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Viatel to participate in BT Wholesale's Quality of Service trial
Wednesday 18 August 2010 11:28:32 by John Hunt

Viatel have announced this morning that they will be participating in a trial by BT Wholesale to test quality of service (QoS) functionality on the WBC (Wholesale Broadband Connect) and WBMC (Wholesale Broadband Managed Connect) platforms. QoS gives service providers a way to prioritise specific traffic to ensure that bandwidth is always available for specific types of traffic such as voice over IP (VoIP). Viatel who are a business communications provider have also been involved with the design phase of the product, feeding back to BT data to help them specify how the product might perform in use.

"Today shared broadband in Britain cannot be relied upon to deliver the speed and latency required for particular business critical applications including converged voice communications using VoIP and other time critical services. Implementation of RT QoS will lead to a situation in which bandwidth can be dedicated to an individual line and will therefore never be subject to the effects of contention. The eventual deployment of this technology will be a major breakthrough in the viability of shared broadband for business and we are obviously very excited to be one of the few companies involved with this trial.

At present, businesses that cannot risk using contended services are limited to using more expensive offerings like leased lines, Ethernet or even dedicated broadband lines. RT QoS removes the effects of contention by adding the ability to dedicate a quantity of bandwidth to specific subscribers or applications. The amount of bandwidth that can be dedicated to a particular line can range from 100kbps up to nearly 5Mbps depending on line type and performance. With this service customers will enjoy enhanced management of their networks and will be able to make prioritisation decisions based on key SLA metrics of Latency, Packet Loss and Jitter. Once released RT QoS will be available on any 21 CN ADSL2+, Annex M, FTTC or FTTP line and will revolutionise the use of shared broadband for businesses in the UK."

Steve Powell, (Product Manager of Connectivity and Access) Viatel

The technical trial will begin in October and will be followed by a customer trial that will run until early 2011 with plans to launch it as live product option later in 2011.

[ Topic: Internet Service Providers | 26 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
quote"BT Wholesale to test quality of service (QoS) functionality on the WBC (Wholesale Broadband Connect) and WBMC (Wholesale Broadband Managed Connect) platforms. QoS gives service providers a way to prioritise specific traffic to ensure that bandwidth is always available for specific types of traffic such as voice over IP (VoIP)."

Or in short words, another company that wants to join BT and kill off Net neutrality... SPIT!

Posted by cf492bcc about 1 year ago
Right. And who exactly gets to decide what traffic is to have priority over others? What's to stop the company from exploiting its new-found degree of control for its own, selfish, commercial purposes? Are the regulators going to be keeping an eye on exactly how this is going to be used?

Left unchecked, it's likely it will be exploited, and it won't be in the interests of the general public either. OFCOM better start reading up on Net Neutrality.

Posted by GMAN99 about 1 year ago
If anyone ever wants VoIP on a large scale or IPTV it needs to use QoS.. come on guys... wise up.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
You could apply that to other forms of traffic and service though GMAN99.... Why should people pay the same monthly fee for a service, but some consumers and their usage gets First class treatment while others are treated like a nuisance or Third class citizens...... The company are still happy to take the same amount of money from both types though. If you cant supply fairly and evenly to all types of user and traffic, dont charge the same, charge based on your class based system. Charge those that get traffic priority more and those that dont less.

Posted by GMAN99 about 1 year ago
To get decent iPlayer viewing you'd want that traffic to get a better priority though yes? Should you be charged more if you want to use iPlayer on your net connection? Or just let the ISP prioritise video and voice and keep the same pricing?

All that is happening here is what has been happening on corporate LAN's for years

Posted by New_Londoner about 1 year ago
"some consumers and their usage gets First class treatment while others are treated like a nuisance or Third class citizens"

Presumably the QoS only prioritises within the bandwidth to your connection, so don't think this would be a case of consumer X gaining over consumer Y?

Posted by GMAN99 about 1 year ago
Its hard enough for some business to decide how much EF to buy for the MPLS connection, you can't tell me your average home user will be able to covert into kbps how much traffic they'd like to prioritise for voice and video. If you want these all new killer apps like IPTV and other high bandwidth time sensitive services you need to ensure they aren't sat waiting behind joe bloggs p2p leech of the latest harry potter movie.

Posted by GMAN99 about 1 year ago
Anyway... AFAIK this is just a business offering by a business ISP

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
quote"To get decent iPlayer viewing you'd want that traffic to get a better priority though yes?"

Nope i can watch BBC HD iplayer streams fine on my connection with no so called added priority.

quote"Should you be charged more if you want to use iPlayer on your net connection?"

Nope i dont want or need extra priority in which to be able to view it.

quote"Or just let the ISP prioritise video and voice and keep the same pricing?"

I dont want any specific traffic priority, i believe in Net neutrality, you charge the same, provide the same to everyone. That darn simple!

