Dear Customer,
On the 4th January we sent you an email to let you know of the changes
that will be occurring over the next few months. These include our
support telephone numbers being changed and some new features during
2006, like being able to pay by Direct Debit and experience higher
speed broadband.
We also advised you that we will be implementing network management
policies to ensure that we continue to offer the highest quality of
service to all our customers. The two key network management
techniques are Traffic Prioritisation and Traffic Shaping.
We are sending you this email as we have noted that during November
and/or December you used more bandwidth than is included with your
account type. You are therefore more likely than most customers to
experience the effects of network management at peak times, and we
want these effects to be clear to you.
Network management techniques will be introduced from the end of
January and will mean at peak times heavy usage by a minority of
customers will not detrimentally affect the service for all of our
customers.
Traffic prioritisation
----------------------
We give different protocols different priority levels according to
time sensitivity and type of application. For example, time sensitive
applications such as web page viewing and VoIP telephone calls are
given a higher priority over non time critical applications such as
music downloads. This means at peak time gaming, VoIP and web pages
won't slow down but P2P downloads will. We prioritise traffic into
Titanium, Gold, Silver and Bronze.
Traffic shaping
---------------
We will allocate specific amounts of bandwidth to different protocols
according to their priority. For example, we allocate a greater level
of bandwidth for Gold traffic over Bronze during peak hours. By
limiting the amount of bandwidth available for low priority traffic,
we ensure that web traffic for example, is not affected by people who
are using a large amount of bandwidth for P2P.
You could easily ask why we need to consider implementing these
things. The answer is fairly simple. This is because an unlimited
broadband service is no longer sustainable in today's market. This was
the predominant reason why Metronet was sold to PlusNet.
We will also use traffic shaping to ensure that customer's usage is
spread across the day and across the month in a reasonable manner in
line with our product designs. As with any ISP, we have a finite
amount of bandwidth available to our customers at any one time. Even
with traffic prioritisation, if all our customers are downloading
files at the same time, then the service will be slower for
everyone. On the other hand, if the usage is spread relatively evenly
across the month, the level of service for all will be higher as a
result.
Ideally, all heavy usage downloads would take place outside of peak
hours. Right now there are around 300 customers who download all of
their included bandwidth at peak times. By encouraging these customers
to change their behaviour and schedule large downloads outside of peak
hours we can maintain a high quality service for the majority of
customers.
To complement these network management policies we also plan to
simplify our product portfolio for new customers so that we do not
attract very heavy usage customers. This will not involve any changes
for existing customers.
How will this affect me?
------------------------
I imagine that you are wondering how this will affect you. Traffic
shaping will only be evident during peak hours (4pm-midnight) once you
have gone over the price ceiling on your account during a month. If
you do not reach your price ceiling, you will not experience traffic
shaping provided your usage is spread evenly across the month. For
example:
PayGo500
Usage per month Cost Management
0-400MB 11.75 Normal contention*
400-5080MB 11.75 - 22.75 Normal contention*
5080MB+ 22.75 Connection rate-limited
*Provided that total usage is spread reasonably across the month and
heavy downloading is scheduled to off-peak times.
What can I do?
--------------
It is not sustainable to regularly download large amounts at peak
times. We would recommend you schedule large downloads to off peak
times i.e. anytime after midnight and up to 4pm.
In the next few days, as mentioned previously, we'll be sending you
another email to let you know of our new terms and conditions and
acceptable usage policy (AUP).
We'll also be adding information to
www.metronet.co.uk about network
management and you'll be able to either adjust your usage to meet our
product design, or you'll be able to request your MAC key, free of
charge, and migrate to another ISP.
Many thanks for your continued custom.