I have used my quota for the month and now I am capped. I still have 15GB of my downloads from GSA, but when I download things they still go at about 7KB/s. Why cant it be at normal speed which is 1.5mbs for me? (out of range for ADSL2+ damn) I don't want to stir up things to much but I was just wondering. I thinks Internode goes at the same speed after download quota is used. Although they cant match the prices of Adam :)

International bandwidth is expensive, so by extension, Internet access itself is expensive. As we are so far away from the rest of the world (read "internet"), it costs Australian ISPs more to get traffic back and forth.

There are only a few providers within Australia with international, "submarine", links. They are VERY, VERY expensive to install and by no means cheap to maintain either.

The way I look at it is, we either get capped after x gig of data transfer, or, we pay through the nose for access.

I know which I'd choose :)

Darkarnium writes...

we either get capped after x gig of data transfer, or, we pay through the nose for access.

Or in the case of Telstra, both!

If the price of data wasnt so high for international links I guess it might be slightly different.

Zaraki Kenpachi writes...

Or in the case of Telstra, both!

Touche' :)

Darkarnium writes...

International bandwidth is expensive, so by extension, Internet access itself is expensive. As we are so far away from the rest of the world (read "internet"), it costs Australian ISPs more to get traffic back and forth.

What the OP was talking about though was access within the "Local" data - PIPE, AdamTalk, GamingSA, etc. And he has a point - that stuff should still run at full speed, but I believe there is a technical limitation which results in Adam's policy of "Once you go over one of your allocations, it all slows down".

Kev (esynrg.com) writes...

What the OP was talking about though was access within the "Local" data - PIPE, AdamTalk, GamingSA, etc. And he has a point - that stuff should still run at full speed,

Correct. I just thought it would be obvious to make it like that.

Hennels writes...

Correct. I just thought it would be obvious to make it like that.

There are however, no other providers which offer this feature. The closest thing you have is an Adam service anyway, being CommunityNet.

It seems that providers don't see it to be cost effective to allow their customers to download at full speed from local sources after being shaped, then there is then the sheer logistics of such an operation.

Hennels writes...

Correct. I just thought it would be obvious to make it like that.

I think perhaps one valid reason for it is to encourage people to be more careful with their quota and to more evenly utilise both. Otherwise, if people know that they can thrash their downloads heavily for the first two weeks and still have all local traffic unshaped (and vice-versa) then they will be more prone to do just that rather than evenly moderating their traffic usage on both halves.

The other point to be made is that the local traffic isn't actually an entitlement as such, it's a free "value add" as part of your broadband service. This means that should your broadband service becomes shaped, so too do the value adds which associate to it. They're free value associated with the plan you've taken, not rights in and of themselves. So if you've used up all of your plans entitlements and that plan gets shaped, then so too are the value adds which are part of that service.

We could do it, and it's not that technically hard to do it.

However, there's a trade off. Doing it would involve performing significantly more processing on each packet once a customer has hit their quota. It's much easier for our equipment to be configured to "say", for this shaped customer, all traffic to or from the customer is shaped, rather than it having to classify it into different sources and destinations before then deciding to shape it.

More processing makes the equipment do more work, and that results in us not being able to service as many customers with it. Therefore we'd need either more equipment, or more expensive equipment, for the same number of customers, which means increased costs, and those costs would typically be passed on to the customer via increased plan prices. That could be one of the reasons why Internode,

Hennels writes...

cant match the prices of Adam :)

« Mark R Smith » writes...

We could do it, and it's not that technically hard to do it.

Thanks for the explanation and I support your trade off in this case. Using the logic it encourages customers to buy an always big enough quota it is doubtful it would be wort doing even if there was no technical cost.

Not so sure about VoIP though. Not shaping your VoIP traffic could well be viable as it would give you a reliability advantage over third party products.

patch1 writes...

Not so sure about VoIP though. Not shaping your VoIP traffic could well be viable as it would give you a reliability advantage over third party products.

The low bandwidth VoIP codecs, such as G.729, will fit within the shaped 64Kbps.

Adam will love their cpu load if the Australian government ever actually does try and introduce mandatory traffic filtering! :)

In regards to G.729, I use that codec, and it works well when shaped, of course you don't want any application to be using bandwidth (I don't have any hardware specifically routing my voip traffic).

As for getting shaped- don't. New research shows that when users are shaped, the serotonin levels in a users brain drop, thus they are creating a new diagnosis called "Capped Bandwidth Dysphoria Syndrome" :)

MichaelN writes...

As for getting shaped- don't. New research shows that when users are shaped, the serotonin levels in a users brain drop, thus they are creating a new diagnosis called "Capped Bandwidth Dysphoria Syndrome" :)

LMAO..

Although.. If your Serotonin levels are dropping, that means your Melatonin levels are rising, which would make you sleepy/tired/feel worn out...

Suppose that would be similiar to been capped ;)