Broadband Premier Option 2 - experience

This page explains how we manage Broadband Premier Option 2 to ensure you get the right experience for your product. For more detailed information about how we manage our network read:

• Managing our Network Under Abnormal Load

Product Design

Broadband Premier is designed for all kinds of Internet activity, including file downloading, as with peer-to-peer or Binary USENET. You should note that for these data-intensive activities, download speeds may slow down when the network is busy. See how Broadband Premier differs from Broadband Your Way.

Broadband Premier Option 2 is provided with 30GB allowance for peak-time (4pm-Midnight) usage.

When the allowance is reached, peak-time file transfer applications such as peer-to-peer are blocked until your next billing date. These management policies are designed to stop overuse of the product from affecting the service for everybody else.

Broadband Premier Option 2 - Expected Speeds

We set speed restrictions on certain types of Internet activities, so that real-time activities such as gaming, broadband phone calls and video streaming don't slow down as a result of heavy network traffic.

The table below shows an example of the restrictions that are applied at the busiest times (at the time of writing these are on Monday and Tuesday evenings).

Key

*Even though there are no individual restrictions, the speeds you receive are still affected by traffic prioritisation and the activities of every other customer who is sharing the network. We constantly adjust these restrictions to match current network traffic levels. This gives Broadband Premier customers the chance to gain higher speeds when the network is less busy.

Expected speeds - The difference between Broadband Premier and Broadband Your Way

Broadband Premier is different in that it will benefit from any spare capacity on our network, with less speed restrictions than the ones shown if more capacity is available. This could be as a result of less bandwidth usage on our network during quieter days of the week. As such, the speeds shown in the above table represent the lowest rate limits that will be applied at any time and they should be viewed as a worst case scenario, with available speeds often higher than those stated.

What do the categories represent?

• Peer-to-Peer (High Demand File sharing applications)
  Includes applications such as: Bittorent, Azeurus, Emule, Limewire and others. Does not include applications which happen to use P2P technology, such as Kontiki (used by the BBC and Sky) and 4OD, both of which are treated as 'streaming' and prioritised on our network accordingly.


• Binary USENET
  Includes access to commercial USENET providers such as easynews.com and giganews. These speed restrictions do not apply to text-only USENET servers.


• External FTP
  FTP is a protocol used to transfer files to and from remote servers. The restrictions listed apply to all FTP data transfers not hosted on our network.


• Download sites
  A small number of  high-volume HTTP download sites which are used for file sharing, such as Rapidshare, Megaupload and Imageshack, as well as a number of commercial Adult sites which provide big file downloads are included in this category.


• Download servers
  This includes speeds to some 'mirror' sites and servers run by Akamai which provide high-volume HTTP downloads.


• Everything else
Includes the vast majority of applications and sites which are not subject to speed restrictions. 70% of our customers only ever use traffic that falls into this category.

Why do the maximum expected speeds differ at different times of the day?

Ultimately, the speeds you can expect from any network depend on how many other people share the same capacity and what they're all doing. We apply heavier speed restrictions at times when we expect demand for prioritised applications (which are never slowed down) to be highest. The busiest times on our network are between 4pm and 10pm, reflecting the point when school finishes, through to the time people start to go to bed. When demand for prioritised protocols decreases we can plan to provide higher speeds for other applications.

In time, the process of managing speeds on our network will become smoother.

Will the speeds shown here change?

The restrictions shown in the tables above are subject to regular change. Changes are made in response to both customer usage habits and wholesale capacity costs. Speeds that customers can expect will come down if average customer usage increases, but will increase if the wholesale cost of Broadband capacity falls.

In other words, as our customers' average usage increases over time, the speed each customer can receive may need to be reduced, ensuring that everyone receives a fair share of the available capacity. On the other hand, as we add more broadband network capacity, the expected speeds can be increased to allow everyone to benefit equally. We are committed to ensuring that our customers receive great value for money from our products, and will always look to improve the experience for customers wherever possible.

Whenever we make a change to our traffic management systems or the minimum speeds that our Premier customers can expect, we will announce it as a news article on our Community Site. It is possible to subscribe to updates from the Community Site, which will ensure you are always up-to-date with the latest information about how our network is performing and what you can expect it to deliver.

We also regularly talk about aspects of our traffic management systems in our discussion forums. You are welcome to join the discussion, where we will be happy to answer any questions you have.

Why do we have to manage traffic on our network?

Like other ISPs we deliver our broadband service over a network which is shared amongst our customers. This means we have to manage our network to ensure we provide a sustainable quality broadband service to all our customers.

The principles of Plusnet's network management policies:

• To make sure that time-critical applications like VoIP and gaming are always prioritised
• To protect interactive applications like web-browsing and VPN from non-time sensitive download traffic
• To flex the network under demand to cope with normal peaks and troughs from day to day and month to month
• To flex the network more gracefully than other ISPs in the event of unusual demands in traffic or disaster situations such as a network failure
• To provide a service relative to the amount each customer pays in terms of usage and experience