http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=30609 Lengthy Post by DL at some obscure hour. No full stops. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OK, time to clarify things a little. Below is how this is currently implemented. I do not set policy, I make recommendations and implement policy which is usually in line with those recommendations, so this may change at any point up to the extent permitted by the T&Cs. For example, the T&Cs state "10Gb in free periods" before traffic shaping but the current implementation considers both free periods separately - this is not guaranteed and could change at any point. You will also note the below is significantly different from when I last posted to whirlpool detailing what was happening - the increased number of LNE and WW users going beyond 10Gb/month in the relevant periods has meant that we have had to expand the times where the limiting must take place to protect, mostly, HomeDSL users below 10Gb/month in usage in the relevant periods. (And, it's been quite some time since I provided any details about this.) And yes, there's no exact figures about number of users, amount of bandwidth, etc below. However to give an approximate view, the bandwidth allocated to LNE or WW users beyond the limit is slightly higher per user than the bandwidth consumed by the average LNE/WW user who does not consume beyond limit, so any significant performance drop experienced is a result of people you are sharing that bandwidth with going far beyond normal usage patterns. In 1am to 4am weeknights customers over 10Gb in the last 30 days rolling average of late night free periods (calculated nightly; the weekend limiting is calculated weekly, the late night limiting calculated nightly) and on the LNE plan will in some cases experience slow speeds (as previously detailed, one link only is affected; however the link in question is now less significant in our network as there are more international paths added since I previously provided details on traffic shaping). The amount of bandwidth dedicated to this user class on that link has been recently increased due to increased upstream capacity. This has the effect of spreading the LNE peak into two peaks - a 1am peak where downloads for users with less than 10Gb in the last 30 days start using significant bandwidth, which then tapers off over the next few hours, and a 4am peak where the overlimit users' downloads for the night speed up and then taper off again over the next few hours. You have noted a significant performance increase at 4am, this means that your last 30 days of 1am-8am periods have contained more than 10Gb of downloads and thus you are in the 'LNE over 10Gb' category. Over the weekends, again this is only currently and no indication of future trends, time is split up into various blocks for different treatment: midnight-1am Saturday - WW over 10Gb shaped 1am-4am Saturday - LNE over 10Gb shaped 9:30am-midnight Saturday - WW over 10Gb shaped midnight-1am Sunday - WW over 10Gb shaped 1am-4am Sunday - LNE over 10Gb shaped 10am-midnight Sunday - WW over 10Gb shaped midnight-1am Monday - WW over 10Gb shaped 1am-4am Monday - LNE over 10Gb shaped And up to Tuesday this week there were some delays in upgrading the link between Sydney and Brisbane, meaning that Brisbane LNE/WW customers beyond the 10Gb limit were shaped more severely than their Melbourne and Sydney counterparts up until Tuesday. As per our T&Cs, we reserve the right to shape LNE/WW customers beyond the 10Gb limit for the protection of other customers. On Tuesday this week we upgraded the link between Sydney and Brisbane by 50%; we had planned to announce the date in advance but when we called our interstate ATM provider to set the final time (ie. when they were ready to action the order and we would normally set a time such as 6am on the next Thursday morning), they said 'we understand you want this ASAP, how about we do it while you're on the phone?', and given that ATM upgrades are seamless and extremely low risk (someone at the provider increases the PCR/SCR limits in the switch and then later at our convenience we increase the PCR/SCR in our routers) we proceeded with an immediate upgrade so that we could improve performance for Brisbane customers right away.