# Celebrity Big Brother tonight??



## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

what happened to tonight's Celebrity Big Brother??

TiVo was scheduled to record it at 8pm, but instead recorded The Search (a crap version of The Amazing Race, currently only showing on Livingtv2 and downloads from American channels).

So, who got it wrong - Channel 4, TiVo, Tribune or me?

I want to know who to complain to. My TiVo's screen lists CBB as starting at 8pm and lasting 1 hour.

So much for relying on TiVo to record programmes.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

I think it was a late scheduling change by Channel 4 from what someone said in another thread.

If you recorded British Eurosport for a couple of weeks each year to catch the Paris-Dakar rally as I do you would become used to the fact that Tribune do not manage to catch very late scheduling changes made by channels. Fortunately most channels don't make late scheduling changes nearly as often as British Eurosport are in the habit of doing.

I think the scheduling change notification system to Tribune and onward data transport to Tivo from Tribune is such that depending on when your daily call is it can take 2 or 3 days for a scheduling change notified by a channel to reach your Tivo's EPG. Probably worse still if there is a weekend in the middle


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

Looks like you can't add omage attachments after you've finished posting despite the system pretending to do so.

Here's my TiVo screen.

Thanks TiVo/Tribune. Another severely edited recording from BB tomorrow morning then, or a shameless effort to plug a new series by changing the schedules?


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## Darren Skidmore (Mar 27, 2001)

They have also messed up the scheduling of Big Brothers Big Mouth on E4!

It started at 22.00 but the Tivo thinks it is ER


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

How strange - having gone through all the motions twice - I still haven't been able to attach an image to a post. I'll try once more time to this one...

D'oh... image size restrictions, not bandwidth. How silly.

The image is attached to this post - sorry for the muck up.


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

So who do I complain to - Tivo, Tribune, or Channel 4. If the change was made less than 48 hours ago it's C4. Anything more it's the whole TiVo chain.

... and if the change WAS made less than 48 hours ago - we really need a better system of getting schedules to our recorders...


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

I'm SO annoyed by this - I had to change all my scheduled recordings tonight to fit in CBB's 8pm slot and miss out something I've have otherwise watched. And then it wasn't on.

And of course, Channel 4 have gone to bed for the night - no viewer enquiries line until tomorrow morning.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

aerialplug said:


> So who do I complain to - Tivo, Tribune, or Channel 4. If the change was made less than 48 hours ago it's C4. Anything more it's the whole TiVo chain.
> 
> ... and if the change WAS made less than 48 hours ago - we really need a better system of getting schedules to our recorders...


Perhaps you could start with C4 viewer & listener enquiries and ask when the change was made and why and when they would have notified Sky for Sky+ boxes for instance.

It would also be useful to know what was in the EPG on Sky Digital and Sky+ boxes tonight and on NTL/Telewest, Homechoice, Freeview and of course on Channel 4's own teletext service and on the BBC's teletext pages. Most of this stuff is cleared off straight after the program is shown unfortunately apart from on our own Tivo EPG. Perhaps someone watching at the time who checked these sources can tell us what they were saying.

Did everyone else cope with making the change and it was just Tribune/Tivo that was behind or was it a generalised EPG communication problem by C4.

You really ought to also make a report on this error in the usual listings error thread.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

aerialplug said:


> I'm SO annoyed by this - I had to change all my scheduled recordings tonight to fit in CBB's 8pm slot and miss out something I've have otherwise watched. And then it wasn't on.
> 
> And of course, Channel 4 have gone to bed for the night - no viewer enquiries line until tomorrow morning.


I'm sure it would make you feel better if you email their CEO with your views:-

[email protected]

with cc to their Chairman:-

[email protected]

Unfortunately Channel 4 go to considerable lengths to hide the identity of any of their other senior staff and I was forced to refer to the Annual Report to find these two:-

www.channel4.com/about4/pdf/2005_C4_Complete.pdf

However I can't find any mention of this issue over in the www.digitalspy.co.uk discussion forum which is normally a pretty active place.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Its definitely shown as 9pm at:-

www.channel4.com/listings/C4/index.jsp

My Freeview 7 day EPG on my BT Iplayer+ does let you go into the past (unlike my Sky box EPG) and shows:-

8pm The Search
9pm Celebrity Big Brother

So either they were switched or Tribune simply entered them wrong for some reason.

