o2 Broadband - Traffic Shaping ????

StuieUK34

I have o2 broadband in 2 places....
I have had o2 at my cardiff place for over 2 years, and is running ADSL Max (upto 8mb)

At my partners place, we had o2 broadband setup 2 months ago on ADSL + (upto 20mb)

When i want to download somthing at my cardiff place on my laptop, stuff comes down at the fastest it can go (say 483k a sec). And for the sake of it, lets say i am using a downloader tool, regardless of the content..... (say 1am)

When i'm at my partners, doing the same as above (my sink rate is say 11mb), i sometimes get 43k a sec or might shoot to around 250k a sec........ (say 1am)

To me, thats traffic shaping on my partners line, but i cant find any documentation on the o2 website which states how or when the shaping kicks in?
Anyone got any insight into this ?

kwikbreaks

ISPs don't call it shaping they always call it "traffic management"

This page mentions it (but only for Access)...

http://broadband.o2.co.uk/home/ofcom.jsp

Fair speeds for everyone

The internet is busiest when more people are at home and online. This can slow it down for everyone. To stop that happening, we've introduced a traffic management policy for our Access package on O2 Home Broadband.

When the network is congested, we'll give first priority to those things most people want to do - like emailing, looking at websites, watching things on sites like BBC iPlayer or YouTube, or using programs like Skype or Messenger.

We'll give lower priority to peer to peer programs and newsgroup services. So you'll notice them running slower when our network gets busy. We've done this because some people use them to download large files (like films and TV shows) all day long. And that slows everything else down.
How traffic management works

* We'll do it at the busiest times.
* You can use any kind of program whenever you want. But peer to peer programs and newsgroup services will run slower when our network gets busy.
* Audio and video streaming (like BBC iPlayer and YouTube) will work as normal - or even faster than before.
* We won't limit your actual connection speed - only the speed of peer to peer programs and newsgroups.

techno12

All of O2's broadband packages (The Basics, The Allrounder and The Works) now suffer from traffic management, so anyone joining in the last few months will be on one of those.

http://forum.o2.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=309382

That's why I'm sticking with my O2 legacy package (16meg LLU unlimited that I've had for several years) as they're unaffected.

I was going to get their HomePhone as well, but if you do that they force you onto one of the new broadband packages with traffic shaping so I will give that a miss!

StuieUK34

I guess thats why my cardiff o2 broadband works like real broadband then as its on the o2 llu old skool setup........

Great, so now i got crap broadband for 10 months

Eyeballs99

Always go for the ISP's on a monthly contract, and then if you get port throttling etc then you can just leave. I did this with sky and I'm now with Vivaciti on a monthly bases.

No more slow connection for me, it's not like its a massive amount more a month either.

Inactive

Eyeballs99 wrote: »

Always go for the ISP's on a monthly contract, and then if you get port throttling etc then you can just leave. I did this with sky and I'm now with Vivaciti on a monthly bases.

No more slow connection for me, it's not like its a massive amount more a month either.

Good advice.;)

AzimScot

techno12 wrote: »

All of O2's broadband packages (The Basics, The Allrounder and The Works) now suffer from traffic management, so anyone joining in the last few months will be on one of those.

http://forum.o2.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=309382

That's why I'm sticking with my O2 legacy package (16meg LLU unlimited that I've had for several years) as they're unaffected.

I was going to get their HomePhone as well, but if you do that they force you onto one of the new broadband packages with traffic shaping so I will give that a miss!

Biggest mistake I made was on the old legacy package myself and they told me nothing would change on package and what do you know the cap my line.

allan2006

the old o2 home broadband tariffs (legacy) are not throttled.

new ones are, hence why you are probably experiencing differences.

they do have details buried on the website,
http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE/,/?St=191,E=0000000002900608149,K=3005,Sxi=1,CASE=24947,T=broadband_case,&cm_sp=OnlineHelp-_-broadband_home-_-home_bb_top_5

AzimScot

any english site?