[WXC/VFX] The Torrent plan and what it's done...

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [WXC/VFX] The Torrent plan and what it's done...

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131 posts

Master Geek

#170818 13-Oct-2008 09:09

coffeebaron:
TheBartender:
So...there it is....simple really, they underestimated the market demand and under resourced the plan...now it is suffering, and they are being forced to either limit the plan, or chop it all together.

I think a big part of it is not so much that they "underestimated"; their figures would have been based on the habits of their users at the time. What would have happened though, is those who were big downloaders, will have become much bigger downloaders; as now they get a big chunk free.
Rather than giving away a big chunk of free data, maybe they could have offered a cut price deal on the off peak data instead. That way, they would have still moved the heavy downloaders, but made a few $$ too to put back in the bandwidth budget.

I totally agree with this. Xne should have charged the same for peak time as everyone

but charge perhaps qurter/third /half/ for the off peak.

This way the heavy users can pay for the extra bandwidth without speed being compromise.

choccers

64 posts

Master Geek

#170835 13-Oct-2008 11:44

Well I have to agree with KKnuts (except the part about the boobs).

I have had enough of receiving little or no concrete response from XNet. I am now just a normal customer of theirs who pays an extra 50c per gb to surf during the day and have an unusable 24/7 service for 8hrs.

Whether or not you agreed with the the torrent plan principle I was still a paying customer who was in the end was receiveing a service which could not do what it was sold as.

I am/was a reasonable customer, I would have been happy to have the overnight time slot reduced, to have a certain amount of throttling put in place if that would restore the overnight international bandwith to even 128kbs so at least be of some use. I was quite happy with XNet. I would have been happy with them doing something/anything to improve the overnight service.

However, I also work in IT (like a lot of people on this forum) and used to work for an ISP in NZ as part of the ops team. So the deafening silence from XNet about what they are doing or planning to do or whether they are actively doing anything or whether they would just like users on the torrent plan t go away is really unacceptable to me both as a customer and professionally. Its certainly nothing I would ever get away with at work for even 24hrs, let alone 7 days.

So I do the only thing I can as a customer and take my money to somewhere else. (In this case Slingshot since they already have the phone line. And yes I know they are having speed issues as well but at least the posts in their thread are still talking over the 100kbs mark).

RalphFromSnap

776 posts

Ultimate Geek

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Snap Internet

#170874 13-Oct-2008 16:10

attilathegorilla: The strange thing for me is that with Utorrent, my upload speeds are still good, and are about 4 times as fast as my download speeds. I seed a couple of great documentaries, and I`m still able to upload exactly 1.9 GB overnight, just like before these speed issues started. But I can nly download about a quarter of that, no matter how well seeded the torrents are. Don`t upload and download use the same bandwidth?

The way that ISPs purchase bandwidth is different to the way that a consumer purchases it.

Consumers purchase it in blocks of data ie. 1gb, 10gb etc.
ISPs purchase a line speed of say 50mbps bidirectionally.

This means that ISPs can move 50mbps (6.25 MegaBytes per Second) of traffic in both directions, as ADSL connections are much faster down than up, and as NZ provides very little content for other countries to want the data coming in on those links is contended for, the data leaving the ISP on those same links is not.

Upload bandwidth is much more available on demand, and this is what you have observed.

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Kyro

74 posts

Master Geek

#170922 13-Oct-2008 18:53

choccers: Well I have to agree with KKnuts (except the part about the boobs).
I have had enough of receiving little or no concrete response from XNet. I am now just a normal customer of theirs who pays an extra 50c per gb to surf during the day and have an unusable 24/7 service for 8hrs.
Whether or not you agreed with the the torrent plan principle I was still a paying customer who was in the end was receiveing a service which could not do what it was sold as.
I am/was a reasonable customer, I would have been happy to have the overnight time slot reduced, to have a certain amount of throttling put in place if that would restore the overnight international bandwith to even 128kbs so at least be of some use. I was quite happy with XNet. I would have been happy with them doing something/anything to improve the overnight service.

Interesting how you say this, because before Torrent users were pooled pay-per-meg users could not even browse the web let alone watch streaming video.

Its still usable I know people who are on the Torrent plan and are still downloading 1-2Gb a night.Its just now the torrent plan users are finding out what it was like for pay-per-meg users, when the Torrent plan users were leeching both Torrent and pay-per-meg users bandwidth. Now the Torrent plan users only affect other Torrent plan users (as they should) and do not impact (as much, there is still a massive difference from before when there was no Torrent plan) the pay-per-meg users.

