Just Like Clockwork...

[Supernova]

I've noticed this pattern for several days now. As soon as the clock strikes noon, torrent download speeds plunge dramatically and don't pickup again until late in the evening. I get the sneaky feeling that True is throttling torrents -- especially the ones that aren't cached.

Take today for example, just before noon my torrents were cruising along at comfy 300KB/s (has been since late last night). Then all of a sudden, comes the dramatic drop in download speed at precisely 12:00 PM. No matter what I do, I cannot get speeds back up. As I type this, torrent downloads are running at less than 20KB/s, frequently dipping to 56k speeds. Funny thing is, uploads are cruising at full throttle. I wonder what's that all about...

I'm just curious to find out if any fellow True ADSL subscribers have noticed this pattern? Please share your experiences.

Edited April 4, 2011 by Supernova

[lomatopo]

I think they have triggers on individual accounts, when bandwidth peaks and sustains they apply a 'rule', but with BT there are too many factors affecting performance to consider. I wish they'd just put in a monthly fair-use policy.

I do manage several True installs in the metro-Bangkok area, most of which are heavy torrent and FTP (from a local seedbox) users. I have not heard any comments re: bandwidth management.

If you do a lot of torrenting I's suggest a local seedbox, which can download/upload at ~ 50 Mbps (6 MBps), then FTP files down to your PC. An ISP cannot really justify limiting FTP traffic, IMO, and at the current time. I guess there are other ways to access material so maybe you might investigate those if your BT issues remain?

[MKAsok]

Maxing out my 10 meg connection from my seedbox in France (1 gig connection) by FTP. No complaints here (True BKK).

Edit: I'm through a VPN direct to my seedbox, so this may have a bearing on not being throttled.

Edited April 4, 2011 by MKAsok

[edmartech]

I think they have triggers on individual accounts, when bandwidth peaks and sustains they apply a 'rule', but with BT there are too many factors affecting performance to consider. I wish they'd just put in a monthly fair-use policy.

I do manage several True installs in the metro-Bangkok area, most of which are heavy torrent and FTP (from a local seedbox) users. I have not heard any comments re: bandwidth management.

If you do a lot of torrenting I's suggest a local seedbox, which can download/upload at ~ 50 Mbps (6 MBps), then FTP files down to your PC. An ISP cannot really justify limiting FTP traffic, IMO, and at the current time. I guess there are other ways to access material so maybe you might investigate those if your BT issues remain?

And where can we find local seedbox? Any website?

[nikster]

3bb was also throttling torrents, mainly in the evenings. Can't blame them, really...

[lomatopo]

And where can we find local seedbox? Any website?

Google "seedbox" "Thailand" "colo".

Also look for local trackers.

[Supernova]

I think they have triggers on individual accounts, when bandwidth peaks and sustains they apply a 'rule',

What do you mean, that my account is specifically targeted? TBH, I haven't been torrenting nearly as much as I used to...

I do manage several True installs in the metro-Bangkok area, most of which are heavy torrent and FTP (from a local seedbox) users. I have not heard any comments re: bandwidth management.

Are we talking cached or uncached torrents? BIG difference. I have no issues with cached torrents or FTP.

with BT there are too many factors affecting performance to consider.

Yes -- in most scenarios, but not in this case. It's very clear to me True has been applying the 'brakes' to uncached torrents from noon onwards. I hadn't noticed this before until last week.

It's now 6:40 AM, torrents are smooth sailing as usual. Will check back in 6 hours.

[hml367]

Hello, Supernova.

I am certainly not an expert. I just wonder if it could be that some subscriber to the same service (feeding off the same line) is signing on or starting some heavy traffic activity everyday about the time you notice a drop off in speed.

MSPain

[lopburi3]

This started late February for many of us. It is not just bit torrent being slowed.

[sammycic]

File hoster maxed out connection any time,the only way to go. gave up on torrents.

No uploading.

[Supernova]

As of 11:58 AM, my speeds have gradually dropped from a steady 180KB/s to less than 10KB/s. I've also noticed many seeds/peers getting disconnected simultaneously shortly thereafter as well. It almost seems as if someone pulled the plug...

