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)?

Re:Gassy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, from what I've seen, BP lacks the capability to successfully throttle down the flow of anything.

Re:Gassy

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, the internet is a series of tubes.

Re:Gassy

[Anonymous Coward]

I have BP Internet. They don't throttle which is nice, but when something breaks, a torrent of bits sprays everywhere. And it takes their support forever to fix it, and then they just walk away, leaving you to deal with the giant mess.

Re:Gassy

[DriedClexler]

No, BT stands for bit torrent, silly. They obviously wouldn't discuss British Telecom in the same context -- that would just be confusing.

Re:Gassy

[Ihmhi]

The only thing from BP I'd like to see throttled is their board of directors.

Re:Gassy

[Ihmhi]

Addendum: my above post may be misconstrued as undue hatred or malice towards BP. Rest assured, I would just as readily strangle any executive who works for British Telecom as well. Thanks and apologies if there was any confusion.

Re:Gassy

[Fjandr]

I hate walking along the beach and stepping into a blob of random bits. You never know what exactly is inside it.

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:Depends on the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here.

If traffic is too much on servers, not throttling them would degrade other services as well.
I'd hate it if I wanted to check up on, say, Slashdot, but the page was loading at 56k speeds because half the country was watching / torrenting the latest episode of whatever show, as an example.

Throttling is a necessary evil until the ISPs, which are also evil (well, the corrupt ones), get off their ass and actually use our monies to upgrade the lines at a reasonable speed and not slow just because they all agreed it is better for them, when in fact it is actually worse for them because they'd get considerably more money with cheaper lines and more people.
The lower that price goes, the significantly higher the number of people who can afford it, probably even in the powers of N range as it goes up, to a point of course.
Good example is how the movie industry can stay afloat pretty easily with cheap tickets, even though their productions cost several hundred millions in some cases, yet the videogame industry is still in that backwards mentality that higher prices = more profit, companies dying all over the place. You'd think dying once would have got it through to those who took it back up to what it is now, but nope.
Games just keep on getting more expensive because "oh, hey, we need to work more, increase the price and make it even more of a niche market"
Not only would this get rid of a huge reason for most piracy in the games industry, it would allow considerably more people to afford games more often. That would EASILY make up for the lowered price due to the higher numbers of people.
I know I would be buying more games often if they were cheaper, but I only get one maybe every quarter period, if not half. I make less adventures in what I consume because of that, which is bad for the industry as a whole because they also make less adventures in what they create. The creation of XBLA, PSN and Wii ..something-or-other, the Apple game market, even Facebook, has made a huge shift towards cheaper and simpler games that still play good, still work just as good, and can sometimes even last just as long as big budget games. Usually of teams less than 10 people at that.

Anyway...as I was saying before I went off on that tangent.
This whole "cutting losses in short term" mentality is seriously holding back society as a whole, from internet to videogame industry to even government. (except for dat military budget, gotta kill dem terrorists!)
"Gotta spend money to make money" used to be a brilliant term, used by all the hotshots in the industry, now it is just meaningless and laughed at.
It's just insane... really insane.

Re:Depends on the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Fewer people. Continuous quantity -> Less. Discrete quantity -> Fewer.

Re:Depends on the time

[JMJimmy]

Thank you. +1

On a side note, this report is shit. paraphrasing... Bell Canada throttles 65% of the time... actually they throttle 100% of the time from 4pm to 2am weekdays and during another set time period on weekends. Rogers throttles 100% of the time period (they're facing some consequences for their 'accidental' game throttling)

And 4-5% false positives is a huge error rate and doesn't account for what level the throttling is taking place on (your ISP could be fine and an intermediary is not)

Re:Depends on the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Close. The usual prescriptivist distinction actually has to do with whether the noun is mass or count. This is correlated with distinctions of continuous/discrete, but is not the same. You can see this distinction by talking about summary statistics, for example: "The standard deviation was fewer than 1.4 defects per shipment."