Its great to hear you were willing to have a shorter time period (2am-8am for example), but a vast majority of the users who were posting here and on other forums did not feel they should compromise at all, whether it be a reduced time slot, throttling or being pooled together.

I feel this Pooling xnet have done is a great step in the right direction, because the average Torrent plan user can still get all their torrents downloaded (most of the users I know are doing only 35-50Gb a month, not the 75Gb total). Obviously no one will be 100% happy because Xnet cannot actually garranty enough bandwidth for every single user, they have to calculate out the average amount used, and then add on a little bit of a buffer to accomidate for the users who download more. This will always result in users getting less than 100% performance.

As it is now, is much better than it was before. Atleast now pay-per-meg users are 'protected' from the bandwidth hogging nature of the Torrent plan users, just means the Torrent plan users might have to compromise a bit instead of before when they had free-range over all the bandwidth.

But alas you have moved on to Slingshot and thats good for you if your getting better performance. Maybe you will come back when all the mess is sorted out and the Torrent plan users have a better matching bandwidth pool, that still allows pay-per-meg users to browse the web and stream content in an acceptable time period.

d0tn3t

43 posts

Geek

#170927 13-Oct-2008 19:14

I wouldn't agree with your reasoning really. I would prefer to have a smaller free cap, even only 35gb - but I want it to be fast. Never mind being able to do 1-2gb daily - I want my computer to download quickly so I can either use what I'm downloading, or save power by turning off. At the moment on my torrent plan, I can't even download half of my osx updates I need to install the latest version of itunes etc, without waiting for hours for the software update to complete, this stinks. This is pretty much from 9pm on, not midnight. Youtube is pretty much useless to me too. I wouldnt call myself a very heavy user, I just tend to download stuff at night - if I knew changing plans would fix my speeds I would change right now.

I have only had a few months experience with Xnet, and I loved their plan. I'm pretty forgiving of the issues we have had over the last few months not being able to connect etc, certainly a bad run of luck - but this is really frustrating me. How hard is it to at least send us an email notifying us of changes they are making or creating a 'pool' for us to share etc.

Once I move I wont have a problem signing up with a service that requires a 12mnth term, and I'm kind of looking forward to that freedom of choice. People seem to crap on xtra all the time, but to their credit, in 12months I never had any issues with speed or connection.

There seems to be a bunch of guys on here with a major chip on their shoulder regarding torrent plant users. There probably are some abusing the service, and you may say 'farewell, go to xtra, dont look back', but we're only here because they made a value proposition that appealed to us, and they delivered on their promise only until recently where they wont even contact us regarding the issues. To me, its about accountability. If we get caught downloading illegal torrents, we can be banned. If we pay our bill to WxC late, we are penalised. They are supposed to be providing me with a connection in comparable quality of service to whom they are competing against, if they cant, at least have the balls to let us know.

attilathegorilla

213 posts

Master Geek

#170942 13-Oct-2008 20:15

Instead of creating these seperate pools, I find it a much better idea to decrease the free period. What sort of free time frame would regular Xnet users be happy with? 2am-7am? Remember sleep is great for body and mind ;)

If honest work and justice are not enough - we'll get a lawyer.

TameIti

97 posts

Master Geek

#170943 13-Oct-2008 20:17

yep 2am or 1am to 7am. Decreased "free" cap too, maybe about 35gb at the most.

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Niel

3267 posts

Uber Geek

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#170970 13-Oct-2008 21:54

TameIti: yep 2am or 1am to 7am. Decreased "free" cap too, maybe about 35gb at the most.

Some people would like to do some browsing before going to work. The proposed time of 7:00 is still too late for them. It is really hard to please everyone. If XNet is not suitable for you, then change to something else. It will cost you nothing, and you will get a brand new modem for free (you can sell it on TM for $20). I would love to buy a new Volvo C30, but it is not suitable for a family so I got an old S40.

You can never have enough Volvos!

SEEN

161 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

#170997 13-Oct-2008 23:41

Just did a speedtest to LA, at about 11:35pm, this is the result.

Unfortunately I don't have the option of changing ISPs as I still live with my parents (I'm only 17), so there is nothing i can do but put up with the speed I get.

Lorenceo

904 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#170998 14-Oct-2008 00:05

Kyro, your post makes reading a bit difficult. Even on a 1680x1050 monitor I have to scroll heaps from side to side.

