Irish Broadband Throttling BitTorrent?

Bambaata

I got a reply today which seemed quite honestm, i was honest with my details so it qwas good to get such a reply back, they basically said that although i do download a fair bit i am not doing too much and that if i was i would be informed before any restrictions would be put in place. He also said that they ahve not restricted my trafic in any way. He mentioned i am sharing my connection and that others coudl be effecting it btu i am unsure of he means in my hopuse or in the area on contention issues etc. I do shre my connection, with myself (laptop upstairs) but i plug diorect in bypassing the router 90% of the time so it is not at my end. I'm gonna get back to him with that info. Twas good to hear from them though

fkm

Possibly worth mentioning that I've been getting speeds in the 250 kbps range recently through some well seeded torrents... I'm presuming if throttling were occurring, this wouldn't be possible?

tullachBuí

Just wanted to add the feedback I got from IBB about their Ripwave Plus and my question about acceptable download levels that I sent very recently.

The email quite literally said that I could download as much as I want and they would not ask any questions. The words "the sky is the limit" were also used with relation to Ripwave Plus.

I was a little surprised by the answer. In addition they said that they had no system was in place to keep track or monitor ripwave usage.

I'm very happy with the Ripwave Plus, couldn't get NTL and getting a landline in was the last resort, so thumbs up for IBB so far.

P.S Another comment actually says, acceptable usage policy doesn't apply to this service. Huh!!?!

thebman

tullachBuí wrote: »

Just wanted to add the feedback I got from IBB about their Ripwave Plus and my question about acceptable download levels that I sent very recently.

The email quite literally said that I could download as much as I want and they would not ask any questions. The words "the sky is the limit" were also used with relation to Ripwave Plus.

I was a little surprised by the answer. In addition they said that they had no system was in place to keep track or monitor ripwave usage.

I'm very happy with the Ripwave Plus, couldn't get NTL and getting a landline in was the last resort, so thumbs up for IBB so far.

P.S Another comment actually says, acceptable usage policy doesn't apply to this service. Huh!!?!

Its probably because you couldn't download all that much in a month on it compared to a fast Breeze connection which a heavy downloader would probably have so they could download all their crap fast.

tullachBuí

Ah, fair enough. Makes sense

Although, it's plenty fast for me anyway.

Bambaata

I've now done testing on my connection. An FTP i used with no issues from May until September at full speed died around the same time bittorrent did. Speeds start at 5kB/sec or so and die to 0.0 whioch made using it impossible. Over the past week ive tested the FTP on 5 different broadband connections of friends with my laptop. I did this to rule out the possibility of bad settings on my FTP engine, Flash FXP, and have found that i get their full dl connection through all of them. This tells me i've either a problem with my connection (although i get full speeds from http dl's) or which i think is more likely they are preventing it working. I've emailed these recults to them which i cant wait to hear back from. I've only 1 month left on the contract so i may eb moving then. Problem is i need at least 100GB a month as a limit and i've no phone connection at home right now and NTL are not in the area with good speeds!! What to do?!

MrVestek

Bambaata wrote: »

I've now done testing on my connection. An FTP i used with no issues from May until September at full speed died around the same time bittorrent did. Speeds start at 5kB/sec or so and die to 0.0 whioch made using it impossible. Over the past week ive tested the FTP on 5 different broadband connections of friends with my laptop. I did this to rule out the possibility of bad settings on my FTP engine, Flash FXP, and have found that i get their full dl connection through all of them. This tells me i've either a problem with my connection (although i get full speeds from http dl's) or which i think is more likely they are preventing it working. I've emailed these recults to them which i cant wait to hear back from. I've only 1 month left on the contract so i may eb moving then. Problem is i need at least 100GB a month as a limit and i've no phone connection at home right now and NTL are not in the area with good speeds!! What to do?!

You say you tested it in a friend's place with your laptop. Do you use a wireless router at home or were you connecting directly? Only reason I ask is because I recently moved into a new house and we have changed router. The router we use now seems to be worse on the traffic management side but gives better wifi signal quality so that's why we use the new one. Still on the same NTL connection (albeit in a different area). Sometimes our connections slow to a crawl and I have to restart the router remotely to get it back up to full speeds again.

Could be a router issue maybe?

watty

There isn't usually a download limit on dialup or ISDN either. Ripwave doesn't need a limit.

ouldscratch

If you don't have any ports manually opened this can greatly decrease your download speed. If you don't know how to do this there is plenty of websites that will tell you how to do this for your particular router.

Bambaata

Achilles wrote: »

You say you tested it in a friend's place with your laptop. Do you use a wireless router at home or were you connecting directly? Only reason I ask is because I recently moved into a new house and we have changed router. The router we use now seems to be worse on the traffic management side but gives better wifi signal quality so that's why we use the new one. Still on the same NTL connection (albeit in a different area). Sometimes our connections slow to a crawl and I have to restart the router remotely to get it back up to full speeds again.

Could be a router issue maybe?

