While we already compare favourably with commercial broadband providers (on price, speed and bandwidth quotas) there's always room for improvement - so we're rethinking how much bandwidth we give you on ResNet.

Making your usage quota easier to understand

Currently you have two bandwidth quotas, one for off-peak and one for on-peak times of day.  Going over either quota lands you in a slow network for the rest of the week - at all times of day. This is confusing, and terribly inconvenient if you want to skype your friends back home during peak hours...

So, we're getting rid of peak-time!

We've combined the on and off peak quotas to give you a single quota of 48GB per week (For ResNet Standard) or 81GB per week (For ResNet Max) - no more worrying what time it is!

We've been trialling this change since 23rd May and it's been going pretty well so far.  The My ResNet control panel, and the Bandwidth Gadgets don't fully know about the change yet, so your on-peak usage is being reported as zero.  If the trial continues to work out ok, we'll have to see about fixing that!

If 81GB per week isn't enough for you, you can still buy extra chunks of quota through My ResNet.

Making your connection even faster!

Not content with making things easier, we're making them faster too!

Starting Monday 13th, we're going to increase the speed of ResNet wired connections to 50Mbps symmetric - That's 50Mbps download speed, and 50Mbps upload speed.  Once we've made that change, ResNet connections will be faster than BT Infinity Broadband (which gives you 40Mbps download speed, and 10Mbps upload)

Why is this awesome?  (Apart from it being obvious that faster is better!)

Well it means you can take full advantage of cloud based storage/backup solutions such as iCloud, Windows Live SkyDrive or Ubuntu One. It makes uploading photos or video to facebook/vimeo/flickr/youtube super quick, but most importantly - whatever cool new internet functionality is coming round the corner, we want your ResNet connection to be ready to handle it.

At this stage, we're not making any changes to the speed of the wireless network.  We can make it a bit faster than it is at the moment, but we can't make it quite as fast as the wired network.  So to take full advantage of the speed boost you'll need to use your wired connection.

"With great power comes great responsibility" - Spiderman

Once your connection is faster than a very fast thing going downhill on rollerskates - it does mean that it's easier to use up all your bandwidth quota.  We've done some sums and we think a bittorrent client serving up something popular (like an Ubuntu Linux DVD image) left unchecked could rip through the ResNet Max weekly limit in under 4 hours - on upload traffic alone!

If you've got any filesharing software on your computer, you might want to limit how much it can upload to the internet.  Most programs allow you to specify a maximum upload speed - we suggest setting this as low as you can get away with!

Not-that-small-really smallprint: All the features mentioned above are being trialled, we reserve the right to end the trial at any time if things start to melt.  We'll make a decision about what next years network speeds look like based on the results of the trial, so the above features may or may not be available for the 2011-2012 academic year.

Oh, and they apply to ResNet only.  The VisitorNet service got an 8 fold increase about a month ago but that's as far as we can push that for the moment.

Questions?

If you've got any questions or comments about the trials mentioned above, hit the comments below!

We've got a new version of the ResNet bandwidth quota monitoring sidebar gadget, which fixes a problem experienced by Windows Vista and Windows 7 users, where the gadget refused to accept their keys.

If you tried the sidebar gadget and it didn't work, upgrade to the latest version from http://toys.resnet.bris.ac.uk and give it another go!

Information Services are carrying out some essential systems maintenance on the 11th August 2009, 10:00-10:30 which affects the following ResNet systems:

If you've looked at MyResNet recently you'll have noticed that the off-peak weekly allowance cell in the Network Usage table has changed from 'unlimited' to 35GB. Currently we are not automatically restricting users based on their off-peak usage but we are working towards this goal.

Looking at this table you should be able to work out that if either the off-peak allowance OR the on-peak allowance exceed 100% AUP then your connection will be moved into the restricted network. Clever usage will allow up to 40GB weekly traffic (35 off + 5 on).

As I said before, the off-peak allowance is not active yet, but will be in the near future. The on-peak allowance is still in operation as it has been all year.

From current usage statistics, we anticipate that less than 1% of our users will be affected by this change. For example, last week 0.56% of users transferred data in excess of 35GB off peak and the week before it was just 0.33% (although term only started on Wednesday of that week).

Currently off-peak is midnight to 6pm (18 hours) and on-peak is 6pm to midnight (6 hours).

As always, we welcome constructive feedback.

Well it's Christmas and lots of students have disappeared for the holidays so it’s only fair that we increase the usual 5GB weekly peak-time usage to 10GB.

Peak-time is unchanged, 6pm to midnight.

The limit will be reduced back to 5GB per week from Monday 7^th January 2008 so try not to get caught out

Mark

During the vacation period (starting on Monday 25th June) we are increasing the peak-time usage 10GB per week as the network is less busy. We may review these limits throughout the vacation period.