When everyone was on the same equipment, the internet was still usable during the off peak hours. Since the 6th all international traffic comes to a grinding halt as soon as the clock strikes midnight for users on the torrent plan.
From what I understand it hasn't had that much of a positive effect on the non torrent users, who still get sub optimal speeds. However it has had a drastically negative effect on torrent users.
While I understand it must have been frustrating for the pay per MB users to be slown down by the torrent users, I don't think this current situation is fair.
As I said, when everyone was on the same equipment the internet was still usable. Web pages still loaded, videos still streamed, games still worked. Now, nothing works apart from downloads, and they go at a snails pace.
All this along with the possibility that the torrent users are still consuming the bandwidth, but this new equipment is wasting it by dropping a large number of packets due to being overloaded. (this is just speculation, but it makes sense after what Rapidshare has said and with the horrible off peak speeds)

I am considering changing back to pay per MB. If I do this I will go back to downloading during peak time, and if many people do the same we will end up back in the same situation the torrent plan was introduced to combat. Slow on peak speeds and users complaining about it.

I would be happy for the free data amount was reduced, to say 50GB if it meant that the internet would become usable again after midnight.
It would be good if Xnet re-introduced free national traffic, or made it so that Xnet user - Xnet user data counted as local. I imagine this would take some pressure off the international links.

I like Xnet and want to stay with them, I have received good service previously, but these issues are not good (to say the least) and are surely doing damage to Xnets reputation as a reliable and cheap ISP. Considering that Xnet became so popular through word of mouth, I think that if the issues persist much longer then the damage to their reputation may be irreversible.

Not to mention that any potential new customers will likely look elsewhere due to the new offerings from Telecom, which I have yet to see Xnet match/beat. (I understand why though, operating costs and profit have to come from somewhere)

marmel

1924 posts

Uber Geek

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#171016 14-Oct-2008 08:15

Lorenceo: reliable and cheap ISP

Is this possible in todays enviroment?

Even if these international issues are fixed I can't see how xnet could continue with their plans the way they are.

JUPITER2K

131 posts

Master Geek

#171020 14-Oct-2008 09:02

Even if these international issues are fixed I can't see how xnet could continue with their plans the way they are .

As I stated in my earlier post there are unused off peak bandwidth not to go to waste.

Hence the torrent plan was introduce which make good business sense.
However it appear the plan seem to backfire and affecting all users.

possible solution

Kill the plan all together then the peaktime issue may/will surface again

or

1. reduce the data cap

2. shorten the duration to perhaps 6 hours instead of 12-8 a.m

3. Introduce a fix data cap plan like the old IHUG grandfather plan 40 + 40 G peak /off peak for a fix dollar
of $70~ $ 90 the money can budget for extra bandwidth ?

May be all the above are not the problem at all there are deeper issue Xnet management is experiencing
who can tell !...

Tunk

35 posts

Geek

#171022 14-Oct-2008 09:24

Or alternatively we can pick up our pitch forks, grab some torches and start a torrent hunt.

Never mind its the mayors mismanagement that led to the contaminated water.

Ragnor

8222 posts

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#171027 14-Oct-2008 10:09

RalphFromSnap:
The way that ISPs purchase bandwidth is different to the way that a consumer purchases it.

Consumers purchase it in blocks of data ie. 1gb, 10gb etc.
ISPs purchase a line speed of say 50mbps bidirectionally.

This means that ISPs can move 50mbps (6.25 MegaBytes per Second) of traffic in both directions, as ADSL connections are much faster down than up, and as NZ provides very little content for other countries to want the data coming in on those links is contended for, the data leaving the ISP on those same links is not.

Upload bandwidth is much more available on demand, and this is what you have observed.

Charging users per GB for traffic is an unrealistic and crude way to restricted users internet usage. It is only used in a widespread manner in AU and NZ because ISP's are small in scale and don't seem to be able to afford the proper equipment to manage traffic appropriately.

In other markets users simply do not tolerate capped plans (US/UK) and there is enough competition and economy of scale that ISP's provide uncapped but managed access.

Talkiet

4793 posts

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#171028 14-Oct-2008 10:15

Ragnor:
Charging users per GB for traffic is an unrealistic and crude way to restricted users internet usage. It is only used in a widespread manner in AU and NZ because ISP's are small in scale and don't seem to be able to afford the proper equipment to manage traffic appropriately.

In other markets users simply do not tolerate capped plans (US/UK) and there is enough competition and economy of scale that ISP's provide uncapped but managed access.

Wrong, then wrong, and finally wrong, but not as wrong as the first 2 points.

You need to understand how NZ being a traffic sink affects the price ISPs pay for internatinoal bandwidth, and how the massive bias towards international traffic (as opposed to national traffic) affects cost structures as compared to international ISPs where the traffic patterns are different.

Hoping that you're right and wishing for cheaper plans won't make it so.

Cheers- N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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