Is your ISP manipulating BitTorrent traffic?

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Is your ISP manipulating BitTorrent traffic?

boykunk

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#38024 23-Jul-2009 11:00

Currently im running on Telecom Go Large plan.
Around Manukau Location.

Recently i've been using a P2P video streaming program and its going awfully slow. So i decided to test it out.
By going to the site below:
http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php

The end result, a big YES!!! my connection is being stricted for those apps using bittorrent ports.
Are people from other ISPs being manipulated?

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Biddle Corp

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#238174 23-Jul-2009 11:06

Go large has always been a traffic managed plan from the day it was launch and Telecom have made this quite clear.

This means P2P traffic will always be managed to stop excessive P2P traffic ruining the internet experience of other users.

Some ISP's manage traffic and others don't. Some manage traffic on specific plans, some manage traffic on all plans.

NonprayingMantis

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#238182 23-Jul-2009 11:14

^ what he said +1

boykunk

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#238183 23-Jul-2009 11:23

Is the new plan Big Time offered by Telecom worth upgrading to?

xpd

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#238205 23-Jul-2009 12:12

If thats the unlimited one, then going by friends reports, its great - theyre abusing it to the tune of 15+ GB a day.... must be nice to be unemployed/retired with high speed internet to waste time on :)

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zion

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#238213 23-Jul-2009 12:35

Vodafone here;

"There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads" on all tests.

eXDee

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#238239 23-Jul-2009 13:48

I would think we can safely assume all ISP's prioritize bittorrent traffic as rather low, except xnet who chose not to use any prioritization at all (or at least used to). You could see the effect of no prioritization thanks to their torrent plan, everyone else at midnight (now 2am) pretty much couldn't use the net.

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freitasm

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#238263 23-Jul-2009 14:19

Excuse me... The old Go Large plan and the new Big Time plan are no caps, traffic managed plans. Telecom does not hide this fact. If you didn't know that, then you are at least two years late with Go Large.

As for "managing traffic", at least Telecom is clear about it. Some ISPs still deny they do it, while everyone knows they actively slow down P2P traffic.

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Ragnor

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#238331 23-Jul-2009 16:58

It's insane for an ISP to not manage traffic, it's just a matter of how far they go in doing so. Many smaller ISP's rely on charging a high $ per GB to disourage large usage.

honem

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#238342 23-Jul-2009 17:52

Would to chime in here from a former Telecom employee

Before Go Large come out we got training on it.

It was Traffic Managed from the outset and quite frankly a lot of people hated it.

One of the worse mistakes Telecom could of made IMHO.

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dawnraid

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#238398 23-Jul-2009 19:23

But go large has less traffic management than Big Time?

freitasm

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#238400 23-Jul-2009 19:24

dawnraid: But go large has less traffic management than Big Time?

I am not sure about this. But certainly Go Large has lower upload speeds.

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dawnraid

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#238406 23-Jul-2009 19:32

I just did the test, on a go large connection and it appears that there is no throttling.

results here

techo

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#238423 23-Jul-2009 21:08

eXDee: I would think we can safely assume all ISP's prioritize bittorrent traffic as rather low, except xnet ...........

I think that is a big over-generalisation.

Some ISP's work on the principle of volume based charging, therefore it is their interest not to throttle ANY traffic. They view it as: more customer traffic = more revenue.

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Ragnor

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#238465 23-Jul-2009 22:29

Xnet worked on that principle and it was complete disaster, without restriction 10% of your users can consume 100% of your available bandwidth using p2p, completely ruining performance for normal traffic.

insane

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#238475 23-Jul-2009 23:14

Ragnor: Xnet worked on that principle and it was complete disaster, without restriction 10% of your users can consume 100% of your available bandwidth using p2p, completely ruining performance for normal traffic.

very true, and mainly because of the constant usage nature of a bit torrent/p2p wh0re vs user who loads webpages in short bursts.

I wish I could show you some REAL graphs of what types of traffic takes up the available bandwidth for an ISP. Its not terribly surprising but hits home when you see it in a graphical form.

You can get a general overview by looking at this video produced thanks to Orcon, look at around 58 seconds at the colorful graph on the right. Each colour represents a particular traffic type.

http://www.orcon.net.nz/lifestyle/page/an_insight_into_the_techonolgy_that_powers_the_orcon_network

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