that there is a hard transfer cap for the month). If I where to upgrade an FTTC service, I would go with Zen again, or perhaps switch to Andrews and Arnold who are even more open when it comes to traffic shaping and blocking (they don't do any at all).

[Spud1]

The most irritating problem is finding an official source of information about what occurs on their product. I think ofcom should step in and get these providers to spill the beans about their service so consumers can make an informed decision before getting tied into 1/2 year contracts.

Can't argue with this, and all ISPs are guilty of it..their FUPs are often confusing and far too general, so that people don't know what they are getting into until it is too late. As I have mentioned in this thread before I am all for ISPs throttling all file sharing/P2P activity during peak hours - its a sensible measure that any ISP who cares about quality of service will implement, as it preserves the QOS for most users whilst still allowing people to get round it by doing their downloading out of peak hours.

The fact that this is not mentioned up front however is what is wrong and this is what needs to be changed. It's tantamount to false advertising really, and is misleading at best..its been this way for years though. Sadly with the takeoff of P2P in the past 10 years I don't see a time when true unlimited internet will ever return..the people who sit there downloading/uploading lots of data cost ISPs far too much with the current networks. Even limiting connection speeds doesn't help with this cost, as its the quantity that matters here not the speed that its acquired at.

Ofcom/ASA are the only two groups who can make this happen though I think, not sure if there is a current investigation or not..so moral is: Don't complain because you can't use P2P, complain because you were not told so explicitly when taking out a contract!

[watercooled]

Agreed. It is not just torrents, or even file sharing protocols in general that can suck up bandwith.

When I downloaded 8Gb in one day because there was a new Ubuntu release (see my post above), I was not downloading the release via Bittorrent. The release got downloaded in the form of several thousand package files via normal http. The kind of traffic that would not normally be throttled at all.

As I've said, the difference being most Torrent traffic is probably illegal sharing which should obviously be given the very lowest priority. If Torrent users are forced to accept dial-up speeds then maybe it might encourage them to buy stuff instead? If you think about it, refreshing your iso 'cache' doesn't happen very often, you might suck up 10GB or so but then that's it for a good few months depending on how many distros you like to have handy. Regular Torrent users will probably have videos or something constantly downloading at full speed with no breaks.

[shaithis]

It's encouraging to see a supplier actually throttling torrents again during peak times..and hopefully usenet too although thats a little more difficult to do due to the difference in access methods.

One of my biggest concerns when moving to infinity was that people torrenting/using P2P excessively (well above the odd linux ISO or streaming TV) would ruin the speeds/reliability of the line - its inevitable that a high bandwidth service like this will attract such people.

What I have to hope though is that this doesn't get extended to impact on legitimate use of the connection, as some providers have done in the past..so by this I mean iPlayer/Sky Anytime etc..from what I have read so far this doesn't seem to be the case though so..all good news at the moment

Err, why offer such speeds to customers if they cannot use them due to throttling/shaping?

Do you even need to be on the service unless you want to download a LOT?

I really do not get the moaning from ISPs and other customers about excessive use of broadband lines......I pay for it, therefore I should be able to use it fully AND RELIABLY. If it is impacting other customers, then the ISP needs to upgrade whatever part of their network is being overloaded or they need to stop offering the faster packages......don't put the blame on customers for using what they are paying for, berate the ISPs for selling what they don't have capacity to handle!

[Spud1]

Err, why offer such speeds to customers if they cannot use them due to throttling/shaping?

Do you even need to be on the service unless you want to download a LOT?

If you want to download a reasonable amount of legitimate content, large or small files, but really quickly..or want to be able to play online games while someone else is watching Iplayer whilst someone else is downloading windows updates..then yes. There are many reasons to want to be on this kind of connection, none of which ever require the use of P2P or illegal content. Not to mention the fact that its just cool if you are a geek.

People can, do and will use those speeds for many more purposes than using P2P, which is in the vast majority of cases used for illegal downloading. Just because that particular service is throttled doesn't mean the service is unusable. It may be for you, but then tough, go somewhere else. In any case this kind of traffic is usually not throttled 24/7 (and definitely not in this case) so its not like you can never do it anyway, just not during peak hours.

I really do not get the moaning from ISPs and other customers about excessive use of broadband lines......I pay for it, therefore I should be able to use it fully AND RELIABLY. If it is impacting other customers, then the ISP needs to upgrade whatever part of their network is being overloaded or they need to stop offering the faster packages......don't put the blame on customers for using what they are paying for, berate the ISPs for selling what they don't have capacity to handle!

