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[hesketh14]

Hi

Just checked again and I am on Green, so the issues must be a plusnets end!!

[DeadKenny]

It seems to me that at peak times, to make sure everything else runs correctly, P2P must run incredibly slowly for BB+ users - probably around the 1KBs that I've seen being reported or even slower.

That's the kind of speed I get with P2P on Premier! In fact in peak hours I get near enough 0K/sec. My peak usage however is way under the limit (around 2 to 5Gb a month, for everything, not just P2P).

However I do notice that upstream levels with P2P seem to be untouched (so whilst everyone leeches from me, I get nothing in return).

[godsell4]

Quick update on this, am still working on the draft internally - planning to get to PUG this afternoon.

Is this information going to go out to the lowly fee paying customers today?

SW.

[ianwild]

Hopefully, yes - We had something ready on Friday, but we decided not to post it on the basis that we wouldn't be around to follow it up or clarify any misunderstandings (It's a detailed document, and there were a lot of questions when we published it to the PUG NDA guys).

There are a couple more updates to make now, but we are doing everything we can to get this out to customers today.

Cheers,

Ian

[neilarmstrong]

We're finshing this off at the moment to try and ensure we cover all of the questions asked by PUG members.

[godsell4]

Really polishing this tu*d till it is gleaming ?

SW.

[wildmind]

Not a particularly helpful nor required response there?

We saw a draft, which people were told we would, and it is a VERY comprehensive document. After reading it there were some additional questions (which is the point of us being shown it) so people are answering them before posting the update.

Would you prefer PN to simply say "An update will be out by wednesday" without people being aware that it is being proofread and that feedback is being considered?

[Oldjim]

Announcement has now been made on the main forums - are we going to have it on here as well for the benefit of F9 and Metronet customers http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51330

[mikeb]

cough - http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51330 - cough

Broadband Platform Traffic Management – UPDATE

Summary

This is an update to the previously reported problems relating to our broadband network management system. A copy of the previous posting can be seen here:-
http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1164017667.htm

[snipped]

Kind Regards,
_________________
Bob Pullen
Plusnet Customer Support
The smarter way to Broadband
http://usertools.plus.net

edit: pipped at the post ... just

[Colin]

Announcement has now been made on the main forums - are we going to have it on here as well for the benefit of F9 and Metronet customers http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51330

It is on the other portals.

[bpullen]

Hi all,

Another announcement has just gone out to the portal forums and I'm about to update SS.

Rgds,

[ptotea]

Hi - As a novice user I am not exactly sure what plusnet are trying to say other than the fact that the service is not as it seems. I have recently found that while my service from PlusNet seems interminably slow. My neighbours service (by another provider) is excellent. As we are both wireless I can log onto his system to access the internet and find a huge difference in download speeds.
Where I am downloading at a mere two to three kb with plusnet I can switch to my neighbours network and the same download runs at sixty to seventy KB.

The question is should I change over to his provider? On the face of it there seems to be no competition.

The second question is.... I purchased an uncapped service with unlimited bandwidth but find my service IS capped - where do I stand legally?

Three... What happened to the 30 to 1 maximum contention ratio I signed up for?

Am I alone with these problems?

Possibly the problems plusnet is experiencing is the crux of my problem but maybe someone can explain to me in lay terms what their problems are so that I can work out if MY problems are short term or not.

Regards....

[colizhoward]

Mr Pullen,
Please can you tell the general user, in simple terms, and without all the jargon and TLA's just what is going on with Plus Net performance. It does not seem to be getting any better. The problems with being able to log on in the first place when using a simple USB router appear to be spreading and in some instances it is impossible for your customers to access the network for whole days or more. Tickets are not answered satisfactorily and it is still impossible to make contact by phone, just like in the summer.
Personally I have moved to using a wireless router and the connection issues have been mitigated as this stays on all the time, but my 85 year old father, who I persuaded to use PlusNet remains on a simple USB modem that is only powered when he is using the PC and hence finds that since early October when the (lack of)connection problems started he has been unable to make any sensible use of his connection without much frustration. As his "support engineer" operating from afar I too am finding it very difficult to help him solve the problems and we are both becoming increasingly fed up with PlusNet performance.
The speed issues that I experienced earlier in the summer remain unresolved and an "up to 8Mb" connection continues to operate at less than 10% of that value (typically 500Kb) even when BT and others say I should be able to get at least 3Mb
Your recent email to customers seemed to be operating in a different world from where we are.
 