Don't forget 9pm is the watershed for adult content. Did this have anything to do with the change I wonder.


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## JudyB (Jan 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> Its definitely shown as 9pm at:-
> 
> www.channel4.com/listings/C4/index.jsp
> 
> ...


I think that they switched them fairly late on - both the Radio Times and yesterday's paper showed The Search at 9PM. My guess is that the problem was the 9PM watershed affecting CBB, but presumably C4 enquiries should be able to give the correct answer.

Edit: In addition by 9PM the Sky EPG was showing CBB at 9PM, but I don't know when that was changed.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

JudyB said:


> I think that they switched them fairly late on - both the Radio Times and yesterday's paper showed The Search at 9PM. My guess is that the problem was the 9PM watershed affecting CBB, but presumably C4 enquiries should be able to give the correct answer.
> 
> Edit: In addition by 9PM the Sky EPG was showing CBB at 9PM, but I don't know when that was changed.


Well I suppose that this makes one argument in favour of the Sky+ method of Series Links, which would have caught this change in time I think?

Of course if a Tivo is connected by broadband there is no real reason why it couldn't make a call every hour to check for scheduling changes or why Tivo couldn't notify it proactively of late scheduling changes. I would be interested to know how the S2 and S3 Tivo work in this regard.

But anyhow aerialplug if you really are this desperate to see this program surely you can download it to watch from www.channel4.com/4od/whatson.html


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## steveroe (Oct 29, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> But anyhow aerialplug if you really are this desperate to see this program surely you can download it to watch from www.channel4.com/4od/whatson.html


If you don't mind paying them 99 pence for the privilege!

The show is repeated at 17:25 next Saturday on C4 for free.

I was also caught out by this and have used C4's feedback page to express my displeasure.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

steveroe said:


> If you don't mind paying them 99 pence for the privilege!


It says on the 4OD web page that Celebrity Big Brother is one of their free downloads this week though. 

Mind you I hope they do keep on charging in general as that combined with the modest 3Gb broadband cap with my ISP (after which I pay per Gb) mean that my Tivo will not become a redundant piece of technology from both a cost and convenience perspective.

Of course the BBC will probably not charge for downloads when it launches its on demand program archive I imagine (at least not for UK residents) which will no doubt put the cat among the pigeons with the commercial channels pay download model.


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## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> You really ought to also make a report on this error in the usual listings error thread.


I only noticed the change at 06:35 PM which is when I posted a Heads Up in the Schedule Errors thread.

I have *http://www.radiotimes.com/tvscheduleupdates/* as one of my home pages in Firefox
(the others being *TiVo UK, UK General Chit-Chat, http://tivo1/ui/ *and *http://tivo2/ui/*!);
I check the Radio Times page almost every day; it's worth it.

C4 are notorious for messing about with BB; 
I remember a year or two ago, they started extending the daily prog by 15 minutes in a quite arbitrary fashion.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

My Vista MCE guide picked it up, and I noticed the change from the schedules on the TiVo and the printed Radio Times.

Since my TiVo is the only means of recording the Sky premium channels, I still use it. However, I really quite like the MCE interface, the ability to record conflicting programmes on my twin-tuner Freeview card, the inclusion of music and other media, and the networked distribution via Xbox-360's.

The up-to-date schedules appear to be another reason for moving to MCE when I finally get round to cancelling my Sky subscription. Now that I can use multiple tuners to handle conflicts, I find that I'm getting enough to watch via Freeview, and the extra channels with Sky are becoming less necessary.

My TiVo is still safe until they release an MCE Extender in this country that is quiet enough to run in a bedroom. Unfortunately, the Xbox-360 isn't really quiet enough to run in my lounge, but the functionality wins out.

However, a TiVo 3 would have been so much cheaper than an MCE setup.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

iankb said:


> However, a TiVo 3 would have been so much cheaper than an MCE setup.


And continuing a Tivo S1 setup with Cachecard and RAM is so much cheaper again.

