NTL/Chorus (UPC) Traffic Shaping on Torrents?

BostonB

I can only agree with that. My NTL is connection seems very adversely affected at peak times, which I can only put down to contention issues in my area. So throttling is inevitable for a finite resource. Especially where its for trivial content. IMO.

thebman

CodedFire wrote: »

I think service throttling is only going to get worse as many content providers of music, films etc put severe pressure on ISP's. I can see both sides of the throttling arguement but i would be inclined to sway with chourus on this. While i do agree that bit torrent as a technolgy is not only legal but a great solution to handling large files, it has to be said that its majority use is to procure illigelly sourced content. Lets call a spade a spade folks.

Tell that to companies depending on bit torrent. TBH you can get illegal music over any protocol so attacking the protocol isn't really the answer.

BostonB

What companies would use torrent, and what other protocols are typically used for downloads?

thebman

Eh everything, I've seen FTP music downloads and normal websites with them.

Should we throttle these too?

World of Warcraft AFAIK uses P2P to distribute updates (not sure if its torrents), most Linux distro's do, track mania is a free racing game that uses P2P to share data/tracks/etc...

There are lots of examples out there. I don't make use of most of them so I'm probably not the best person to comment on them but why restrict torrents just because its the most popular one? It'll just divert people to other ways to get this content.

BostonB

Because its an easy way to police the bandwidth.

If the torrent users are using bandwidth out of all proportion to their numbers its obviously going to make them a target for throttling. Does it make sense for a company to have a tiny % of users degrade the service for all its other users?

thebman

BostonB wrote: »

Because its an easy way to police the bandwidth.

If the torrent users are using bandwidth out of all proportion to their numbers its obviously going to make them a target for throttling. Does it make sense for a company to have a tiny % of users degrade the service for all its other users?

I have no problem with it being throttled but it doesn't need to be throttled 24/7 either.

Peak times is fine if its affecting other users but most of the rest of the time, there is hardly a need for it.

I don't use torrents so I'd be more likely to be someone affected by it if it was hogging the network. Many ISP's seem to just blanket throttle it down to nothing which is more laziness than anything else. Too lazy to set up restrictions for peak times that turn off when it comes to off-peak.

At the end of the day, torrent users pay for their Internet connection same as everyone else and not all of them are illegally downloading data so at some point throttling torrents all the time affects a number of users that it shouldn't as they have paid same as everyone else and if ISP's are going to cut off or throttle services for their users, they should notify them in the writing and give the user the chance to cancel their contract if they are unhappy with the conditions.

BostonB

That makes sense. NTL/UPC don't seem all that organised. Maybe in 10yrs time they get their act together.

rahenyguy

just got 12mb ntl,have tried every possible setting under the sun with both utorrent and azureus,cant get it over 30-40kb,is there any way around this throttling ? have tried with and without encryption,im glad i havent cancelled my 3mb bt yet,what use is 12mb broadband when you can only download what you want at 30kb/s

Any help would be greatly appreciated !

silvine

I'm on NTL 3mb package and can get speeds of 30 to 40kb depending on the torrent. I thought a 12mb connection would be four times faster.

How come yours is so bad?

edit: I'm using Bitlord at the moment and getting speeds of over 200kb! I haven't encrypted anything or changed any settings either.

rahenyguy

are you using upnp or have u opened ports ? could you post your bitlord setting ?

rahenyguy

whats a reasonable speed you should be getting on torrents,on some im getting up to 160kbs/s on some but 20 or 30kb/s on others,should you not be able to get up to 1mb/s with a 12 mb connection ?

RoyalMarine

it depends on the amount of seeds/peer's. remember, not everyone who has the file has a fast upload.
on occassion i get speeds on utorrent anywhere from 1kb/s up to 1.5mb/s.

rahenyguy

when i had 3mb bt i could download a sinlgle torrent at 330kb/s,or maybe ten or fifteen ay avrying speeds up tp 330kb/s,with the ntl i find it hard to get a single torrent faster than 150kb,s

koHd

I was thinkin' about getting the NTL 12Mb.

But after reading this thread, I'll think I'll stick with my Smart Telecom no contention no throttling 6Mb connection for €45 (including line rental).

After going over all other possible broadband connections for home, I really can't understand why everybody isn't with Smart Telecom. They're clearly the cheapest and best source of broadband in Ireland.

I had a feeling the NTL 12Mb sounded too good to be true.

BostonB

koHd wrote: »

...After going over all other possible broadband connections for home, I really can't understand why everybody isn't with Smart Telecom. They're clearly the cheapest and best source of broadband in Ireland....

Only if you have a phone line thats up to it.

thebman

koHd wrote: »

I was thinkin' about getting the NTL 12Mb.

But after reading this thread, I'll think I'll stick with my Smart Telecom no contention no throttling 6Mb connection for €45 (including line rental).

After going over all other possible broadband connections for home, I really can't understand why everybody isn't with Smart Telecom. They're clearly the cheapest and best source of broadband in Ireland.