But mostly I just like pointing out that prescriptivist pedants don't actually know anything about language or the usages they criticize, and encourage you to shut up and stop fostering vague fears about grammar in the general population. Many varieties of English license use of "less" with count nouns, and this usage has been attested for centuries. There's no sense in fighting it except to prop up your own ego.

Re:Depends on the time

[DarkOx]

Cheap tickets! I can hardly think of consumer good that has inflated in price as much as move tickets have over the past decade.

Re:Depends on the time

[rot26]

So you admit that you're simply propping up your own ego?

Re:Depends on the time

[Ant2]

Lately, Comcast has been depositing nearly 100% of the checks that I have sent to them. If they continue to cash my checks at this rate, I will be force to throttle back the check writing to 50% of the invoice amount. During times of peak demand of my money, it is only fair to other utility providers who also require a portion of this limited resource. With throttling in place, which should only affect the top 1% of my creditors, everyone can continue to enjoy "unlimited" payments.

Re:Depends on the time

[rsandwick3]

Example should be "less than 1.4," by the same clause-shifting test that helps in choosing "I" vs. "me:" "The standard deviation, in defects per shipment, was less than 1.4." The error is easy to make because "defects" is discrete and near the comparator, but the comparison is with 1.4, not with the unit of measurement. (As long as we're nagging the grammarasses...) Ego propping is fun!

Re:Depends on the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, that's not correct. There is no "clause-shifting test" that would produce "The standard deviation, in defects per shipment, was less than 1.4" because there is no shifted clause in your example ("in defects per shipment" is an adjunct prepositional phrase, with "defect" no longer the syntactic head of the dependent to "less"). In your example, "1.4" is the head of the noun phrase, while I specifically picked a noun phrase that was headed by a clearly count noun. So it is the countedness of "defect" that matters in the example I gave.

Re:Depends on the time

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Every network on the planet does that.

The article is horribly light on details about how the test was actually conducted. If you run it with unlimited bandwidth and connections, then you will always see "throttling" because that's how TCP/IP functions. A better test would be to setup a small swarm and restrict the number of connections and bandwidth for each host. Then run the test continuously, and observe the results after a long period of time.

BP? they could not throttle the oil let alone...

[Anonymous Coward]

..bit torrents, me thinks you mean BT.

If necesary means "if we're full".

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't mean "if it's daytime".

Re:If necesary means "if we're full".

[compro01]

So "if necessary" means "24x7x365.25 because we've been funneling the "infrastructure improvements" fund into our bonuses and stock dividends".

Re:If necesary means "if we're full".

[Coren22]

Yes, but only if the company name is Comcast...or is it Xfinity?

Re:If necesary means "if we're full".

[compro01]

Yes, but only if the company name is Comcast

or at&t or Verizon or Mediacom or Time Warner or Bell or Rogers or Telus.

Comcast is actually probably almost the least-worst in regards to infrastructure. They look to be the only ones getting their asses in gear with regards to IPv6, though it's fairly trivial for them as DOCSS 3.0 requires IPv6 support.

Re:If necesary means "if we're full".

[Coren22]

Verizon DSL/Cell maybe; FiOS is wonderful, and I have pushed it pretty hard at home without slowdowns are throttling.

First?

[Anonymous Coward]

F........i.........r............s............t...... p......o......s........t

-----
Sent from my BT iPhone

my netflix is more important than your BT

[alen]

me streaming cartoons and being able to watch them is more important than someone taking an extra few hours to download their blu ray rips

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Pi1grim]

Somehow I doubt that. The point is that people pay for that bandwidth. If your provider fails to provide what people pay for — then he is to blame. Not people using what they bought from him.
Imagine if phone companies handled calls the same way they handle data: first you would pay for "unlimited 24/7 connection" and then you would discover, that you as well as sever hundred clients are all connected to one line. Should you start complaining that your calls are more important then those, of all the others or just make the provider do his job and provide the advertised service?