I used to be an early adopter of all new broadcast technology but the whole thing is now fragmenting so fast in so many different ways that I admit to becoming a bit of a luddite suddenly and more importantly a Tivo S1 with Freeview and Freesat gives me more choice of good programs than I could possibly ever have time to watch. When really good programs are only available to watch on broadband tv eventually (say in 7 to 10 years time) I may pay more attention to that medium.

Agreed one does miss the odd program now again due to a clash on a Tivo S1 but most programs are repeated sooner or later if you set up a Wislist for it across all channels and I still have more than enough good programs I really want to watch that I will never have time to sit down to even with recording just stuff on Sky Freesat and Freeview just one channel at a time.

As to the Sky subscription I think the only excuse for still subscribing to Sky is if you are an avid cricket or football fan or if HD quality is a must have for you and you think you can afford the currently very high price to watch it.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Pete77 said:


> As to the Sky subscription I think the only excuse for still subscribing to Sky is if you are an avid cricket or football fan or if HD quality is a must have for you and you think you can afford the currently very high price to watch it.


In my case, it was (non-HD) films. However, I did get addicted to the US imports on Hallmark (often shown now on Five), and series such as Lost, 24 and (maybe) Jericho. Now, I think there might be cheaper ways to fill up my hard drive, without tying myself into a hefty Sky sub. I'm sure a paid-for download of the odd series (if available) would be somewhat cheaper than a Sky sub.

For many years, I had the complete Sky package. When I explained to Sky that I hadn't watched any of the Sports channels in the previous 5 years, they couldn't find anything in their 'don't-let-the-client-cancel-a-sports-subscription' script to cover that case. With the ability to record multiple channels comes the ability to get more films off the Freeview channels. However, it would be nice if they repeated films at different times, in the same ways as the satellite channels.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Pete77 said:


> And continuing a Tivo S1 setup with Cachecard and RAM is so much cheaper again.


What I like about the MCE/Extender setup is the combining of a PVR and a media centre (for music, etc), and the distribution of that to all rooms. No amount of TiVo Series 1, Humax, Topfields, etc, has come close to that. Now TiVo Series 3 might have been a different matter.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

iankb said:


> However, it would be nice if they repeated films at different times, in the same ways as the satellite channels.


I thought that is precisely what Film 4 and Film4+1 do both in terms of the one hour shifting and showing the films several different times over a month at different times.

Also don't forget ITV 2+1 and ITV 3+1 over on Sky Freesat. And TrueMovies 1 and 2 and Zone Horror and Zone Thriller also repeat films several different times during a number of weeks or months. Still working on the EPG data acquisition by Tribune for Movies4Men 1 +2.

I believe you can also get one or more Freesat cards for MCE can't you?


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## Benedict (Jun 8, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> I believe you can also get one or more Freesat cards for MCE can't you?


Freesat doesn't always mean FTA (Free to air) it means FTV (Free to view) in many cases, which means you still need a viewing card (and at the very least a VideoGard CAM) in order to decrypt some broadcasts.

I'm not sure any of the DVB-S PC cards can do this.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Benedict said:


> Freesat doesn't always mean FTA (Free to air) it means FTV (Free to view) in many cases, which means you still need a viewing card (and at the very least a VideoGard CAM) in order to decrypt some broadcasts.


It means FTA that needs no viewing card in most cases and FTV that needs a working unsubbed viewing card in the case of remarkably few channels at the present time.

Specifically only:-

Channel 4
Five
Five US
Five Life

Film Four is FTA on Sky/Dsat and needs no card.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Last night my recording of the Paris-Dakar rally on British Eurosport Ch 410 failed due to a 3 hour Masters snooker program being allowed to over-run by 50 minutes. This is the second day in a row that Eurosport has allowed an already outrageously long snooker program to over-run in this fashion.

Is there any recording system out there as yet be it Sky+, Freeview Playback or Windows MCE that can handle these kind of capricious last minute scheduling changes by Eurosport.

To make matters worse Eurosport don't make the whole program available to watch again on their video download website but instead only four brief 2 minute clips of each program.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Sky+ can in theory as the EPG can be updated "live", but rarely does in practice.


