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Bad D/L speed (20kB/S) in evening with BT broadband (brit telecom)


Thetechnogeek

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Hi, I hope someone can help. I have a problem with my BT broadband connection, or the settings in uTorrent (I think). My D/L capacity is ~4800kb/s, and my upload speed is ~400kb/s, so I have selected 384kB/s in the speed guide upload limit.

I am never exceeding 20kB/s download speeds- although I am getting 35-40kB/s upload at all times. If I open a new torrent (so 2 are d/ling at the same time), the collective speed of the two also does not exceed 20kB/s. My ports are forwarded, have a green light at all times.

This happens with pretty much any torrent, even very well seeded ones. Now for the "odd" bit- I work full time, so I only ever see the speeds in the evenings or weekends during the day. But if I am d/ling a torrent which uTorrent tells me will take several days at 20kB/s, often when I leave overnight, it completes in a few hours. My theory- my torrents are speeding up dramatically at night, and are "throttled" during the peak hours when I see them.

Does this sound possible? Anyone else know if Brit Telecom are throttling torrents during peak hours? My internet speeds during these peak hours are unaffected, and I am encrytping, so maybe a long shot?

Otherwise any ideas?? My firewall is properly configured, my router is forwarding OK. Oh, and I'm using Vista, but it was exactly the same with XP.

Help appreciated!!

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First, check the speed tab at utorrent main screen and select 5min resolution. You should see speed graphs for much longer time interval.

Does this sound possible? Anyone else know if Brit Telecom are throttling torrents during peak hours? My internet speeds during these peak hours are unaffected, and I am encrytping, so maybe a long shot?

Throttling during peak hours should be possible, in fact it sounds quite reasonable.

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Have you run a speed test during the day too? Besides throttling there could be static on the line that is caused by something being active during daylight hours. It might even be outside your house. I know of one case (happened in the evenings) where static from a badly wired outside halogen light on a timer that was close to a DSL line was causing bad connections due to interference. Turned it off and it worked great. Or maybe you're near an industrial plant or an office that has high powered equipment in use during the day. If you get vastly different results on the speed test at different times of the day and night while not torrenting (meaning it has nothing to do with it), then contact your ISP to have a line check to see what's up.

Of course if the ISP is throttling then you're out of luck, but it never hurts to check.

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to Thetechnogeek:-

im in the same boat my friend.having spoke to bt

they did say between the peak hours(which is spose to be

between 4pm and 7pm)that my speeds will decrease.

so having to get home from work to witness such rubbish

speeds sucks.my are speeds are only really good after midnight

and most part of the weekends.

heres what baffles me tho.my pc was running from an extension

was getting speeds of about 100KB/s for the first year with no probs

upgraded to option 3.getting speeds up to 170KB/s then speeds probs

arose.engineer came.said to move pc to the main phone socket which is

only about 10 feet away.he said i was losing about 1000kbps downstream

through the extension.now my speeds are about 300KB/s off peak..so the peak

hour throttling lasts about 7 hours for me in the week.there must be ways around this...:(

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Exact same problem here. I think they are a bunch of arseholes, I work all freaking day only to get fucked over by the wankers at bt.

I cannot even get out of the contract, because its fucking 12 months. I am not happy and will be contacting them during the week. Its totally counter productive as I end up downloading more to get the same fucking file. On top of that every time I rang up BT the line kept dropping dead as they cut me fucking off!

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I had this problem since I moved from bulldog to bt total. They certainly do traffic shaping during the peak time. From my experience, the cap for p2p during 2pm-10pm is around 20K now (30-50K before last month). It's shown on the statistics graph very clearly. You can see a step function.

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Well, I've been monitoring the graphs- from around 5pm to 11pm, my speed stays stuck at around 20kB/s (I only monitored for one evening, so hours maybe different on different eves). Then, lo and behold, a massive increase to 165-220kB/s throughout the night. As I said in previous post, my internet speed during the "throttled" hours is fine- in the high 4000kb/s's. Thus I can only assume that BT are performing some kind of shaping.

On the other hand, I am getting decent speeds except for the 5 or so hours in the eve, so I guess I can live with it. Wish I knew a way round it though- I am now forcing encryption, but makes no odds. I reckon BT may be looking at the number of open connections as an alternative means of throttling, but I'm just guessing.

Weird eh?

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OK, so I have now monitored my speeds over the last couple of weeks- without a doubt BT are throttling torrents, and the encryption workaround does not (work, that is).

My findings- capped speed of 20-22kB/s between the hours of 6pm and 11pm, Mon-Fri. At all other times I'm hitting the limits imposed by upload settings or swarm speed.

I can live with this, but I think it's important to flag BT as a provider who now perform shaping- hopefully if this one can be added to the list, it may help some of the many other people with the "my speed was fine, now it's crap" issue who use brit telecom total broadband to understand where their speed has gone!

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  • 2 months later...

