Crystal Web (NEW ISP) ADSL Feedback

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I don't believe that any of this is intentional.

They've used the previous months usage data to predict what your current usage this month would be, generously increased it (let's say x 2), and allocated that to you as a cap because the system they use, require, them to impose a limit. That is fine, and I can live with that.

What seems to be happening now is that the usage data they used to predict our caps, are SO skew due to the issues that they've had on the old IP ranges / shaping policies / etc, that the data is actually incorrect. It's not that we are downloading "more", or "milking" them or anything like that. It's plain and simple that the previous months the experience was so bad that seemingly a lot of us did not even bother to really use the internet (or was unable to use the internet). Now that we are on unshapped, now everything is working fine and dandy. But our usage "seems" FAR higher than they anticipated because the data they used to do the predictions with, was actually factually incorrect.

Just my opinion, I don't know whether it is correct or not, but it does make sense to me. I am seeing the same "increases" in data usage on other aspects I can't talk about publicly, which is why I am reaching this conclusion.

I do believe we're going to see a lot more complaints like this coming forward as the month draws to an end and more and more users hit the "lowish" predictions put in place by CW. Honestly, I feel that this is a honest mistake and perhaps a slight oversight on their side, it obviously spell terrible news for their tests and the reasons why we where given unshaped bandwidth, and I do still concur with what others, and I have said - in that simply disconnecting / capping without any communication is not on.

That being said, I'm sure it's being worked on.
 
I think you are probably right about that. With the international issues a few of us (myself included) used backup accounts from other isps. That data would not have been included in cw's estimations.
 
It's not great idea to set the limit to previous usage should always be slightly higher as by the last day of the month everyone will be capped and we will all lose internet connectivity :(
 
Sinbad said:
Paying the wholesaler/upstream, for a start, I would imagine?
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Correct, as well as a few other internal costs for doing so.

As for customers predicted to exceed our predictions, there are only a handful.

I apologise that the system didn't alert users properly. It's something I'm looking into at the moment to sort out.
 
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Some more feedback after chatting with Shaun. It seems if you use NNTP/P2P on the shaped account (during business hours) your account gets "shaped" to <100kbps (not just P2P/NNTP, everything) until the system checks if your traffic has changed (every hour), that's why most of the things were not working.

If your account gets "unshaped", everything works 100%. Youtube plays 1080p without buffering. HTTP downloads go at line speed.
 
Sephiroth96 said:
Some more feedback after chatting with Shaun. It seems if you use NNTP/P2P on the shaped account (during business hours) your account gets "shaped" to <100kbps (not just P2P/NNTP, everything) until the system checks if your traffic has changed (every hour), that's why most of the things were not working.

If your account gets "unshaped", everything works 100%. Youtube plays 1080p without buffering. HTTP downloads go at line speed.
Click to expand...

Well, this was intended to be private communication based on what we're looking at introducing in the future on standard uncapped shaped accounts, but now that it's in the open, I need to clarify some things. We want to introduce as unshaped an experience as possible for customers while preserving the quality of our network. Your account is not throttled as per the inference. Certain services received lower priority on the network because you were firing off p2p downloads during peak load periods.

For standard uncapped accounts, the plan is as follows (and this is not final, but rather the plan at the moment for the standard uncapped accounts - we are introducing other products now as well - and to be honest it's really premature to be discussing this - if you guys have a private conversation with me and I disclose certain things to you, there's an expectation from my side that such communication remains between us. I do understand in this case why it was disclosed though as we have moved you over to such an account as your usage was quite high for us to maintain an unshaped experience, so this is more a general comment than being directed at you)

Peer to peer, nntp and other automated downloads are shaped during daytime use to preserve network quality. If traffic on these protocols are detected during peak hours, other services such as http downloads are deprioritised (they are normally prioritised 100%). This is to encourage users to schedule their large downloads to outside of our peak usage period, and to ensure that we don’t have to block these ports for customers. So while you can download on these protocols during peak periods, it will slow down other services when you do, until such time as that peer to peer traffic for example has been stopped.

