Slow DL's always; Comcast blames "Bit Torrent"

[211]

Could "Bit Torrent" be the cause of consistantly slow connection speeds?

Not unless Bit Torrent is running right??? That's what I thought. Comcast is telling me otherwise.

Just a bit of background:

According to Broadband Reports.com's speed check I'm only seeing download and upload speeds of 2200/354 kbps respectively (+/- 50-100). I've ran multiple speed tests from the same server and multiple tests from different servers. The DL is less than HALF of what I should be getting according to Comcast (uploads are near normal).

I've called Comcast's tech support numerous times and, ...well to tell you the truth they're pretty much worthless. I've powercycled my modem, taken my router out of the loop, restarted, rebooted, hell I even installed the latest chipset driver (nForce2). I've ran the tests with and without the firewall active, I've disabled antivirus, I've ran spybot and Adaware, dumped my Temp IE files; nothing seems to help.

Finally they had a tech come out to my house and try and diagnose the issue. According to his meter, my signal going to the house is "excellent!" and the signal going to the modem is "excellent". Comcast can ping my modem and test voltages and whatnot and they say everything is good on their end. So the only suggestion the tech has for me is to replace my modem because the one I'm using (user owned) is pretty old and known to be flakey right out of the box (Linksys BEFCMU10). So he issues me a router and bails; not without leaving me his card though 'incase I have any other issues'.

So I get the Comcast RCA modem up and running and I'm still having the same speeds. So I call the guy and tell him whats up. He in turn calls a few other techs because he's clueless. Later that day he calls back and says he's stumped, his Supervisor recommends I change my cat5 cable (which I've already ruled out long ago), then says that if I'm running "Bit Torrent" I could really be seeing some slow speeds.

Maybe he saw uTorrent on my desktop, either way I tried to argue the fact that unless "Bit Torrent" is running it should not make a difference! He says he agreed but his Supervisor says differently.

Does anyone have 2cents on this matter? I've already deduced that Comcast is not helping, I'm not believing the story that just having Bit Torrent on my Desktop is the cause of my slow speeds. Is there something else I could check???

[maku8ex]

dude those guys are FULL of themselves...

a good isp should give u proper service whatever u run...its not cuz of BT....

ur slow speeds could be the result of faulty infrastructure, useless DNS, crappy line...

ditch Comcast...get a better isp.

[Firon]

Speed Guide -> xx/384kbit

[211]

dude those guys are FULL of themselves...

a good isp should give u proper service whatever u run...its not cuz of BT....

ur slow speeds could be the result of faulty infrastructure, useless DNS, crappy line...

ditch Comcast...get a better isp.

I can't just "get a better isp". Comcast has the monopoly here. Unless I go to DSL; F-that!

Speed Guide -> xx/384kbit.

??? I didn't quite get that...

[Nefarious]

try running the speed tests from a "live-cd linux distribution" or somethen so u show them nothing out of the ordinary is running, also if the problem is not the same in the live-cd then u may have somethen wrong in your windows worth checking

i had to do this to the people that came here saying i had spyware and etc running and taking out my bandwidht, so they would be convinced otherwise after that they made several test's and found out problem was not in my end... after 1 month of tests and such >.>

[Switeck]

Some modems and routers see a significant impact in perfomance on receiving ANY level of UDP packets. These come from µTorrent's DHT if you have it enabled.

Even after you've closed µTorrent, others running BitTorrent client try to connect via UDP to see if you're still there. After you've had DHT enabled for awhile, it can be up to a month before BitTorrent-related UDP packets drop off to almost nothing.

Note: This is the best µTorrent-caused explaination I have for your slow connection. I too am on ComCast, but no doubt in a different area as I don't experience those problems.

[Ultima]

@Firon: lol I don't think 211's blaming slow speeds on µTorrent, but telling us that Comcast is =P

@211: Total bull. I agree with Nefarious here, run a clean operating system and see if you still get the problem. Live distributions are probably the way to go if you don't feel like reinstalling Windows.

