how to find out what ISP/OS throttles and find work around

[2good2b]

Hi,

this post is a question - NOT a guide! (sorry for the confusing subject!)

my wireless ISP in New Zealand, Woosh, seems to cap speed and I want to determine what they do and find a work around without calling their helpdesk and alerting them to my internet usage

Could someone give me some advice what to test and what to configure?

current speed and connection settings:

1500kb dl (hence the name "woosh"), ~128kb ul in NZ;

speedtest on USA servers ~600dl, 90ul (max)

XPSP2 with re-re-re-re-...patched TCPIP.sys to 50 ;-),

W-LAN router Netgear (not in any list) and Wireless Modem from provider,

XP firewall on, utorrent allowed, port forwarded in router

max half-open 4

bt.connect_speed 20

encryption enabled with incoming legacy connections allowed

utorrent max UL 8KB, max 2 ul slot per torrent

connections per torrent 30, max torrents 2, max total connections 80

port forwarded and green status light, port 14124 (not random; would that be a good first shot for workaround?)

Obvious capping times:

7.30 - 4.30 somewhere at 20-25dl/5-8ul

4.30pm - 23.59pm: 15KB dl, 5-8KB ul,

0.00am (at exactly !! 0.00am) - ~7.30am: spikes 50KB dl, usually ~40, ul 8, sometimes as high as 12 (am setting it higher when I see I have a strong peer in the swarm and it doesn't reduce dl speed)

At 9.30am - so in the middle of the "half-speed time slot", I did the slackware-download test and got 25 actively connected peers/seeds (of total 60 connected) with a whopping 130KB download - but that was because a single one of the seeds pushed 120KB through. (Btw: thanks to whoever that is who offers his resource to allow such a test!!)

Is the speed during the night the most I can get because I can't offer better upload speeds and therefor don't get faster peers?

How can I determine whether it is the amount of active connected peers that cause the speed limit during the day and especially in the evening? Can I configure something to avoid that?

Or is it also XP which I could improve somehow to then improve utorrent?

Would randomizing the port be helpful and if so why? Does my ISP monitor upload traffic and then action throttling based on the port they discover? AND do so only during certain times of the day?

What did you guys do to outsmart your ISPs? Any hint or idea would be awesome. Thanks!

Sorry for the long post!! But I wanted to avoid annoying the moderators who always have to ask for the obvious as their very first reply...