Other than that, all other services remain unshaped on the network. So if you schedule your large peer to peer and nntp downloads correctly, you will have a fantastic, unshaped experience on the network, both day and night.

If heavy traffic on VPN protocols is detected, it is treated in the same manner as peer to peer and nntp and will result in deprioritisation of your service when used during peak periods, as many users try to circumvent shaping using these services. Because VPN traffic does not allow us to recognise the specific protocols (as all traffic is encrypted), Crystal Web have to implement this policy on our standard uncapped accounts as a general rule. There are better accounts more suited to full-time VPN traffic than a standard account.

If you require large downloads during daytime use, then a premium (non-standard account) is best suited for your needs. Large volumes of traffic consumed during day-time use on standard accounts will result in a deprioritisation of your account on our network. Ordinary day-time users will not be affected. This is because day-time bandwidth is premium bandwidth to an ISP as it is the peak period of usage, and if your usage case requires access to such services in large volumes during premium bandwidth times, then a premium account is best suited for your needs. This ensures that we can plan capacity correctly for all customers on our network.

We are open and honest about this so that you can make the right choice when selecting which Crystal Web account is right for you. If all customers are on the correct products for their requirements, then Crystal Web can properly plan capacity and ensure that you are never subjected to capacity constraints on our network.

That's the plan for standard uncapped accounts, which from our perspective is a far better proposition than being throttled after a threshold of shaped consumption in any case. We're also releasing other products to fill any gaps this may create too. Everyone has a different usage case, and we want to be able to cater for these at the right price-points.
 
Can you look at vpn endpoints and exclude some of them from your rules? Eg my work vpn? Can't use it to bypass any policy, they're much stricter than you! ;-)
 
Crystal Web said:
Well, this was intended to be private communication based on what we're looking at introducing in the future on standard uncapped shaped accounts, but now that it's in the open, I need to clarify some things. We want to introduce as unshaped an experience as possible for customers while preserving the quality of our network. Your account is not throttled as per the inference. Certain services received lower priority on the network because you were firing off p2p downloads during peak load periods.

For standard uncapped accounts, the plan is as follows (and this is not final, but rather the plan at the moment for the standard uncapped accounts - we are introducing other products now as well - and to be honest it's really premature to be discussing this - if you guys have a private conversation with me and I disclose certain things to you, there's an expectation from my side that such communication remains between us. I do understand in this case why it was disclosed though as we have moved you over to such an account as your usage was quite high for us to maintain an unshaped experience, so this is more a general comment than being directed at you)

Peer to peer, nntp and other automated downloads are shaped during daytime use to preserve network quality. If traffic on these protocols are detected during peak hours, other services such as http downloads are deprioritised (they are normally prioritised 100%). This is to encourage users to schedule their large downloads to outside of our peak usage period, and to ensure that we don’t have to block these ports for customers. So while you can download on these protocols during peak periods, it will slow down other services when you do, until such time as that peer to peer traffic for example has been stopped.

Other than that, all other services remain unshaped on the network. So if you schedule your large peer to peer and nntp downloads correctly, you will have a fantastic, unshaped experience on the network, both day and night.

If heavy traffic on VPN protocols is detected, it is treated in the same manner as peer to peer and nntp and will result in deprioritisation of your service when used during peak periods, as many users try to circumvent shaping using these services. Because VPN traffic does not allow us to recognise the specific protocols (as all traffic is encrypted), Crystal Web have to implement this policy on our standard uncapped accounts as a general rule. There are better accounts more suited to full-time VPN traffic than a standard account.

