New Bandwidth Allowances

[pctech]

I understand to a certain extent why some ISPs have peak and off peak periods to ensure that their business customers' traffic isn't impeded by a load of couch potatoes watching repeats of Strictlydancingonicewithnotalent in HD but unless you are an avid downloader its really not suitable unless IDNet allow the offpeak to be used at the weekend too when there is less business traffic?

[psp83]

I understand to a certain extent why some ISPs have peak and off peak periods to ensure that their business customers' traffic isn't impeded by a load of couch potatoes watching repeats of Strictlydancingonicewithnotalent in HD but unless you are an avid downloader its really not suitable unless IDNet allow the offpeak to be used at the weekend too when there is less business traffic?

Turning weekends into off peak would be enough to make me stay, I hardly touch my off peak allowance.

Code Select Expand

During the time period 1 March 2012 to 19 March 2012 your bandwidth use was:

44.35 GB Download - (Peak: 23.16 GB | Off-Peak: 21.19 GB)
2.61 GB Upload - (Peak: 1.83 GB | Off-Peak: 0.78 GB)
If your previous 7 days rate of usage continues for 31 days then the total for the month will be:

72.77 GB Download - (Peak: 38.07 GB | Off-Peak: 34.71 GB)
4.18 GB Upload - (Peak: 2.92 GB | Off-Peak: 1.25 GB)

* Peak times are 9:00am to midnight - Off-Peak times are midnight to 9:00am

And that's being VERY careful about my peak time usage & not using the PC much because of a bad neck & shoulder.

[pctech]

Before the uplift in the allowance on Zen if IDNet had done such a thing I might have defected to IDNet as my working patterns are different now.

[t22design]

I'm on ADSL Max - Home Supermax, so from 1st April Zen will offer 20GB more allowance than IDNet for about the same price and with no restriction on when I can use it. The only negative is a reduced upload rate, which does make a difference when video chatting with family/friends.

I decided a long time ago to keep my mail separate from my ISP, albeit at a cost, so that I have the freedom to switch provider easily.

[pctech]

Great minds think alike, registering my own domain was the best thing I did and have a terrific mail host.

[Niall]

You'll never have weekends counted as off peak. That would absolutely destroy peoples experience of a lot of things, especially online gamers. It doesn't take much of a change to see the massive impact on an online game, especially an FPS game where a very stable connection is needed. It's a pain for me sometimes, having to leave my PC on after midnight, or waking early to start a download, but in reality I'd prefer to do that than have a horrible experience online at the weekend either streaming things, or playing a game. I don't actually play online anymore as I'm sick of whiny kids ruining every experience.

[Lance]

Great minds think alike, registering my own domain was the best thing I did and have a terrific mail host.

I've got a terrific mail host too. I host my own! 

[nowster]

I've got a terrific mail host too. I host my own! 

I do similarly, on a VPS from Gandi.

[SSK]

Great minds think alike, registering my own domain was the best thing I did and have a terrific mail host.

Who hosts your domain & mail?

[wecpcs]

Turning weekends into off peak would be enough to make me stay, I hardly touch my off peak allowance.

That would be enough to make me stay as well, as I am seriously considering going back to ZEN, unless my new WiMax opportunity with VFAST comes along sooner than expected.

Colin

[JB]

With their new allowances, I am moving to Zen next week. There have been too many niggling problems of late with IDNet and the mail server outage was the one which finally made me get off my backside after several years with IDNet. My son is an IT professional and he uses Zen at home so that must say something I guess.

It's a one month rolling contract so if I'm not happy I can always return.

[Simon]

Good luck.  Sorry to see you go, but you're always still welcome on the forum. 

[JB]

Good luck.  Sorry to see you go, but you're always still welcome on the forum. 

Thanks Simon. I'll be checking in as usual.

[Steve]

and  good luck from me. 

[pctech]

Who hosts your domain & mail?

Company called Netcetera www.netcetera.co.uk who also support greylisting which cuts down a lot on spam.


Would be happy to use Zen for the hosting of the mail but at the moment they don't do a mail only package (don't really want to pay £3.99 a month for cpanel) and they are a tad expensive for .com TLDs and don't offer Whois privacy.

[mouthrush]

Home Pro: now 200GB per month  (50 Peak plus 150 Off-peak)
Home SuperPro: now 400GB per month (100 Peak plus 300 Off-Peak)

No chance of a splash more peak quota on the Home Plus package then?

[Rik]

Not afaik. 

[Bill]

No chance of a splash more peak quota on the Home Plus package then?

Agreed, 30GB is a bit tight when an hour of HD on iPlayer (via the Humax box) eats over a gig, and on my 80/20 FTTC can download it in about 6 minutes- not much chance to kill it if you decide you don't want to watch it after a few minutes

[pctech]

With their new allowances, I am moving to Zen next week.

If you need any help jb, give me a shout.

[Technical Ben]

Agreed, 30GB is a bit tight when an hour of HD on iPlayer (via the Humax box) eats over a gig, and on my 80/20 FTTC can download it in about 6 minutes- not much chance to kill it if you decide you don't want to watch it after a few minutes

I constantly get snapped by game updates. 250mb down the drain if I launch the wrong one. 

[pctech]

Yep game updates are getting ridiculously large.

[Bill]

So is everything on the internet, that's the trouble

What happened to "640KB should be enough for anybody"? (Even if Bill Gates never actually said it  )

[pctech]

Ah the days of 56 K modems that could only connect at a maximum of 53 if you were lucky and being deafened by the handshaking.

[Bill]

and being deafened by the handshaking.

Yup, I well remember the first time I fired up my USR Courier, the volume was set at full and I think I leapt about 3 feet straight up!

[zappaDPJ]

Yep game updates are getting ridiculously large.

That and the recent proliferation of streamed content does indeed present major problems on capped services. I do a lot of alpha testing for a couple of software houses which in the last two months alone has accounted for well over 65GB of my bandwidth allowance. I've found the only way I can manage it is to shut down all the ports associated with the clients because on FTTC it's all too easy to hammer your peak allowance with a background download without even realising it.

Two years ago my average usage was around 25 GB a month. Towards the end of last year that quadrupled to around 100GB. This year I'm hitting the end stops on my 120 GB IDNet allowance a month and I regularly take a trip to a friend's office who kindly allows me to leach off his business connection. My totals for March were 112.66 GB Download - (Peak: 28.55 GB | Off-Peak: 84.11 GB) with IDNet and s further 215 GB on my friend's office connection. I did watch most of the coverage from two GPs on Sky Go which accounted for a surprisingly large amount of bandwidth but I don't do any file sharing and I do limit myself to less than an hour or two of streamed content a day.

Times are clearly changing, two years ago 25 GB allowed me to do everything I wanted to do on the Net. Two years later I'm consuming nearly 350 GB and I now have to think twice every time I run up a game client or have the urge to watch an hour or two streamed content. I keep eyeing up Sky's oh so cheap but never arriving FTTC package and even horror of horrors, BT Infinity, but I also keep reminding myself you get what you pay for.

As a slight aside, if you think 350 GB a month sounds excessive, we've been conducting a survey for the last few months on a mid sized gaming and technology forum I maintain. While there are a few users who poll lower figures (manly due to capped services), 350 GB is below average and a surprising number of people regularly report figures over and above a terabyte a month.