BitTorrent Throttling Internet Providers Exposed | Hacker News Reader

BitTorrent Throttling Internet Providers Exposed

torrentfreak.com

87 pointsnextparadigms35 comments

My pitchfork and torch is always ready but have they ruled out the possibility that the measurements are a result of something other than ISP targetting P2P? Something like ISPs just blocking bandwidth hogs? Have they tested various protocols with similar characteristics to see that only BT is throttled?

So... This won't answer your question directly... Just as a datapoint: I use Charter, and rarely torrent. But when I do, my connection gets "throttled" in an interesting way. It happens like clockwork:

I reach maximum download speed (1.5MB/sec in my case), and after a few minutes of sustained speed, all internet traffic suddenly halts. It's as if the modem were unplugged. Between 1-5 min later, internet suddenly starts back up. Rinse and repeat.

As far as I can tell, this has never happened with any other program. Not once! Only uTorrent seems to trigger it. Sometimes I can torrent for about an hour before experiencing the throttling; but it always eventually happens.

I'm actually glad they throttle me, since I don't feel bad about hogging bandwidth anymore! But that's just a personal quirk... =)

There is one other interesting aspect to the throttling: during the download, my upload speed is capped to 0.5kb/sec. (that is not a typo.) And when the torrent finishes downloading, the upload speed immediately drops to zero.

In other words, Charter seems to be entirely blocking all Bittorrent seeding. My little conspiracy theory is that the 0.5kb/sec are "keepalive" packets, which trick the Bittorrent protocol into allowing me to download without seeding at all. If true, then that's very crafty of Charter... And no one complains, because no one tends to notice/care about upload speed. (and if they did notice, they probably say "yay, that's cool, torrenting without saturating my upload!". But I feel greedy.

There's probably a mundane explanation; maybe our Linksys router is misconfigured somehow? But then why does my download speed work correctly at 1.5MBs, with upload speed capped to 0.5kbs? And when a download completes, why does the 0.5kbs drop to zero?

To me, it seems like there's a mystery there. But I'm likely just stupid. =)

Are you on wireless? Apparently bittorrent tends to kill a lot of wireless routers, as it opens too many simultaneous connections for them to handle. I will regularly see my download speeds shoot up, only to crash to 0. Resetting my router fixes it, but the modem itself is fine.

Oh wow, thanks! I am on wireless.

I don't suppose your router happens to be a blue-and-gray El Cheapo Walmart Linksys, like mine...? Haha. It's so ghetto; I can only forward 10 port ranges total, for example.

Out of curiosity, does uploading/seeding work correctly when you torrent?

Check out Tomato firmware: http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato Much more control than stock firmware. It may be a matter of adjusting max connections and/or TCP timeout.

Thanks very much!

Wireless has nothing to do with it. The problem is that most consumer routers don't have enough RAM to firewall more than a hundred connections. It only correlates with wireless usage because most consumer routers are bought and used specifically for wi-fi.

Took me a while to figure out the title.. hyphens, people. They work!

If you go anywhere in public you will hear people complaining about Rogers, it's more common than seeing a Tim Hortons.

Rightly so, Rogers is probably the most hate inducing company in Canada!

and by anywhere in public, I mean in Canada, or at least Southern Ontario.

I am with Teksavvy in Southern Ontario and just this morning it appears that Rogers finally got around to turning of the cable (from the last tenants) they also managed to turn off our Internet connection.

Classic and I've already seen a similar story about 3 times in the last 2 weeks on my twitter feed from people switching to Teksavvy in the area. Teksavvy is great.

Who is Tim Hortons?

A fast food restaurant in Canada.

i would call it more of a coffee and donut shop then a fast food restaurant...even if theyve recently oddly started selling lasagna

A hockey player who started the huge chain of coffee/donuts restaurant. Tim Horton's restaurants are everywhere in Canada.

Oh, thank you. I feel dumb now.

As someone who worked for Shaw during the transition from Rogers to Shaw in 2001, I can fully attest to the hatred people have for that company. A full year after the switch over customers would open their tech support call with bitching about Rogers.

Whatever people want to say about Netflix at least they didn't try that "negative option billing" crap.

Comcast has gone from being synonymous with Bittorrent throttling to making the "best" list for lowest throttlers.

This is why when Comcast announced its bandwidth limit policy, I actually cheered rather than jeered. By solving the problem correctly, they eliminated their need to solve it incorrectly. I only sort of wish you could pay for more bandwidth, though that's an abstract concern as my worst month ever barely cracked 1/3 usage. (But I know others can have issues.)

I don't even think the monthly bandwidth policy is enforced that strictly. I built a new gaming computer a couple months ago, and needed to redownload my steam library and a few other things. Long story short, I grabbed 1.5 TiB over the course of a week, and comcast has yet to complain.

You have to exceed it twice in a 6-month period for them to contact you. The third time, your service may be suspended for a year.

http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=ce29df...

I have it on good authority that converting your residential account to a business account (~25% more expensive) will 'remove' Comcast's bandwidth limits (or have them turn a blind eye, etc).

If you don't want to pay the extra, often downgrading the line to the business equivalent of the speed tier below what you are currently using on your residential package will net out a similar monthly fee.

They have better contention ratios on Business accounts and so you may even see faster speeds at that lower tier.

Interesting. Will that improve latency, as well? I have a 50mpbs connection, but I'd be happy with a 10mbps if it didn't take 45 seconds to load reddit.

It might in general, but Reddit's bottleneck might be their own servers.

We downgraded a 50Mbps Comcast line to a 25Mbps line and I honestly couldn't see much difference in terms of actual page load time, file download speeds etc but we saved some $

Yes this works. I upgraded to business class because I was going over the limit. Now I use 300-500GB every month with no problems.

Also they have a thing where you can pay an extra $5 to get basic TV (local channels, weather channel public access etc...).

It works out to be cheaper than residential internet + basic channels.

> By solving the problem correctly, they eliminated their need to solve it incorrectly.

A correct solution would include a guaranteed increase in the cap yearly (at least) based on the rate of bandwidth usage inflation. I've used massively more bandwidth every year as things like streaming, HD video, etc. become commonplace.

It's certainly better than throttling BitTorrent, but it's very easy to go over if you get 2 or 3 techies living together. Personally, I think the whole thing is somewhat anti-competitive. It discourages people from using services like Hulu or Netflix and encourages them to buy TV service from their cable provider.

And plus, I don't buy the "Our networks can't handle the strain!" argument companies like Comcast keep bringing up. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, 250 GB of data isn't that much for a company the size of Comcast.

cap with no ability to pay for more is not "solving the problem correctly". I use a multiple of the cap every month and I have a roommate who often uses at least the cap himself. Imagine a family of 5 where everyone actually uses the internet. The cap would not work.

If you break the cap twice there are no overage charges, they just disconnect you for a year, no matter what you're willing to pay. When they called me and said "use less or use nothing" and refused to suggest any way to let me pay for more of their product, that was extremely consumer hostile.

The only solution is the small business plans which are not capped, which they do not tell you about, but fortunately I found out about them in HN comments.

What was your monthly bill before and after switching to Business?

pricing is here:

http://business.comcast.com/SMB/services/Internet/plans

And all it took was a direct order from the FCC. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/comcast-disclos/

Admin or submitter: Please add a necessary hyphen to the title.

    - BitTorrent Throttling Internet Providers Exposed
    + BitTorrent-Throttling Internet Providers Exposed

In my neck of the woods in quebec, canada where we do not have rogers internet service, it is Bell that is usually the target of hate because of p2p throttling

We have Vidéotron as an alternative, and they don't throttle. They are, however, on the pricey side.

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