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## Pugwash (May 23, 2003)

I canceled my Sky sub this month. When the guy asked what channels I was getting on Freeview, I said "All the ones I want". freeview box: 21 quid. My Sky sub was 23 a month!

Luckily I was about to watch BB just as it ended on Live TV, so caught the mistake and watched it live at 9. I suspect the content was more watershed than expected, so they delayed it in the last 24 hours. The freeview Now & Next info that popped-up was correct.


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## NickB (Jun 29, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Last night my recording of the Paris-Dakar rally on British Eurosport Ch 410 failed due to a 3 hour Masters snooker program being allowed to over-run by 50 minutes. This is the second day in a row that Eurosport has allowed an already outrageously long snooker program to over-run in this fashion.


I'm a avid fan of Alpine skiing and it's been my experience that it's a complete waste of time trying to record any coverage on Eurosport.

Even if it does manage to catch some skiing, it'll likely be Nordic, biathlon or ski-jumping rather than Hermann Maier or Bode Miller ripping up the piste.

Eurosport is great for live streaming into a sports bar, but useless for time-shifting.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

NickB said:


> I'm a avid fan of Alpine skiing and it's been my experience that it's a complete waste of time trying to record any coverage on Eurosport.
> 
> Even if it does manage to catch some skiing, it'll likely be Nordic, biathlon or ski-jumping rather than Hermann Maier or Bode Miller ripping up the piste.
> 
> Eurosport is great for live streaming into a sports bar, but useless for time-shifting.


And although they now make a few minutes available of each program to download on their website its nothing like the full program length.

Eurosport seem to imagine that people only watch live. Even in 2007......................


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## doubledrat (Aug 24, 2001)

slightly off topic, but beware 4OD! It's a bittorrent-like program which uses your bandwidth to deliver content to others and apparently stays around even after uninstalling it!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

doubledrat said:


> slightly off topic, but beware 4OD! It's a bittorrent-like program which uses your bandwidth to deliver content to others and apparently stays around even after uninstalling it!


I can't believe Channel 4 can afford to risk this when loads of broadband users have capped allowances and pay severely over the odds per Gb beyond those allowance.

Someone is going to sue them down the road if this is really true.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> I can't believe Channel 4 can afford to risk this when loads of broadband users have capped allowances and pay severely over the odds per Gb beyond those allowance.
> 
> Someone is going to sue them down the road if this is really true.


Bear in mind though, those per GB fees are for download, not upload. The content a user distributes to others will only incur a miniscule download in the form of protocol & handshaking info from the other clients.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Blacque Jacque said:


> Bear in mind though, those per GB fees are for download, not upload. The content a user distributes to others will only incur a miniscule download in the form of protocol & handshaking info from the other clients.


Not always. Plusnet counts upload the same as download for some purposes.

Re: 4OD sticking around after it's uninstalled I find that hard to beleive, but continuing uploading after downloading has finished is how P2P works; Sky by Broadband is the same.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> Re: 4OD sticking around after it's uninstalled I find that hard to beleive, but continuing uploading after downloading has finished is how P2P works; Sky by Broadband is the same.


I accept that going on uploading after downloading is finished is how P2P works. What I thought would be outrageous was to allow this to still happen even if the customer had uninstalled the software.

NewNet also charge per Gb for Uploads as well as Downloads. Although most Home Max connections do not achieve more than 400kbps Upload at best that can still clock up to a lot of Gb if it goes on hour after hour.

NewNet provide a very high quality high speed Max connection on their Lite product that does not deteriorate in speed at peak hours due to inadequate network capacity. It ideally suits the needs of many single person households, especially if they use the internet at work in the day, but it is capped at 3Gb and additional Gb cost £1.30 per Gb sold in a 3 Gb block. These kind of customers are not going to be happy at all if they find they are billed for another 5Gb per month they were not bargaining for. And it will be visible to them due to the graph Newnet provides of hourly and daily use of bandwidth. If they see high use when the computer was on but not being used by them they will know something is up.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Having read the T&C, AUP, Code of practice & the sales blurb for both PlusNet & NewNet, I can't see anything that explicitly states their pricing includes uploads, although I'll concede it's ambiguous.