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[samkass]

What if electricity providers had to guarantee that every house in the country could consume the maximum current draw their connections are rated for at any given moment? I think the industry is young enough that everyone's still figuring out the right model under which to sell and provide service.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Anonymous Coward]

The electricity providers have never had to throttle my connection, or anyone I've ever heard of.... If they did then we would be hearing some pretty large fucking complaints (weather emergencies, knocked over pylons and stolen cable notwithstanding).

I pay to be connected to their supply, and despite the fact that they have never claimed it was unlimited - it has never failed me in that respect.

I pay to be connected to the ISP's on an unlimited supply, a claim they make on every fucking advert and website they have (as does every competitor) - yet they tell me that I have to share and it's only as 'unlimited' as they can manage....

I think the complaints are extremely fucking valid.

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:my netflix is more important than your BT

[alen]

the phone company has never had the ability to service 100% of their customer base at the same time. it's been proven for decades every time something happens you get an all circuits are busy message if too many people try to call

the advertised bandwidth is not full internet bandwidth but up to your CO. BT you still have their internet gateway while netflix and other big companies use CDN's to stage their data inside the ISP's network so there will always be preference for some data

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Perhaps you've never heard of the United States? We've had rolling blackouts over here several times. In fact, it looks like many places in the world have had rolling blackouts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout#Texas You do realize that rolling blackouts are, indeed, one method of throttling. As the GP said, electricity providers cannot provide everyone with the full rating on their service entrances today. If everyone tried to reach the peak that their equipment was rated the grid would sag and electric plants would go offline to protect their generators and transmission lines. As someone who lived through rolling blackouts in California just several years ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis, it is hard to believe that nobody you ever heard of has had their electricity throttled.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Bucky24]

The difference is that the electricity companies never CLAIMED to be able to give every household max current draw at any given moment (AFAIK). When I signed up for Comcast I was told "You can have 16 down, 6 up." Whenever I get close to the bandwidth that I was told I could have I get throttled down. Yes, there was the fine print in the contract saying "you can't actually have these speeds 'cause our network can't handle it", but doesn't that imply false advertising?

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[icebike]

I pay to be connected to the ISP's on an unlimited supply, a claim they make on every fucking advert and website they have (as does every competitor) - yet they tell me that I have to share and it's only as 'unlimited' as they can manage....

Seriously?
Can you post one single advertisement where they claim you have unlimited data?
Please only post those where you have taken the time to read the fine print you overlooked the first time.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Nyder]

Really? Perhaps you've never heard of the United States? We've had rolling blackouts over here several times. In fact, it looks like many places in the world have had rolling blackouts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout#Texas ...

Sucks to live in Texas, this we already know...

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, bullshit. Comcast never claimed to be able to give you anything either. Guaranteed they said 'UP TO 16 down, 6up', and not in fine print either. If you want a connection with guaranteed speeds, buy one. It will cost you probably 10x what you are paying now, but obviously your usage is important enough to warrant that.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[MBGMorden]

If they advertised that, then they should absolutely be able to provide it.

I'm not wanting the max speed my equipment is capable of - hell everything in my home LAN past the cable modem is capable of Gigabit per second speeds. What I do want though, is that if the ISP offers me some advertised rate - say 6MBps, then they ought to be able to handle me using up to that amount of bandwidth at any given time.

And truthfully, I don't even think overselling their network would be such a problem if they were more reasonable about it. If providers were capable of delivering at network that could sustain people using more like 20-25% of their maximum capable bandwidth, then most people wouldn't be in as much of a bind. Instead, many are adding data caps that can be hit using 2 or 3% of your bandwidth.

Compare it to a buffet - not many people are going to care if you have some fine print that caps food consumption at 8 plates. If you advertise "All you can eat" and then have some fine print that cuts you off after 1 cup of soup, then people will rightfully complain.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Ant2]

Big difference. Electricity is a metered service. "Unlimited" Internet is not, at least in theory.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[inhuman_4]

What if electricity providers had to guarantee that every house in the country could consume the maximum current draw their connections are rated for at any given moment?

