23rd December 2003
Further to the Bandwidth Management introduced on ADSL connections in
January 2003, we are now pleased to announce that the Bandwidth has
been drastically increased and is now set as follows:
Business Users are now set to Unlimited Time and Unlimited Downloads/Uploads.
Other users Unlimited time and 8GB/month Download and 8GB/month Upload
If the 8GB is reached the speed will be reduced to 64Kbps
but if you use the proxy settings (proxy1.global.net.mt, port8080)
the speed will continue to be 512Kbps.
If the limit of 12Gb in a month is reached, the speed will be reduced
to 64Kbps both with and without proxy settings.
28th January 2003
During the past few weeks we have noticed a gradual degradation in the speed of our international link to the
internet which was frustrating all our internet subscribers. Our engineers have analysed the problem and in
order to restore a high level of service to our subscribers, we have implemented a range of filtering and
blocking as from 24th January 2003. These are in conformity to the service agreement and may change as
required.
The internet connection is permitted for an unlimited connection time period as specified on WWL application
page.
Download volume is permitted as long as it is reasonable and does not have a negative impact on the service
received by other subscribers.
Our statistics shows that 95% of the users receive below 1.5Gb and send below 500Mb per month. We have
established that users downloading above double that average, are disturbing other users. For this reason, we
have implemented the necessary filtering and blocking as per service agreement clause 2 (e) f/g , in order to
ensure that subscribers are protected and that over 95% enjoy the download speeds throughout their
subscription period.
For the relatively few users who exceed the 3Gb on receive or send data every month the following rules are
now applied from 8am to 1am.
The direct international bandwidth speed is being filtered to a maximum of 16kbs while 512 kbps will remain
available when the proxy settings are enabled on the browser, on local bandwidth and e-mail. This means that
there is no major impact on the service as long as the proxy settings are used.
For those fewer subscribers who exceed 8Gb per month, a further limitation is imposed which limits the
international bandwidth to 8kbps, downloads from the proxy server are filtered to 16kbps, email is filtered at
32kbps on receive and 128kbps on send. Local bandwidth remains open. This applies 24hours a day.
The downloads are calculated from the expiry day, for example, if the expiry date is 11th January, on the 11th of
each month the logs are cleared and you will get full speed as long as the limits described above are reached.
After that, the filtering described above will apply.
We have also noted that connections longer than 3 days pose a high risk of being targeted by hackers and this
also affects all our services even if the attacks are not successful. For this reason any connection longer than 3
days needs to disconnect and a new connection established.
In addition to this protection we have also installed a firewall which blocks well-known virus and hacking ports
as well as known bandwidth depletion ports.