Worse than that PlusNet "bandwidth manage" their network  
P2P apps like 4OD will be handicapped by this (IMO virtually illegal  ) practice.

OTOH, if someone has a capped service such as this, they ought to realise that using a service such as 4OD will eat up their bandwidth allowance in short order.

Caveat emptor. 

Personally I'd *never* sign up to a capped account, especially from a provider who imposes additional punitive conditions such as these but that is strictly _my_ personal preference.

There are other providers offering similar performance packages & similar pricing with less restrictive conditions.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Blacque Jacque said:


> There are other providers offering similar performance packages & similar pricing with less restrictive conditions.


Other providers like Entanet give you a lot more allowance but allow their network to become overloaded at peak hours so that you do not achieve maximum possible download throughput. Speeds with Entanet slow to only 2000kbps or so at peak periods instead of the 5800kbps data download speed my connection is capable of. With NewNet download speeds never fell below 5000kbps even at peak periods.

Unlimited download plans attract users who either have a genuine need to download a lot of data regularly and/or attract sad downloadaholics who say things like "I've got a 300Gb per month allowance to use mate so I'm going to make damn sure I download it all."

Nobody offers unlimited use plans for gas or electricity. Why do you expect to get it for broadband when the ISPs have to pay per BT Central and per segment of that Central that is lit that they have in use to provide the capacity.

Most plans you consider unlimited in fact massively throttle download speeds at peak hours and also have a hidden "fair use" policy that limit your downloads a week to only 5Gb or so or between 20Gb and 40Gb per month.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

For once I agree with Pete (!). There's no such thing as unrestricted broadband; BT charges these guys by the Mb, so to have a viable business they must restrict you somehow. PlusNet does it in a complex, but public, way. Others just let network contention choke things for them. I prefer the former.

I just set up my torent client to only operate during non-peak hours, when the speed is better anyway and it doesn't touch any allowances.

Last monthe I downloaded 52Gb but bever got even close to triggering any of he network management.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> For once I agree with Pete (!). There's no such thing as unrestricted broadband; BT charges these guys by the Mb, so to have a viable business they must restrict you somehow. PlusNet does it in a complex, but public, way. Others just let network contention choke things for them. I prefer the former.
> 
> I just set up my torrent client to only operate during non-peak hours, when the speed is better anyway and it doesn't touch any allowances.
> 
> Last monthe I downloaded 52Gb but bever got even close to triggering any of he network management.


BT in fact has two charging models for broadband ISPs. In the less popular model the ISP does indeed pay per Gb downloaded but in the one far more widely used on most of the ADSL Max services the provider pays a set amount to have a BT Central installed and then a set amount per month for each segment of the Central that is lit. However once a segment of a Central is lit a provider has every possible incentive to try and cram it full of data all the time as they will pay no more to BT than if the Central is sitting there not fuly utilised for a large part of the time. This cram it full as much as possible model is precisely the one used by cheap and cheerful ISPs like TalkTalk and Tiscali.

On the other hand ISPs that pride themselves on offering full speed nearly all the time like IDNet, Zen and NewNet must actually pay to have enough capacity so that it is only near to completely fully utilised at their very peak periods of daily use which tends to mean some redundant capacity or a lot of redundant capacity sitting idle off peak. But in any event the customers of these ISPs pay a higher monthly fee and have lower download caps in order to be able to guarantee this top quality service speed and throughput wise.

Those who do not strive to provide full speed regardless of price but a sensible balance between price and service do have some spare capacity in their network overnight which is why they have either no download cap or a much bigger download cap during those hours. This allows customers with heavy download needs to schedule it during hours that do not require the company to install more BT Centrals and when the capacity would otherwise be sitting there unutilised. By contrast with say Tiscali their network is so overloaded 24 hours a day that their BT Centrals are not under capacity even at 3am. They are merely less overloaded so instead of only being able to offer users the say snailpace 200kbps they can offer at 7pm they can now offer perhaps 2000kbps. With that being so these cut price ADSL services have no incentive to increase download limits off peak or offer an unmetered downloading period.