Then they had better lower the rated maximum current draw per house! The issue is that the ISP have a very good estimate of how much bandwidth is needed and what the usage bell curve looks like, and intentionally offer services they know they cannot provide.

The problem is the TelCo's advertise a speed and don't deliver. I would understand if the throttling if it were temporary, sure no problem. But if they have failed to solve the issue 5 years running, that is just nonsense. The issue of some users slowing down the system is not the consumers problem. I didn't buy a internet party line or time share, I bought a service from a company and I expect them to provide it.

The companies need to a) limit/segregate heavy users so they don't disrupt regular service, or b) stop signing people up for a service they are unable to provide. The ISP industry is the only system I can think of where companies get away with blaming poor service on their users. If only 8/10 phone calls made a connection, or you had blackouts 6 times a month, your credit card only worked 5 times a week, water 300 days a year, etc. people would pitch a fit.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

No, WE seem to not want them to use that model. Given how everyone here and in other parts of the internet seem to fly into conniptions for hours on end any time anyone mentions the word "metered" anywhere within eight paragraphs of the word "internet".

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[DavidTC]

Yes, but there's a difference between emergency unexpected situations, and standard operating procedure.

The phone system might get overloaded in a disaster and everyone understands that, but I sure as hell would be pissed if, to make a phone call normally, I had to wait in queue for two minutes until a line opened up.

Phone companies: We can only serve 10% of the capacity we claim to provide at once, and about 2% is normally in use, so everything works except for emergencies.'

ISPs: 'We can only serve 10% of the capacity we claim to provide at once, and about 25% is in use normally, so we've decided to stop actually supplying the service we've sold to people we think are over-using it, and in fact we've built automated systems to do this.'

Everyone understands things fall apart in disasters, or even in expected fringe times. There's a reason, back when pizza places did '30 minutes or it's free' stuff, they always exempted holidays and sporting events. But we're not talking about any sort of unique event. ISPs are throttling all the time, they have are, quite simply, completely overselling their capacity. At all times.

Hell, no one would really care if throttling showed up at, oh, eight in the evening because everyone was on Hulu. Or the net connection was a little slow over Thanksgiving. People would bitch, but we'd understand.

But there's a difference between 'can be slow at peak times' and 'throttled all the time because we don't even have enough capability for normal usage'.

If ISPs don't want to buy more capacity, all they would have to do is stop claiming to provide stuff they don't. Which probably will require actual laws, because some ISPs being honest will result in the lying ISPs gettting the customers.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[skids]

Power companies charge by the amount of power used.

Not necessarily. Saner economies implement revenue decoupling to remove this perverse incentive from the marketplace.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[mollymoo]

> If your provider fails to provide what people pay for — then he is to blame.

If your provider isn't providing what they are contracted to provide you do have a legitimate cause for complaint. But almost always in the cases where people complain they are in fact getting what they paid for - the ISP never promised you dedicated bandwidth and no traffic shaping on your residential connection and you haven't paid the going rate for that kind of connection.

If you shop around for dedicated bandwidth with an SLA and guarantees of zero traffic shaping and zero contention you can most certainly get it. Expect to pay at least an order of magnitude more than you pay for your basic residential connection.

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[RajivSLK]

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.

They tried to do that in Canada and everybody went apeshit crazy. The federal government got involved and there were protests in the street (really) and ultimately the isps were ordered to abandon it. To be fair the the ISPs wanted to charge a monthly fee with a low cap plus something stupid like $2.50 /GB for overages.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=canada+usage+based+billing&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Re:my netflix is more important than your BT

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketing a service as unlimited and then later artificially limiting it makes the service not unlimited, and thus the marketing false.

It's really not that hard to grasp, unless actively trying not to.