[Supernova]

This is really f*cked up. Being on an 8M connection, one would hope to utilize one-third of that for torrents no matter what time of day. I don't think I'm being too unreasonable here. But this excessive throttling I've experienced over the past several days is unacceptable.

Seriously man, if it wasn't because of my crap TOT line, I would never have switched over from JI-NET. Their 2M/512K ADSL service was flawless. I never once had to put up this nonsense.

Edited April 5, 2011 by Supernova

[haveaniceday]

TRUE used to drop my VOIP phone at 5:20min EVERY call, I would go next door and use another ISP and no issue.

Looking at so many restrictions in Thailand on everything in communications, I am surprised their is no fair use policy, say Unlimited, throttling at 50gigs a month is a example I have had back home......

[Phil Conners]

Out of curiosity and in the spirit of science I though I'd give my 3BB standard 8M a shot. I found a popular 1.5G torrent with about 10,000 seeders and 5,000 peers and started the download at 1.30pm on a Friday. It ran full speed and downloaded in half an hour. So I think it's clear that 3BB doesn't profile torrents.

Having said that, torrents have the advantage of downloading many small streams. When you try to download a single stream it's a completely different story. Another test I did a week or two ago during off-peak hours showed me that if I try to download a single uncached stream from a high-speed source in US that I know can push 100 mbps, the download was clearly throttled at about 128 KB/s. Notice how flat the graph is.

Below is a similar download taken today at 2pm from the same source. (note the scaling is different due to the odd spike in the middle). Notice how ragged it is. This is typical of not even enough bandwidth to hit the throttle level.

This is a problem as you need about 2 mbps for a decent picture watching streaming TV these days.

Personally I would prefer they do some profiling/throttling of torrents during the day against getting more per-stream bandwidth. I don't mind letting torrents run while I sleep, but I really need more bandwidth to see the realtime streaming programs, and it would also be nice with better quality bandwidth for other realtime things such as internet radio, skype with video, voip, games etc.

[Supernova]

Out of curiosity and in the spirit of science I though I'd give my 3BB standard 8M a shot. I found a popular 1.5G torrent with about 10,000 seeders and 5,000 peers and started the download at 1.30pm on a Friday. It ran full speed and downloaded in half an hour. So I think it's clear that 3BB doesn't profile torrents.

Any chance you can PM me the link or .torrent file? I'd like to test it on my True connection...

[Phil Conners]

Sure. It wasn't anything special, just a popular torrent found on one of the trackers. I've sent you a PM with the link.

[Supernova]

Thanks Phil.

This torrent is cached by True, so I'm downloading at full speed obviously.

[Phil Conners]

Interesting. I didn't realize they cache torrents. Maybe that was why my torrent download was so fast. I have to admit I didn't think about going in to check but I just tried another popular torrent:

A lookup of the IP address just shows an IP address in Maxnet, but I guess it could be a caching proxy server. Not many people have 5 mbps uplink speed on Maxnet.

The second IP is in Malaysia though, with 1.5 mbps uplink speed. Pretty good for what is most likely a consumer account.

[Supernova]

Here's one that isn't cached by True. This torrent may not have seeds numbering in the thousands, but I should be getting better speeds.

[Supernova]

Same torrent as my previous post... This is the kind of crap I have to put up with for 13 hours a day (from 12 noon - 1 AM).

[Phil Conners]

Yeah this one is definitely not cached. Getting around 400 kB/s, about half of this from one node in Korea.

[Supernova]

Let's see... it's been 4 hours 15 minutes since I started the torrent in post #19.

Transfer stats:

Time Elapsed: 4h 15m
Downloaded: 226 MB (out of 2.53 GB)
Download Speed: < 10 kB/s (avg. 15.8 kB/s)

[Phil Conners]

Yeah then 3BB seems to beat True in this department

[Supernova]

Restarted the torrent (re: post #19); cruising at a respectable 235KB/s and climbing as I type this. The time is now 1:20 AM.

While some may argue, "it's late... fewer users online blah blah", it's entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand which is insane throttling. As the subject title says, "Just Like Clockwork..." -- well it is indeed. Enough complaints, now I'm going to make the most out of it; 10.5 hours and counting...

