Torrents Probably Being Throttled By True

[DangerfieldLives]

Hi all,

I'm in BKK and on an 8mb connection. I had previously experienced very fast torrent download speeds, around 700k or more for heavily seeded torrents, but now the speed has dropped considerably to 20 to 30kb. I have port forwarding set up and use a non-standard port. It has nothing to do with number of seeds, as the same thing happens consistently with new and popular torrents.

I have run Glasnost and got the mixed results below.

True said it could be because I'm using a splitter. I plugged directly into the modem and it made no difference.

Oddly, when I start Utorrent, speeds will increase to say 400kb, remain at that speed for a minute, and then dip down to the 20-30kb. Other times it never reaches that level, but when it does, is this indicative of throttling? What can be done about ISP throttling if that is the case? Will they lift the limit if a customer complains?

Is BitTorrent traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?

* The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* Your ISP possibly rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests a TCP uploads achieved at least 270 Kbps while a BitTorrent upload achieved at most 106 Kbps. You can find details here.

* The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved at least 5 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved at most 9 Kbps. You can find details here.

Is BitTorrent traffic on a non-standard BitTorrent port (10009) throttled?

* The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* Your ISP possibly rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests a TCP uploads achieved at least 299 Kbps while a BitTorrent upload achieved maximal 85 Kbps. You can find details here.

* The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* Your ISP possibly rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved at least 584 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved at most 40 Kbps. You can find details here.

Is TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all downloads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP download on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 1032 Kbps while a TCP download on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 584 Kbps. You can find details here.

* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all uploads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP upload on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 419 Kbps while a TCP upload on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 299 Kbps. You can find details here.

[infernalman7]

For some reasons on my 30Mbps True, the torrent speed is much higher than normal download speed (w/o download helpers and accelerators)

[skippybangkok]

I believe its called "Shaping equipment", basically distributes a given resource more equally among all users . Although not an expert ( no where near ), i understand if this were not done, the band width would be killed by heavy down loaders slowing down the net for everyone. As such, a very large majority of users will have a good / fast surfing experience and the heavy users ( some times termed abusers ) will complain of slow though put on torrents etc.

Try TT&T, my friends tell me it sucks during peak hour, and i assume they are not shaping their traffic.

[Spoonman]

I think it depends more on the traffic at the time, on my 8mb connection my download speeds vary between 1.5mb/sec and 150kb/sec...... mostly noticable saturday afternoons and sunday mornings.

[Wolfie]

I had no problems on my True connection last night - was getting my typical download speeds

[dttk0009]

I had no problems on my True connection last night - was getting my typical download speeds

Me too. It is probably just a case of bad seeds. Some torrents crank away at max speed right away while others slowly dribble along the entire duration, whether the ratio is good or bad. I used to think True was throttling but after numerous tests I can conclude that they in fact do not.

[Wolfie]

I have noticed that unless there is a Seeder based in Thailand, i dont max out my download speeds... perhaps this is part of the problem?

[Supernova]

Test your connection by downloading from a well-seeded torrent... You should be able to achieve full speed within a minute or two.

[dttk0009]

I have noticed that unless there is a Seeder based in Thailand, i dont max out my download speeds... perhaps this is part of the problem?

I have noticed this too, but it could be the IP address of the international gateways, as I've noticed they're usually uploading at 200+ kb/s which is impossible with a retail connection. Sometimes I've reconnected a torrent and it finds that one IP address which makes the speed shoot sky high.

I find that my torrents are coming in at max speed about 80% of the time.

[bkkmick]

I thought I'd check using my True 4mb connection and started downloading a free documentary.

The speed says 117.5KB/s. Is KB the same as kb? I thought that there was some subtle difference in the capitalisation.

Cheers

[Supernova]

^ KiloBytes vs. kilobits (transfer speeds and capacities)

[bkkmick]

Thanks, that's super

[A_Traveller]

Something to note is that some torrent systems use the upload not download speed as a configuration control point. Overstating this can lead to problems, so even if one has '8Mb' the upload may only be .5Mb.

Regards

[DangerfieldLives]

Thanks everyone for your input. Speeds are back to normal now. No real idea what caused the lag... Some good tips here for next time though. Cheers