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Irish Broadband Throttling BitTorrent?
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Hi there,
Well I myself have been experiencing terrible download speeds on torrents for the last week or so. To be honest, all I use the BT for is an episode of heroes and prison break once a week plus maybe an episode of desperate houswives (for the missus only of course
), watch and delete after 'cos I couldn't be arsed taking up space on the Hard Drive and I'd never be bothered watching another episode again.
Anyway... Torrent is also used for World of Warcraft patch downloads (by Blizzard themselves) and the downloads can be fairly hefty at times - so the latest patch has been a nightmare to download
More importantly though, other online games, especially those form Sony like Star Wars Galaxies, PlanetSide, EQ2 (and others that I'm not bothered with) utilise all sorts of ports outside of the norm. Even their Station logon software uses port 7000. All of these games have also been effected by whatever is going on at Irish Broad Band recently. Within these games I am now experiencing 30% to 60% packet loss and connecting via the station logon application is taking multiple restarts of it and at least 2 hours. That plus trying to download patches from Sony is taking 2 or 3 days in the case of Star Wars Galaxies.
So whatever traffic shaping or otherwise that is or is not going on, it is effecting other applications and games in particular.
Tabula Rasa is another game that is heavily effected by these recent goings on at IBB.
All the games I've mentioned from Sony are now unplayable.
Further investigations into the packet loss on Star Wars Galaxies from Sony throw up the following pathping info (edited a bit to take personal ip info etc away at my end)...
>pathping 199.108.6.33
Tracing route to sdkswg-01-01.starwarsgalaxies.net [199.108.6.33]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 blahblah [x.x.x.x]
1 my.router [x.x.x.x]
2 xx.irishbroadband.ie [x.x.x.x]
3 xx.irishbroadband.ie [x.x.x.x]
4 xx.irishbroadband.ie [x.x.x.x]
5 213.242.106.61
6 so-4-1-0.bbr1.London1.Level3.net [4.68.128.113]
7 as-0-0.mp2.SanDiego1.Level3.net [4.68.128.149]
8 so-8-0.hsa1.SanDiego1.Level3.net [4.68.112.130]
9 vl861.sdtermswitch-1.sonyonline.net [63.215.251.130]
10 vl831.sdkollsw-1.sonyonline.net [64.37.144.82]
11 sdkswg-01-01.starwarsgalaxies.net [199.108.6.33]
Computing statistics for 275 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 blahblah [x.x.x.x]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% my.router [x.x.x.x]
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 27ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% xx.irishbroadband.ie [x.x.x.]
0/ 100 = 0% |
3 5ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% xx.irishbroadband.ie [x.x.x.x]
0/ 100 = 0% |
4 11ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% xx.irishbroadband.ie [x.x.x.x]
1/ 100 = 1% |
5 8ms 1/ 100 = 1% 0/ 100 = 0% 213.242.106.61
0/ 100 = 0% |
6 21ms 2/ 100 = 2% 1/ 100 = 1% so-4-1-0.bbr1.London1.Level3.net [4.68.128.113]
0/ 100 = 0% |
7 159ms 2/ 100 = 2% 1/ 100 = 1% as-0-0.mp2.SanDiego1.Level3.net [4.68.128.149]
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 153ms 3/ 100 = 3% 2/ 100 = 2% so-8-0.hsa1.SanDiego1.Level3.net [4.68.112.130]
0/ 100 = 0% |
9 157ms 3/ 100 = 3% 2/ 100 = 2% vl861.sdtermswitch-1.sonyonline.net [63.215.251.130]
0/ 100 = 0% |
10 159ms 7/ 100 = 7% 6/ 100 = 6% vl831.sdkollsw-1.sonyonline.net [64.37.144.82]
0/ 100 = 0% |
11 154ms 1/ 100 = 1% 0/ 100 = 0% sdkswg-01-01.starwarsgalaxies.net [199.108.6.33]
Trace complete.
As you see, there is packet loss on 213.242.106.61 onwards, IBB's high sites etc., (the hops I have marked with xx.irishbroadband.ie) are fine apart from the final one which dropped a packet. The packet loss and problems are experienced from what seems to me, where they hand off to their peering partner (tiscali or level3) or whatever to get to the site I require.
To confirm this, I start up my private VPN service which I use for work access from home or while travelling and carry out the same pathping, as follows (again, anything confidential hidden with x.x.x.x)...