Edited April 22, 2011 by Supernova

[moo9]

Interesting. I didn't realize they cache torrents. Maybe that was why my torrent download was so fast. I have to admit I didn't think about going in to check but I just tried another popular torrent:

A lookup of the IP address just shows an IP address in Maxnet, but I guess it could be a caching proxy server. Not many people have 5 mbps uplink speed on Maxnet.

The second IP is in Malaysia though, with 1.5 mbps uplink speed. Pretty good for what is most likely a consumer account.

Consumer account (in Thailand) for business cost and service (elsewhere) though....;-)

[lomatopo]

Thanks Phil.

This torrent is cached by True, so I'm downloading at full speed obviously.

Torrents, actually the files, aren't cached by True or any other ISP (can you imagine the copyright issues they'd find themselves dealing with if they ever did such a stupid thing?). The BT protocol is vastly complicated and one factor in distance, or should I say relative proximity (based on ping/tracerte), when utilizing peers. In this case there is another user (a peer) who is very close (in Thailand hence the Thai flag, perhaps even a True subscriber), who has parts of the file you require, hence the high speeds. Part of the problem with being here is that most peers are so far way.

Many seed-boxes cahce (since we're using that word) files in that you are essentially co-located with other peers on the same 100 GB ethernet network (or even on the same PC!). Often I am seeing peers on the same seed-box as me, so my D/L speed is 48 mega-bits per second (6 MB/s, my cap).

[Phil Conners]

Torrents, actually the files, aren't cached by True or any other ISP (can you imagine the copyright issues they'd find themselves dealing with if they ever did such a stupid thing?). The BT protocol is vastly complicated and one factor in distance, or should I say relative proximity (based on ping/tracerte), when utilizing peers. In this case there is another user (a peer) who is very close (in Thailand hence the Thai flag, perhaps even a True subscriber), who has parts of the file you require, hence the high speeds. Part of the problem with being here is that most peers are so far way.

Many seed-boxes cahce (since we're using that word) files in that you are essentially co-located with other peers on the same 100 GB ethernet network (or even on the same PC!). Often I am seeing peers on the same seed-box as me, so my D/L speed is 48 mega-bits per second (6 MB/s, my cap).

I understand what you're saying, but how else can you explain that I can download with 5 mbps from one IP address in Thailand? I doubt there are any consumer account allowing you 5 mbps upload - and I'm unlikely to be the only client downloading from this client.

Are you suggesting someone set up a seedbox in Thailand? With the prices for dedicated servers in Thailand I kinda doubt that - and in any case a dedicated server would have a dedicated IP, not a dynamic IP from 3BB.

Yes I can imagine the copyright issues they are getting themselves into, but hey, I'm not surprised, TiT

[lomatopo]

I understand what you're saying, but how else can you explain that I can download with 5 mbps from one IP address in Thailand? I doubt there are any consumer account allowing you 5 mbps upload - and I'm unlikely to be the only client downloading from this client.

Are you suggesting someone set up a seedbox in Thailand? With the prices for dedicated servers in Thailand I kinda doubt that - and in any case a dedicated server would have a dedicated IP, not a dynamic IP from 3BB.

Yes I can imagine the copyright issues they are getting themselves into, but hey, I'm not surprised, TiT

Who said anything about a "consumer account"? You do realize that not everyone uses an asynchronous, low-bandwidth (ADSL, 16/1) connection? Think business or education, I'm sure you'll figure out how someone can upload at such a high rate.

There are plenty of local seed-box providers; I use one, so I'm not sure if your doubt is valid.

An ISP would never host, or cache copyrighted files.

[Supernova]

True subscriber IP usually ends with

.revip2.asianet.co.th

Those superfast seeds/peers who are able to transmit data at >400KB/s, or in some cases a single peer able to max out my 9Mbps connection all have addresses that end with

.static.asianet.co.th

[Supernova]

Another interesting thing to note are the clients these seed/peers use. Most seem to run very old clients, with BitComet 1.09 and uTorrent 1.6 or 1.7 commonplace.

Edited May 19, 2011 by Supernova