Ace Internet. Any Other Victims?

Fenris

I honestly can't believe my luck; I finally get away from Toucan only to have a worse time with Ace. And there was I beliveling all the hype about how good they were!

Anyway, I connected to them last Friday and on that day they started to throttle P2P. Brilliant. So we're back to the old "unlimited" debate again. Then, on Wednesday I lost connectivity completely; no websites load despite being able to connect to Ace at between 2-5mbps. E-mail support is terrible and they haven't done a thing to correct the problem; I've been using dial-up since Wednesday afternoon!

Anyone else experiencing problems with Ace?

mrJ_5

apprently its due to everyone watching the world cup on the bbc sport site

ace are probably recieving emails left right and centre about this... but i would say ringing could get the problem sorted out quicker

Fenris

Yeah, I know the reasons; I've been following the progress on another website. But that doesn't explain the fact that I couldn't connect at all.

Still, funny thing is, not long after I posted this I went to my other PC and lo and behold, I can connect again! Guess I'll just have to see how long for...

Sorry, just re-read that and it came over as a slap! Didn't mean it too, just ment that I've been seeing all the excuses; football "my shiny metal a*s! "

Rex_Mundi

I saw THIS ARTICLE and thought it may be of interest to Ace users.

I find the World Cup excuse highly amusing. My Zen 2Mb unlimited account hasn't suffered even a slight dropping in speed during the tournament on any service I use including P2p and usenet (in fact I've never noticed a drop in speed on any service since I joined Zen a couple of years ago).

Fenris

It's a good one, I grant you! I've been on another forum where they have an Ace section and you wouldn't believe the amount of people who actually swallowed that excuse!

Don't get me wrong, I know that people are loyal to Ace because they've been with the company for a while, but as they say, if it looks like bullmuck, smells like bullmuck, then it's bullmuck!

I've had a funny day with Ace today. My connection stayed live last night, but when I came back to my PC at around midday, gone again! BUT uTorrent was still up and downloading. How very odd. Then it was back on at 3pm. So I'm now convinced (well, I was before, but I like to give the benefit of the doubt from time to time!) that it's NOT a BT problem as Ace fobbed me off with, but a network problem their end. If it happens again I shall be one severly annoyed person!

atlantic_2

It is supposed to be back to normal service for this weekend and Steve (Ace) is making an announcement tomorrow.He has admitted on a forum that P2P is the problem and it was made worse by the football streaming.
Looks very much as though caps will be put in place.
I agree with you though that many Ace customers are bending over backwards for Ace.

normanmark

Fenris wrote:

I've had a funny day with Ace today. My connection stayed live last night, but when I came back to my PC at around midday, gone again! BUT uTorrent was still up and downloading. How very odd. Then it was back on at 3pm. So I'm now convinced (well, I was before, but I like to give the benefit of the doubt from time to time!) that it's NOT a BT problem as Ace fobbed me off with, but a network problem their end. If it happens again I shall be one severly annoyed person!

and i suppose all you're downloading is legal material? :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Fenris

normanmark wrote:

and i suppose all you're downloading is legal material? :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Depends on your definition of legal really doesn't it? If you think Beta's of software and TV shows are not legal, then you'd be right!

Honestly, if you can't post anything constructive why waste your time on comments like the above? Do a search and see how many legitimate software designers, musicians etc use Bittorrent to share their wears, then come back and fling around accusations.:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

normanmark

Well lets not kid ourselves here, how many use it to download legitmate material? 5%. Not suprising why ISP's limit people who use these programs etc.

Anyway thats a diff matter altogether. If its a new connection, then a max product will be up & down for the first 10 days before it stables out.

Fenris

Just got an e-mail from Ace; makes for interesting reading:

We would like to thank you for choosing Ace Internet as your ADSL
provider.

We are writing to you to inform you of some important changes which are
happening to your service.

In the last few days, you may have noticed we have had to restrict your
speeds no peer2peer services such as Bit Torrent, or USENET (news
groups) during certain times of the day.

This was due to a huge, rapid, increase in the demand for bandwidth by
a small minority of users of these services.

This, combined with other increased usage over a couple of days, lead
to us increasing the contention for these services, to allow other
services, such as web browsing, email and streaming media to continue to
function.

The increase in contention for these services was only planned to be an
emergency measure.

ADSL, by nature, is a shared service. The available bandwidth is shared
by other users of the serivce. This means that if a user is heavily
downloading files 24/7, then it does cause problems to other users.

In light of the current issues, we have had to introduce a "fair use
policy".

We have looked at customers' usage patterns and the vast number of our
users will not be affected at all by this policy.

Starting later this week, we will be introducting a fair use limit on
peer2peer and Usenet downloads. We estimate this new limit will start
from around Wednesday, as soon as the development work is complete - and
will replace the current peak rate restrictions.

You will be able to download up to 3.5Gb per 24 hours - at any time of
the day or night, from P2P and Usenet, at normal speeds. This will
allow you to potentially download over 100Gb per month at normal speeds.

If your downloads exceed 3.5Gb in the 24 hour period, your service for
P2P and Usenet will be contended to a higher rate, and you will be
restricted to slower speeds on P2P and Usenet until your next 24 hour
period begins.

The 3.5Gb daily limit ONLY applies to P2P and Usenet. The use of other
services such as web browsing, email, ftp etc, are NOT restricted.

Whilst there are no defined limits or restrictions for other services,
if we think your usage is having an detremental effect on our ability
to provide the service to other users, we will contact you and see if we
can help you to reduce your usage or find an alternate package for you.

The full policy can be found at
http://www.ace-internet.co.uk/adsl/fup.html

Please note, this new policy is under trial and it may be necessary to
make some minor adjustments. If we need to, we will let you know.

We value your custom very highly and hope you will understand why we
have had to take these measures. If however, you are unhappy with the
changes, we don’t want you to feel you have to stay with us. Therefore, if
you ordered your ADSL service with us on or before 18th June 2006, we
have reduced your minimum contract from 3 months to just 1 month. We
would rather have your custom because you want to stay and not because you
have to.

Kind Regards

Ace Internet

Now. don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have objected to a cap... BUT 3.5gb per day? Erm, think not! What happens if you're downloading a file larger than that and you need it today? If that'd been a peak-time limit per day, OK fair enough, but that's the whole day. I don't use newsgroups, but I'm aware that they take some loading, so I guess those people are going to be affected badly by this too.

Glad I got my MAC today because I see a mass exodus happening!

Now to find a decent ISP who state their terms up front before you fork out your dosh!

BexTech

All these problems are happening with all but one or two ISPs, it is BT Wholesales fault for changing the way they charge ISPs.

I know no one likes caps, but at least Ace's is pretty open and decent, 3.5GB per day if you go over you will be slowed down, look how many only have pathetic 2gb per MONTH caps or 5Gb etc.

There isn't really anywhere else to go, as when everyone jumps ship and signs up with an ISP that offers unlimited downloads or a high cap per month, the same will happen to that ISP.