Calculating FAP restrictions

My understanding is ..

The various integration periods, 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day, 1 week, 4 weeks are all sliding windows, recalculated every 5 minutes, and probably worked out by simply adding up the number of Mbytes in each 5 minute period for the last 12 periods (i.e. 1 hour), last 48 periods (i.e. 4 hours), etc.

How long it takes to come out of the FAP will depend on when during the relevent period you used a lot of Mbytes.  As your oldest traffic records drift out of the back end of the window, your current total in the window goes down.

The current Tooway FAP document, which was updated 14th Oct 2008, has a revised diagram which tries to explain this.  I hope my understanding is correct but I'm not sure.  It is not very clear, but perhaps better than it was before.

I expect Skylogic will amend their FAP system based on experience.   Bentley Walker with their management of their Hughes HX hubs have successfully adapted their FAP system (which is based on fixed 8 hour period and two different lower speed thresholds) so that the number of sites ever affected by the FAP is only a small proportion of all the sites, while achieving what they consider to be a fair sharing and keeping everyone happy.  Those affected by the FAP can easily see their stats and those of other FAP sites at any time and this open feedback has been well received.   I believe GlobalTT.com also operate some good customer traffic status pages on their Gilat networks, to give similar feedback to customers.

Best regards, Eric.

I don't understand it either.  There appear to be 13 x 5 minute periods in the first hour and 12 x 5 minute periods in the later hours.

The sliding time window appears to be 65 minutes wide.

The 22kbit/s, 100 kbit/s and the 20 MB and 25MB are unexplained.

Are the 20 MB or 25MB the hourly limit for the basic service ?  No idea.

Best regards, Eric.

I have read the FAP posts above and realise that I may never understand the wonder that is FAP and I must just accept it and live within its awesome power.

But I have one last question -  if the FAP kicks in after bad behaviour in a single hour and is recalculated every 5 minutes, then how did Aealden manage to cram in enough action to get put on the Naughty Step for a week?

Surely the FAP would kick in and slow him down - at first for an hour, then for a day, long before he managed to build up a week of Jankers?

Here is a traffic chart for SILVER tariff (kindly sent by aealden)


Tooway SILVER tariff above.

Compare with the BRONZE tariff at the top of this thread.

Best regards, Eric.

It is interesting to observe the -1245.3 Mbytes inserted below the exceeded threshold.  A question: Why is it -1245.3 and not -45.3 ?

Assuming you were in this one week FAP state and  took another traffic record image 5 minutes later presumably the 1245.3 would have gone down a bit if you had been downloading during the 5 minute period ending exactly 1 week ago, and not doing anything during just the immediate last 5 minutes.

Does anyone know of traffic monitoring software provide 5 minute records of traffic over the past month?.

Best regards, Eric.

I am still waiting to be upgraded to Gold. It seems that even this is not easy to do!

I have been waiting for nearly a week - I chucked a bit of a wobbly this morning and it transpires that for gold service you are supposed to pay a year in advance! Although my provider is looking into taking this on for me. Should hear back by lunch.

I don't think I can blame my provider for this one I think this is another bit of Sky Logic craziness. I remember the silver I needed to pay 3 months in advance. Is this normal in the satellite ISP industry?

By the way, I have been unable to obtain an updated FAP graph since the last one. The one I did receive  was not dated, and not emailed to me until several days after the event so it is virtually impossible to really make anything of it.

By the way, it came on nicely on Friday but was off again by the end of the day. it has been unusable since. I am hoping that if they do manage to upgrade me to gold I might see some difference.

Hi Alex
have you been monitoring your internet usage with Netmeter or similar?
On the day you got you service back, do you estimate you may have used sufficient bandwidth to become FAP'ed again?

Cheers
Sean

Here is the latest revision of the FAP diagram.


There are now 12 x 5 min periods in each hour and the sliding window is 12 x 5 min wide.  The red recovery time is for 15 minutes (3 x 5 min periods).

Time now is 1hr 20 min from the start time.

I don't understand it.  Is there a limit of 20 Mbytes in 10 minutes causing a 100kbit/s restriction ?  Is so, this is not per the traffic graphs for BRONZE and SILVER.  Rather, more probably, the yellow line is just actual traffic useage and the area represents the Mbytes. Some clarification is needed for the first 10 minutes.

