NTL/Chorus (UPC) Traffic Shaping on Torrents?

Cabaal

I'm in Waterdford, I can max out my line on my 3MB connection at about 335-340k/sec via http or ftp traffic but last I tried I can't manage better then 100k/sec from a very well seeded torrent on a privatre tracker.

Ports are forwarded correctly

I still believe that NTL could be using something like Sandvine to throttle torrents, this would explained why only some people are being affected in certain area's at certain times

dlofnep

If NTL begin to throttle traffic and it's not outlined in the original contract, then they cannot force it on us without us us as customers resigning a new legally bounding contract.

So if UPC do it without our knowledge, AFAIK - they would be in legal trouble.

I have NTL's 6mbps product - i'll check later and see what's happening with the torrents.

Stark

Just got home. I was downloading a torrent at a steady 50kB/s on a BT 2Mbit/s connection, and now it's barely downloading at all on an NTL 6Mbit/s connection. HTTP traffic is fine.

Stark

Got a bit of a speed boost after following the Azureus tips for getting around Sandvine. Was downloading at 0.1kB/s, now downloading at 7kB/s.

Edit: Now up to 70kB/s, 6 minutes after I enabled the new settings.

Settings beforehand: Port 80. Encryption enabled. Legacy incoming connections and DHT enabled. 0.1kB/s download speed.
Settings afterward: Port 80. Encryption forced. Legacy incoming connections and DHT disabled.

fuse

On a related note, it looks like NTL have blocked the port to access Soulseek. Can't log on anymore, it works fine on connections with other ISPs.

Stark

All encrypted connections over port 80 are being dropped for me this evening. It wouldn't surprise me if they were reading this thread and reacting accordingly.

spektr

just to let everyone know, that since last week much more things have been blocked. Not just p2p-related, but typical websites too, even radios including last.fm

Stark

Feck, you're right. Fupping baxtards. What next? Blocking bebo because it's costing them too much bandwidth?

spektr

oh I know what's next. Mass migration to another ISP's - that what's next.

bonzodog2

I've just downloaded the 'official' BitTorrent client, as a particular torrent's tracker was refusing to work with BitLord, and it works fine,currently on the connection with a wifi router, which utorrent doesn't work on. I'm getting up and downstream traffic, not mega fast, but OKish. This is without ANY port forwarding.

What I immediately noticed, however, was the almost identical user interface between this official client and utorrent. It even goes to utorrent's website to check port-forwarding !

DoubleU

I use iScrobbler to automatically send information to last.fm about songs I have played.
Since Friday the connection times out.
However if I use an open proxy server then it works. iScrobbler sends information to http://post.audioscrobbler.com
I'm unable to open this page via NTL but at work and via open proxies, this works fine.
I have a few other sites that don't work like ca.geocities.com

Torrent speed is absolute crap. Download is "OK", but upload is not existing or very very slow. Not funny when you are using private trackers that expect something back.

I already called NTL about ca.geocities.com, they would pass my problem to their "network" team. They couldn't provide me with a reference number. And ofcourse, I haven't heard a word back from NTL.

They are absolute crap and I'm wondering what I (we) can do about it.
Stop paying?
Beause they don't respond to my calls or e-mails.

Kensington

Channel 4's 4od hasn't been working at all for the past week now on ntl, works fine on smart though :mad:

Stark

members.lycos.co.uk is also blocked, as is archive.org (bar the front page).

Ryanjar

Ok, just found this thread after recently upgrading to a 6M connection with NTL.

I came across it while trying to find information on possible throttling of Eve Online by NTL (I have been unable to play it for 2 weeks due to disconnects every 2-3 minutes).

The fact that they seem to be blocking sites such as Last.fm (just tried connecting to it and can't) is extremely worrying. Up to now I was unsure if the Eve problem was NTL, but now I'm starting to think it could be.

Has anybody contacted them about their apparently heavy handed throttling/site blocking? If this is the way they are going to play the game, then it's a new ISP for me. They won't get a penny more out of me.

