UPC is the worst ISP for Deep Packet Inspection and throttling

TychoCaine

PogMoThoin wrote: »

No, what you think is completely wrong. Your traffic does not route through a dns server. Dns is just a lookup and reply. First your pc sends a dns request to the dns server, to get the entry for the ip address to match the hostname, then when it receives its response from the dns server it sends the packets to the next router marked with that ip as destination ip address.

The DNS server does not decide the routing to a given IP address, however it can effect it in a different way. Content Distribution Networks, which are used by sites serving large volumes of data, will actually send you to a different IP based on your location. This cuts delivery costs as the data doesn't need to transit over as many networks to get to you. They do this at the DNS level. If your DNS server is in the US, the host name will resolve to an IP of a US server. If you're in Europe it'll resolve to a European IP. Because Google's DNS servers are (i assume) in the US you could actually be sent to a distant server over a slow link when there might be a closer faster one. Akamai (the biggest CDN used by Microsoft, Oracle etc.) even have a couple of racks in a Dublin Data Centre to serve Irish users.

mickoneill30

In this case though the IP address returned from the Eircom account from Cuddlesworths trace (which is getting 250Kb/s) and the UPC account from my trace (which is getting a lot less) is the same IP.
The traces are in posts 31 & 32 of this thread.

blaz

TychoCaine wrote: »

Because Google's DNS servers are (i assume) in the US you could actually be sent to a distant server over a slow link when there might be a closer faster one.

Google DNS servers are located all over the world, including Ireland.

MrVestek

I think it's hilarious that people are accusing UPC of this when they have no idea how computer networks work.

You all have been given countless reasons why a download can be faster on one connection but not on the other and yet you ignore it.

Why moan about something you don't understand? They may be doing it... they may not. Does it really matter if it takes 10 minutes or an hour to download an episode of something or erm.. aherm sorry I mean a linux iso, is your time really that precious that you wait on a download with baited breath?

If you don't like UPC for whatever conspiracy nutjob type reason then change ISP, otherwise put up with it.

Cuddlesworth

Achilles wrote: »

I think it's hilarious that people are accusing UPC of this when they have no idea how computer networks work.

You all have been given countless reasons why a download can be faster on one connection but not on the other and yet you ignore it.

Why moan about something you don't understand? They may be doing it... they may not. Does it really matter if it takes 10 minutes or an hour to download an episode of something or erm.. aherm sorry I mean a linux iso, is your time really that precious that you wait on a download with baited breath?

If you don't like UPC for whatever conspiracy nutjob type reason then change ISP, otherwise put up with it.

It does matter. I don't remember reading "100mb internet access, except to Asia that's only .4mb" when I signed up to UPC. And yes, I understand how WAN's work. And what a ISP is. The two defining features of UPC's packages are bandwidth and cap. And with a artificial limit imposed on my connection, they are not providing their end of the deal and if the majority of my traffic is to Asia, none of UPC's products are suitable for me.

MrVestek

You signed up to a service with a fair use policy. They're not obliged to provide you with the service you thought that you signed up for but rather the one that you agreed to when you signed on the dotted line.

Is it unfair and underhanded? Yes absolutely... but most ISPs do this and unfortunately if you want this service then you have to put up with it. A bunch of people moaning about it on a forum isn't going to change anything.

Cuddlesworth

Achilles wrote: »

You signed up to a service with a fair use policy. They're not obliged to provide you with the service you thought that you signed up for but rather the one that you agreed to when you signed on the dotted line.

Is it unfair and underhanded? Yes absolutely... but most ISPs do this and unfortunately if you want this service then you have to put up with it. A bunch of people moaning about it on a forum isn't going to change anything.

A lot of people forget that fair usage policy's work both ways. Limiting a aspect of your connection to 0.4% of contracted would never be deemed fair usage in court.

listermint

mark17j wrote: »

I think UPC are cutting bandwidth to some customers at specific times to ease congestion on lines.This slow up occurs every 3 -4 days in my case, always starts at 11pm on the nose, and when this happens, full speed will not return until 9-10am the next day.Happens so regularly and at these specific times, that I have it off by heart at this stage.

All ok now, Hopefully my connection doesn't die at 11pm This Evening again.

Do you have Wireless Active? Are you sure someone isnt hacking onto it using your bandwidth?