Honest marketing should be a legal requirement. Dishonest marketers should be held accountable. This is not too much to ask.

Web surfing != Bittorrent

[SSpade]

Any article that starts off with the problems of a web page not loading, then goes on to explain that it's because ISPs are throttling a different, completely unrelated protocol is either very confused or intentionally deceptive. It's the NYT, so "confused" is a fair bet.

Re:Web surfing != Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Any article that starts off with the problems of a web page not loading, then goes on to explain that it's because ISPs are throttling a different, completely unrelated protocol is either very confused or intentionally deceptive. It's the NYT, so "confused" is a fair bet.

Slightly OT, but this has got to be the most politically correct invocation of Hanlon's Razor I have ever seen. Well done, Sir.

Re:Web surfing != Bittorrent

[DriedClexler]

Well, it could be that torrenters have started disguising torrent packets as web traffic by sending them through port 80, making ISPs throttle websites as a countermeasure ...

Just kidding, it's probably journalist confusion!

Re:Web surfing != Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me see if I can go for the politically incorrect version then:

The dumb-fucks at NYT are being fucking retarded. They're too stupid to be maliciously dishonest because the Jew owners are retards.

Re:Web surfing != Bittorrent

[_0xd0ad]

You are the one who appears to be confused.

Nobody said anything about throttling bittorrent. The ISPs are detecting bittorrent activity and then throttling everything.

Re:Web surfing != Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

you're wrong. if you knew what glasnost does, you will see that the tool defines "throttling" as, and detects, *difference* between throughputs of bittorrent and regular web traffic. if everything from the customer's home is being throttled, it would not see this difference, and it won't tell you that you're being throttled.

Re:Web surfing != Bittorrent

[cthulhu11]

The irony is that every single time I've tried to use this Glasnost tool, it's told me that the server was too busy.

Probably...

[ackthpt]

Probably a defect in a Clacks tower along the Grand Trunk.

Damn you, Reacher Gilt!

Re:Probably...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably a defect in a Clacks tower along the Grand Trunk.

Damn you, Reacher Gilt!

Rarely do I wish I had mod points, but you, sir, deserve +1 Internets for this.

Re:Probably...

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially since I posted all thee messages to this thread.

I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

Once these ISPs learn that we're entitled to everything we want, they'll finally have to stop throttling us. Then we can continue to consume content without paying the people who spent their lives creating it.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[djsmiley]

Ah, you forget not everyone wants payments, and because you use the same tool someone conducting a illegal act does, it should therefore be outlawed?

I torrent masses of linux isos. Much love.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

No one said you weren't entitled to some perfect level of Internet performance on torrents, regardless of anything. Perish the thought!

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[icebraining]

That depends on the contract one has signed.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[thestudio_bob]

Once these ISPs learn that we're entitled to everything we want, they'll finally have to stop throttling us. Then we can continue to consume content without paying the people who spent their lives creating it.

Um... how is mimicking the BitTorrent protocol taking money away from people? It's not. You, just like the people who pay you, are so scared of losing control you will go to any means to suppress a technology instead of innovating and coming up with new business models that make it easy for people to consume your product.

Of course, I'm sure it's just cheaper to buy politicians and people like you.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[orichter]

I've got no problem with them throttling, but throttling and then calling your plan unlimited is False advertising, and should be outlawed. Perhaps we need some new language to describe what they are actually doing, but Unlimited is not it.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

That attitude doesn't validate our entitlement.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

So you want them arrested for disagreeing with you on the meaning of "unlimited"? Or do you just want them fined?

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[pla]

Once these ISPs learn that we're entitled to everything we want, they'll finally have to stop throttling us.

7/10. Try "Once these ISPs learn that we're entitled to" the goddamned level of service we signed up and paid for.

