Speed Killed

[cassius335]

Since there's a large sign in the troubleshooting forum saying "Speed Problems don't go here", forgive me I've managed to put this in the wrong place again.

Since yesterday (when I had to System Restore for an unrelated reason), using 1.8 Stable my Uploading/Downloading has all but flatlined. The program seems very reluctant to connect to available seeds/peers and even when it does connect to a few, upload/download speed is very, very slow, with a global speed of only a few Kilobytes's at best.

Modem has been whining about connectivity for some time now (limited to 2.2 Mbps, apparently), but that hasn't been a problem before yesterday and a speed test came back fine. The program seems to have picked up a very severe case of "can't be bothered"...

[Switeck]

Can you try v1.8.1 beta?

And what settings are you (trying to) using in uTorrent?

(All the Speed Guide CTRL+G ones plus any advanced settings you changed...)

[cassius335]

Knew I missed something in the rewrite...

switched to v1.8.1 with no change.

Upload limit: None

Upload Slots: 4

Connections: 50 per torrent, 150 global

Max active torrent: 2

Max downloads: 1

Only advanced setting I've changed (IIRC) is max half_open (currently 4)

EDIT1: Dslreport Flash speedtest just gave result of (d)817kbps/(u)223kbps with latency 94ms (whatever that means. Milliseconds?)

EDIT2: Speakeasy Speedtest just came back as down 1609kbps (201 KB/sec), up 233 (29.1), which is pretty much what I'd expect to get.

EDIT3: Having seen the thread at: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=46494, I think I'd better mention that I'm on XP SP3 as well.

[Switeck]

You NEED to limit upload speed max no higher than about 25 KB/sec...and maybe as low as 20 KB/sec.

Carphone Warehouse Broadband Services ISP is rather hostile to BitTorrent traffic.

[cassius335]

Not much point. I only get about 30 KB/sec upload at best anyway (and right now I'm getting all of nothing). I do limit it to 20KB/sec if IE is running slow, though (or when I'm downloading).

Did Carphone Warehouse just declare war on BitTorrent or something? Because it's never been this bad before...

EDIT: Huh. Turning Personal Encryption up to "Forced" and rebooting seems to have allowed some download speed (approaching nearly 50KB/sec at one point!). Still no upload speed above 1 or 2K though.

EDIT2: Whoa! One of my torrents is uploading! Only about half-speed (10KB/sec-ish), but it's something!

Ah. And the peer it's uploading to is running utorrent 1.8...

[Switeck]

I guess the improvements in speed you see when using encryption pretty much shows how much "war" has been declared by your ISP.

uTorrent v1.8 and v1.8.1 betas have means to bypass some types of ISP crippling that may not be blocked...just yet. ISPs will increase their hostility to BitTorrent and eventually get that too no doubt.

But not all ISPs take such a hostile view to BitTorrent. The ones that only throttle during peak hours...and even then not to 0...are at least friendlier.

[cassius335]

Yeah. Right now it's fading in and out. Not sure how much is the throttling and how much is network conditions, but it's still a lot less than I'm used to getting. Sucks, frankly.

[groovygarden]

Carphone Warehouse Broadband / AOL are throttling bittorrent downloads.

Just been talking to their support. After *a lot* of back and forth and protestations that they don't restrict downloads the guy said:

"Ok I have been informed that there is a system in place that will throttle downloads and in extreme cases like when a big movie hits the Internet it can be enabled.

They are throttled between 5pm and 11.30pm Monday to Thursday"

So much for the unrestricted service.

I've been going mad for two evenings trying to tweak settings etc etc, but seems like the ISP is the problem. Time for a MAC code I think...

[Skembear]

Mine has been the same for the past 4 weeks, but i think he was being a little conservative with his throttling times. I've been doing some extensive no damned sleep testing for this problem and found the throttling starts at 7.30 to 8.00am and kills the torrent speeds until at least 2.00am so really only getting partial unrestricted speeds for up to 5 hours per day, there is also some throttling at the weekends as well in addition to this we have the extra bandwidth users from the free laptop deal they have going. speeds at peak times are no more than 256kB on speed checks. Time to switch me thinks

[cassius335]

I think those times might be different for different people. Download is working fine at the mo but upload is fading in and out, possibly depending on who's using what at the other end.

[BrisUTorrentForum]

Groovygarden...thanks for this info. I have been using bittorrents for years and utorrent...humm..longer than i can remember.

My portforward checks ok, speedtests at speedtest.net check out OK....but my Utorrent is just virtually static just over the last few weeks...a dribble under 1 kB/s now and then is the best I have. I am currently totally free of firewalls too (although I do have Utorrent rules in the firewall when its running).

How do they (AOL UK) know I am using Utorrent though? I have let Utorrent select a random port, so I am not on the default port. I thought that was how they ID's my soft?

[Switeck]

Traffic analysis has evolved greatly in the last 3 years alone. They are likely now doing Deep Packet Inspection, totally removing any illusions of offering privacy in what you're doing. And also looking for traffic patterns. Lots of incoming connections to 1 port on your computer...as well as in-the-clear BitTorrent packets mixed in...makes it pretty obvious to "sniffer" software what you're doing. The ISPs now have stuff that can do that automatically on the fly and throttle, kill, or mangle BitTorrent packets.

Not all ISPs take an increasingly hostile Big Brother 1984 approach. Ask around, shop around, research online. There's no point in a competitive environment (assuming your area has multiple broadband ISPs) settling for such treatment, because these same invasive ISPs typically have no problem giving your private information over to anyone claiming to be "law enforcement" that comes along. They don't really want you "bandwidth hog" as a customer anyway.

[BrisUTorrentForum]

Ahhh. AS ever there is more to it than i know. Problem with shopping for a new ISP is the contract length vs how quick they can implement the above. Maybe one day we will come full circle and nobody will want broadband coz no one can get big 'free' DLs.