Fighting Irish

I am on UPC 30mb

This is my speedtest:


I have fileserve and filesonic premium accounts
On fileserve the usual download speed is about 30kb/s-100kb/s
On filessonic the usual download speed is about 600kb/s-1500kb/s
On usenet i get a constant 1500kb/s

mark17j

listermint wrote: »

Do you have Wireless Active? Are you sure someone isnt hacking onto it using your bandwidth?

No I regularly check the Connected Clients list when I experience these issues and it always shows just my pc connected.
I use WPA AES-encryption and use the SSID and password supplied by UPC -

MrVestek

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

A lot of people forget that fair usage policy's work both ways. Limiting a aspect of your connection to 0.4% of contracted would never be deemed fair usage in court.

Bring UPC to court then and let's see who wins, otherwise stop whinging about a situation that you are currently powerless to change.

Cuddlesworth

Achilles wrote: »

Bring UPC to court then and let's see who wins, otherwise stop whinging about a situation that you are currently powerless to change.

Do you have anything constructive to add besides saying that we should either ignore it, that Jason is being lied to or that limiting the connection to .4% of contracted "Doesnt really matter".

This thread is about packet inspection and throttling.

A UPC rep said they don't do either. I have shown that they throttle either directly or through a contract. This is here for the world to see and for future customers to consider. That's more then enough for me.

MrVestek

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Do you have anything constructive to add besides saying that we should either ignore it, that Jason is being lied to or that limiting the connection to .4% of contracted "Doesnt really matter".

This thread is about packet inspection and throttling.

A UPC rep said they don't do either. I have shown that they throttle either directly or through a contract. This is here for the world to see and for future customers to consider. That's more then enough for me.

Wether they do or do not do this it's a situation you have to deal with and consider wether you want to remain their customers.

Shouting wild accusations about a company probably isn't going to deter anyone from joining them and will more than likely just make you look like a conspiracy theorist nutjob of a person who has nothing better to do than wait for their downloads to finish in their life.

Chill out... it really isn't that big of a deal.

yoyo

I do think this issue is only affecting cable broadband providers, funny enough Virgin media over in the UK have similar problems with the file hosts, and maintain the same stance as UPC: see here and here.
Its been suggested that its a file host problem, if UPC were to throttle file hosts I don't get why Rapidshare and some other popular ones always go full speed. It does seem to be isolated to certain providers and cable ones aswell

Nick

Cuddlesworth

yoyo wrote: »

I do think this issue is only affecting cable broadband providers, funny enough Virgin media over in the UK have similar problems with the file hosts, and maintain the same stance as UPC: see here and here.
Its been suggested that its a file host problem, if UPC were to throttle file hosts I don't get why Rapidshare and some other popular ones always go full speed. It does seem to be isolated to certain providers and cable ones aswell

Nick

UPC are owned by Virgin media. Rapidshares servers are located in Germany, meaning the traffic can be carried across Europe on UPC owned lines at little to no cost. When travelling to Asia the bandwidth would be subject to increased charges. Those fibre cables across the ocean don't lay themselves.

ArthurG

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

UPC are owned by Virgin media.

I thought they were owned by Liberty Global.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Global

Bohrio

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

UPC are owned by Virgin media. Rapidshares servers are located in Germany, meaning the traffic can be carried across Europe on UPC owned lines at little to no cost. When travelling to Asia the bandwidth would be subject to increased charges. Those fibre cables across the ocean don't lay themselves.

Thats not all true. I am not familiar with UPCs network but I can tell you that there is no free traffic as such.

Any time it leaves the Island it becomes expensive. Also, there is cheap international bandwidth and expensive international bandwidth.

Routes are are also different depending on who you are paying same as the bandwidth. ISPs can hire many different providers, some companies provide bandwidth to their services for "free" such as google but thats exclusively to access their services.

someone already mention Akamai, some ISPs use Akamai to ease congestion and avoid congestion. Its not easy to keep a network healthy...

this was just a remark, as I have said I have no idea of what UPC do with their network

What I mean is that is not as cheap as you think. Most ISPs only have a few GB of international bandwidth available, and that's for both business and residential customers.

Maybe, and I am just saying, the reason why is not so quick is because they are using a cheap or low bandwidth node instead of a more expensive one?