Off-peak periods remain unlimited.

Peak-time is 6pm to 12 midnight and off-peak time is 12 midnight to 6pm

Enjoy

Week 5 (Monday 21nd May to Sunday 27th May)

Update 2007-06-19: Comments are now closed as there have been no genuine comments submitted recently, only spam. If you want to comment on this article, please contact the ResNet Helpdesk.

This is part of the occasional series of newsletters sent to all ResNet subscribers. In this edition: Peak usage limits increasing to 5GB per week; ‘Second Chance’ System; Jobs with ResNet

Peak usage limits increasing to 5GB per week

We are pleased to announce that from Monday 21st May 2007 the weekly peak-time usage allowance is to be increased to 5GB.

It has always been our intention to let ResNet subscribers use any spare capacity. We are confident that we have enough spare network capacity at the busiest time of day (6pm to midnight) to allow this increase.

We are constantly reviewing the peak and off-peak usage so that the best possible quality of service is maintained for the often conflicting needs of ResNet subscribers.

For more information on the peak-time system see

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/slink/dr8r

‘Second Chance’ System

We are developing a ‘Second Chance’ system that can be used once per term to allow restricted subscribers back onto the ‘normal’ network. An announcement will be made on our blog when the system is in place. If you are moved to the restricted network, and the ‘second chance’ system is in place, then the email we send you will contain information on how to use it.

Jobs with ResNet

There are still a few days to apply for a number of technical and non-technical positions available for full-time work this summer vacation and part-time work from Freshers’ week onwards.

To apply, please see http://www.bristol.ac.uk/slink/ktui

The closing date is 10am, Monday May 21st.

Best wishes,

The ResNet Team.

Update 2007-06-19: Comments are now closed as there have been no genuine comments submitted recently, only spam. If you want to comment on this article, please contact the ResNet Helpdesk.

We are pleased to announce that from Monday 14^th May 2007 the weekly peak-time usage allowance is to be increased from 2.5GB to 4GB.

We have been very pleased with the improvements to packet loss and latency that real-time application users find essential. These applications should now be working without trouble at all times of day.

We now find that for the first time in ResNet’s history we have spare capacity at the busiest time of day (6pm to midnight) and it has always been our intention to let subscribers use this capacity, hence this increase.

The limits will be reviewed again in a week or two and changed accordingly. The aim is to allow as much use of the available capacity whilst still maintaining quality of service to all subscribers. This is a learning curve for us, as having a peak-time limit is a culture change and we could not easily predict usage patterns, hence the relatively low 2.5GB initial limit.

Last week a total of 191 subscribers were moved to the restricted network, well under 5% of all subscribers, with an average restriction of 2.86 days per restricted user. If this were scaled up to all of ResNet then the average restriction would be < 3 hours per user per week.

We hope this change meets the approval of all who have asked for an increase, however, I’m sure not all will be fully satisfied with our attempts to please all ResNet subscribers.

Regards,

The ResNet Team

Week 4 (Monday 15th May to Sunday 20th May)

Update 2007-06-19: Comments are now closed as there have been no genuine comments submitted recently, only spam. If you want to comment on this article, please contact the ResNet Helpdesk.

We are making the initial results of the new policy publicly available so users are aware of what's going on.

We have calculated, based on past usage, the number of people that may be affected by the new policy. This data is in the expected column.

Week 1 (Monday 24th April to Sunday 29th April)

Notes on Tuesday 24th:

The 15 users that were moved to the restricted network had a combined upload to download ratio of 2.75 so it is likely that they were moved because the either couldn't, wouldn't or didn't know how to control the upload traffic.
For probably the first time in the history of ResNet there was noticeable drop in traffic between 6pm and midnight. There was no increase in latency and no packet loss so this is all very positive.
One minor problem was noticed for the hour before 6pm. Latency increased slightly because the upload link was saturated which would have had a detrimental affect on real-time applications. We are looking into solving this.

Notes on Friday 27th:

The number of people being moved to the restricted network is decreasing which suggests that people are not doing P2P during peak times (our traffic graphs also support this). The latency and packet loss for the vast majority of the day is excellent so hopefully all the real-time application users are happy. There is still a slightly higher latency spike for the hour before 6pm - this is probably when people are cramming in downloads before the peak period begins.

Notes on Sunday 29th:

* The script that runs every evening failed on its early Sunday run because of an error in the code. This has now been corrected. 62 people were not moved to the restricted network and the 186 warning emails were not sent to users that were over 80% usage.

Week 2 (Monday 30th April to Sunday 6th May)

Week 3 (Monday 7th May to Sunday 13th May)

Update 2007-06-19: Comments are now closed as there have been no genuine comments submitted recently, only spam. If you want to comment on this article, please contact the ResNet Helpdesk.