Finally i have found the ones afflicted with the pain in the ass ive been suffering, ive been wid bt for almost 2 years and up untill a week ago i have had no problems whatsoever wid them, infact i would of reccomended them to any1, but when u been use to getting a nice 300 to 400 kbs (on good torrents) no matter what time it is on peak or off, i def wouldnt reccomend, for the last week all i been getting on peak hours (evenings 6ish to 12ish) (weekends 12ish miday to 12 ish at night) a max of 6kbs no upload speed at all well maybe 1 thats what i got for weekday evenings, and this weekend it has fluctuated all day with a highest average of around 20 but its goes to 20 maybe 30 then a few seconds l8er down to 1 or 2 rofl ahhhhhhhhhhh, and its done it all day long only now has my speed been restored (thnx torrent god),i confirm that no encryption works so what a waste of crap that is, also i can confirm that my speed does not change during the peak hours when downloading something throuhg the net, i can still get upto 500 kbs even 600 through the internet, i just cant get diddly squat for my poor torrents so its all sytmes on standy till they GIVE MY SPEED BACK, i know ive gone on lots but i been ringing them with no joy also searching the net to see if i was the only one exprianceing this problem and i finally found others that do and just had to put my 2 cents on the table, 1 more thing i have spoken to bt and have asked em to confirm for me whther or not they r starting to throttle bit torrent speed and the first 2 very helpfull operators i got told me they dont throttle speed in anyway whatsoever ahaha yea yea ok, then i spoke to a manager after being hung up on twice grrrr, coz i was fuming, and asked them to confirm for me whther ot not they r starting to throttle the speeds and she would not give me an answer instead telling me not to guess at why my speed is suddenly crap for torrents but fine through the internet, she said can i monitor my line for the next 24 hours and someone will ring me back well did they nope, so i rang them and they said someone was going to ring me last night did they nooooooooooo frikkin nooooooooooo ffs, im thinking about ringing em up and going through the next 2 weeks or more trying to get the mac code of em so i can change isp, such a shame aswell coz b4 this throttling crap i really felt like i was with a really good isp, well pld british telecom if ya gunna steal my speed when u never have b4 let me first stick my boot up ay ass.

p.s if any1 ever gets through to an english operator plz leave a post to say ya did coz every time i ever rang them up i have never had someone who was english or someone i didnt have to ask "sorry ure have to say that again, na sorry and again rofl so many times i have had to say that.

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well, I have been having the same problem as well. DL speeds of 20KB max, often needing 6 or 7 hours to download 700Mb of stuff. I always thought that it was because I could only get basic broadband, due to being at the very end of the extension here.

It seems though that this is not the case, as I can get speeds of up to 80 or 90 KB / S if I download through the net instead of a torrent.

The only way I find to get around it with fucking BT is to change ISP. So Looking at all the things and in particular the "fair usage policy" the best option IMO is Tiscali.

If anybody knows any better ISP's in the UK leave a message please.

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BT categorically does throttle torrents. It uses packet sniffing on the tracker announce and blacklists the IPs it finds on them. It also blocks the DHT table.

Solution : Force start 10 torrents at midnight. When you wake up you'll have pulled in 5 GB minimum.

Everyone always says you *must* limit your current number of torrents to 2 or 3 to get the best speed. That's just rubbish! Perhaps it is something peculiar to my set up and router...but i'm fairly confident this is something peculiar to BT. So try it! I pull in 100 KBytes/s minimum every night. And usually nearer 200 KBytes/s.

I'm investigating the use of proxies and VPN because it is annoying being throttled in the evening. But i'm not hopeful.

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well finally i had a bt operator who was english who confirmed that they are now starting to shape torrent traffic when traffic gets high, a bloody men lol, well i still got 6 months on my contract so am stuffed either way, as for a new isp after im not sure dude your best bet is to have a search do your homework b4 u do sign up and work out exactly what your needs are.

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Thank god, my contract with fucking Brit Telecom is up. As I said I was gonna look for another ISP.

I have decided after looking around and reading the FUP on a lot of ISP's on Eclipse Internet.

They have got NO speed restrictions during off peak hours, and during peak hours there is a 20GB monthly allowance

which will do just fine for me.

Bye Bye BT see you never again!!!

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You should really use your common sense and notice the trend that the upload speed has affecting the download speed. Usually, I limit my upload speed to 5KB/s for each download that is downloading which gives me so much more speed than it would uploading at 35KB/s or so (the maximum). At the END of downloading (to give back to the network) I take off the upload limit and seed for about twelve hours to put my share towards the community.

Also, if you are uploading at 35KB/s or so, you must notice a dramatic decrease in browser performance? I am on a 6.5MB/s package (Option 3) and whenever I upload at the maximum that I normally can do (sometimes up to 45KB/s) my browsing grinds to a holt.

Here is a summary of what to do:

When downloading, set your upload speed to MAXIMUM 5KB/s.

When downloading is finished, take off the limit and seed for a fair length of time.

When your share ratio reaches ABOVE 1.000 (try to make it even more), you can stop seeding.

Hope that helps ;)!

Have a lovely day,

VM Releases.

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How badly affected are uploads by BT broadband throttling?

Downloading is based on the randomness of the torrent, but so long as you have even 10 "hungry" peers...they could probably drain you of 100+ KB/sec upload speed. (...if you had that much!)

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