I think the graph is supposed to represent a high level of traffic between 0 and 10 minutes, then 50 minutes of moderate useage.  The total for the first hour is excessive and speed reduction applied at the end of the first hour (at T=60m).  After 10 minutes the high level burst drops out of the window and the recovery period ends and you are back to full speed. Quite why you have to wait an extra 5 or 10 minutes is not clear.

I don't understand the new yellow lines around the first 2hr 5m.

I don't know what the 20 and 25 Mbytes are supposed to mean or what hourly threshold is supposed to be in force.  The BRONZE traffic had 53 Mbytes per hour threshold.

100kbit/s = 45 Mbytes per hour
22kbit/s = 9.9 Mbytes per hour

Anyone on BASIC tariff please get a traffic graph and send it here eric@satsig.net

A warning to anyone working on real-time C language code to implement a FAP system like this.  Think very carefully about the logic and make sure it all makes sense before writing the code.  Testing and verification of correct operation is very difficult.

Best regards, Eric.

Please urgently ask your provider for a traffic graph so you can see what Mbytes threshold(s) you have exceeded.

For the BRONZE and SILVER Tooway tariffs see the traffic graphs above (on page 1 of 2).  They show the Mbytes thresholds per hour, 4 hours, day, week, 4 weeks.   500 Mbytes in a week may have caused some threshold to be exceeded.

Was it raining heavily at your location when you lost service ?  Maybe it was raining heavily in Turin, but that would have affected all sites. Ka band operation is affected by rain but the size of the dishes should be sufficient to give a large link budget margin and make service possible in all but the heaviest rain.  Perfect centre dish pointing is important as the uplink beam is narrower than the downlink beam.  The top of the beam is 'rounded' and considerable skill is needed to find the centre.  Getting a 'good enough' downlink signal is quite inadequate.  You need to get to the exact centre of the beam (i.e. half way between two equally degraded levels on either side) and this final tweeking will make no significant improvement on the downlink.

Best regards, Eric.

I had a Traffic Volume statistic  a few weeks ago and It gave me.


Thresholds:
1 hour - 86Mb
4 Hours - 200Mb
1 Day - 300Mb
1 week - 1200Mb
1 month 3200Mb

Unfortunately I am with T****m and and trying to get an answer to anything is virtually impossible, but I will give it a go.

The Tooway FIP clearly states that the subscriber shall have instantaneous access to real time information, and I quote:

6) The Fair Information Policy (FIP)
Information given to subscriber
• Instantaneous real time information (Push)
– Network congestion (FAP active or not)
– FAPed or not
– Punished or not
• Information on a web site (Pull)
– Account status
– Remaining Volume / Volume available
– FAP status   

but this is clearly not the case, if it were we would all know how we stand.

Hi, It says Bronze. I cannot see how to upload it to here. I am still running at 18 kbps and I have written to T****m but nothing so far, There's a surprise.

Yesterday speeds went back to normal and today things have hit an all time low of 10 down 4 up after only using 100mb in a day. Still no answer from T****m regarding why. FIP! what FIP??

Hi Aealden,  

I am still on 10Rx/4Tx. I have received a graph saying I am 20Mb over my 4 week limit and I am on FAP.



The graph dated 27/10/2008 (yesterday) reads:

Last Hour Limit Limit 53Mb / Used 0.3Mb
Last 4 Hours  Limit 100Mb / Used 0.9Mb
Last day Limit 300Mb / Used 14.8Mb
Last Week Limit 800Mb / Used 487Mb
Last 4 Weeks Limit 2000Mb / Used 2020.6Mb

Surely that should bring me back to full power after a day as there is a 300Mb threshold per day which should put me 280Mb in credit but I have been down for 2 days . I also certainly do not understand this sliding scale and have no idea when I will be back to full power.

Hang on, I have just checked and I am back to full power. Great

Hi, I am not absolutely sure, but assuming you are allowed a maximum of 450Mb per day and you are 20Mb over your 4 week limit then "Logically" it should take 1 day maximum from the date of the printout to be back within your limits as you woul be 430Mb's in credit, assuming that you have not used up much bandwidth since the printout. I say 'logically' but I am not sure if it is calculated logically! I would think Eric knows more about this than me.

Following the campaign on this web site, Bentley Walker have been working to develop their own on-line web customer accessible portal to enable customers to see their traffic useage versus the Mbytes thresholds for the various sliding window time periods applicable to the tariff selected.  It has not been easy and the development of the software and web interface have proved quite difficult.

If anyone can help fill in the unknowns in this table please say:
( Mbytes per sliding time window period, recalculated every 5 min)


Best regards, Eric.