Plusnet want to kill my puter

wigglebeena

But why?

Lately my access is rubbish, slow as owt. I suspect I may be being 'shaped'. Plusnet's answer is to propose 'tests' which involve switching off all firewalls for hours at a time.

Is it just me or does this not seem like a marvellous idea? Or is it how they get rid of 'noisy' customers - wreck their puters, get them turned into zombie bots and then they won't be able to contact you anymore and moan. An ISP's dream!

No, really, is it just me or is that proposal irresponsible and unprofessional? What am I missing here?

fwor

Plusnet have been traffic shaping for ages now - it's unlikely that it has only recently been applied to your connection. If you are just surfing the internet (rather than using P2P) it should make your access better, not worse, as they are throttling mainly P2P traffic, not HTTP.

If you're connected to your router via USB then I agree, you shouldn't be asked to turn off any firewall at your end.

However, if you are connected to the router via Ethernet or wireless, turning it off for a while shouldn't represent much of a risk. Presumably they are trying to establish whether your firewall is the cause of the bottleneck?

sharkie

If your not connected via usb, I'd personally use a linux boot cd like the ubuntu one just to shut them up and put the onus back onto them.

wigglebeena

A friend has reported similar problems with Plusnet: when he gave in and upgraded to a more expensive package, the problems suddenly and mysteriously went away.

Plusnet are shaping/pressurising us into shelling out for a more expensive upgrade, then?

Or maybe we could just go elsewhere. This isn't what we paid for.

M4RKM

i left plusnet years ago when the traffic shaping came in. Is it really worth all the hassle, when there are probably better packages around nowadays..

fwor

Strange - I'm on Plusnet on one of their cheap tariffs, and for me performance has been very good recently.

For example on Sunday I needed to download a Linux Mint .iso in the evening via a torrent. Normally this can be "shaped" down to as little as 25kB/s during busy evening periods, but it ran continuously at over 500kB/s. Perhaps someone forgot to switch the traffic shaper on that day.

It's quite possible that the line equipment at the exchange is faulty, or that you just happen to be contending with a lot of bandwidth-hungry "neighbours".

Taffybiker

I used to be with Plusnet and they were okay, but if I had exceeded my monthly quota (easily done with teenagers on my home network) they would slow my connection to a measly 128 kb/s for the remainder of the month. I switched to O2 who offered a cheaper, more reliable connection with unlimited access. I am still happy with their service and prices more than 24 months later.

wigglebeena

O2 sound good. We'll have to seriously consider moving. It seems like ISPs are great initially when you're new and they're still making an impression, then service gradually deteriorates... Bit like relationships!

kwikbreaks

wigglebeena wrote: »

O2 sound good. We'll have to seriously consider moving.

O2 can be excellent but only the LLU service. If all you can get is the O2 Access product give it a miss.

Regarding Plusnet shaping.
Plusnet have built their whole business around selling high speeds for browsing but throttling back downloads. The only real reason you need a fast connection is for downloading something quickly. The subjective difference between 512kbps and 8Mbps when browsing is small.