Sky Connect Broadband - Are you being slowed down?

[NewsreadeR]

Update - Rather than trawl all the way through this long thread, there is a new one here http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-b...ect-users.html summarising the main points and what you can do, if affected.

Over the last few days, there has been a marked increase in posts about being throttled or slowed down after 5pm until Midnight. From what we can ascertain, it is those customers on Sky's Connect package - The one at £17 per month.

We would like to try and find out the severity etc and so if you are being throttled / traffic managed, feel free to let us know in this thread. It would be handy if you could give any extra details, like for example:

• Broadband package: Sky Connect
• Normal Speed: 7mb (what you would normally expect)
• Current throttled speed: 5mb (Use our broadband speedtester to check)
• Average usage per day: A little / A lot / Hammer my connection *
• What does this throttling affect? Browsing / Gaming / Torrents / Or other *

*Please delete or amend as necessary.

If you wish to ask anything, please use this thread, so that we can keep all the information in one place.

For an explanation for the policy of throttling, the Sky Broadband Terms and Conditions state:

SKY BROADBAND CONNECT TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT POLICY

In addition to the monthly Usage Cap, this Traffic Management Policy applies to you if you take Sky Broadband Connect.

Excessive use during peak time

We will monitor your Sky Broadband usage during peak times from 5pm to 12am each day. This is when the majority of customers use the network and when speeds could be affected by the excessive usage of a minority. If we consider that your usage is excessive during peak times we may slow down your connection for the rest of the day so that it has less affect on others. Only a very small number of customers will be affected by this (less than 2%). If you are affected, we will only slow down the speed you can get during peak times for applications which use a lot of bandwidth (for example, streaming, peer-to-peer and newsgroups) and which have a negative affect on other customers. You will still be able to use Sky Broadband to do other things normally such as browsing, email, instant messaging and VOIP. There are no restrictions in place outside of peak times.

Traffic management of our Network

To ensure we provide a sustainable quality broadband service to our customers, we continuously monitor and efficiently manage the Sky Network as a whole. To do this, during peak times (from 5pm to 12am each day), we may slow down the speed that all Sky Broadband Connect customers can get on certain applications which we consider use up a lot of bandwidth (for example peer-to-peer and newsgroups) and which have a negative affect on other customers There are no restrictions in place for applications such as browsing, email, streaming, instant messaging and VOIP during peak times. We do not put restrictions on our network outside of peak times.

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

* Broadband package: Sky Connect
* Normal Speed: 5500kbps-ish
* Current throttled speed: 1500kbps-ish
* Average usage per day: A little
* What does this throttling affect? Downloading files / General Browsing

I've had my connection checked and i wasn't being FUP'd so probably just the throttling combined with general internet slowdown...not actually that bothered but it would be nice to be fast all times!!

[googleme]

* Broadband package: Sky Connect
* Normal Speed: Around 7
* Current throttled speed: 1.6mb
* Average usage per day: A little'ish
* What does this throttling affect? Downloading files / FTP

[NewsreadeR]

WOW - That's some loss of speed, IANTE and Googleme!

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

Yep!! just as well I'm not a gamer!!!

I can understand the frustration but as I'm not fussed too much about mine I get on with it - I'll eventually move to a LLU'd exchange and then I'm sorted!!

[googleme]

Just a little but I have managed to work around the throttling and what to do at times of the day. Does not worry me to much though. I do keep an eye on my usage though, Dec was a low month Nov exceeded the amount by 400meg, and Oct was below the 40 gig usage.

By daily amount is up and down, some days hit 2 gig others 200 meg, depends on my ftp'ing

[NewsreadeR]

Yep!! just as well I'm not a gamer!!!

To me that's not the point. You don't hammer the net, but you are being severely crippled with a loss of speed. The whole point or the way I read the T and C's is that it would affect those who hammer the net.

We will monitor your Sky Broadband usage during peak times from 5pm to 12am each day. This is when the majority of customers use the network and when speeds could be affected by the excessive usage of a minority. If we consider that your usage is excessive during peak times we may slow down your connection for the rest of the day so that it has less affect on others.Only a very small number of customers will be affected by this (less than 2%). If you are affected, we will only slow down the speed you can get during peak times for applications which use a lot of bandwidth (for example, streaming, peer-to-peer and newsgroups) and which have a negative affect on other customers. You will still be able to use Sky Broadband to do other things normally such as browsing, email, instant messaging and VOIP. There are no restrictions in place outside of peak times.

To do this, during peak times (from 5pm to 12am each day), we may slow down the speed that all Sky Broadband Connect customers can get on certain applications which we consider use up a lot of bandwidth (for example peer-to-peer and newsgroups) and which have a negative affect on other customers

So looking at that you should not be affected.

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

i know - perhaps I'm slow tonight due to me downlading Windows 7 yesterday so that WAS a big day but it's rare for me to do more than 500MB a week...

[Devil_Spawn]

Note: has been happening for months. It also may be caused by serios contention problems at my exchange.

• Broadband package: Sky Connect
• Normal Speed: 5mB
• Current throttled speed: 0.5mB some days, 2mB others
• Average usage per day: 1.5GB tv series download every week on thursday, usually not much else
• What does this throttling affect? everything. seem to be getting major packet loss too, may be unrelated

[dholdi]

To me that's not the point. You don't hammer the net, but you are being severely crippled with a loss of speed. The whole point or the way I read the T and C's is that it would affect those who hammer the net.

So looking at that you should not be affected.

Agreed, maybe someone somewhere at BT / Sky has got the settings wrong bigstyle.