But that cannot be considered throttling I guess

Cabaal

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

UPC are owned by Virgin media.

err no they are not,

The Virgin Media "name" was used to rebrand NTL in the UK.....the UK cable provider Virgin Media is nothing to do with UPC Ireland.

UPC Ireland is owned by Liberty Global

Cuddlesworth

Cabaal wrote: »

err no they are not,

The Virgin Media "name" was used to rebrand NTL in the UK.....the UK cable provider Virgin Media is nothing to do with UPC Ireland.

UPC Ireland is owned by Liberty Global

Sorry, I was aware that Virgin owned NTL and by definition owned UPC.

MrVestek

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Sorry, I was aware that Virgin owned NTL and by definition owned UPC.

NTL UK and NTL Ireland were once the same company but not anymore. NTL UK was sold off in the UK to Virgin and NTL Ireland became UPC owned by as others have stated Liberty Media.

This just leads credence to my earlier claims that whilst making wild accusations you haven't actually got a clue what you're talking about.

Cuddlesworth

Achilles wrote: »

This just leads credence to my earlier claims that whilst making wild accusations you haven't actually got a clue what you're talking about.

So I'm not 100% up to date of company ownership but it proves that when UPC throttle their connection to 0.4% of contracted that I don't know what I'm talking about? I think your grasping at straws attacking me but not addressing the throttling.

MrVestek

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

So I'm not 100% up to date of company ownership but it proves that when UPC throttle their connection to 0.4% of contracted that I don't know what I'm talking about? I think your grasping at straws attacking me but not addressing the throttling.

I have addressed this supposed throttling. NOC engineers for UPC have passed on a message to an official representative to say that they absolutely do not do this and infact have none of the equipment that I mentioned previously in order to achieve this.

Some bloke on the Internet who has no idea how the Internet works thinks otherwise... I know which one I believe.

As I said I've worked for ISPs in the past... and one that particularly lied to it's customers and it's agents about this practise but as a UPC customer and someone who has a friend that works in UPC's NOC I can tell you that this is not a practise that they engage in.

As I have stated many times in the past whether you believe them or not you can't change a damned thing about it so get over yourself.

subway

latest stats out, looks like UPC are no longer throttling

...some ISPs who do not use DPI to throttle often show some positive percentage. In general, ISPs whose % of DPI is consistently below 10% over several consecutive quarters are unlikely to be doing anything...
between 11% and 50% are likely to be using it in a limited way (e.g., confined to peak time periods or to specific networks or classes of users) ...

source: http://dpi.ischool.syr.edu/ISPtable.html

RUCKING FETARD

just came in to post that, lol.

seanp_25

Ran that Glasnost test on my UPC connection here. Says nothing being blocked or throttled on BitTorrent at all.

MrVestek

See? They don't and have never done this.

I'd say alot of areas were over subscribed for a while with everybody trying to use the connections for torrenting... that's all.

Regular port 80 bandwidth would have been fine but with people all downloading from the same sources over the same ports etc then this caused extra slowdown.

If you people really want free movies, games and music then you could just go out and buy it... there's a thought. Ohh sorry I forgot you're all only using it to update World of Warcraft and download Linux ISOs... right?

jameshayes

Achilles wrote: »

See? They don't and have never done this.

I'd say alot of areas were over subscribed for a while with everybody trying to use the connections for torrenting... that's all.

Regular port 80 bandwidth would have been fine but with people all downloading from the same sources over the same ports etc then this caused extra slowdown.

If you people really want free movies, games and music then you could just go out and buy it... there's a thought. Ohh sorry I forgot you're all only using it to update World of Warcraft and download Linux ISOs... right?

subway

Achilles wrote: »

See? They don't and have never done this.

you seem a strange fellow, perhaps you are looking at a different chart?
from 2009Q1 to 2010Q1 they had readings of almost 100% DPI.

you can see industry and academically accepted evidence, but as "your mate in the ops centre told you otherwise" you will never be swayed?

these arent "wild accusations"

MrVestek

jameshayes wrote: »

Go on then...

Tell me what you're legitimately using Bittorrent for then that requires you to be mindful of the fact that you're not getting full speed downloads.

Honestly... I'd love to know.

BostonB

I think his amusement was with the was the advice to "buy free movies, games" etc. Assumption being they are legally free.