I had a feeling the NTL 12Mb sounded too good to be true.

Probably because nobody can get it :rolleyes:

silvine

My Bitlord settings:

Global max upload and download set to unlimited.
Max simultaneous downlaods: 10
Listen Port: 17746
Proxy Type: No Proxy
Firewall/Nat Connection: Enabled.
UPNP port mapping: Enabled
Port reporting to IP tracker: Enabled
IP filer file: enabled.
Max sessions per ip for downloading: 3
Max sessions per ip for uploading: 1


Everything else in Bitlord is is set to auto. I am operating behind Comodo firewall.

Wireless Mode: G
Security encryption: 64 bit
UPNP: Turned on
MAC address: use this address only
Port forwarding: no

RoyalMarine

here, just a note on p2p with utorrent compared to rapidshare.

been using utorrent for ages for different types of files.
on occasion i would get speeds varying from 2kb/s - 250kb/s

they're not too bad at all!

i bought my rapidshare account today @ 15:30

the traffic on the left up to 1am last night is using utorrent.
i turn it off during the day as its peak season.

the traffic starting @ 16:00 today is rapidshare.


http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/9003/downloadwp1.jpg

you can easily see the difference between p2p and rapidshare.
ive downloaded 4gb in 1 hour today.
on p2p, 4gb would take 24hours +

so here's a beer for rapidshare.
29.99 for 6 months unlimited access. just cant go over my 120gb limit with ntl now

oh, im on 6mb with ntl.

christophicus

Indeed I would recommend rapidshare to anyone that can wrangle it .

Cabaal

RoyalMarineComm, please resize your images so they don't break tables

RoyalMarine

Cabaal wrote: »

RoyalMarineComm, please resize your images so they don't break tables

ah sure ill leave it at a link. thanks for changing it for me.

acalmenvoy

Yeah Rapidshare is the dogs b**lox, easily hit the 120 cap on 12 meg with it.:D

Cabaal

RoyalMarineComm wrote: »

you can easily see the difference between p2p and rapidshare.
ive downloaded 4gb in 1 hour today.
on p2p, 4gb would take 24hours +

so here's a beer for rapidshare.
29.99 for 6 months unlimited access. just cant go over my 120gb limit with ntl now

oh, im on 6mb with ntl.

All depends what tracker your using, I've seen connections being maxed out for hours on end with bittorrent downloads, not by using loads of torrent downloads...by using just the one

Bittorrent is the way forward imho

christophicus

I used to get between 200 and 300 nodes ( can't be any more specific then that cause I can't remember) with Utorrent after about a minute of uTorrent being open. However recently I have been taking a look at uTorrent to see if torrents are working any better. But as of late I have been waiting 30 mins and only bairly reaching over 100 nodes. Is anyone else expeariencing this ??

For example atm uTorrent has been open for 10 mins and I only have 83 nodes, WTF is up ??

Single Malt

The only reason that my NTL is causing problems is due to router. Port assignment and proper forwarding is a must, otherwise your application cannot connect properly. I do not believe that NTL are throttling speeds at all. The supplied netgear routers are doing the throttling, as they are choking under the connections. A router upgrade, and network setup will get you top speeds. I got over 900kb/s before the network hassles started, now I am lucky to get 30, but in 2 weeks I will forward my ports, and assign some to my chosen app., tell my chosen app. what ports to look for and then it will be full steam ahead.

Kensington

NTL are most certainly doing something with traffic - I have the Netgear WGR614 router they supply for WiFi here. Hook it up to the ntl modem (6Mbps package), torrents crawl through or just refuse to start. Channel 4oD downloads (which use P2P) quite often won't start or trickle through aswell.

Hook exact same Netgear router up to smart modem (4Mbps package), making no setting changes whatsoever in the Netgear and bang - instant 4Mbps download speed on pretty much all well seeded torrents, and on 4oD downloads. And I've often tried connecting to the same torrents on both connections - smart works no problem but the ntl connection barely gets above half a Megabit.

thebman

Since some users aren't having problems, could it be the amount being downloaded and at certain times?

Maybe NTL only throttle people that they feel are abusing the network with BT.

RoyalMarine

brim4brim wrote: »

Since some users aren't having problems, could it be the amount being downloaded and at certain times?

Maybe NTL only throttle people that they feel are abusing the network with BT.

ive downloaded over 200gb this week from rapidshare so i dont think they target the heavy user's.

CodedFire

I think there is more truth in the router issue than people think, i changed from the supplied netgear product to a buffallo one and found that after some mandatory router setup my speed seems constant.

Keyzer

Hey Guys,
Just moved to NTL (6MB package) recently as I moved to a new house.
Was previously using Eircom. No problems with NTL so far apart from configuring the modem for torrents.

The cable modem they gave me is a Scientific Atlanta EPC2203.

Does port forwarding need to be setup for a cable modem?
If so, how do you access the advanced config section? Its blocked when I open the modem in a browser - I can only see the basic settings.

Should I ditch the Sci Atlanta modem and get a new one?

Any help would be appreciated.