[winMX_67]

I dont know it its the same type of thing as DSL, but I had a problem like yours. I was getting shit speeds on a 1.5Mbit, so I thought well...ill upgare to 3.0Mbit. Not ONE bit of difference.

I had a guy come out and he went to check the circuit box across the street and he couldn't belive it! He didnt even think I could get a connection with the condition the cables were in. He put me on a new circuit and BOOM, everything was fine. A couple weeks later all the circuit boxes were being changed thoughout my whole city LOL.

But yeah, like I said I dont know if cable has circuit boxes or not. Its worth a shot though.

[Determination]

In many parts of America, there aren't options for ISPs. Cable zones are decided by the ... someone ... and you pay the one that services your area or you don't get connection. I have heard rumors that this may change, but have no proof of it.

WinMX's solution is usually the best one: ask for them to physically check the box.

[Nefarious]

He didnt even think I could get a connection with the condition the cables were in.

ohhh... don't you love when they say that? i must have heard that at least 5 times by now, and yet my problems where the same

[µser]

Comcast? Thats Cable internet, cable internet is shared with all your neighbors (if you get half your max speed your lucky, and if you read your contract i'm sure you'll note that *if* (lots won't) they stated a gauranteed speed its under 1 mb).

My favorite example is a local company, Roadrunner, in a nearby city (state capital) they are the *only* provider. Their set up is a giant circle around the city, with circles sprouting off of it into communities in a city of ~500k. I've heard stories of people getting 1mb at most.

This is why people opt for D(edicated)S(ubscriber)L(ine), a line just for you to your nearest CO which the majority will at LEAST quote you a minimum speed. (reliability vs. speed)

(as a side note, the comment about bittorrent could of been a stab at you, since they blame downloaders for it)

If nothing else got through, cable bad, DSL good.

@Deter

I wish, its getting better but dial up became available in 1999 here (28.8kbps, 2 hr kick, limited hours, thanks monopoly). Two weeks from now a option other than satelite is going to go active, Wireless and i'm praying they don't nerf bittorrent traffic (all those connects can get bad on wireless ISPs stuff).

[Stone]

@Firon: lol I don't think 211's blaming slow speeds on µTorrent, but telling us that Comcast is =P

Ultima, it's a bot that replies when it finds words like "slow", "connection", "speed" and down/up speed (2200/354) in this case.

[kurahashi]

If nothing else got through, cable bad, DSL good.

Truth is all depends how good network infrastructure has your ISP and how good are their connections to other ISP (or to say, the whole internet).

So it really doesn't matter if it is cable or DSL.

[Nefarious]

well, having an almost always stable speed and pings, helps a lot thou so DSL theorically helps

[Ezra]

About the DSL vs CABLE, that a lot of bull.

I'm downloading full speed with my cable connection, and I wanted cable because ADSL is only fast if your live near the isp.

But if they still won't help talk to some agency that supervises the isp they will contact the isp and try to handle it.

[Switeck]

Be it A/DSL or Cable, the ISP's gateway connection is the main limiting factor nowdays. If 20 A/DSL lines connect to the rest of the internet via a single T-3/OC-3 line, they're all sharing roughly 45megabit/sec up and down. Or it could be 20 cablemodems on a cable trunk line connecting to the rest of the internet via a single T-3/OC-3 line. Either way, they're still able to reach an average 2.25 megabits/sec between them all.

But! Both A/DSL and Cable companies oversell their true bandwidth capacities by 10-100 to 1.

That means if you and all your neighbors are on connections rated for 10 megabits/sec, everyone could only average 0.1-1 megabits/sec if they were all doing it at once.

Cablemodems DO have to share a trunk line, but many times those trunk lines are dual FDDI running at 100 megabits/sec up+down on each side. They are unlikely to max out that shared connection, but even if they do they still have more bandwidth available than their ISP's internet gateway would allow. If not, the ISP needs to get more cablemodem trunk lines + customers or upgrade their existing ones...because they're paying for internet bandwidth that they can't fully use.