They will moan and complain about excessive use as it costs them more money - The situation behind that varies depending on the size of the ISP but use below a certain threshold is usually covered by the monthly fee that they pay, and then anything over that will cost the ISP money. This cost varies hugely depending on how much of the network they own, where the traffic is routed and what agreements are in place with other ISPs and networks. Believe it or not ISPs are constantly upgrading their networks but the few % of people that are constantly maxing out the connections downloading hundreds of gigs a month can saturate the networks incredibly quickly, and that impacts every customers reliability and availability. That is why FUPs exist and should exist on any responsible ISP.

They should of course be clearly available and the ISP should never advertise their service as "unlimited" when it isn't, but that is a separate argument.

[watercooled]

I really do not get the moaning from ISPs and other customers about excessive use of broadband lines......I pay for it, therefore I should be able to use it fully AND RELIABLY. If it is impacting other customers, then the ISP needs to upgrade whatever part of their network is being overloaded or they need to stop offering the faster packages......don't put the blame on customers for using what they are paying for, berate the ISPs for selling what they don't have capacity to handle!

No domestic ISP network I know of comes close to being able to offer full download speeds for everyone simultaneously. You are NOT paying anywhere near enough to be able to use the connection 24/7 - the cost of maintaining the whole network is shared out amongst the subscribers so obviously heavy users get more than their money's worth and light users pay a much higher cost per GB. If you want to be able to constantly max out your connection, look at the cost of leased lines which are in the area of a few thousand quid per month for just a few Mb/s. It's not just broadband this applies to though, pretty much any utility isn't designed to be maxed out; the natinal grid doesn't come close to being able to support everyone in the country using 100A (common max on meters etc) and the telephone network is limited too as you may have noticed over new year when it shows limited service or something on your mobile phone screen. Costs would be astronomical to have everything capable of being maxed out.

[Spud1]

Remember that the vast majority of broadband services are sold as contended anyway so you are never guaranteed that 40mb all to yourself.

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

[CaptainCrash]

As I've said, the difference being most Torrent traffic is probably illegal sharing which should obviously be given the very lowest priority. If Torrent users are forced to accept dial-up speeds then maybe it might encourage them to buy stuff instead? If you think about it, refreshing your iso 'cache' doesn't happen very often, you might suck up 10GB or so but then that's it for a good few months depending on how many distros you like to have handy. Regular Torrent users will probably have videos or something constantly downloading at full speed with no breaks.

You're making an awful lot of assumptions there - FYI I use both BitTorrent and Usenet regularly and legitimately, but I'm damned if I'm going to explain myself or justify my usage, as it's irrelevant and frankly no-one else's business. Furthermore, if my ISP ever took it upon themselves to throttle my usage for the express purpose of "encouraging" people to "buy stuff", I'd boot them into touch in very short order - I'm paying them for Internet access, not to promote the interests of the entertainment industry.

To be honest, I do get rather tired of the unpleasant self-righteousness which seems to surface whenever P2P applications are discussed. It's just a protocol, which can have legitimate or illegitimate uses just like anything else, and it's a shame it apparently can't even be mentioned without people chipping in with the "yer, you use P2P, therefore you must be an evil pirate downloading warez 24 hours/day" attitude.

[watercooled]

It has nothing to do with self-righteousness; whichever way you cut it most people use P2P for illegal sharing, and that is what matters to ISPs. I do tend to express my opinion with matters such as this because it annoys me to no end that people are getting illegally, for free, what I pay for. And TBH I think I've more than earned my right to speak. I know it's 'just a protocol' and in theory it's a good idea but apart from Linux stuff there's very little worth getting from it. Like most careful users I like to know what I'm downloading isn't some malicious version which would mean going to the site anyway to check the md5. That, and most HTTP/FTP servers seem perfectly capable of maxing out my connection, for larger files at least, so I have no reason to use P2P. Yes, it does have a bad stigma attached to it but it's earned it...

[CaptainCrash]

It has nothing to do with self-righteousness; whichever way you cut it most people use P2P for illegal sharing, and that is what matters to ISPs. I do tend to express my opinion with matters such as this because it annoys me to no end that people are getting illegally, for free, what I pay for.

Until legislation is passed which makes ISPs accountable for what their users do online, all they're interested in is how much it affects their bottom line.

