New Bandwidth Allowances

[Bill]

I don't think I'm in the market for a terabyte per month, but even a different split between peak and off-peak would be most welcome, say 50/100 instead of 30/120.

[pctech]

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.

Time to look at an unlimited business connection Zap?

[zappaDPJ]

That would be ideal but there are too many financial variables at the moment. It's an option I might consider if I ever sell my property.

[psp83]

Take today for an example, Battlefield 3 just had a 1.02 GB patch released, but if you downloaded the last DLC before a certain date you have to re download this DLC for it to work after the patch, so that's another 1+ GB download.

So in the space of 30 mins, I've used over 2GB just with 1 game update 

[armadillo]

I think it is a tricky decision for IDnet or any ISP to make. My previous ISP, for example, treated the whole weekend as off peak. Or they could go as Zen does and not make any distinction between peak and off peak at all.

I suspect that IDnet will lose some customers to the likes of Zen through separating peak from off peak and classing weekend daytime as peak same as a weekday. But they may consider that customers who are bothered by that are customers they do not especially want to retain owing to the impact they have on the rest of the customer base. For if the result of retaining them is to cause the overall service to deteriorate, or cost to increase because of needing to add more capacity, they may lose more customers still.

For me, as I have said already, the attraction of Zen's allowance is more than offset by having only 10 email boxes. I looked at the cost of email hosting elsewhere (eg 123reg) but it would roughly double the cost of my present all-inclusive service from IDnet. I currently use 25 email boxes and would not be happy with a service that provided fewer than 35 and preferably unlimited.

We all have different priorities and IDnet must feel they can retain sufficient customers with the allowances they recently announced.

Every ISP I have used has started with a good service which eventually deteriorated as the customer base grew, through aggressive marketing, to a size that could not be sustained at its current cost.

[JB]

We all have different priorities and IDnet must feel they can retain sufficient customers with the allowances they recently announced.

That's a good point. We are all different.

I just moved to Zen and because I host several domain names myself on Linux equipment the ten mailbox restriction does not apply. I guess I am just trying them out to see what reliability is like compared to IDNet. I'm not a game player but do download maybe 40Gb of data per month. To me, the Zen anytime allowance compared to the IDNet 2/3rds off-peak doesn't really matter as my downloads are largely automatic and I tend to schedule them for when I am not at the keyboard, either when out or in bed.

Regardless of the number of mailboxes an ISP gives you, I always advise any colleague to get their own domain name, even if they are going to forward the email to one of their ISP mailboxes. Such an idea only costs about £2.75 per year and means that the individual can carry their own domain / email address for ever.

[armadillo]

That's a good point. We are all different.

Regardless of the number of mailboxes an ISP gives you, I always advise any colleague to get their own domain name, even if they are going to forward the email to one of their ISP mailboxes. Such an idea only costs about £2.75 per year and means that the individual can carry their own domain / email address for ever.

I agree with the rationale, if you need only one mailbox. I actually do have a domain name, from 123-reg, and it costs only about £3 per year I think. It includes only one mailbox, which can be forwarded to an ISP mailbox and I already do that. But the domain name option only allows incoming mail. I need to be able to send mail from each mailbox too, and to do that, you have to buy an email service. With their email package, each POP3 mailbox costs £9 per year. I need 35 mailboxes and hence a cost of £315 per year for mailboxes, which are "free" with IDnet. Moreover, I need to be able to create and delete mailboxes at any time and not necessarily keep any particular one for a year or more. And services like hotmail are not an option. Neither is hosting my own really something I want to do as I do not want to have to keep a mail server on all the time and I have no house space for yet another cabinet.

On that basis, IDnet is by far the cheapest reliable option for me since it includes unlimited mailboxes, which I can create and delete at any time. Only a minority of ISPs do that and IDnet is the most reliable of those that do so. Like you, I can schedule a good amount of downloading for overnight and the peak time limit is not a problem for me. In fact, I have never even exceeded 30GB peak in a month and usually am below 20GB. I have never exceeded 90GB total download in a month and usually am below 50GB total. The new download limits make the service effectively unlimited for me: download limits I do not even need to think about exceeding and a perfect and flexible solution for mailboxes.

