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Report on Web-Surfing Speeds Finds Pervasive Throttling

Posted by samzenpus on from the slow-down-cowboy dept.

Stirling Newberry writes "New York Times has a report on web-surfing speed tests that their reporter ran using Glasnost, a tool that mimics the bittorrent protocol and measures the results. BT in the UK was among the worst. From the article: 'In the United States, throttling was detected in 23 percent of tests on telecom and cable-television broadband networks, less than the global average of 32 percent. The U.S. operators with higher levels of detected throttling included Insight Communications, a cable-television operator in New York, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, where throttling was detected in 38 percent of tests; and Clearwire Communications, where throttling was detected in 35 percent of the tests.'"

7 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Gassy by EEDAm · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think the OP is unlikely to be reporting on the web throttling capabilities of BP (British Petroleum as was) but more BT (British Telecom)?

  2. Depends on the time by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Informative

    My ISP clearly states that they throttle P2P and Torrent protocols if necessary. After midnight, there's less people using their connection, hence less throttling.

  3. I can attest to this. by mcalchera · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm an Insight Communications subscriber in central Kentucky. I noticed a month or so ago that during a period of higher-than-average internet usage, my connection speed was being slowed. I pay for 20Mbits. At the worst, with a wired connection I was only getting around 1.5Mbits. This was after moving ~10GB in ten days or so. Hardly excessive usage by most standards.

    1. Re:I can attest to this. by weweedmaniii · · Score: 5, Informative

      I am a former employee of Insight and here is their dirty little secret. When customers complained about speed issues for example they went to XYZ.com and their speed was slow, we directed them to the only "official speedtest site" which was on the Insight Broadband homepage. What customers didn't know was it never left the system they lived in. For example if you are a customer in Lexington the test went to the Lexington headend and back, so the speedtest levels were almost always at or above the "advertised" speed. So it never went out where the system might be congested or throttled by the company.

      --
      "If stupid things work...then they are not stupid."
  4. Re:my netflix is more important than your BT by sbrown123 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Power companies charge by the amount of power used. If they could technically give you 100% of the power you demand they would. And then charge you for it.

    ISPs could move to that model too. But they don't want to. They prefer to charge flat rates and then throttle people who use it more.

  5. Re:I'm sure they'll stop by PoopCat · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, unlimited means "without limit"; the entitlement comes from the contract - a contract guaranteeing me X means I am *entitled* to X. Regardless of your particular world view, those words have meaning.

  6. BT customers - there is an alternative by jc79 · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those in the UK who suffer from throttled connections, there are some alternatives. I am a very happy customer of Be (part of the Telefonica group) who provide an uncapped unthrottled service with a static IP for less than £20/month. I get 18Mb/s down. On the same line with BT I got 12Mb/s, capped and throttled for the same price.

    This is a good resource if you've not found it already.