I've not noticed any problems but my line speed is so low they could be throttling it and I would never see any problems compared to people on UFB.

Traffic shaping? Quoted many times before... NO.
Port blocking? Things like outbound SMTP (Port 25) along with Port 53 and several high risk ports are blocked by all provider to prevent spam and abuse.

I haven't experienced any slow traffic or port blocks.

It would be unlikely. Why do you ask, are you experiencing service level problems?

In regards to shaping, they might move you to a VPRN with a limited bandwidth pool, but they would most probably only do that if your abuse was affecting other users, you will more than likely be told if this were the case, you would have to read your contract.

My ISP has a publically declared policy of not shaping traffic. 

But in their T&Cs they are able to shape traffic.

Can someone informed please explain the difference between traffic shaping and enforcement of a 'fair use' policy.

Hi all,

We provide our broadband connections as fast as the line can handle, we don't impose any speed restrictions or limitations on our connections (with the sole exception of the retired Snap plans exceeding data caps, which get rate limited).

In terms of port blocking, we don't do this either.

If you are having issues with speed or particular ports, feel free to give the team a yell on 0800 022 022 opt 9 and they'll be able to assist with troubleshooting.

Thanks,

Ralph ^JOB

To prove that 2degrees doesn't block outbound, you can check it yourself by telneting directly to port 25 to some public mail host (like gmail.com); resolve the actual server by getting the domain's mx records.

$ host -t mx gmail.com
gmail.com mail is handled by 5 gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

$ telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25
Trying 2404:6800:4008:c07::1b...
Connected to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx.google.com ESMTP j13si8323451pgn.15 - gsmtp

As you can see, not blocked on my 2degrees account when I did the above on my home machine.

Been with 2Degrees/Snap for years, never seen an ounce of shaping or port blocking (and why on earth would an ISP block port 53....)

vulcannz:

 

Been with 2Degrees/Snap for years, never seen an ounce of shaping or port blocking (and why on earth would an ISP block port 53....)

 

Some ISPs are afraid that their customers run DNS servers that are public and misconfigured which can then participate in DNS Amplification attacks, but this logic basically applies to everything really (or that the ISP provide custom IP addresses to capture additional advertisement revenues by misdirecting requests to third-part advertisement servers to their own ad servers).