yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Networking] HarrowingLife:
It appears TrafficSense was re-activated today for me.

Speeds are not terrible however, coming in around 1Mbps. But the connection keeps cutting out, essentially its the same as it was before, just more speed.

Once again its being done by increasing latency! (Causing TCP Connections to Timeout, and making Online Gaming impossible - This was discussed on previous posts)

I fully agree with QoS shapping, as one of my previous posts goes into details about.

I live in a Rural area, the nearest Virgin Media Co-Ax is 8 miles away, as for BT, well do you really think 512Kbps with High Latency is ok for £30/month?

Three are the only provider I can use for my entire Internet use!

Now me and you have a problem. Firstly, The Internet could handle every person download 50GB a day fine if you exclude mobile networks, its just ISP's do not want to spend a little more money as people are switching to High Definition.

Secondly, Netflix, per film on a TABLET is 2.8GB. Are you really telling me this is unacceptable? 2 HD Movies on Netflix on a Tablet while I'm say Bed-Bound?
[Networking] cirian75:
I bloody hope not.
[Networking] SimonTS:
I don't think that is exactly acceptable, but I grew up in the age of analogue modem connections - and when I started work and my company paid to have an ISDN line installed at my house and I could get 128k bonded it felt like I was doing things at the speed of light.

You really believe that the Internet would be OK if 6 billion people all decided to download 50GB a day? The pipes across the Atlantic can only carry 40Tbps and, at a conservative estimate, they will be overloaded by 2014. As for 'a little more money' you have obviously never worked in the datacomms/telecomms arena. That money has to come from somewhere - so your monthly Internet plan would be pushed up to cover the infrastructure costs (as would mine and everybody elses). How would you feel about paying £60+ a month to cover the costs of the new infrastructure?

No, I don't feel it is unacceptable if that is what you want to do - but if you are using that much a day and I am paying for the same 'unlimited' plan and I only use 500k in the average day then your Internet access should be throttled far more severely than mine should if there is network congestion. I don't feel that is exactly unfair - and I suspect that a straw poll of the 'man in the street' would show the majority to have the same opinion.
[Networking] cirian75:
A tweet this morning

“@ThreeUKSupport: @jailbrkr21 We're no longer doing the high usage element of our traffic sense programme. This was just a trial. http://t.co/horgptp6”
[Networking] drachers:
I would be delighted. Does anyone do a £60 mobile broadband contract? If they did, and it offered north of 50GB a month, I'd be all over that. Unfortunately we have to make do with the ridiculous hyperbole of Three's "true unlimited" claims on their website, which were never going to be achievable aims. I say this a lot - if Three had a page on their website saying "Browse responsibly! Let your neighbours use the internet too!" then I would sympathise with their capacity issues. But no, they give this impression of a fantasy world of freedom and impossibly high capacity. God forbid anyone take them up on their offer.

I have the money here, I just need a company to offer the service. Right now I spread my broadband usage over Three's "The One" plan and T-Mobile's "Full Monty" plan whereas I would rather just have one plan to rule them all, so to speak.

It's one of those SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY situations. I'm not trying to break the internet.
[Networking] ahmadcentral:
Monitor the speed during the peak times and tell us if it goes back up to normal speeds at midnight. If it goes up it looks like they're 'trialling' traffic sense again. If not it could be a mast issue.

For those who feel they're being throttled a good way to check is to buy a three PAYG sim and just put it in your phone and try speedtest.

@ cirian75- You've missed the point on my previous post. What i'm trying to say is most of the people now complaining about trafficsense are not complaining for the right reasons, either it is a mast issue, they're torrenting, tethering in a Mi-Fi etc... Until we have proof there is no point saying traffic sense is back.

@drachers- Isn't that what the traffic management page is for, it does say keep downloading to before/after peak hours. But i do agree, the way Three have marketed AYCE is in such a way that consumers are being encouraged to download huge amounts of data without a worry.
[Networking] drachers:
It would have been nice to receive prior notification that those were the terms. That way I could have scaled back my useage in advance of their traffic management, not after I'd already been knocked off the internet for a week.

