The following was taken from the Plusnet Forum on ADSL-Guide.

The original post was made by Bob from Plusnets Comms Team and has been recorded here in view of AG's archiving system deletes posts more than 6 months old.

Post reference.

Subject Re: Honest answer please?

Posted by bpullen (isp)
Posted on Sat 23-Apr-05 19:03:38
Hi there,

I will try and answer your question as best I can, but as you probably expected, it's not going to be a simple yes no response.

Firstly, if we can try and get away from the 5:1, "OK, let's devide my potential bandwidth by 5 and define a new FUP figure'" mentality. The new proposal is about managing a balance and providing a shared resource, not allocating x amount of bandwidth to each individual user. What would happen if everyone decided to use the bandwidth allocated to them at the same time each day?

Remember we intend on attempting to contact those having a detrimental effect on the remainder of the network. If we are seeing customers typical Internet usage affected by heavy users during the day, then would there be any logical point in contacting those downloading 150GB entirely during non-daylight hours, asking them to adjust their usage? No, there wouldn't, because the problem would still remain.

Having said that, I cannot guarantee downloading continuously outside of peak hours will keep you out of the spotlight, it may change. To quote Ian "The reality is that every day, month, and year will see changes in the way people use the Internet and the amount of bandwidth they use". greatcapp, I would love to give you a straight yes or no answer, I really would, but the truth is, I don't know and can't give you that assurance, I would be surprised like Ian if anyone here could.

Any of those heavy utilisation customers who are concerned by this proposal can only see how they get on in all honesty. We can explain our intentions tens of thousands of times but it is a concept that does not have defined limits. A 1MB customer could be downloading 70GB during the day and be having a worse effect on the network than a 2MB customer downloading 100GB/mnth between 3am - 9am. It wouldn't be fair to say 70GB is the limit in this situation because another customer is downloading 100GB without having any detrimental effect on the network at all. We are not going to pull the plug on you one day without warning if you hit a certain figure.

This also gives an example where a 2MB and 512K customer could both be using their connection to a detrimental excess. These figures I am using as a very loose example. Please do not quote me and assume they bare any relevance as to when we would take action, bacause they do not. I just wanted to quash the 'divide by 5' theory and how this would be unfair when applied to differing speeds.

So mr_Ray, I don't think it would be safe to assume that 512k people will be free to max out their lines. I do understand your arguement but line characteristics are not within our domain of control. We wouldn't be punishing people because of line quality, but it would not be fair to allow them to max out their lines because it may constitute what we are trying to avoid.

To some it may see as if we have pulled a u-turn but back in October things were different. I personally think FUP would have worked almost perfectly when considering 2MB across the board. Add the higher speeds though, and look at where other companies appear to be heading and perhaps what has occured between October and now isn't as we initially envisaged it. We want to move forward with a solution we are comfortable with as we start to head into the realms of MaxDSL, LLU, ADSL2 and beyond.

FUP has certainly not been abolished because we couldn't get it to work. The mechanisms for FUP were in place and working perfectly. We had some hiccups with VMU, yes, even after extensive testing in a non-live environment. To assume we would make such a weighted decision on difficulties implementing a particular project though is naive. If we honestly though FUP was the better option, we would have vouched for it, even if there were difficulties implementing it (which for the most part there wasn't).

We believe we are heading in the right direction, it has been turbulent of late, but I think much of the hype and speculation is irrelevant when considering the wider picture of things. There are some unanswered questions that have arisen as a result of the announcement, the purpose of which was just to say that FUP was no longer to be. The product specs as we all know will be detailed on their launch date.

Regards,

--
Bob Pullen
Plusnet Customer Support
The Smarter Way to Broadband
http://www.plus.net

www.kitz.co.uk