Plusnet - Traffic Shaping, Bandwidth Throttling

tekton23

Hi,

I moved to Plusnet Fibre last year. Since then our connection has been poorer than our previous Sky standard broadband connection.

Running a speed test shows a good speed of between 17-20 mbps. However, the connection to music services or skype for example frequently cuts out.

I have tried endless boosters, run ethernet cables etc to try to improve the connection.I have also been told constantly by Plusnet that there is no issue with the line, their service or the connection.

At Christmas however, when half of London leaves town, the connection was perfect. Consistent downloads, Skype worked perfectly and no issue with music streaming. This for me was strong proof that they cap the service or apply throttling during busy times. The problem is, what can I do? It is difficult to prove, particularly as I have a dynamic IP so it is hard to test using online connection tests. What have you found if you are a Plusnet customer and who should I move to (once my long contract comes to an end)?

Thanks,

T23

Gloomendoom

Your good speed is the same as I get on standard copper broadband... also with Plusnet.

Don't Plusnet actually state up-front that they use traffic management though, or is that just with standard broadband?

tekton23

They have a traffic prioritisation service, which kicks in when you are using multiple connections on your fibre. i.e. a Skype call will take priority over a film download, as Skype needs a prioritised connection to ensure the call is good quality, whereas the film download is not as time sensitive.

However, we are not gaming or downloading often and we notice issues with simply streaming the radio, when there are no other downloads going on.

Gloomendoom

According to this they also manage traffic at peak times...

https://www.plus.net/help/legal/key-fact-indicators-for-broadband-traffic-prioritisation/

onomatopoeia99

It's possible that they simply don't provision enough capacity in their links to cope with peak demand, because they don't charge enough to pay for it, so at peak demand there is contention internally in their network (or segments of it) and this results in dropped packets and the problems you have seen.

kwikbreaks

I have no problem getting the maximum speed my fibre extra connection can deliver at any time I care to download. No issues with streaming either. I'm pretty much certain that they have enough capacity not to need to do any throttling and any problems you do have are likely to be WiFi ones.

What does this link show your line speed as - https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=data_transfer_speed (you will need to sign in)

forgotmyname

I had Plusnet fibre for a while and its was great, 73MB and i never noticed any traffic shaping. I even downloaded 600GB one month with no emails or anything to say your taking the michael and cut back.

Using wireless?

brewerdave

Could simply be an issue at your local exchange of congestion - not directly of PN's making but insufficient capacity supplied by Openreach.
I suffered issues a while ago on my "standard" adsl line, when everything slowed down at ~ 4:00pm ie when all the kids got home from school! Fortunately, the issue went away after Openreach had carried out some upgrades at the local exchange.

kwikbreaks

Exchange backhaul upgrades get done fairly quickly and although the OP only says "last year" which could just be a month ago I suspect it has been an issue a lot longer than that.

Plusnet's own exchange checker page may show if that's a likely issue though - http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/

sghughes42

As I've posted elsewhere, Plusnet are moving from a shared wbmc network to a dedicated one but the process is causing chaos for their customers. I've been getting the same issues for 6 months - connection fine at quiet times but unusable at busy ones.

starving_artist

As above I have been experiencing painfully reduced bandwidth at certain times with standard adsl broadband. I just used the link in kwikbreak's post to check my exchange to rule out congestion there and it was upgraded in 2003 to Max DSL. I contacted Plusnet customer services and they denied they do any traffic shaping or throttling, they said the sites I was trying to access were probably slow because it was peak time and there was no problem from their end. I then talked to the technical help (after a 40 minute wait) but he didn't seem to grasp that I was asking about traffic shaping and seemed to think I was concerned about intermittent drop outs. From what I've been reading I'm coming to the conclusion that it is a structural problem at their end and they just won't admit it.