Xplornet and Traffic Management
Our goal is to ensure that each Xplornet customer receives fair
and consistent access to the Internet. A small percentage of
customers are responsible for a disproportionate share of data
usage on our network. To minimize the impact that heavier users
might have on the experience of other Xplornet customers, we have
implemented a Fair Access Policy. Our intent with this policy is to
affect the fewest customers while helping maintain the best speeds
for the majority of customers.
What is the Fair Access Policy?
The Fair Access Policy is a series of rules that govern how data
traffic flows through our network. There is a set of rules specific
to each of our access platforms:
Within each platform, the rules differ by the specific package a
customer purchases. Across our different platforms, our traffic
management approaches include things like:
- Setting hourly, daily, or monthly usage allowances. When the a
customer exceeds one of the allowances on their package, their
service goes into "Recovery Mode" for a period of time, during
which their maximum speed is reduced. For details of how this works
on each of our platforms, please click on the relevant link
above.
- Charging for usage beyond a specified usage allowance.
- Subjecting traffic related to applications that are considered
non time-sensitive (such as peer-to-peer file sharing, newsgroups,
and online data storage) to reduced transfer speeds during peak
hours.For details of how this works on each of our platforms,
please click on the relevant link above.
- Dynamic congestion policies, which respond to congestion in a
part of the network by identifying the top 10% of users in that
part of the network who are consuming the most bandwidth and
reducing their speeds to approximately half their maximum speed for
a period of 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes, if congestion in
that part of the network continues to be an issue, the system will
once again calculate which users have been consuming the most
bandwidth in the prior 15 minutes, and implement the speed
restriction on that newly-calculated set of users.
For the purpose of network security or to address unpredictable
traffic events (e.g. traffic surges due to global events and
failures on part of an ISP's network), we reserve the right to
temporarily employ additional traffic management policies in order
to protect network integrity.
Current Xplornet customers can view the details of the specific
policies that apply to their platform and package by using our
customer portal and www.myxplornet.com.
Further details about our Fair Access Policy are openly available,
through your local dealer or by calling our Customer Care group at
1-866-841-6001.