bt broadband throttling again!

[Neo_VR]

Ive been noticing recently that the internet seems "slower" during the evenings (ive been off work) then the rest of the day.. not specifically bittorent (at the moment it wont go over 15kps on a massive torrent) but web browsing too!..

Ive just been looking over at thinkbroadband.com (formerly ADSLguide) and it seems btbroadband in their infinate wisdom are also throttling port 80 traffic.. this explains the slow web-browsing..

Is anyone else on btbroadband who can confirm?.. on the speedtest you can select to use port 80.. and if you do it at peak time (4pm-midnight) and youll probably get a d/l somewhere between 0.4mbit and 0.8mbit for port 80.. and a "real" result when the box is not ticked.

This is unacceptable.. and i will be leaving bt if it continues.... which is a shame, as ive had nothing but flawless service from them since jumping on the 512k bandwagon the day it was available

[amjedm]

Ive been noticing recently that the internet seems "slower" during the evenings (ive been off work) then the rest of the day.. not specifically bittorent (at the moment it wont go over 15kps on a massive torrent) but web browsing too!..

Ive just been looking over at thinkbroadband.com (formerly ADSLguide) and it seems btbroadband in their infinate wisdom are also throttling port 80 traffic.. this explains the slow web-browsing..

Is anyone else on btbroadband who can confirm?.. on the speedtest you can select to use port 80.. and if you do it at peak time (4pm-midnight) and youll probably get a d/l somewhere between 0.4mbit and 0.8mbit for port 80.. and a "real" result when the box is not ticked.

This is unacceptable.. and i will be leaving bt if it continues.... which is a shame, as ive had nothing but flawless service from them since jumping on the 512k bandwagon the day it was available

Bad news

I hope you find a 'good' provider as Virgin are trialling Traffic Shaping as well

[notsobig]

I can understand your frustration because this is very reason why I moved to Be. I was with BT for more than 8 years and was quite happy with thier service but recently it has fallen dramatically to a low grade to the level I couldn't stand anymore. Now I'm with Be and can't be any happier because there's no more slowdown at peak hours and I can get my full speed at any time of the day, my enquiries are being answered within few hours, unlike BT who likes to keep thier customers wait for days. On top of that I pay 5quid less for my service now. So yeah, if you can switch provider I think you should. There are much better services out there for the same price or less, BT service is no longer what they used to be and not worth paying your hard earned money for in my honest opinion.

[MadduckUK]

be is king, me and a mate were torrenting the same file at the same time tonight. he could NOT get over 13KB while i was popping along at 120. he had the chance to get out and try sky too but they talked him into staying with a shiny new home hub and a few more gig allowance. tool

[alsenior]

Bad news

I hope you find a 'good' provider as Virgin are trialling Traffic Shaping as well

try changing your bittorrent port to 443 (http-ssl). they shouln't be trottling that. also turn on encryption.

[chuckskull]

Ahh and there was me thinking it was just because I hadn't paid my bill

[aidanjt]

Bad news

I hope you find a 'good' provider as Virgin are trialling Traffic Shaping as well

Traffic shaping is a REALLY GOOD thing. Be informed.

[jamin]

Traffic shaping is a REALLY GOOD thing. Be informed.

Why has my sarcasm detector just gone off the scale?

[aidanjt]

Misperception perhaps? Seriously, think about it, you're sitting playing CS:S or whatever and all of a sudden you start lagging like crazy, or you're talking to someone on skype and you start hearing nothing but 'urg' 'gah' and lots of sound gaps because Microsoft just released released Vista's source code opensource (never gonna happen irl, but bare with me) and millions of people are feverously downloading the sourcecode via FTP, HTTP, bittorrent, etc. This wouldn't happen with traffic shaping, traffic shaping puts connections in priority classes, which would let 'realtime' traffic like VoIP continue unhindered, highly important traffic like gaming continue working without dropping packets.

Too many people confuse throttling with shaping. I've experimented with traffic shaping at home and I had much better quality and performance of internet connectivity, once I have my LinITX router sorted out traffic shaping will be a permanent feature.

[jamin]

Misperception perhaps?

Ah I did interprate that the wrong way. I too am a supporter of traffic shaping, in fact without it growing services like IPTV and VOIP will end up almost unusable. However, if an ISP impiments shaping and gets the configs wrong, then customers will suffer! As you pointed out, throttling and shaping are totally different beasts which are commonly confused with each other. Throttling limits available customer bandwidth, whereas shaping utilises the bandwidth more efficiently as it orders and routes packets based on service priority.

Many ISP's are currently having bandwidth issues at peak times as a result of customer oversubscription leading to IP core capacity issues. Throttling would seem to be the easy fix though as it only requires simple changes to DSLAM configs in the exchanges (or UBR' configs for cable customers). Shaping requires planing/testing across their IP core routers / switches to impliment properly.

Most of the current posts I've read regarding slow speeds "seem" to point towards the fact that ISPs are taking the easy throttling option which would bug the hell out of me too! But slow peak time speeds doesn't automatically mean an ISP is throttling, it could just be an over congested network in need of some extra capacity. In the current cut-throat, cut-price unlimited broadband market I can't really blame the ISPs for rationing bandwidth as capacity upgrades cost lots of cash and don't make the bank balance look great!

Just my 2p!

[MD]

You title for this thread was totally unacceptable.

Please do not post such things again.

Matt.

[Neo_VR]

You title for this thread was totally unacceptable.

Please do not post such things again.

Matt.

Sorry... was in a moment of frustration after a bad day.

[dangel]

My evening broadband performance has been terrible the past week or so (BT Business) but it could be contention as surfing and HTTP downloading suck too.
Could be a minor blip, we'll see.. I don't really mind (mostly) as i download in the wee hours or early morning so as to be sociable to other users (as i'm a very heavy user).

[badass]

Personally I have no issue with any kind of traffic shaping, provided it is made obvious before purchasing and that it is fair in how it is done.
i.e. rather tham throttling everything for everyone at certain times of the day, only throttling the bigger users and/or only throttling those that have been hogging bandwidth for the last say 30 minutes.
That way, the peer to peer mickey takers that leave it on during peak periods will get a rubbish connection, and those that use during peak periods in a bursty way dont have to suffer because of the peer to peer abusers.

[aidanjt]

As I've said, shaping != throttling. Shaping done right actually removes the need for throttling entirely.

[notsobig]

I agree that we need some degree of throttling/shaping but it was seriously horrible. My speed was always crawling around 1000kbps at peak hour although I was synced at much higher speed. And annoying thing is that this throttling thingy went on until well off peak hours like 3 o' clock in the morning. I was checking my speed the other night and I gained my full speed only after 4 in the morning. What a joke. So I got seriously upset and decided to leave finally. And I'm glad that I did.