Soft throttling should affect the majority of users on the system. It is only applicable to the Old Generation service plans, and only the heaviest users will notice the soft throttling coming into effect.
As an addition to the Fair Access Policy, soft throttling will commence on all limited plans. A limited plan is one with a defined data allowance.
Heavy users above the limit will experience a slower speed once they reach the soft throttle limit of their data consumption. The moderate users will benefit from the enhanced network resource. This standard network management measure is used to improve overall user experience.
What is throttling?
This is the ability to control the amount of used data and the speed of the data usage per service plan. YahClick is a shared network, and so throttling allows us to implement fair access policy to an extent whereby users receive access to speed and network as per the price plan to which they have subscribed.
Who will the throttling affect?
Heavy users above the limit will experience a slower speed once they reach the soft throttle limit of their data consumption. The moderate users will benefit from the enhanced network resource.
Estimated timeframe for when Soft Throttle will be released
Soft throttling works the same as the hard throttling. We count the volume and apply the limitation only out of free-zone time. When the volume allowance is reached, the speed limitation is applied for 18 hours outside free-zone. It stays until the volume in the leaking bucket is below the soft throttling allowance, but at least for 24 hours (18 hours + 5 hours free-zone).
FAP tokens do not release the SAN from Soft Throttle status but are only used for Hard FAP or ‘Exceeded’ status.
The only way to get out of ‘Soft’ status or Soft throttle is to upgrade to a higher volume service plan. Reduction of volume consumption will eventually result in a release of the soft throttling state after 24 hours.
How to avoid Soft Throttling in the future
Reduction of volume consumption will eventually result in a release of the soft throttling state after 24 hours. Reduce high-volume consumption (downloads, streaming) or upgrade to a higher-volume service plan.
Soft throttle is applied through protocol prioritisation or aggregate speed throttling. We do protocol prioritisation to make sure that the response time-sensitive applications are always treated best – but this is independent from Soft Throttling. Soft Throttling will limit the aggregate data rate on IP level for the very heavy users.
