Re: At those moaning about P2P traffic throttling
Big_Ted, if your connection slows down to the extent that at peak times you get constant buffering on iPlayer or low quality streams, then it is probably not some unseen group of "bandwidth hoggers" all downloading illegal files using P2P services. It is in fact more likely that your ISP has not provisioned enough backhaul bandwidth for peak use. If the ISP's network is congested then the other users are also getting slow connections = how can they be hogging your bandwidth, they are not getting a larger proportion of the available capacity than you.
A good example is that Sky bought an extra half million customers - they did not buy Be or O2's network infrastructure. When they started migrating the new users to their network, I found my Sky connection becoming worse so I left. They offered me all sorts of deals to stay with them but I prefer to pay £10 more a month and have a better connection. Many of my friends (against my advice) choose their ISP based on cost and then complain about buffering etc...I have a decent router that cost £100 rather than the cheap crap you get from most ISPs (Aquiss expect you to provide your own router) and I pay a higher than average monthly cost. In return I have stable consistent connection that is not affected greatly by peak/off peak times. This is, I think, what people are referring to when they say "you get what you pay for".
In my experience you get a better experience in the UK if you go with a small/moderate size ISP that has a limited number of users and can therefore manage their network effectively. All the big players are trying to compete against each other using bundled services such as TV and are therefore not as focused on network management - they prob got most customers through cheap deals or because they have football/other sports TV packages and most non-technical users will therefore stay with them for the same reasons even if the network is flakey at times.
I repeat - if you want a stress free experience then look up ISPs somewhere like this http://www.ispreview.co.uk/
..and be prepared to pay £10-£20 more a month - trust me it is worth it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