[LC100]

Hi

The speed issues that I experienced earlier in the summer remain unresolved and an "up to 8Mb" connection continues to operate at less than 10% of that value (typically 500Kb) even when BT and others say I should be able to get at least 3Mb

Have you tried connecting using a network cable to the router and running a speedtest?  Wireless and Windows XP run slow in a lot of cases unless you make some manual settings.

The problems with being able to log on in the first place when using a simple USB router appear to be spreading and in some instances it is impossible for your customers to access the network for whole days or more. Tickets are not answered satisfactorily and it is still impossible to make contact by phone, just like in the summer.

USB Modems typically give all sorts of problems and I will not touch them!  They are cheap for a reason and use your own PC for a lot of the processing which gives rise to plenty of opportunities for something on the PC to cause a conflict.  As you have found a router is more reliable and a lot more secure as well due to NAT and in most cases built in Firewalls. 

I would recommend testing your PlusNet account using a wired connection, if throughput is better come back here and let us know and there are ways to bring the wireless speed upto the same as the wired speed.

For your father consider buying him a new router as a Christmas present



 

[ianwild]

Mr Pullen,
Please can you tell the general user, in simple terms, and without all the jargon and TLA's just what is going on with Plus Net performance. It does not seem to be getting any better. The problems with being able to log on in the first place when using a simple USB router appear to be spreading and in some instances it is impossible for your customers to access the network for whole days or more. Tickets are not answered satisfactorily and it is still impossible to make contact by phone, just like in the summer.
Personally I have moved to using a wireless router and the connection issues have been mitigated as this stays on all the time, but my 85 year old father, who I persuaded to use PlusNet remains on a simple USB modem that is only powered when he is using the PC and hence finds that since early October when the (lack of)connection problems started he has been unable to make any sensible use of his connection without much frustration. As his "support engineer" operating from afar I too am finding it very difficult to help him solve the problems and we are both becoming increasingly fed up with PlusNet performance.
The speed issues that I experienced earlier in the summer remain unresolved and an "up to 8Mb" connection continues to operate at less than 10% of that value (typically 500Kb) even when BT and others say I should be able to get at least 3Mb
Your recent email to customers seemed to be operating in a different world from where we are.
 

Hi - Just wanted to answer a couple of things from this:

- I'm not aware of the widespread connection issues with USB modems you report (Although I'm not saying it isn't happening, it just isn't on my radar). There could be many causes of this, but I'm at a loss to pin the blame on one thing. What errors do people see here?

- I personally see the support team operating a lot more effectively now. We are not there yet, and I agree that there are still tickets that aren't getting good enough answers, however generally I'm seeing many fewer complaints than we were a few months ago, and call waiting times even following the improvements to our Auto-Attendant (Which made it a lot easier to talk to someone) the average waiting time is down by a lot. It's been rare to see it go above 25 mins this week, and often I've walked through the support centre and it's been below ten mins. That is in contrast to times in the last 6 months when waiting was over an hour. As we bring in more support staff from our graduation bay to mainstream support (We should have 19 more people on the phones by the end of this month than we had at the beginning of last month), this can only get better.

- In terms of speeds, it really is worth getting some more detail, because there are 3 or 4 reasons why you might be getting a poor speed. Depending on what is wrong we can either fix this easily, or at least advise about where the problem lies. It's all to easy to generalise and say that everything is PlusNet's fault, but that is only doing an disservice to yourself, when there could be an easy fix with a bit of sustained investigation.

Ian