I did it through both and i generally use the IBB connection straight from their ethernet cable but do also use the WiFi with ports opened Before this thread appeared and the troubles started for me everything was fine both using WiFi and through the direct cable. IT was when my bittorrent stopped the FTP also stopped which makes it hard for me to accept its a problem with my connection as i get max http dl's and ul's are fine too (i use DU meter so i can see exactly what im doing in total). It seems they have stopped the FTP fully. I even tested it through a few linux ftps with same results both ways. Something is definitely up though. I don't mind the "acceptable usage" policy thing but i have been told about 3 times when ive asked am i doing too much to which i have told no. One lad even said i'd nearly have to be hitting TB status to be flagged when i told him straight what i do (he cud probably see that anyway). If they were to tell me to keep it below 100Gb a month and for that they wudnt restrict anything id be cool with that but its the fact they say nothing is up when it is apparent something is. Maybe that info is just coming down the line for them! Or maybe whoever IBB get their service from is doing it? I don't know how all that's works so i cant comment there fully though

ouldscratch

Irish Broadband don't have a supplier for their wireless they have all their own transmitters. All that I can think is that your contention has reached the full 24:1 in your area. Call them and ask can they switch the high site that you are connected to because you are getting that kind of service. If you know what you're talking about the guys usally respect that. Hope this helps mate.

Bambaata

if my contention was shot at the capacity wud i not also experience that levekl of trouble downloading direct from http? i get my full dl and ul at 240 on it. its just bittorrent and ftp that have the issues.

ouldscratch

With the Breeze it's a Static IP address maybe if you ring them and say that you would like a new IP address to replace your exsisting one. maybe one of the IT guys seen your traffic and put a block on it. I'm not sure if they will do it but it would be worth a shot.

pete

There's definitely something up with IBB alright. I've been seeing noticably slower torrent speeds lately (eg assorted SLES DVD ISOs for work crawling down) so i set up that SSH SOCKS proxy guff through my web server in the states and speeds immediately shot up - I'm talking at least a 10x increase.

Might give them a buzz tomorrow & see what they say, although I think i'll keep this SSH proxy running for me browsing privacy anyways.

pete

ouldscratch wrote: »

... he seems to know his stuff and tells it as it is. Hope this helps mate.

does he mind people posting his name up on the internets?

ogiee

ouldscratch wrote: »

Irish Broadband don't have a supplier for their wireless they have all their own transmitters. All that I can think is that your contention has reached the full 24:1 in your area. Call them and ask can they switch the high site that you are connected to because you are getting that kind of service. If you know what you're talking about the guys usally respect that. Hope this helps mate.

Thanks for the vote of confidence but even though I don't mind being mentioned in a post to the world. I'd rather you didn't as IBB have alot of customers and I don't really want them all ringing in looking for me.

MrVestek

ogiee wrote: »

Thanks for the vote of confidence but even though I don't mind being mentioned in a post to the world. I'd rather you didn't as IBB have alot of customers and I don't really want them all ringing in looking for me.

LOL!

pete

ogiee wrote: »

Thanks for the vote of confidence but even though I don't mind being mentioned in a post to the world. I'd rather you didn't as IBB have alot of customers and I don't really want them all ringing in looking for me.

so...... throttling or not?

ogiee

pete wrote: »

so...... throttling or not?

Not

MrVestek

ogiee wrote:

Not

I knew it!

pete

ogiee wrote: »

Not

thanks for the answer... but it begs the question "what the hell's going on? then?"

whatever it is, it mustn't be deliberate, ha!

MrVestek

I knew IBB weren't throttling just like I know NTL aint throttling either... even though my torrent speeds can jump. It's just all down to the fact that alot more people are using BT these days and are slowing the networks down! It's all network congestion... the way I see it is... if alot of customers in the one area (Eircom DSL let's say...) and they're all DLing from BT when they get home that'll greatly reduce their download speeds but mainly on BT only as they're all contended against eachother for that traffic. I guess that'd explain why http downloads etc are so fast.

pete

Achilles wrote: »

I knew IBB weren't throttling just like I know NTL aint throttling either... even though my torrent speeds can jump. It's just all down to the fact that alot more people are using BT these days and are slowing the networks down! It's all network congestion... the way I see it is... if alot of customers in the one area (Eircom DSL let's say...) and they're all DLing from BT when they get home that'll greatly reduce their download speeds but mainly on BT only as they're all contended against eachother for that traffic. I guess that'd explain why http downloads etc are so fast.

if you've a contended connection like you're surmising then *ALL* your traffic is going to be slow... unless your ISP is prioritising HTTP / using QOS / implementing traffic shaping, aka that thing nobody admits to actually doing.

MrVestek

pete wrote: »

if you've a contended connection like you're surmising then *ALL* your traffic is going to be slow... unless your ISP is prioritising HTTP / using QOS / implementing traffic shaping, aka that thing nobody admits to actually doing.

Meh... then I dunno...

Bambaata

mine must be a connection problem with my line then if torrents and ftp arent being throttled

MrVestek

Bambaata wrote: »

mine must be a connection problem with my line then if torrents and ftp arent being throttled

May as well give them a call so...

pete

pete wrote: »

so...... throttling or not?

ogiee wrote: »

Not

well that didn't add up for me, so i does a little digging:

Some major Irish internet providers such as Irish Broadband, UPC (NTL/Chorus) and Digiweb are already using traffic shaping procedures that essentially moderate which high-bandwidth services can be accessed by their customers.

Irish Broadband uses traffic shaping so that "all users and all applications get fair access to network resources when they need it", according to commercial director Ruairi Jennings. He said Irish Broadband would not "throttle" individual user connections, but at certain times P2P traffic will be restricted to ensure other applications have adequate access to network resources.

From the sunday tribune, 4th November 2007.

So that's a no to throttling, but a yes to traffic shaping. I'll give ogiee the benefit of the doubt, since i seem to have phrased the question badly

pete

edit: ooops

MrVestek

Well there's our answer so... seems fair to me by any chance?

pete

Achilles wrote: »

Well there's our answer so... seems fair to me by any chance?

only if you consider misleading customers to be "fair"