Bandwidth capping and traffic shaping allow your ISP to fairly share the availlable bandwidth between all the users of the network.
A fairly active user will use under 2GB of data per month a fairly active P2P user can download in excess of 100GB per month. This level of activity can unfairly impact other users on the network.
Bandwidth capping is where your ISP will place a restriction on you downloading after you have exceeded a particular threshold. This restriction can either be disabling your downloading until the next billing month or it could be just limiting your download speed across the board to a particular speed, for example 0.5MB.
Traffic shaping is where your traffic is prioritised so, for example, web access and e-mail takes priority over P2P file sharing. All ISPs operate traffic shaping in one form or another to make sure their users have an acceptable browsing experience.
Currently TalkTalk do not apply Bandwidth Capping although they monitor excessive broadband usage and have the ability to apply it under their fair use policy. They do however run a strict Traffic Shaping policy which applies to all members.
The traffic shaping applies solely to P2P traffic and will throttle it back to preserve the bandwidth for web surfing, e-mail etc.If, for example, you were to download a tune from iTunes your bandwidth will not be affected. If you were to attempt to get something from a P2P network then that traffic will be slowed down fi the network is busy, if there is spare capacity then you will be able to use it.
To date our policy has been to identify high bandwidth users and actively apply Traffic Shaping to their Peer 2 Peer traffic but we have decided to test an updated policy that delivers a dynamic and softer customer experience.
So, instead of maintaining a window between 12 Midnight and 7 am when there was no shaping anywhere within the network and then slamming shaping on after 7am we will dynamically shape the policy over a 24 hour period, protecting the peaks for the majority and progressively allowing more peer to peer outside of peak hours.
This will deliver a smoother and seamless customer experience by removing the hard policy on and policy off times.
The advantages are:
The disadvantages are:
This is a trial and we will be monitoring the results and listening to your comments.
Basically we didn't shape in late evening hours but shaped agressively during the day to preserve bandwidth for customers browsing the web etc.
Now we shape 24/7 but instead of it being an agressive cut off during the day the system looks at the available bandwidth on the network and will allow P2P traffic to use bandwidth were its available.
Please note that this Web site and the associated forums are currently in the beta stage of pre-launch.
Feel free to use the site, however, be aware that we may remove any data or functionality between now and go live.
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