>pathping 199.108.6.33
Tracing route to sdkswg-01-01.starwarsgalaxies.net [199.108.6.33]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 blahblah [x.x.x.x]
1 x.x.x.x
2 x.x.x.x
3 x.x.x.x
4 x.x.x.x [x.x.x.x]
5 ae0-6.stk30.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.72.61]
6 so-2-0-0.nyc33.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.81.197]
7 Te-3-4.car3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.68.110.77]
8 ge-1-3-0-79.bbr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.68.16.66]
9 * as-2-0.mp1.SanDiego1.Level3.net [64.159.1.137]
10 so-10-0.hsa1.SanDiego1.Level3.net [4.68.113.38]
11 vl861.sdtermswitch-1.sonyonline.net [63.215.251.130]
12 vl831.sdkollsw-1.sonyonline.net [64.37.144.82]
13 sdkswg-01-01.starwarsgalaxies.net [199.108.6.33]
Computing statistics for 325 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 blahblah [x.x.x.x]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 61ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% x.x.x.x
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 58ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% x.x.x.x
0/ 100 = 0% |
3 66ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% x.x.x.x
0/ 100 = 0% |
4 74ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% x.x.x.x.[x.x.x.x]
0/ 100 = 0% |
5 67ms 3/ 100 = 3% 3/ 100 = 3% ae0-6.stk30.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.72.61]
0/ 100 = 0% |
6 166ms 1/ 100 = 1% 1/ 100 = 1% so-2-0-0.nyc33.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.81.197]
0/ 100 = 0% |
7 183ms 4/ 100 = 4% 4/ 100 = 4% Te-3-4.car3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.68.110.77]
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 171ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ge-1-3-0-79.bbr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.68.16.66]
2/ 100 = 2% |
9 243ms 2/ 100 = 2% 0/ 100 = 0% as-2-0.mp1.SanDiego1.Level3.net [64.159.1.137]
0/ 100 = 0% |
10 234ms 3/ 100 = 3% 1/ 100 = 1% so-10-0.hsa1.SanDiego1.Level3.net [4.68.113.38]
0/ 100 = 0% |
11 245ms 5/ 100 = 5% 3/ 100 = 3% vl861.sdtermswitch-1.sonyonline.net [63.215.251.130]
0/ 100 = 0% |
12 243ms 2/ 100 = 2% 0/ 100 = 0% vl831.sdkollsw-1.sonyonline.net [64.37.144.82]
0/ 100 = 0% |
13 237ms 2/ 100 = 2% 0/ 100 = 0% sdkswg-01-01.starwarsgalaxies.net[199.108.6.33]
Trace complete.
It would therefore seem to me at least, that either tiscali or level3 are the ones who have implemented some sort of traffic shaping and/or some change which has both impacted bit torrent traffic and any other traffic (like online gaming which I've mentioned here) in a huge way. So much so as to make the games unplayable and the torrents unuseable.
At the very least, either or both of them are responsible for crap quality connections and high packet loss.
I used to get the torrents at full 6mb download speeds over the VPN from work (yeah I know, bit naughty) but now can not get above 50Kbps over the VPN. still a lot better than over IBB which is going now at 1Kbps on my 3mb breeze wireless at home. My games work ok over the VPN in regards packet loss, never goes above 10% but the high pings make them then unuseable plus it's my work related VPN so cannot use it for gaming other than for this testing really.
Whatever is the case, it's not the loss of torrents that pisses me off, it's the fact that my online gaming now has suffered badly, so much so that I have had to cencel my Station access subscription to the sony games, cancel my Tabula Rasa within it's feckin free month and also having to resort to download the Blizzard patches for Wow manually from possibly unsafe sites a day or two after the patches go live.
A gamer that is not feckin' happy at all at the moment ! 0 -
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Well, it would seem to me at least, from further testing at home that IBB are not throttling bandwidth (mine at least) nor are they traffic shaping torrent traffic.
However, their connections/peering via tiscali and level3 on certain routes are feckin' abysmal with stupidly high packet loss but that's another issue i need to take up with them now.
My guess is that the seeders of some torrents are being traffic shaped by their ISP or that for some reason they are shaping IP addresses to Irish Broadband (or maybe Ireland as a whole ?).
3 Torrents last night (as a test) - 2 were running constantly at 1Kbps and the third was running at 3Mb down ! All from the same torrent source but the third only had 3 seeds, all from Sweden. The rest on the other torrents were from the UK, Canada and the US.
Strange indeed !
Anyway, I've gone back to using Usenet for my weekly TV Heroes and Prison Break fix as I just can't be arsed anymore with all this messing about with torrents.
Wouldn't mind but I'd happily pay to watch new episodes of my programmes online from official sources
Anyway, in short, from what I can tell myself - it would seem that IBB are not responsible for the traffic shaping and possibly the finger should be pointed more toward tiscali and level3 - or ISPs elsewhere in the world who are cracking down on torrent traffic and shaping their own customers.
Would be nice to get an official or even semi official word from IBB on this one though. They won't reveal nothing over the phone.0 -
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I'd tend to agree, but the evidence suggests otherwiseBittorrent has a quite unique traffic profile. It's not hard to spot, whether you encrypt the data and use common ports or not.
... because any traffic that's not automatically identified by the shaping hardware needs to be manually classified? Or not.
Anyway it's not the issue here. The question is "are IBB throttling / shaping torrent traffic?" and, even though their commerical director has explicitly stated in the turbine that they are, people still don't believe it because IBB's staff have told them that they don't throttle / traffic shape at all.
The suggested experiment shows that some trivial reconfiguration of the client to make its traffic profile look slightly less like torrent activity can avoid traffic shaping and drastically improve speeds. So, is the shaping occurring (and therefore being avoided) at every single one of the other peers' ISPs, or at the local ISP?0 -
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Well my torrents have been snailing along at less than 20K/sec all of
today and now all of a sudden bang 100K/sec constant.
Look at the time.
The speed has gone up in the last 10 minutes and this isn't the first
time I have seen this happen.
If you want torrents on the IBB network, get them over night
between 12am and 8am offpeak.
On Ripwave btw.0
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