Here's the thing - on mobile at least, I think any claims of unlimited all you can eat or any variant thereof should be banned outright. Give me a number of GB I can have and a rate I'm allowed to have it at, then set a price. I'll then decide if it's worth having. Any changes to the terms thereafter are easier to query, because it's all laid out in measurable certainties. Mobile ISPs can't help but court the big money, so they will oversubscribe unlimited services they can't possibly cope with, then start panicking and chopping people's service down later on. That has to stop, and it'll need an act of parliament to do it.

Once the UK's infrastructure has been upgraded to meet the colossal demand of streaming TV services, we can have another conversation about getting unlimited back on the table. For now, it's like a networking death ray.

Yes, I probably sound like a hypocrite seeing as I crack a hundred gig a month between my two contracts. But if it's the only option out here in the sticks, I'm going to do whatever I can do. Next house move is going to be somewhere with cable or fibre, naturally...
[Networking] ahmadcentral:
Agreed, at least now we don't have o2 advertising unl then cutting you off when you use over 1GB. Its better now that the ASA have stepped in and told T-Mobile they can't use unlimited for their 500mb fair use policy any more. Now they have Basic, standard and pro with 1.5GB data allowance.

Their full monty plan still has a speed cap in place though, but as far as i am aware it is truly unlimited with tethering with p2p being the only thing throttled.

Three is the same however speeds are uncapped and despite traffic sense last month they haven't throttled anyone before (or now) for using a high amount of data.

Giff Gaff offer unlimited data without tethering but have been cutting off users without warning for using too much so they are under investigation by the ASA and may have to remove the term 'unlimited' soon as well.

As long as trafficsense doesn't return then you should be fine on both Three or T-Mobile to download as much as you want as long as it's not something like p2p or against T&C as neither of them have a FUP. A bit silly if you ask me. And you can see the affect its had on Three with them having to implement traffic sense in the first place. My opinion has always been keep it unlimited on phones, but have a cap for tethering of any kind with extra payments to up the cap.
[Networking] chazam:
Something's up for me today.

Also, my location on utrace.de is completely wrong, it should be around where the red arrow is.
[Networking] cirian75:
looks awfully familiar :eek:
[Networking] HarrowingLife:
Mines slower today, but not to the same level. Also IP Tracers will only show you the RIPE details for location usually, with exceptions like Virgin Media who show in the Reverse DNS of your IP the Town you are in. I like the fact that Three keep my location secret :)

The uses for the internet evolve, the speeds increase, Investment has to be done otherwise we make no progress. And frankly, if BT did what they promised I'd have a nice fast BT Infinity line in this RURAL area.

I can clearly tell your the kind of person who only loads BBC News and reads your e-mail. Do you not even know about HD Video Streaming, let alone Netflix, buying things Digitally. (Jesus, a game I bought 2 weeks ago was over 30GB DOWNLOAD on Steam!)

Those of us that have worked or had "moderate" involvement in the telecoms industry know of a provider called Easynet. You'll know them as Sky Broadband. They have enough Fiber around the UK to offer every UK citizen 1Gbps on their backbone at the same time, FULL LOAD. (They bought most of the Dark Fiber from the 1990's to my understanding) - They them selfs said this, if you don't know how to Google this, I'll unhappily do it my self and provide the link :victory:

Your in no position to say if I should be throttled, especally when I out of curtosity have always left my large downloads to after 12AM. Even more so when you seem to think "the internet" is just e-mail's, forums and web pages without video streaming. Install Networx on your Desktop PC and learn how much you actually use. Know the difference between MB and Mb? :victory:

Do you realise that streaming RADIO 9-5 every day of the week on its own would use more data than you think is acceptable?

And I remember the ISDN days, back then I was using my Schools Co-Ax that was running at 10Mbps and loved it :p Although I do also remember thinking back then that this new thing called USB was pointless! (And clearly was wrong:silly:)
[Networking] SimonTS:
Yeah - and if the politicians did what they promised we'd all have large pensions and good healthcare; unfortunately the world is in financial crisis - and high-speed Internet access isn't exactly a life-essential priority.

That's not all I load at all, but I do most of my high-end usage on my VM fiber connection, so I am lucky to have that. Most of the stuff I do on my mobile is when I'm out of the house, so normally at work.