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
quote"Presumably the QoS only prioritises within the bandwidth to your connection, so don't think this would be a case of consumer X gaining over consumer Y?"
So if BT started prioritising all bit torrent traffic tomorrow or other forms of traffic you may not use and http and similar wasnt a priority, would you stay with BT even if visiting a web page started feeling like the days of 2400baud dialup? Thats what could happen in theory with traffic prioritising systems. Traffic prioritisation is favouritism to some customers and not others, yet everyone pays the same per month. (ATLEAST FOR NOW)

Posted by GMAN99 about 1 year ago
Its not that darn simple though. Because as we move on more people are wanting to use their connections for different purposes and there's only so much bandwidth to go around, chucking more bandwidth at is isn't the "costly" solution. Net neutrality is such a naff phrase, if the internet is to survive priority needs to be put in place for certain types of time sensitive traffic. Just because your http/email is best effort/default it doesn't mean its going to stop dead.

Posted by Legolash2o about 1 year ago
I think GMAN99 is correct... VOIP/IPTV needs QOS to be able to use it with no problems/lag, although i do think the ISP should have enough bandwidth so that the QOS would only be noticed once the network started to get busy.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
In that case GMAN99 i assume if you wanted to use a service that gets traffic priority like VOIP and i didnt (because i certainly do not) you are happy to pay more for it? If not explain why i should pay the same when you are getting and additional benefit from a service and something you actually want/need when i have no desire for it what so ever.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
My iplayer works fine without traffic prioritisation, its not needed on the network im on. Although i never use it so cant say for certain but i doubt VOIP would need prioritising either. My pings and speed are good the world over. Surely my ISP doesnt prioritise everything?

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
Ive never had any youtube issues (nor any flash/shockwave based video service issues), iplayer issues, itv player issues, 4 on demand, five ondemand issues, PSN film downloading issues either.
Spotify works fine for me, so does itunes, lovefilm, acetrax and every pay service ive tried.... Why doesnt my ISP have issues with music and video? If this prioritisation lark is truely needed??? Its nothing more than a cheapo way for any company to be able to traffic shape users and pretend everyone still gets what they want, which they dont.

Posted by Btcc22 about 1 year ago
^ Your ISP does have serious issues with traffic on the BTW side of their network though. Answer the question of why and you'll have answered your own question too.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
^^ Must be related to BT in some way then. Dont other LLU ISPs which also do/did BTW services also have issues with the BTW side of things and being able to supply the demand (O2 as example)? Doesnt Virgins cable system also perform better than their BTW conventional sold UPTo 20Mb products?
(let the CARPETBURN bashing and BT defending commence, as always) Sounds to me like some companies provide the required bandwidth whilst others just want to traffic shape and prioritise low demand things.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
I like the advertising and so called reassuring catch phrase though.... Its Quality of Service people..... Honest, just as long as the service you want to use meets what we decide to give actual "Quality" on.

Posted by GMAN99 about 1 year ago
I really can't be bothered going down the Net Neutrality road :) I'll save it for a rainy day. This article is about business broadband QoS and for them to be able to prioritise voice and video traffic between their sites / customer sites, something they've not been able to do until now with the service that they can (trial) now. Its only a good thing. Its not even about "The Internet" these services are used to connect company sites together rather than using some of the more expensive offerings.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
quote"RT QoS removes the effects of contention by adding the ability to dedicate a quantity of bandwidth to specific subscribers or applications."

What happens if everyone wants the specific services and bandwidth at the same time? You either have the bandwidth available or you dont and if you have it available for everyone why limit other things but prioritise some?

Posted by GMAN99 about 1 year ago
I think the article is lost on you CB, I can't be bothered explaining it. Its not about bandwidth being available its about prioritising customer traffic. Office A has a regular Video Conf with Office B but Fred from Sales in Office A starts a large file transfer to Office B which drops the Video Conf. Enabling QoS ensures the file transfer takes place fine but doesn't affect the Video Conf. I just don't think you get the context of the article (not being funny either)

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
What happens if they want to do more than a single video conference, who gets priority then? Lets say there are 20 offices in the same company that all need to video conference, how does this prioritisation help then?
Or how about if the office relies on file transfering more than video conferencing, what is the point of this so called prioritising of video traffic for that company?

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
It is clearly traffic shaping and not traffic prioritisation, BT QOS has always equaled Traffic shaping and not traffic prioritisation, its one of the reasons P2P is throttled on all their residential services, including even new FTTC. If this is traffic prioritisation for certain apps, what is the point if the company never use the applications which get this so called priority?

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
The statement of "will lead to a situation in which bandwidth can be dedicated to an individual line and will therefore never be subject to the effects of contention."

Is also utter nonsense, if you prioritise certain traffic and every user/subscriber you have wants to use the application which produces this traffic at the same time, i dont care who you are contention will happen. Even if you allocated 2Mb out of 8Mb by default for video conferencing if all your subs wanted to do that at the same time contention will happen.

Posted by GMAN99 about 1 year ago
I hope your not waiting on an indepth reply to those ^ :)

The customer chooses if they want to prioritise some apps over others and how much they want to allocate. That's it... there's nothing more to say really.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
Wouldnt a decently configured business network do that anyway? I know in my home i have things configured see the right things get the right amount of bandwidth. My iplayer or a video chat wouldnt stall if i were downloading files on another machine. I guess some just cant configure a router or hub ;)