You will see the same kind of forces in play in the physical world in terms of traffic flows on the M25 each day over a 24 hour period. That is that at peak times there is more traffic than the network can possibly hold so those who do not like travelling very slowly simply do not travel at that time. Those who like to achieve full speed while not inconveniencing others use the M25 between 9.30pm and 5.30am. Its a shame that the Highways Agency does not have the same idea as ISPs who don't meter downloading during their off peak period by abolishing speed limits on Motorways with light traffic loads and also no roadworks during the overnight off peak period. :down:


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

I find it odd that anyone would charge for upload - it's only going to be a fraction of download speed and the pipes that the ISPs use are symmetric so they're not going to saturate.

What A&A do is meter downloads between peak hours of 8am and 6pm weekdays so effectively what they do is charge their business customers more.. outside that is unlimited (there's an AUP (written in readable plain english!) but I've never heard of it being applied.. you'd have to really affect their service for it to be an issue). OTOH they're not a mass market ISP.. the average user isn't going to see the value of SMS monitoring, 16 IP addresses or routed ipv6... they see the headline price and stay away.. and personally I prefer it like that


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## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

Tony Hoyle said:


> I find it odd that anyone would charge for upload - it's only going to be a fraction of download speed and the pipes that the ISPs use are symmetric so they're not going to saturate.


Apparently, that isn't so.

I'm sure I've read somewhere (possibly in a PlusNet forum) that BT exchanges are designed for the upload to be smaller than the download;
and I suspect that model continues further up the line.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ericd121 said:


> Apparently, that isn't so.
> 
> I'm sure I've read somewhere (possibly in a PlusNet forum) that BT exchanges are designed for the upload to be smaller than the download;
> and I suspect that model continues further up the line.


The clue surely comes in the name ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subsciber Line - as opposed to the still far more expensive SDSL - Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line - which is only available on BT's largest 1,500 or so town exchanges and costs the earth to rent as a customer compared to ADSL. You can get a faster grade of ADSL Upload by renting a Business class ADSL service from your ISP but that still only gets you up to a maximum upload speed of around 800kbps compared to over 7000kbps download speed.

Now I don't know the exact internal workings of a BT Central but as surely any part of the fibre can be lit to send data in either direction more data traffic means more of the fibre is lit and so there is less capacity at any point in time for other users of the ISP to route their traffic.

I think the only reason many ISPs don't measure Upload traffic is because you can only Upload at between a fifth and a twentieth of your likely download ADSL speed on an exchange, so that it is unlikey that the majority of the excessive use an ISP will have to worry about will be in the Upload direction. However with the potential massive growth of Peer2Peer software from the BBC, Channel 4 and others ISPs do still have legitimate reason to worry about Upload traffic and to want to manage it.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

That's the point though - the ADSL part refers to the way it's transferred over the local loop, not how the exchanges are connected - they're going to be connected by Frame Relay which is inherently symmetric.

All BT exchanges digital have symmetric fiber capacity - you've been able to get point to point leased lines that use the exchange as a PoP for over 10 years (possibly 20 years). The SDSL limitation is just a matter of how profitable it is to upgrade the DSLAM (IIRC the break even point is about 50 customers, so whilst SDSL is available in all the major cities (even my poxy residential exchange supports it), the country exchanges have little chance).

'lit' in fiber terms basically means there's a tranceiver attached to both ends. Some people don't call it lit until there's a router at both ends too.. doesn't say anything about how the capacity is used, and the upstream and downstream are independent (between 155mb/s and 40Gb/s depending on the technology in use). In fact when you buy such bandwidth you buy it at a flat rate, not usage related (aside: this is a real cash cow for BT since the amount of spare fiber capacity is enormous.. they can still charge a huge 'installation' fee even though the cable is already there (if you're gonna dig a trench to put fiber in it makes sense to put loads in, since the digging is the most expensive part). Another favourite is to light 40Gb and sell it over and over again in 155mb chunks charging a separate installation fee and maintenence/rental fee for it each time, even though it's going over the same link).

Charging for bandwidth used is a fiction created so that DSL providers can make more money off 'heavy' downloaders and keep their base price down. It's a sort of congestion charge  since the end user cost of DSL is absurdly cheap for the speeds on offer... only possible because the bandwidth is contended at a maximum of 50:1 (although no good ISP will go above about about 15:1 if you want everyone be able to burst 8mb when they need it). 

