Broadband News

Tiscali traffic troubles continue

(23-01-08) - Despite undoing the software upgrade that caused extreme traffic management during peak hours, Tiscali customers faced another evening of blockages and poor line speed yesterday.

Like many cheap broadband providers, Tiscali (www.Tiscali.co.uk), imposes traffic shaping measures to control heavy downloading during peak times.

However, a botched upgrade to its traffic shaping software over a week ago resulted in “sub dial-up speeds” of as little as 10Kb between 5pm and 9pm, reported The Register.

Gaming, peer-to-peer and even the use of iTunes became impossible.

Tiscali acknowledged the problem and has since reversed the upgrade, but to no avail.

Engineers “are continuing to address this issue”, and the firm said last week: “We are aware that there is an issue in this area which is currently being addressed. Sorry for any inconvenience, caused.

”As well as having an impact on gaming, this issue is a cause of peak time slow speeds and is currently affecting: iTunes access, VPN / FTP / RDP just to mention a few.”

The company’s user forum has now been closed to any new customer comments on the issue and Tiscali has said that customers still experiencing problems should get in touch via the usual channels.

Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “Tiscali is the UK’s fourth largest broadband provider, with around two million customers, so this problem will be affecting a lot of people.

“Traffic shaping is a common practice among ISPs who advertise their packages as ‘unlimited’. Of course, there’s no such thing, and all unlimited broadband packages come with a fair usage policy attached, and more often than not, with traffic shaping to slow down bandwidth hungry applications and downloads during peak hours.

“This is why I often recommend that customers take out packages with a published, clearly set download limit that won’t be subjected to speed throttling when they need it most,” he concluded.

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