peterpr
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I have been using BT satelite broadband for about 2 years now and had had few, if any real problems until about a week ago.
I started using Ionic's Sharescope about 8 weeks ago, then a new L2 trading platform about a month ago, together with my usual real-time price quotes from various providers.
All was going swimmingly until last week when, for no obvious reason all connections seemed to become slow and unreliable. So much so that on Friday last week I was unable to even look at a real-time chart or price quote until mid-morning by which time I had been badly caught out on the wrong side of a move with no stops or limits on the position (I have been caught before by spikes when setting them too tight and had been intending to watch real-time - Oh dear - big mistake this time)
The problem turns out to be something called the BT 'fair-shares' policy whereby they monitor bandwidth useage and begin to throttle it when certain thresholds are exceeded. I've not got to the bottom of the precise technicalities yet but it appears that my useage over the preceding month was such as to cause them to throttle me to one tenth the normal 512K !! - that's less than a standard dial-up connection -with no warnig or notification whatsoever!!. Also, the effect of latency on a satelite system compounds the effect of restricted bandwidth substantially. The net effect is that the system becomes totally unuseable - even for collecting email!
I had to scramble to re-instate a dial-up to do anything at all and, surprise surprise, found that I could run both Sharscope and all my other stuff quite happily over it.
I am now seriously reviewing my options. Why pay all that money for a sytem that can be degraded unpredictably to an extent that renders it totally unuseable for days on end?
Peterpr
I started using Ionic's Sharescope about 8 weeks ago, then a new L2 trading platform about a month ago, together with my usual real-time price quotes from various providers.
All was going swimmingly until last week when, for no obvious reason all connections seemed to become slow and unreliable. So much so that on Friday last week I was unable to even look at a real-time chart or price quote until mid-morning by which time I had been badly caught out on the wrong side of a move with no stops or limits on the position (I have been caught before by spikes when setting them too tight and had been intending to watch real-time - Oh dear - big mistake this time)
The problem turns out to be something called the BT 'fair-shares' policy whereby they monitor bandwidth useage and begin to throttle it when certain thresholds are exceeded. I've not got to the bottom of the precise technicalities yet but it appears that my useage over the preceding month was such as to cause them to throttle me to one tenth the normal 512K !! - that's less than a standard dial-up connection -with no warnig or notification whatsoever!!. Also, the effect of latency on a satelite system compounds the effect of restricted bandwidth substantially. The net effect is that the system becomes totally unuseable - even for collecting email!
I had to scramble to re-instate a dial-up to do anything at all and, surprise surprise, found that I could run both Sharscope and all my other stuff quite happily over it.
I am now seriously reviewing my options. Why pay all that money for a sytem that can be degraded unpredictably to an extent that renders it totally unuseable for days on end?
Peterpr