They tried it the sensible way by charging for 8mb and saying 'it's contended, be nice'.. didn't work - some users decided to use all 8mb 24/7 and caused all sorts of congestion problems. Users don't understand contention - too many times I heard 'I paid for 8mb and I've got a right to use it' (in reality they paid for about 160kb and are borrowing the rest off others whilst they're not using it, on the understanding that it works both ways)

So now we have a situation where the ISPs take draconian measures to make sure that people can't saturate their network. Of course some ISPs are taking the smeg a bit.. well.. a lot, really, by using it as a way to ramp their prices up without changing the headline price (I'm of the opinion that any ISP that advertises 'unlimited' then puts a cap hidden in the AUP should be censored by the ASA and told to stop bloody lying).

As far as upstream goes, given that the pipes are symmetric and the upstream is at about 1/10th of the downstream, the contention is only at a maximum of 5:1.. plus few people upload very much - the changes of it getting congested are almost zero, hence no real need to control it. If p2p becomes an issue it'll get banned from the networks fairly sharpish, or at the very least pretty heavily throttled.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Thanks, Tony. Informative post.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

Heh. Sorry for the mega post.. it's a pet subject of mine...


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

Tony - I'm intrigued by your info (in a "you're a guru" way). At work we use 'network smoothing' on traffic to give the best performance, even allowing our application to indicate that it's going to be using large amounts of bandwidth, but is not mission critical (think massive reports) so that it doesn't affect other users with customer facing screens (for example).

I see the way that ISPs filter their traffic to be much the same - they throttle torrent traffic to allow other users to get the bandwidth. You've indicated that you're against that idea - why?

Apologies in advance if I've misinterpreted you.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

I'm not against it as such, if it's done right (eg. by prioritising burst and interactive traffic, web browsing remains fast at peak times, whilst things like p2p slow down).

What I don't like is some ISPs taking advantage. eg. (not a real example, honest, *cough* vodaphone *cough choke*) £41.70 per month unlimited broadband, then in the small print ('subject to an FUP of 1GB').

That seems to me to be highly dishonest. They have that limit not for traffic purposes, but because if they advertised 1GB at £41.70 per month nobody would buy it. 

Limits should be upfront so you know exactly what you're buying.


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

£41.70 per month !?!?! 

I'm amazed anyone buys their service at that price anyway.  

I'm paying just over half that for my 2Mb, unlimited, uncapped, unthrottled, unmonitored service. Even if I go to 8Mb it's still under 2/3 of that price & is still an unmolested service.


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## Tony Hoyle (Apr 1, 2002)

It's mobile... the advantage of vendor lockin with 12-18 months contracts is if you're a vodaphone customer it's pay that much or get nothing.

'Three' do the same - their new 'x series' stuff offers linking to MSN, Skype, Slingbox, etc. Says it's unlimited - and has a 1GB cap hidden in the FUP (along with a skype cap, and msn cap, slingbox cap, etc.).

ADSL providers tend not to be that extreme... they charge less and have higher 'limits' but the limits are still limits... they are advertising unlimited when it isn't.

Of course there has to be the ability to take action against those that take the p...s but writing hard limits in there isn't the way to go... you react to persistent behaviour not someone downloading 75Gb one month as a one off when they normally download 5Gb.

(My ISP has an interesting solution.. if you go over at peak time (8am-6pm) (few do unless they work from home) it carries forward, and you can have an 'overdraft' of several times your monthly amount without having to do anything, since it'll recover itself over time as long as your average use is a little below your paid amount).


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

Tony Hoyle said:


> It's mobile... the advantage of vendor lockin with 12-18 months contracts is if you're a vodaphone customer it's pay that much or get nothing.
> 
> (My ISP has an interesting solution.. if you go over at peak time (8am-6pm) (few do unless they work from home) it carries forward, and you can have an 'overdraft' of several times your monthly amount without having to do anything, since it'll recover itself over time as long as your average use is a little below your paid amount).


Ah ok, didn't realise that.

As for your ISP's method, it seems quite innovative & forward thinking.


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