Report on Web-Surfing Speeds Finds Pervasive Throttling

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.'"

Comments

Gassy

[EEDAm]

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)?

Depends on the time

[Yvan256]

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.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[sbrown123]

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.

Re:I can attest to this.

[weweedmaniii]

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.