I am aware of Easynet. They have more than enough fibre round the UK, I agree, but when the fibre across the Atlantic is near-enough full already - and nobody has the money available right now to start laying new cables - it makes no difference. The majority of the stuff that people download doesn't come from within our shores, so that's where the bottle-neck will always be.

Cheap shot; I think I know the difference between Bytes and bits - yes. I don't think that the Internet is 'just' those things - but I came into all of this when we had BBSs and ASCII pr0n, so I have seen it develop all the way through. I may not be in a position to say whether your data should be throttled or not - but when the high usage of someone like you causes my service to be degraded then I have more right to complain than you do about not being able to download 500GB a month on your 'unlimited' contract.

Good job I don't do that then. Most of my music is from the radio, CDs or MP3s (mainly ripped from my own CDs before you start)

You had Co-Axial at school? We didn't even have a network until I was at University - and that was Token-Ring, which is a hideous technology. But I felt the same about USB. Never thought it would take off, but I also used to work for a company that sold off the future Vodafone as the MD didn't see a future in mobile telephones :eek:

Anyway, I never started this as a flame at anybody else, simply agreed that people complaining about having P2P throttled shouldn't be moaning. Yes, Three may well have been wrong to advertise their service as 'Unlimited' when they then have to limit it to stop abuse - but the way that people are *****ing about it you would have thought somebody had cut their arm off or something. If they can't download all the HD movies they want then they can buy DVDs. If they can't download the stupidly large games (how the hell can a game be 30Gig) then they can buy them on hard media, or do without. When people are struggling to get by, to find jobs, to buy enough food to survive from day to day then moaning about this is, at best, immoral.
[Networking] SimonTS:
I'll come back to the rest of your post tomorrow I'm sure - right now I've been drinking and don't trust myself to be fully in control, don't want to say anything I might regret.

Just three things to say on this though;-

1) The declaration was actually that "all people should be allowed to connect to and express themselves freely on the Internet" - that is fundamentally different to saying they have the right to stream HD movies or games ;)

2) You might just find that many, many people around the globe would put that 'Human Right' rather lower on the ladder than the right to clean water, medicine, not being abused by their governments soldiers etc

3) "Human Right" is exactly the same phrase as that used by the European Court when it ruled that prisoners MUST be allowed to vote in this country - and look at the uproar that particular "Right" has caused in the media here :eek:

As Ayn Rand said in "Atlas Shrugged";- "Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival."
[Networking] jonmorris:
I'd be quite happy for Three to do the following;

1) Introduce an AYCE tariff with no throttling or restrictions with the exception of P2P which is blocked or capped.

2) Offer an AYCE tariff that has no such restrictions but at a higher monthly cost.

3) Offer a higher bundle than 15GB for mobile broadband users, so I could use my MiFi without fear of hitting the limit (easy if you've got Sky Anytime+, Netflix, LoveFilm or in my case - all three) in any given month. Offer bundles of 30, 50, 100GB - and charge accordingly.

Given I pay £40 or so for my ADSL with the additional line rental for a phone I don't need, I'd happily pay the exact same for mobile broadband because it's faster for both uploads and downloads.

Three is missing a trick I feel.

And for the existing users with AYCE, just continue to allow things as they are until the minimum contract period is up - then let people accept the new terms or disconnect without penalty.
[Networking] VirtualMark:
Wrong - it doesn't matter how much someone has downloaded, only WHEN they download it. I'll wager that at 3am there are less people online than at 9pm.

I'm assuming that you do sleep sometime in your life? Clearly you've missed the point i'm trying to make - you suggested totally cutting off p2p. That means no p2p 24/7, while you sleep.

And as i suggested, simply basing connection speeds on the amount of people trying to connect is a fair system. It means fast speeds when the network is quiet, slow speeds when everyones on. Prioritise websites and email, its not rocket science.
[Networking] HarrowingLife:
Well I guess this is the end of this thread. Everyone seems to be back to enjoying Three, and those that were not before seem to be getting better speeds as well now thanks to the P2P management.

