P2P Speeds Between 8 am and 12 Noon

[ryanb]

You see, this is where I have a bit of a problem.
Are you saying that Gamers and other Users are better then me and others that use P2P?

Ofcourse they are. P2P takes a lot more bandwidth and can generally be completed overnight. Gamers need minimal bandwidth at the time where they are playing, which tends to be peak hours.

We all pay the same amount for each plan offered. I don't get it any cheaper because I use P2P and am not a Gamer etc......

You really think Exetel are singling out P2P users purely because they disprove of how some people use their leisure time?

[CoreyPlover]

Are you saying that Gamers and other Users are better then me and others that use P2P?

That statement completely misses the point.

All users are treated equally. It is the type of downloads that are ranked. Gaming and VOIP traffic is *required* to have low latency to be used properly. P2P is not time critical in the slightest. Therefore it makes sense to prioritise gaming and VOIP traffic and de-prioritise P2P traffic. If this means you have to wait twice as long for your "Linux distribution", then so be it: wait twice as long. It is all about managing bandwidth so that everybody gets what they pay for: Gamers pay for gaming, VOIP users pay for clear phone calls. And P2P users pay for the ability to download files: de-prioritisation does not detract from this ability.

Now to bring some realism into this, here are some realistic numbers: During peak period the maximum speed reached was: 280Kib/s with 100 Seeders connected. 2) This morning at about 08:45AM same torrent and 107Seeders connected, it reached 107Kib/s.

In relative terms, those speed ratios look reasonable. True, these are shy of the speed that is possible on an 8Mbps connection but to put this in another context: off-peak speeds of 100KB/s allows you to download up to 108GB for the month. In fact, you only need an average speed of about 55KB/s in order to exhaust your off-peak quota.

[tycannah]

So there is a definite loss of bandwidth but it's not as bad as some are here reporting.
The ones that are getting 15k ~ 30k (meaning what?) do have a problem that might be related with their Software/Port forwarding/firewall/Exchange....etc
.

15Kb/s to 30Kb/s is average speed achieved for some people, such as myself, when downloading bittorrents during the OFF-PEAK period.
Example: last night I would have downloaded over the 2.00am to 12.00pm period about 700Mb of bittorrent data and when noon ticked over the torrents completed at 150Kb/s i.e. about ten times faster, and at my maximum possible line speed.
I dont want to repeat what I have already said about this issue since you only need to read those comments in this forum. Exetel are working on resolving it, and hopefully we can get back to a "normalised" average download speed (by exetel standards) of 50 Kb/s for bitorrents for my ADSL 1 1536/256 during the Off-peak period.

As an aside, the name "OFF PEAK" has to be the greatest misnomer ever created by any marketing organisation.

[LordS]

abolish off peak.

Give one large quota, don't have everyone's plans end/start at the same time and you'll have a decent network.

[CoreyPlover]

15Kb/s to 30Kb/s is average speed achieved for some people, such as myself, when downloading bittorrents during the OFF-PEAK period.

I will repeat myself again: It is possible to get good P2P speeds, even in off-peak and any readers should try such tests for themselves (see http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.ph ... 93#p258393 for high quality torrents and take particular note of http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.ph ... 04#p258404 too).

tycannah, I can sympathise that 15-30KB/s is low and 50KB/s is not unreasonable, but what are you able to achieve via these aforementioned torrents. These are *known* to have extremely high quality seeders. The problem with using other common torrents to assess your speed is that you don't know how much of the speed slow down is due to seeds capping their uploads and how much is due to the de-prioritisation.

abolish off peak.
Give one large quota, don't have everyone's plans end/start at the same time and you'll have a decent network.

You obviously have no idea about the repercussions of abolishing off-peak. Doing so will probably alleviate the congestion at the start of off-peak, but is *very* likely to result in congestion at other times such as 4pm (when school students return home) and 8pm (after dinner once people have settled down for the evening). How would this contribute to a "decent network". It is all about encouraging people to download during the times when bandwidth is least utilised and currently overnight is the most appropriate for scheduled downloads, not 24x7

[LordS]

Unfortunately its impossible to have a perfect setup whereby its never congested. But I'd rather see an hour of minor slow speeds at 8pm than 12 hours of unusable internet.

[CoreyPlover]

Unfortunately its impossible to have a perfect setup whereby its never congested. But I'd rather see an hour of minor slow speeds at 8pm than 12 hours of unusable internet.

This setup is not going to be achieved by abolishing off-peak. Have a look at http://public.mrtg.exetel.com.au/bwsumm ... width.html. There are natural rises and falls and I think that if off-peak were abolished, this general pattern would continue but without the abrupt increases and decreases at off-peak commencement and cessation. By my reckoning this is likely to lead to high utilisation across most times periods, except from 4am until 7am (which is naturally low now) and perhaps another lull in activity around 2-4pm (another natural trough). The biggest risk of abolishing off-peak is high congestion from 7-8pm right through to 2am, which I think is the prime period for internet usage in households and this would make a lot of users very unhappy.

[Sp4nKy]

Does this apply to http websites, as in rapidshare, megaupload, hotfile etc...etc...?
Only reason i ask is i know that is the next thing after torrents and it isnt really a p2p network.
I think this is a fair call by exetel and im glad they have brought this in.

[CoreyPlover]

Does this apply to http websites, as in rapidshare, megaupload, hotfile etc...etc...?

At the moment, no. But I predict that this view might need be reconsidered in the short-medium term future. One thing that P2P does is saturate both the upstream and downstream bandwidth so perhaps HTTP downloads are not as much of a threat to Exetel's bandwidth management, I'm not sure.

[lenvik]

Are you sure?

I was downloading from steam yesterday morning and I was getting something like 20 KB/s until 12pm then suddenly I got 400 KB/s at 12:05. I'm also getting pretty poor speedtest.net results of 1-2mbps instead of the usual 6-7mbps at any other time of the day.

EDIT: 11:45am on Sunday.
Your current bandwidth reading is:

984.10kbps

which means you can download at 123.01 KB/sec. from our servers.

[CoreyPlover]

Are you sure?

No.

I just tested and am getting similar speeds (20KB/s downloads, 1Mbps speed tests). But I'd be inclined to wait to see how things develop (hopefully this is not a permanent artefact of the "no charge" off-peak downloads)

Are you on a Powertel unbundled plan or an Optus bundled/naked plan)? Because http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=226&t=34185 seems similar (and I'm on Powertel too)

[lenvik]

How do you tell the difference? >.>

The plan is ADSL1 8mbps TELO if that helps.

[CoreyPlover]

ADSL1 plans are Telstra, which means you are on different infrastructure to me and neb (from that referring thread).

As I suggested, perhaps wait to see how things develop and if there is no improvement you are welcome to log a slow speed fault via residentialsupport@exetel.com.au