Cabaal

merged NTL internet & torrents with this thread

Cabaal

http://www.last.fm/ works perfectly for me, also throttling won't stop you from using on-line games,

DoubleU

Cabaal wrote: »

http://www.last.fm/ works perfectly for me, also throttling won't stop you from using on-line games,

I have no problems with last.fm.
But there is a tool that uploads song information to last.fm automatically and that tool sends a request to http://post.audioscrobbler.com
And that fails for me on NTL.

But decide to send another e-mail, this time to customer.support@upc.ie
And I got a auto-response e-mail and a ticket number. :eek:
So maybe we can get this sorted

The websites that I reported are.

http://ca.geocities.com
http://post.audioscrobbler.com
http://members.lycos.co.uk
(archive.org was working for me)

Any other websites not working for NTL members?

quintron

Its mad that other people are having issues with Last.Fm! I half thought it might be an issue on Last.Fms side but evidently not. I was just thinking about writing a post on the same topic and I vist the site and other people are complaining about the exact same thing!

Last FM's standalone player will NOT stream music on my NTL 6MB connection for the past few days but it works fine on my Eircom connection at work.
Go figure.

I intend to call NTL in the morning to see what the issue is, and if they are at fault, its utterly unacceptable.

I have called NTL about woeful overall speeds on my connection and the fact that my connection drops out regularly. I have logged 17 calls with them since mid August. They don't do support on the weekends for the most part (had to wait 3 weeks to get a guy out) so I had to take a half day off work the fist time in an attempt to get my issues sorted.
So a guy came to the house to investigate and swap out the router and he spent over an hour faffing around, couldn't get a new router to work and left having basically done nothing.. that was about a month and a half ago.
I called and said their rep didn't know what he was at and that they should send a competent individual out the next available opportunity. Never happened.
I called a couple of weeks ago to get another person out and log another complaint due to my hardware failing, unpredictable speeds, pings averaging 200ms etc etc and was promised a call back the next morning.. Needless to say I never got a call back.

I'm too busy at work etc to be chasing these jokers all the time. I honestly don't need the hassle. I'm paying for a data bundle and a speed pipleline and its not happening. If this is the way UPC are now treating their customers, they need a kick in the arse in the service department. You'd swear we had more to be doing than stressing about a frikkin internet connection in this day and age.

Having followed this thread for the past while, I feel a lot of NTL users, including myself, are not getting what we are paying for. I've measured an Eircom 3MB connection against my 6MB and on all counts the eircom line is consistantly faster, no dropouts, faster pings, no shaping and no bull****.

I left Eircom over a year ago because of their rip off charges and need for a phone line.
After doing my research, NTL seemed like the best option and it was fine for about 8 months but lately its gone to **** and in all fairness it shouldn't be tolerated.

Joke.

Ryanjar

Cabaal wrote: »

http://www.last.fm/ works perfectly for me, also throttling won't stop you from using on-line games,

Weird, I can't connect to that site at all.

With regard Eve I think the possible problem I'm having (and many more that posted in a thread on the eve forums) is that if connection goes idle at all, i.e. I'm not spamming market lookup or something, the connection drops. It might be a combination of losing packets due to throttling and the client badly handling not receiving alive packets or something, I dunno.

It's extremely frustrating as the devs of Eve are stating its not them so are ignoring the problem and NTL have yet to get back to me on the issue (waiting a week so far). I dread dealing with NTL support as my past experiences were not fun (took 3 weeks to fix a problem that left me without connectivity). Especially since my Eve corporation is about to start some heavy operations so I'm missing all the fun

PS quintron, whats the situation regards changin isp's from NTL, do they have a contract? I recently moved to this apartment, so wasnt involved in getting the initial connection and my flatmate is away at the moment so can't find out the details.

christophicus

Cabaal wrote: »

http://www.last.fm/ works perfectly for me, also throttling won't stop you from using on-line games,

Yeah thats working fine for me. To the person wondering about contracts with NTL. You have a years contract with them. As far as I am aware once you have passed that year you can leave at any time.

Cabaal

christophicus wrote: »

Yeah thats working fine for me. To the person wondering about contracts with NTL. You have a years contract with them. As far as I am aware once you have passed that year you can leave at any time.

