Is your ISP throttling your connection?

[VulcanRider]

From this PC World article:

Is the speed of your company's Internet connection being throttled back by your ISP? Unless you're using a cable modem for your business Internet connection--and have Comcast or Cox as the provider--probably not. But, wouldn't you like to know, just to be sure? By offering new tools to measure broadband network performance, developers at a Google-backed venture called Measurement Lab are putting pressure on all ISPs to stop limiting customer bandwidth, or at least to not do it in secret. While I don't know of any small businesses that have run into throttling issues--in which your ISP slows your Internet traffic because they think you're overusing bandwidth--it is surely possible. Particularly if you actually do occasionally download large files in the course of your daily business. If it's happening, a new tool called Glasnost will ferret it out. Should you find you're being throttled, please drop me a note and I'll investigate. It's possible, even likely, that there is a whole lot more of this going on than people think. The ISPs' real targets aren't businesses, but people playing bandwidth-intensive games and doing huge uploads/downloads using things like BitTorrent. Some ISPs appear to be slowing these bandwidth hogs' traffic to protect the network for everyone else. The ISPs don't like to talk about throttling, so we aren't sure how common it is or what the thresholds are for setting it off.

... more at the link...

They compare TCP downloads/uploads with BitTorrent dl/uls, 2 of each. There's a short test that takes about 4 minutes, and a full test that runs about 7 minutes.

Mine showed a potential throttling of an upload -- TCP was almost 400kbps but BitTorrent was half that -- but a single run isn't going to give a definite answer. I'll try again at different times over a couple of days & look for a pattern.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

So, what link do I click on to test it?

[ElfBane]

From what I understand ISP's have always throttled uploads to be slower than DL's. At least for individual accounts. Business accounts are not "supposed" to be throttled, as far as I know.
PLUS, if you add the ISP's throttle to the bottleneck of your own PC's buffer,,,then we have.....slowness!

[VulcanRider]

Originally Posted by Variol (Farseer) Elmwood So, what link do I click on to test it?

The tool is called Glasnost. It's a link in the original post.

[VulcanRider]

Originally Posted by ElfBane From what I understand ISP's have always throttled uploads to be slower than DL's. At least for individual accounts. Business accounts are not "supposed" to be throttled, as far as I know. PLUS, if you add the ISP's throttle to the bottleneck of your own PC's buffer,,,then we have.....slowness!

They're not talking about throttling uploads vs downloads. It's about throttling BitTorrent activity vs other transmission types. From Wiki: "BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used to distribute large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and by some estimates it accounts for about 35% of all traffic on the entire Internet". Which basically means the more time you spend dl'ing large files (video? online gaming like WoW? anyone?) the more likely this could affect you.

How important is this? Probably not very. I just like knowing that if I'm paying for X level of service, I'm actually getting it.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

I KNEWTHAT!
I was just testing you.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

Ok, here is mine!! What does it mean?

Is there anything I should not post here?

s BitTorrent traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6882) throttled?

* The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests a TCP upload achieved minimal 486 Kbps while a BitTorrent upload achieved maximal 487 Kbps. You can find details here.

* The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 1135 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 1151 Kbps. You can find details here.


Is BitTorrent traffic on a non-standard BitTorrent port (10010) throttled?

* The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 477 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 496 Kbps. You can find details here.

* The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 1134 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 1150 Kbps. You can find details here.


Is TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6882) throttled?

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all downloads at port 6882. In our test, a TCP download on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 1135 Kbps while a TCP download on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 1134 Kbps. You can find details here.

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all uploads at port 6882. In our test, a TCP upload on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 486 Kbps while a TCP upload on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 477 Kbps. You can find details here.

I think it's all good!?

[VulcanRider]

"I think it's all good!?"

I think you're right. Your ISP is treating BitTorrent traffic the same as regular TCP traffic, no penalties in speed, no blocked ports. No worries...