Increased Bandwidth Requirements - What To Do?

[tomharrison]

Hello all,

Well, I've been with IDNet (on and off) for over 3 years now. I live in a medium sized town where the exchange serves ~9500 households but despite this only ADSL1 is available to me. No ADSL2+ or FTTC even being announced for my exchange. Not even any LLU suppliers until very recently when Sky appear to have unbundled the exchange, but I think I'll steer well clear of them since I don't like long contracts, plus the fact that their availability checker says I can only get 0.5Mbps downstream on LLU, whilst I'm getting a nice 5.5Mbps with IDNet  .

So here's my problem (and I come to you lovely people for a solution ):

I'm on the Home Max (up to 8 meg ADSL1 package) which gives me 90GB total bandwidth allowance, of which 30GB is peak time allowance. Over the last few months my monthly bandwidth usage has been steadily increasing. Typical monthly usage used to be around 20GB peak per month, however for this month I'm already at 29.5GB with 3 days remaining. It's obvious that I'm going to go over the 30GB peak usage allowance this month and I only see this becoming a regular occurrence. Due to this, I'm looking at upgrading to a more generous package.

Given that only ADSL1 is available in my area, am I correct in thinking that the only other package IDNet can offer me is the Home Supermax with 40GB peak allowance and the higher upload speed / traffic prioritisation at £35.74 per month? I notice that if ADSL2+ was available in my area, I'd be able to get the same 40GB allowance on the Home Pro package for £25.52 per month. I assume that Idnet don't have to pay BT as much for 21CN connections.

I'm in a dilemma because I need the extra bandwidth but the extra £10/month is a fair amount to justify for 10GB extra allowance. I'm reluctant to migrate elsewhere because the service that I get from Idnet is second to none. Speeds have been consistently fast recently and my pings are the lowest I've ever seen (sub 20ms to UK servers). As I don't seem to have any major issues with exchange congestion at the minute, I don't think the traffic prioritisation on the Home Supermax package would make a huge difference. Maybe it would lower my pings even further though? Plus I'd get the extra upload speed .

If I was to go elsewhere, I guess my first choice would be Zen on their Active package. £25.52 for 50GB total download allowance with a 1 month contract. However looking at their forums on thinkbroadband recently shows a number of threads about poor speed and ping, both of which are important to me.

Things are perfect with Idnet at the moment and I am hesitant to jump ship (although I've probably just cursed my connection now !).

Do you think Idnet would be willing to switch me over to the ADSL2+ package which gives me the extra bandwidth whilst still remaining on an ADSL1 connection? Probably a long shot, I know.

Anybody have any experience of regrading from Home Max to Home Supermax? Is the extra £10 / month really worth it?

Thanks and sorry for the long post!

Tom

[Steve]

I don't understand the Sky LLU estimate, it should be equivalent or greater than BT based ISPs can offer on adslmax. Your are not going to get an adsl2+ package on an adslmax exchange . The cost to IDNet for adslmax connections is greater than for adsl2+ connections and indeed I believe IDNet have in fact moved some allowances from adsl2+ to help adslmax users.

You will only gain 10Gb of peak time allowances for Home Supermax, the price difference is similar to the excess usage charge,although if your exchange is 'full' the reduction in latency may be beneficial. I'm not sure how much of your off peak allowances you use but if you've got some unused at the end of the month is there a way of rescheduling some of your downloads to make benefit of the off peak allowance?

[Simon]

Can't help with the tech stuff, sorry, but a couple of thoughts...  

I believe the 'overdraft' bandwidth is just over £1 per gig, so if you used 33Gb peak in one month, it would only cost you about £3 extra.  Would it be worth seeing how things go over another couple of months, paying the 'overdraft', instead of the full £10 for the upgraded package?  Is there any way that you could reschedule some of your downloads to utilise the 'off-peak' allowance?

[tomharrison]

Thanks for the replies. That's as I thought Steve, that Home Max costs more for IDNet to provision.

As for rescheduling the downloads during the off-peak period, it appears that the bulk of the bandwidth is going on streaming video, so things such as Youtube and iPlayer, rather than on any specific downloads themselves. I might have to have a word with some people!

I might see how it goes for the next couple of months as I don't see the peak usage exceeding anything significantly over 35-40GB, as you say Simon it looks like this month will total around 33GB, so £3 extra is certainly not a huge problem at the moment.

I don't understand the Sky LLU estimate

Me neither! Maybe that's what Sky are saying is a realistic peak time speed with them

[Simon]

I might have to have a word with some people!

That would certainly be a path I would take, otherwise, if usage continues to increase, what happens when they reach the 40Gb allowance?

[DorsetBoy]

Take a look at the OpenDNS dashboard    my lad will happily burn 65GB in 2 weeks if I do not ban YouTube/Streaming Media/Films/TV etc. when he is around.

By filtering content I can reduce bandwidth by up to 2/3rds.

[tomharrison]

That would certainly be a path I would take, otherwise, if usage continues to increase, what happens when they reach the 40Gb allowance?

Indeed. I'll tell people to go easy next month .

Thanks for the suggestion about content filtering with OpenDNS DorsetBoy, hadn't thought of that! Might also look at installing the Thinkbroadband meter onto each computer as I believe it allows multiple computer's traffic to be merged together and viewed in the portal.

Thanks again for the help