Fair allocation of the free bandwidth
When you surf with VOO, you – like all VOO customers – have the right to enjoy the benefits of a superfast broadband Internet connection. To make this possible, our technicians ensure that the free bandwidth is always allocated as fairly as possible among all users.
That’s why, if necessary, the upstream bandwidth of P2P traffic may be slightly limited during peak periods. This ensures that everyone has access to sufficient upstream bandwidth volume for a high-quality surfing experience.
P2P traffic in a few words
P2P, or peer-to-peer traffic, is the sharing of files between Internet users. You are probably familiar with some typical P2P applications such as BitTorrent, Vuze, eMule or Gnutella Not to be confused with surfing, e-mail, Skype, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, Usenet, Netflix… which are not peer-to-peer applications.
The speed of P2P traffic depends on:
- the speed authorised by the file provider
- the application you are using
- networks through which traffic passes, such as the VOO network for example
As you can see, the speed at which your P2P applications are sent and downloaded also depends on factors independent of VOO.
Fair allocation: freedom for everyone
P2P applications take up a large part of the bandwidth, especially when sending data. This high occupancy rate can disrupt the sending speed of other users who are busy streaming, surfing or sending e-mails. To secure your freedom to use the Internet at all times, a fair allocation of the sending bandwidth is therefore necessary for peer-to-peer traffic.
How do we ensure this fair allocation?
VOO protects its network by setting maximum sending bandwidth for P2P traffic. If you use this type of application, you will only notice an impact if there is very high simultaneous peer-to-peer usage in the same region. This situation is temporary and therefore very limited. Whatever the case, at least 50% of the total sending bandwidth is reserved for non P2P traffic.
VOOmobile traffic management
To secure the optimal quality of your VOOmobile services, traffic measurements are taken on the mobile network to prevent any saturation or overload of your connection to this network. Network quality and capacity are the subject of careful monitoring in order to ensure an optimal customer experience and quality of the voice and data communications. The technical experts supervise the network 24/7. Proactive procedures have been set up by the network operator to anticipate or avoid any incident and prevent any network congestion. All the technical devices incorporated into the network send performance measurements. Trigger points for proactive actions are defined to improve or increase the network capacity. The aim is to take quick action before quality starts to suffer.
If an incident nevertheless takes place on the network despite this prevention work, teams are on call 24/7 to restore service and increase the network capacity. The main aim of the operational experts is to solve each incident as quickly as possible to minimise the impact on the services proposed to the VOOmobile customers (such as calls, the internet connection or mailboxes). Examples of temporary measures that can be taken: given that mobile internet (Skype, listening to music via streaming, watching videos and films, etc.) requires a high capacity, access to mobile internet can be temporarily blocked by the network operator in order to maintain a sufficient capacity for calls to the emergency services and to send text messages. Each incident is then analysed in depth and in detail: the network operator tries to identify the source of the incident in order to take adequate measures to avoid such incidents in future. During large events, such as summer festivals (Werchter, Tomorrowland, Dour, Couleur Café, etc.) and sports meetings (football matches, Ivo Van Damme Memorial, cyclocross, etc.), the capacity of the existing sites and the installation of temporary sites can be organised to boost the network operator’s network.
