Plusnet Removes Broadband Internet Traffic Prioritisation

[#1]

---

Max Premium looks to still be available on the website

---

Aha, thanks. I couldn't find it, and it didn't come up in the search results at all. Now that page does only mention higher upload speeds, and not any elevated traffic priority - which is different to what I understand by Max Premium, and different to what I remember signing up for.

[#2]

It does include higher priority on the BT network but for some reason Plusnet never said that in the description.

[#3]

Hi this was before work was completed on the "new network" since then there have been significant changes and we're confident that the majority of users will not be impacted.

ITWorks wrote:

When a customer saturates their line on the "new network" (now without traffic prioritisation), with a mix of different apps and service, will time critical apps and services be impacted ?

---

PN,  would appreciate a response/answer to the above 

[#4]

@corringham

Yes, my concern is whether I can expect to get an answer I trust. Few (if any?) of the support staff I have ever spoken to know anything about ADSL Max Premium - most have never heard of it.

Thanks for flagging this I;m really sorry that knowledge of this is low, all staff are trained on it when they join but they can go months and months without seeing anybody with it and so the knowledge deteriorates, I'll speak to our training guys and see if there's a way they can keep it fresh with people.

If the traffic prioritization has been removed then I will have to look elsewhere, as even with it I can't watch iPlayer in the evenings without buffering even on low res. If I hit problems in the daytime (I work from home) then it would be the end of Plusnet for me.

To be clear, traffic prioritisation has been removed from all unlimited accounts. 

Can you PM me if you're having problems so that I can apply the Pro add on?

[#5]

@JonoH - so why can't you get somebody who isn't as incompetent at answering technical questions as you and @Gandalf, to post some answers here that make any sense ?

Unless Plusnet have changed what the so called "Pro Add-on" actually does,  applying it will have no benefit on customers who are suffering the consequences of this.

Please get one of your network guys on here to justify how customers are supposed to cope with this [-Censored-] !

[#6]

Hi @Anonymous

I don't think it's necessary to name call, if you believe I'm wrong then engage with me tell me what your specific concern/point is and I will come back to you with an answer. The brief that we have had from the people who initiated this change is that customers should not experience any issues after the removal of traffic prioritisation, for any that do adding the Pro add on will apply enhanced traffic management and thus should solve there issues.

[#7]

But that is clearly wrong !.

You keep saying the same wrong thing, won't magically make it become right !.

Adding the Pro Add-on will NOT restore the proper functioning of customer's broadband experience on slow connections.

There is NO POINT in engaging YOU in this discussion as it is clear that you don't know the answers.

Please find a member of your network team to answer ALL the questions raised in this topic.

[#8]

Is it just me, or are Plusnet staff deliberately not answering or escalating the pertinent questions raised by the "Superusers" in this topic ?.

I thought the whole point of "Superusers" was to quickly identify, escalate, and resolve issue like this !

[#9]

Moderate, Please CLOSED THIS THREAD with my request.

Thanks

[#10]

Seeing that I've been mentioned a few times in this thread...

@Oldjim wrote:
@bobpullen what about the Ellacoyas...

We haven't used Ellacoya kit for a long time. We do have equivalents in place though, and traffic still flows through the kit.

what about the effect on speed test results

Not sure what you're asking here. There shouldn't really be any effect unless you're hammering your connection when running one. We keep a very close eye on speedtest metrics, so will know if things start going south.

---

@Townman wrote:
Are you able to obtain an explanation of how the investment in the core network removes the need / benefit derived from a traffic flow control, who's objective is to mitigate the limitations of exchange to property bandwidth?  The core network might have more capacity and deliver it edge to edge quicker, but it's still the same limitation of slow speeds over much of BTOR's wet cotton local network.  Can @bobpullen or @Kelly contribute here please?

I'm loathe to get drawn too deeply into the discussion, because I doubt I'll be able to keep on top of it (got a lot on this week). It's worth considering though that there will still be other QoS layers in the mix - like that of your router and what's out on the BTw network.

With recent developments into caching, we have a lot of spare bandwidth available in the event of a catastrophic failure and following investigation into the packet loss issue late last year, we also have a better insight into how things perform with the DPI kit bypassed.

For the sceptics - This isn't a cost cutting exercise. As mentioned above, the physical architecture is still very much in place.

Adding Pro, whilst not 100% aligned with the prioritisation that applied before, will give higher ToS markings to things like Gaming, VPN and VoIP.

@Anonymous wrote:

... will have no benefit on customers who are suffering the consequences of this.

Be great to hear from anybody that's noticed any significant difference following the changes that have been made. There's a lot of speculation in this thread, and not much about actual experiences?

May have overlooked it, but I haven't come across anyone 'suffering consequences' yet?

[#11]

I think the Pro Add On should be FREE of charge to everyones, not £5 per month because of Broadband Internet Traffic Prioritisation was removed. Only suggest in my view.

[#12]

I'd just like to thank JonoH for his reply to my posts. So far today I haven't seen any issues - if I do see any this week I'll be in touch!

To summarize what I understand so far:

• traffic prioritization has been removed from all unlimited accounts
• ADSL Max Premium provided an increased upload speed and elevated priority within the BT network
• traffic prioritization is useful with low speed connections to mitigate the impact of congestion on time sensitive protocols

What I'm still not clear on:

• whether the change only affects traffic within the Plusnet network, or whether it affects the BT network part too

If it is the Plusnet part only, then there is effectively no change to the ADSL Max Premium product.

[#13]

@bobpullen, at last sanity returns to this topic !

Can you answer @corringham's question -

---

@corringham wrote:

Does anyone know whether this applies to 20CN ADSL Max connections on IPStream backhaul, or just connections on Plusnet's own new network?

---

[#14]

---

corringham wrote:

What I'm still not clear on:

• whether the change only affects traffic within the Plusnet network, or whether it affects the BT network part too

Just the Plusnet network.

---

[#15]

---

Just the Plusnet network.

---

---

Phew. Got there in the end.