Yes after the 12 months your on a month to month rolling contract, however if you change your price plan you go back into a new 12 month contract

mollser

That site http//del.icio.us doesn't work on ntl either, although I did access it in work and I don't really get what the hype is about (it looks a right mess), but thats neither here nor there

Maximilian

I haven't been able to play Quake Wars for the last few weeks. I'm pretty sure its this NTL throttling thing at the heart of the problem. Something to do with blocking traffic to Demonware or something. Very annoyed. The internet was the only thing I liked about NTL. I think its time I quit this sorry company once and for all.

MrVestek

Maximilian wrote: »

I haven't been able to play Quake Wars for the last few weeks. I'm pretty sure its this NTL throttling thing at the heart of the problem. Something to do with blocking traffic to Demonware or something. Very annoyed. The internet was the only thing I liked about NTL. I think its time I quit this sorry company once and for all.

It's already been explained that if NTL were traffic shaping which... well which I'm not sure of (although I doubt it) that it still wouldn't effect online gaming for you.

Loveless

Achilles wrote: »

It's already been explained that if NTL were traffic shaping which... well which I'm not sure of (although I doubt it) that it still wouldn't effect online gaming for you.

They are traffic shaping. Torrents speed is averaging 2-3K on BitLord. A month ago I was able to get 320K.

They have also blocked SoulSeek and LastFM. What the hell are they going to do next, block YouTube and MySpace??

XBox Live is still working though (for now) :eek:

Stark

They probably have a list of "most popular websites". "Hey, here's where we can save bandwidth!".

Maximilian

Achilles wrote: »

It's already been explained that if NTL were traffic shaping which... well which I'm not sure of (although I doubt it) that it still wouldn't effect online gaming for you.

It has been pretty much confirmed that throttling is the cause. I'm no expert but the developers of the game presumably are and that's what they say. NTL/UPC have specifically been mentioned in this regard. ITs something to do with traffic to Demorware (some netcode thing) being regarded as torrent traffic and being throttled.

The irony of course is that my torrents download just fine.

Jumpy

FYI, throttling proggys generally only kick in when the network segment is under a certain load percentage. I have seen people on the IBB thread as well as this one mention "mine is fine" where others say "mine is really slow". This could be the reason if in fact any proggys are in use.

Nehaxak

Bandwidth throttling is effecting online gaming. Online games from Sony are effected badly, talking about 50% packet loss typical on all their online games apart from Pirates of the Burning Sea and Planetside.
Sony's station launcher that is used for all these games though is also badly effected and cannot pull down updates at the best of times and 80%+ of the time it takes over an hour just to make a decent connection.

Tabula Rasa (brand new online game out) is unplayable on badly managed throttled connections due to whatever the hell they are doing wrong, some online games have been destroyed by their changes.

Only way around this is to use a VPN.

World of Warcraft would generally not be effected as the ports they utilise are static and rarely if ever change, only their updates service will be effected as they use BitTorrent for the patch distribution.

I haven't been playing the PS3 in ages so can't comment on how it's online games are effected.

Whatever the reason for blocking BitTorrent traffic by ISP's, whatever way they're doing it, it's also effecting other services like online games and that's what pisses me off the most :mad:

MrVestek

Hrm that's interesting. Much check Soulseek and Last.fm when I get home. This could actually hamper me because two online stations I used to DJ for are coming back with full license soon so if my connection were to be ropey that'd hamper my connection.

Although now that you mention it I have noticed that the service in my area has been alot more reliable and quicker lately. Personally if they are throttling these services to provide an overall better service, whilst frustrating I really won't have a problem with.

I mean let's face it who really cares if it takes an extra 30 minutes or an hour to download something? How is that cutting into anyone's productivity? They're providing the service they said that they'd provide and... fair enough if I couldn't receive emails or my web browsing is **** slow then I'd be pissed and rightly so but I'm sure it's in their Ts&Cs that it's against policy to make multiple connections to the same host which is what Bittorrent is.

Soulseek however as far as I'm aware just makes a direct connection to the host... so I can't see why that could be hogging bandwidth. I could be wrong though.