I believe that TrafficSense will come back for Highest Data Users but I have hope that Three will make it a fair system and not a punishment system (7 days is extreme)
[Networking] cirian75:
my general speeds have improved.

at work how ever its been a revolution.

its gone from 2.5mbos to the 9mbps.

I am being a bit more sensible though

last month just 17GB peak time usage vs the 60 to 90 Three told me I was using on peak.
[Networking] jonmorris:
I've been into London three times this week and have enjoyed decent speeds at home and on the way in by train.. but I've used Three in and around Holborn, Tottenham Court Road and towards Oxford Circus - and in ALL THREE locations got download speeds of around 0.2Mbps and little more for uploading.

Pathetic, but surely a network congestion/lack of capacity issue and nothing to do with TrafficSense. Nevertheless, it was very frustrating so I opted today to turn off my MiFi and resort to using data on Orange (which is speed capped at 1.8Mbps). That didn't just have slow data, it had NO data. It was attached to a HSPA network but couldn't get any DNS settings or find any sites, so I reluctantly went back to using Three and the slow speed.

The media has of course been rather busy talking about the O2 outage, but I do think that they're all struggling in London. Goodness knows what it will be like during the Olympics.
[Networking] cirian75:
2nd reply from ASA

"Lewis Jones LewisJ@asa.org.uk

17:09 (1 minute ago)

to me

Dear Mr *******

Thank you for your patience while we have assessed the ad and your complaint. We think you raise a valid point and have referred this matter to our Investigations Team. An Executive will update you further on the progress of the investigation.

Kind regards

Lewis Jones

Complaints Executive"
[Networking] All Day On XDA:
Once you know you've been throttled, how long does it take for speeds to return to normal?

I got a bit eager and downloaded about 1 gb today. Speeds are screwed now and I can't even video call. I accept I should have shown more sense, but I need to know when this throttling will end. I only joined 3 a couple of days ago. I foolishly thought unlimited, 'all you can eat' meant.... unlimited, all I can eat.

Obviously not...
[Networking] HarrowingLife:
It has ended, the only thing you should be getting slow speeds on is Peer to Peer (P2P) software. This mean Torrents, Limewire, etc. It should not include Skype Video Calling (If that is what you were referring to)

You've more than likely got a mast fault if your not a P2P user. Best advice I can give you is to contact @ThreeUKSupport on Twitter.

I personally downloaded 4.6GB between 10PM-12PM at 1.4MegaByte's a second. (Just bought the new Futurama Episodes from iTunes US Account)

And here's my speed right now...

And yesterday at 11PM
[Networking] skezza:
Three are now offering the all-in-one internet as an addon, which I'm quite tempted to jump at. I don't mind throttling of P2P, Torrent, as a number of ISP's are doing that now and it seems to be the growing norm, however I don't like the idea of total throttling. People seem to be getting horribly slow speeds on that speed test and also just loading pages. Also app downloads are slow too? For 3 pound a month it seems a steal but not if it performs like total ****.

What about streaming? Is that being throttled too? I intend on watching video services such as BBC iPlayer etc... Pointless unless it's not being throttled.
[Networking] HarrowingLife:
As one of the first people to get hit by the issue, I've had nothing to complain about since the issue was ended by Three. I believe they are sticking to P2P/Torrents only at the moment. I can tell you the @ThreeUK and @ThreeUKSupport Twitter teams are the best to ask, they are based in the "Working" Head-Office.

If its a Addon to your existing SIM, would you not be able to cancel the addon if you have issues?
[Networking] skezza:
Unfortunately not. In one of Three's more shrewd moves, they've made it an opt-in scheme and once you're in, you're in till the end of your contract. Obviously if I kicked and screamed enough down the phone they'd probably back down (they have before).

I don't mind opting in till the end of my contract, because Unlimited data is rare nowadays and if it's just torrents and P2P then fair play, but my worry is that streaming content will be throttled. iPlayer, YouTube, SkyGo (not that I use it anymore). Also what about grey areas, for example P2P Streaming like Sopcast? Big grey area right there. Not exactly torrent, but it's P2P.

