SingNet undertakes network management activities from time to time to optimize its network performance to deliver a consistent broadband experience to all its residential subscribers. This ensures that the network operates at optimal efficiency and that the quality of access to the Internet by its subscribers is not affected.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic tends to take up the largest amount of bandwidth available on the broadband network. A P2P network is formed when two or more peer nodes (each peer node is an end-user's computer) are interconnected over the Internet to transfer and/or receive content simultaneously. Based on the design of the P2P protocol, as more peer nodes interconnect, bandwidth consumption increases dramatically. Bandwidth consumption by P2P traffic for all interconnected P2P peer nodes on the SingNet broadband network is much higher compared to the overall bandwidth consumption by other activities such as web browsing, email and streaming. If network management is not practiced, the surge in P2P bandwidth consumption will eventually affect other end-users on the SingNet broadband network.
SingNet employs a fair use policy that ensures no single traffic protocol monopolizes all available bandwidth at the expense of other traffic protocols. Network management activities are carried out only for the P2P traffic protocol by ensuring that P2P traffic does not consume more than 10% to 25% of the total available bandwidth during peak and off peak hours respectively. Peak hours may vary but are generally between 11am and 2am when most subscribers are on the Internet.
Network management is practiced by queuing the delivery of the P2P data packet to the end-user's computer when a certain network utilization level is reached, which may delay delivery, but will not drop the data packet from the network. This activity identifies traffic based only on its Internet protocol such as P2P, HTTP and SMTP. It does not scrutinise the end-user’s Internet activity or content. This fair use policy ensures that subscribers using the Internet for other purposes like web browsing, e-mails and streaming etc will not be affected by any surge in P2P traffic protocol in our network.
Subscribers using P2P applications, which typically run in the background, may experience up to three times slower download speeds should the P2P bandwidth consumption reach the network utilization limit during peak hours. It is important to note that as network management activities are applied on an overall network basis, the experience by individual subscribers using P2P applications may also vary depending on a multitude of other factors including but not limited to the subscriber’s hardware/software setup, the configuration of the P2P applications, the websites/files being accessed by the P2P application etc. End-users performing other tasks will not be affected by this network management activity. In fact, end-users accessing other applications enjoy more bandwidth during peak hours as a result of network management which ensures that the end-users’ Internet experience is consistent throughout the peak and non-peak hours.