Hence we agreed everyone has different priorities. If it were not for the mailboxes, I would not be with IDnet.

[Rik]

1&1 are cheaper, Dill.

[mouthrush]

The small peaktime allowance (it didn't seem so small before the family discovered streaming tv) coupled with the arbitrary off-peak timing (after midinght?) is starting to feel the strain.

As much as I like and often recommend IDNet, I seem to be asking the family to lay off IPlayer etc in the early half of the month. My eye is straying towards Claranet and their Claranet Gamers package. Not that I'm a gamer, but offpeak period between 6pm and 8am is much more civil, along with the price, dont you think?

[armadillo]

Thanks Rik. I just had a look on 1&1's website but I could not see any product at all with 35+ mailboxes. Their domains give 5. They have a Microsoft Exchange offering for £5 per user per month, which would work out at £2100 per year

Fortunately, due to IDnet's wonderful service I can do it all here for £25 per month and I even get broadband included :-)

[Rik]

Sorry, missed the 35.

[armadillo]

Claranet Gamers package. Not that I'm a gamer, but offpeak period between 6pm and 8am is much more civil, along with the price, dont you think?

It certainly is more civil, provided you can live with their 10GB per month limit outside those times.

I really do wonder why IDnet do not start off peak until midnight.

[armadillo]

Sorry, missed the 35.

LOL. It would be a good little earner for them.

[Technical Ben]

It certainly is more civil, provided you can live with their 10GB per month limit outside those times.

I really do wonder why IDnet do not start off peak until midnight.

I would guess it's the actual users we have to account for, not the hardware.
Users will be using the PC/internet mainly between the hours they are not working or sleeping. 

[Rik]

And IDNet has a large base of business customers...

[armadillo]

http://www.claranetgamers.co.uk/
claranet say they impose the 10GB limit on 8am to 6pm to "keep business users happy" and they are unrestricted outside that period.

That would suggest that IDnet's limit on 9am-6pm is consistent with a large business user base; but that the extension of the peak period from 6pm to midnight has more to do with its domestic customers. That would be the peak period for domestic users to stream content. They appear to want to discourage heavy streaming usage by domestic customers because of the impact it would have on domestic non-streamers.

Personally, I am happier with IDnet's present 50/150GB peak/off peak split based on midnight than I would be with a 10GB/unrestricted based on 6pm. But I do not stream anything at all.

As I said, IDnet may well lose some customers because of that split. But they may be customers that IDnet feel they can well afford to lose. I also wonder though, if midnight is a bit too conservative. Maybe they could start the off peak at say, 10pm, without compromising domestic non-streamers much.

[Glenn]

Claranet were my very first ISP back in 1996.

[Simon]

They were nearly mine, but I went to AltaVista instead. 

[Rik]

I started with Pipex, disliked their arrogance and moved to an ISP in the Isle of Man. I think I've used most of the major players since, but discovered the niche market a decade back and haven't regretted it since. My first online carrier was Prestel, based on the teletext system, in the days of the BBC Micro.

[pctech]

I used Claranet dial up in about 2004, never had to call support so don't know whether it was good or not.

Tried out most of the 'big boys' and found the service wanting and made the absolute mistake of using that big red cable company's ADSL service when I was first provisioned.

Definitely prefer the smaller players.

[Glenn]

Zen make it into the top 10 ISP's by subscriber numbers http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php

[Rik]

Oh to know the IDNet figure...

[Glenn]

It's less than 87k according to that chart.

[Rik]

But how much less.

[pctech]

Good thing is though. the really good ISPs don't need to advertise and that keeps Joe Public at large away and the network less congested.

Now if we could all have fibre connection direct to a port on our ISP's switch (or at least a non profit neutral third party) and dispense with BT it would be terrific.