Have you tried Sopcast?
[Networking] HarrowingLife:
While I do not know exactly what Three are doing to detect Torrent/P2P traffic at the network level, I would assume its Packet Inspection. Leaving things like Skype, etc alone. I have sent large files on Skype without issue, audio calls without issue during the Peak Times that Three "throttle" P2P. And as I already said, you're already subjected to these throttles as it is.

As for Sopcast, yes I've tried it now. It did some very unusual things, for example directly utilizing DNS instead of API Calls.

I tried about 10 channels in the official application, and only 1 even played after 2 minutes. My bandwidth is fine, so I'm more than happy to listen to suggestions from you. It did however HAMMER my upstream, peaking at 520KiloByte's/second upload! (Poor upstream and that very important document I was sending via Skype that didn't arrive in time due to the massive slowdown it experienced thanks to Sopcast)

I tried the Olympics 2012 video stream in the Sport Category thinking Wow, 2Mbps stream. That's DVD Quality. Shame it didn't play after several minutes. (Unlike the other streams @~400kbps)

The only stream that did play was "Kiss TV Romania" and it was puke-o-vision (Trademark Pending) - A true example of why P2P Video Distribution without back end servers is not possible to good quality with the current internet connections in the world. Once everyone has a upload of 10Mbps things may change. (Puke-o-Vision = What 3G Video Calls were like in 2005)

May I remind you of Joost? It was done by the Founders of Skype and failed for P2P TV Streaming, and it even had the backend high bandwidth dedicated servers on top of the Peer to Peer. At least it managed to play content at 480p quality though!

Overall, other than you using a pretty bad P2P system when Free to use Dedicated Infrastructure for Broadcasting LEGIT video exists (uStream for one) online I see no issue with Three and their policies in regards to your original question as your being subjected to them without the AYCE.

Frankly, if you run SopCast, by all means you should be throttled after what I just did to my upstream! (Yes this is the point of P2P, but even Dropbox has restraint!)
[Networking] skezza:
so flash streams are okay, but not sopcast?
[Networking] HarrowingLife:
Something that uses 5-6 times more bandwidth is of course not ok! That's a significantly higher negative impact on Threes network and your local area (As its Radio instead of Fixed-Line) - This is not to say Three are blocking it/Throttling it like Torrents, although I had ZERO Success with most streams (Like every P2P Video Distrubution service I've ever tried that doesn't have any Dedicated Servers to fill the gap's in lack of capacity)

Lets say your watching a 480p video, that's roughly 800Kbps.

On Flash/HTML5/Any non-P2P Streaming Method this is ~350MegaByte's a hour.

On Sopcast this is a download of ~350MegaByte's a hour, and then in my area on HSPA+ a lovely extra 1GigaByte and ~780MegaByte's a hour on top with the distribution uploading! Totalling around 2GigaByte's a hour! This is extreme to say the least. (Especally when you are not even watching a HD stream!)

All calculations made assuming 800Kbps download stream and 4.4Mbps Upload Capacity which Sopcast uses with NO RESTRAINT.
[Networking] jonmorris:
And still are today, given video calling is still just 64kbps today. Goodness knows why anyone would ever use it, or why networks still feel it's okay to charge a hefty premium for video calls!
[Networking] skezza:
I'm still massively tempted to go for this deal. I rarely go over 1gb tbh but I'm careful. I use WiFi hotspots when possible etc. This would give me a lot of freedom but Three technical support were ****ing useless yesterday when I called.

I'm still not convinced due to the throttling issues. Is anyone else still seeing the problems that are documented on this thread (now supposedly fixed)?
[Networking] jonmorris:
My speeds can very drastically without moving - and I am putting this down to congestion, either at the transmitter end or more likely the backhaul.

Of course, the cause of the slowdown at times (and that can mean ping times of 800ms and dl/ul speeds of 0.02Mbps!) doesn't really matter - it's unusable at times, and increasingly so.

I'd love to know the cause of this, but doubt you'd get a straight answer from Three customer service.
[Networking] cirian75:
letter from ASA
[Networking] skezza:
Hmm, we'll see. I am going to go ahead in a couple of days and probably buy the addon so I want to know if I shouldnt :P
[Networking] blair287:
I have had my speeds around 400kbps for the last week they went trying to throttle again are they.