How we ensure you get a better broadband service
We believe our customers should always get the best broadband service possible. That means a service that delivers good speeds but, more than that, it means a service that ensures our customers are able to enjoy access to websites, email, online games, internet telephone services, instant messaging and a whole host of other services without suffering poor quality of service.
To ensure that we deliver the best quality of service possible our broadband service employs a latency prevention system which works to ensure high speeds and reliable service for all our customers.
To do this the latency prevention system (also called the Anti-Loss Tool or ALT) monitors the bandwidth capacity on the BT Central pipes which carry your broadband connection from BT to us and if the usage on the pipe exceeds 96% the maximum possible speed for customers connected via that pipe is reduced by 500kbps but only if the maximum speed is 2.5Mbps or higher. This means that during the busiest periods (generally just after the offpeak period starts and some times during the weekend) the system may reduce speeds in a controlled manner to a minimum of 1Mb/s. If the network remains congested beyond that level normal network congestion is allowed to affect the network without further management which can cause lower speeds but this should not happen as the policy is to add extra capacity to prevent it. Such reductions are limited to the pipe experiencing excess demand and don't affect the other pipes if they are not as busy.
2Mbps is the equivalent to a 4:1 contention ratio for someone at 8Mbps and capacity planning is currently scheduling for the limiting to only occur for short periods of time during off-peak.
The system also checks to see when demand has reduced and acts to quickly increase maximum speeds again. If usage on a pipe drops to 91% of capacity or less the system will increase maximum speeds by 200kbps. The system checks every 5 minutes.
Remember this system will never cause speeds to be reduced below 2Mb/s and generally only operates for a few hours late at night and at the weekend.
Doing this allows us to ensure that the service does not suffer packet loss which would arise if usage on a central pipe were to exceed capacity. Such packet loss would cause problems accessing web pages and email but even worse it would make online gaming, internet telephone services and other latency sensitive applications completely impossible to use. By employing this latency prevention system we ensure these problems do not affect our customers.
We understand that our customers prefer to know what maximum speed is likely at any given time. This information is available in real time at the Network Operations Centre website on the right hand side of each page. The NOC website also shows information about scheduled network maintainance and reports on any network outages. We believe it is better to provide as much information as possible for our customers and prospective customers.
If you find your connection is on a busy pipe and others are less busy you may be able to move to a less busy pipe by rebooting your router or modem. Be aware however that BT's allocation systems for central pipes are essentially random so it's not possible to select which pipe you reconect to.
You can find more information about how the latency prevention system works on the Entachoice community website.
If you have further queries about this or other aspects of our service please email them to us at sales@ukfsn.org.