If you require large downloads during daytime use, then a premium (non-standard account) is best suited for your needs. Large volumes of traffic consumed during day-time use on standard accounts will result in a deprioritisation of your account on our network. Ordinary day-time users will not be affected. This is because day-time bandwidth is premium bandwidth to an ISP as it is the peak period of usage, and if your usage case requires access to such services in large volumes during premium bandwidth times, then a premium account is best suited for your needs. This ensures that we can plan capacity correctly for all customers on our network.

We are open and honest about this so that you can make the right choice when selecting which Crystal Web account is right for you. If all customers are on the correct products for their requirements, then Crystal Web can properly plan capacity and ensure that you are never subjected to capacity constraints on our network.

That's the plan for standard uncapped accounts, which from our perspective is a far better proposition than being throttled after a threshold of shaped consumption in any case. We're also releasing other products to fill any gaps this may create too. Everyone has a different usage case, and we want to be able to cater for these at the right price-points.
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I'm not part of the CW club yet but if things dont come right with my current ISP by the 25th you will have a new customer.

I would just like to beg that you dont follow the same line as OpenWeb with too many different account types as it can be confusing and will lead to doubts as to whether a user is on the right package or if they getting less benefit than someone on a lower package. We seen this played out on the OW thread many times.
Also the part about "Peer to peer, nntp and other automated downloads are shaped during daytime use to preserve network quality. If traffic on these protocols are detected during peak hours, other services such as http downloads are deprioritised (they are normally prioritised 100%) reminds me what Mr Beep used to say when your connection was slow during the day :P

1. I'm positive that you will not allow this to happen.
2. OW was a bad comparison as they only ever sold 1 account type (Gold/Leon/Orange=Silver=Vanilla=Downloaders Bling) and they shared them all :D
 
Sinbad said:
Can you look at vpn endpoints and exclude some of them from your rules? Eg my work vpn? Can't use it to bypass any policy, they're much stricter than you! ;-)
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this is definitely something to look at, although there is an administrative element to doing which we will need to work out so no promises can be made and we might need some paper work and costing ...
 
Sinbad said:
Can you look at vpn endpoints and exclude some of them from your rules? Eg my work vpn? Can't use it to bypass any policy, they're much stricter than you! ;-)
Click to expand...

We absolutely can, yes. If it is legit traffic then we can certainly look at it and whitelist it for you on the network. Work VPNs being one.
 
Crystal Web said:
We absolutely can, yes. If it is legit traffic then we can certainly look at it and whitelist it for you on the network. Work VPNs being one.
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That would be excellent. I myself am working a hell of a lot from home lately.
 
Unfortunately, the main public is still a bit in the dark what "shaping" truly should mean. Most of them see it as the ISP punishing them for using the internet.
Luckily the likes of saa044 has gotten the grasp of this, and in applying the "Quality of Service" for the different protocols, is able to experience good ping times for gaming, able to stream videos, as well as have downloads in the background.
Most people see "Unshaped, Uncapped" as an "All you can eat" buffet, but you now have so many Ribs on your plate, that you don't have space for the steak fillets.... what do you do? Complain that the plate is not big enough! Not to mention that most want doggy bag to take home because they can't eat it all.
FFS! Take what you want, eat until you are full, but don't make a bloody pig of yourself!

Tell me, who is the abuser? A 2Mbs user who tries to suck up 800GB in a month trying to push 2Mbs 24/7 for the month, or the 20Mbs user who hits 500Gbs per month? Just because you have a Ferrari does not mean that you have to drive at 250KM/H. all the time, but it's nice to know that it's available.

I just get the impression that most of the bitching seems to come from people that are prepared to pay for a VW beetle, but expect a Merc.


BTW. CW, I did upgrade & expect at most about a 15% to 30% increase in my usage (doubt it though). I hope you catered for this. :)
 
patrick123 said:
10Mbs to 20 Mbs. Not expecting double my througput, just a better internet experience. :) (If it can get better.)
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Nice.
When I first read your post, I somehow thought you were referring to you CW package. I only later saw that it was more likely to be your line speed.
 
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