You're missing the point anyway - this thread is about BT Infinity, and several users including myself simply asked if P2P and Usenet suffered from significant traffic shaping. To which we were rewarded with this...

Can i ask if all this talk about torrents is a bit over the top?? I mean how much do you guys regularly download?? and i mean how much storage do you have to keep to maintain this rate of download?

Surely there are only so many Linux dists available, what the hell else do you download that's legal??

...implying that we had no right even to raise the issue, and that we were all thieves to boot. Needless to say, the thread was somewhat derailed from that point, and not in a constructive way IMO.

As I said, I use both P2P and Usenet for legitimate purposes. I can't speak for the other users, but frankly I couldn't give a fiddler's fudge what they're downloading - I don't consider it's any of my business whether it's a Linux ISO or a pirate copy of Debbie Does Dallas dubbed in Serbo-Croat, and I'm not the kind of sanctimonious git who will automatically jump to conclusions and start slinging accusations simply because it's *possible* to be one thing or the other.

By all means feel "annoyed to no end" if you wish, and yes of course you have a right to speak, but perhaps your outrage would be better expressed in its own thread, possibly called "P2P Users Are Thieves" or something similar.

[Spud1]

Its true that there are many legitimate uses for P2P, and also for usenet..both technologies were not created for illegal use and have since been hijacked by pirates. No one is accusing you of using either service in this way, however you have to accept that the vast majority of users of both services these days use them for that purpose. You only have to look at the number of posts on binary newsgroups compared to pure text ones to see the difference in activity, or the number of trackers hosting dodgy torrents compared to the very few legitimate uses. You don't need unlimited usenet download speeds for text or images...and the binary groups are almost exclusively for illegal content, much more so than bit torrent et al.

Both technologies have been superceded for their legitimate uses - forums have largely replaced usenet, and the fact that HTTP bandwidth in terms of hosting has now come down so much in price makes P2P of very limited use outside of piracy. I'm not saying neither have a use..just that its very limited.

It is incredibly frustrating that it goes on so openly, and people freely admit to it on boards like this without fear, and in this case were blatantly asking if it were possible to use these services for that purpose in this thread. It annoys me the most because if I subscribe, its these people that will ruin the service for me as with so many DSL services before. ISPs sharing information etc won't help stop it either since anyone can just claim "oh I wasnt using the PC, I was hacked" and thats it you have an instant defence (which is what made all those legal letters recently such a joke, so easy to defend in court).


Anyway to get back on topic..BT Infinity looks like a great service, good download/upload speeds that seem better than the BT estimates (According to that OKUK thread), and traffic shaping during peak hours only to protect legitimate users..can't wait to get it. If you must torrent etc on it then just do it outside of peak hours, no big deal, right?

[watercooled]

Until legislation is passed which makes ISPs accountable for what their users do online, all they're interested in is how much it affects their bottom line.

Which is what I'm trying to explain to you, P2P eats up a heck of a lot of bandwidth so it does affect their bottom line. And as I've said, since it's mostly illegal traffic it's obviously going to be one of the first things to get the chop in order to preserve quality of service for other users.

...and I'm not the kind of sanctimonious git who will automatically jump to conclusions...

How dare you. And you're being reported for that. I've expressed how I'm annoyed by pirates but that does NOT give you the right to call me a "sanctimonious git". I have not aimed anything at you, accused you of anything nor have I jumped to any conclusions. However I do know a lot of people who use P2P illegitimately and when I was at school, even before broadband was big, using P2P for getting music/movies/software was the norm. I don't see what's so hard to understand about my point of view if you too obtain stuff legally - surely people getting the same stuff for free seems unfair and annoying?

[CaptainCrash]

I've expressed how I'm annoyed by pirates but that does NOT give you the right to call me a "sanctimonious git". I have not aimed anything at you, accused you of anything nor have I jumped to any conclusions.

Likewise - if you read carefully, you'll see that I wasn't aiming the title of "sanctimonious git" at you specifically, but perhaps you'll see how annoying it is when people make blanket assumptions.

I'm sorry if you took offence, that wasn't my intention, but I stand by what I said.

[watercooled]

There's a difference between saying someone is sanctimonious and using the phrase 'sanctimonious git' in that context, especially in text as it's difficult to interpret peoples' intentions. I probably interpreted it that way because I am being somewhat sanctimonious and I don't necessarily see that as a negative description, again it depends on context. No hard feelings though?