Eclipse launches customised broadband services with QoS
Monday 12 May 2008 13:07:58 by Sebastien Lahtinen
Eclipse Internet has this morning announced the launch of its range of broadband services which can be 'tailored by customers to suit their individual online needs'.
In practice, this means customers have the ability to login onto a part of their website and select the relative priority being given to different types of traffic (e.g. streaming, web browsing, p2p, gaming and so on) to suit their own family or business requirements.
"We believe these services will provide our customers with an unparalleled online experience [..] For the first time, broadband users will be able to customise their service to suit their usage – so home workers can optimise their broadband to achieve the best possible connection to their company VPN, for example, while online gamers can prioritise gaming over other applications. [..] The inclusive usage limits mean customers pay only for what they use, which also allows us to offer much faster broadband than is achievable with unlimited services."
Mark Thomas (Head of Sales and Marketing), Eclipse Internet
Flying their ISPA 'Best Business ISP' flag Eclipse is trying to focus on meeting the needs of users looking for more control over how their broadband is provided. Packages start from £13.95/month for residential offering (although a current offer of first three months for £9.95/month is available) which includes 1GB per month of usage. A 10GB/month package "Home Select" is available for £17.95 whilst the top end "Home Pro" service with 50GB/month costs £29.95. Additional traffic is charged at £1.25/GB. Business packages are also available.
Eclipse Traffic Controller Tool
The tool offered by Eclipse will help users manage the download traffic and prioritise critical applications based on their own preferences. So for example, parents using VoIP to make phone calls to relatives in Australia over the Internet won't suffer from degraded service when their kids are downloading movies or the latest copy of a Linux distribution online. Similarly children playing online games could be set to receive priority over their parents' YouTube browsing.
Digg this
Add to del.icio.usComments
Is this just an interface to their throttling / traffic management platform ? With the possible exception of LLU I can't see it affecting QoS on the connection from one's house or office to Eclipse.
Is it just me or does this seem like a smoke screen for network capacity issues?
So you can now choose between next to no bandwidth and no bandwidth, not bad.
So.. greater than £1/GB "excess" bandwidth charges and a packet filter inferior to that which many home routers can impliment. Right.
What on earth is the point of this? If there is no capacity issue, there's no need to adjust priorities. I want my connection to work at full speed all the time and not have to continually manually adjust the rationing. What a stupid concept.
I don't really see the point in this, if Eclipse was a good ISp that gave a decent bandwidth, then yes it may be useful. Unless Eclipse have improved in the last year, then maybe their time would be better spent on getting a better service.
We believe these services will provide our customers with an unparalleled online experience
Flap oink Flap oink
If they ditched traffic shaping and put the right number of customers on each pipe it would help more.
Does anyone know how I can tell if my slow broadband connection is down to my pc or my broadband provider (Tiscali)? I ran a speed test here http://www.broadband-expert.co.uk/broadband/speedtest/ and it tells me I have a download speed of 2.06Mbs and an upload speed of 243 Kbps. My laptop a dell Inspiron 8600, is about 3-4 years old some and I have Windows and is running Windows 2000.
Any or advice help would be greatly appreciated!
ahh proper QoS one the customer controls.
Just read the other replies, I get the impression this QoS is for the purpose of controlling congestion on the customers own line only, so if they are at full utilisation but want streaming to never skip they could have streaming at best QoS and depriotise other stuff, of course if eclipse still have other shaping on globally then its poor.
chrysalis - again, a deacent router can do this entirely under the customer's control. It's a gimmick.
"We believe these services will provide our customers with an unparalleled online experience"
Hilarious stuff. Only someone in marketing could come out with such dross.
it isn't "proper QoS" it's just fiddling with their traffic management platform. No QoS on the end user connection.
carolinenational is a troll and I claim my £5
I do think the intentions are good, I would much rather have my web surfing within the household prioritised over P2P, which tends to suck all life from web-browsing when it is running.
I can’t however see this working on the download, as the bandwidth is often sporadic over the BT network (QOS needs consistent bandwidth in order to work). The upload may however have a chance of being shaped, however I am not sure how much use this would be to an everyday user.
"a decent router can do this entirely under the customer's control"
Not really true, to implement downstream QoS properly you need to control the flow of data before it reaches the slowest point of the network (the DSL downstream). As BT don't offer any sensible way of doing this within their network, the first point of control for an ISP is the IPCentral interconnect.
That said, to do QoS properly you also need to control the upstream, which it doesn't look like this does..?
Karoo which is also run by KCOM have implemented very similar packages, except there is no control for QoS. Looking at the feedback from users it appears that the service doesn't have traffic shaping to the extent of MAX Options 1-4 but only slight shaping of Usenet/P2P at peak or busy times...
This is for Karoo, but it is possible Eclipse will be similar, hence the usage allowances. Shame the "Pro" package doesn't have free overnight usage like Karooo...
http://www.karoo.co.uk/broadband/compare-all-products.asp
Does the picture really show the entire interface of that 'Controller Tool'? And where can I prioritise VoIP or other streaming over other things?
Hmmm a 1gig service available where you can prioritise P2P and and VPN yet there doesnt seem to be an option to prioritise newgroup access or alot more....... Oh and why would anyone need to set priority on email as high??? Is the service so bad you need to prioritise something to send and receive 2K email messages? Whole thing looks like a load of hype and no point or function to me.
This interface can't be found here and where can I say that I want VoIP maximised and does Web Browsing include all HTTP communications or can these be seperate?
In fact, I would like to know where this control is - I can't find it.
Sounds like usual sour grapes to me, I have been with Eclipse for 4 years now and have had excellent service. My line speed 2 years ago was quoted by BT as 5.5Mbps I now regularly measure speeds at well over 6.5Mbps using a server in London. I also find that speeds to Washington are almost identical. Also with Eclipse customer service is excellent.
The horror stories that I have heard with people on Tiscali, Talk Talk etc are one reason I would not change to gain a few pennies and a lot of problems.
Unfortunatley they no longer offer 896kbps upload speed as they did with there old Option 3 - this has lost them two new sales today!