Matters of legality belong in the courts, not the infrastructure.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

Hey, I completely get it. You're entitled, entitled, entitled.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

And perhaps the content creators will realize that they are not special little snowflakes and not every idea that comes out of their heads is genius. Maybe if they start charging reasonable prices for their wares and if the governments of the world pare back copyright to a reasonable level, people will actually have respect for them again.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

Who cares about "content creators"? You're entitled. What does that have to do with them?

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Anonymous Coward]

hey i have insight cable they also throttle my online gaming and i have to pay extra for a package to just do that. so before you open your mouth and spout propaganda try and remember this "the customer is always right"

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[CRCulver]

And perhaps the content creators will realize that they are not special little snowflakes and not every idea that comes out of their heads is genius. Maybe if they start charging reasonable prices for their wares and if the governments of the world pare back copyright to a reasonable level, people will actually have respect for them again.

This claim comes up a lot on Slashdot, but I disagree. The cat is out of the bag, young people are already used to getting films and music for free. The industry could lower prices, but actually completing a financial transaction for content is more work than just going to YouTube and typing in the name of the song you want to hear for free. The physical artifact (CD, DVD) is increasingly considered a luxury, which people will pay for if they wish but avoid otherwise, so lowering prices isn't going to solve anything.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

If you want to talk about entitlement, you have to include the creator class. Nobody has a feeling of something for nothing more than they. Most see copyright as a lottery ticket, or as a reason to work hard for one album and live off of that for the rest of their unproductive lives. They steal from the public domain (Disney, etc.) and never give back. And people like you act surprised when the common person has zero respect for copyright anymore. I'm 30, my grandchildren will doubtfully see the Beatles in the public domain.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[RatherBeAnonymous]

If something is advertised as "Unlimited" and then a limit is applied, it is, arguably, false advertising. That opens the ISP to civil suits. Class action, anyone?

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

Are you saying you're entitled because creators are bad? Because I think most people consider themselves entitled without regard to anyone else being good, bad, or indifferent.

But hey, whatever gets you the things you're entitled to, that's what matters.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

Good idea. They'll learn, once and for all, that you're entitled to "unlimited" performance on every packet. What else could "unlimited" possibly mean? Obviously, it means you get what you want.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[AlamedaStone]

Once these ISPs learn that we're entitled to everything we want, they'll finally have to stop throttling us. Then we can continue to consume content without paying the people who spent their lives creating it.

I agree. The entitlement of the unwashed masses doesn't override my entitlement to send my grandchildren to college for a job I did once.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[dada21]

They never said:

1. Unlimited speeds
2. Unlimited data

The term "unlimited" is from the AOL-centric dial-up days where you had a limited amount of connection hours.

Unlimited still means *unlimited connection time*.

It's been discussed before. Read your TOS and the fine print on advertising.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Bucky24]

While I agree with your other post about people feeling entitled to content that they didn't pay for, I think you're going a little overboard here. To use a car analogy, it's like renting a car that is supposed to have a 150 hp engine (that's horsepower, not health/hit points) and then being told if you actually get up to 150 at any time your engine will automatically throttle back down to 50 hp. Yes, it's not your car, you're just paying for the privilege of using it, and the people who you got it from have every right to throttle it down, but in that case they shouldn't advertise a 150 hp engine when they know they'll never let you get that high. I feel entitled to my ISP telling me what speeds I can ACTUALLY get before being throttled down.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

I've always considered the last 80 years or so to be a bit of a golden age for the content creators. Technology has caught up to culture in that we can now share it effectively over any distance. It is possible to monetize is, perhaps not at the level that they're used to but still at a profit. Look at what iTunes and Netflix have done. Netflix put a pretty serious damper on casual piracy because it was easy and cheap. If the **AA want to continue hamstringing new innovators they will eventually see their distribution models go up in smoke as people start caring less and less about bought and paid for laws. Cooperate and/or innovate, don't treat your customers like criminals, and tighten your belts a little. Simple advice, I doubt anybody will pay it any heed.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Sure, and creators are entitled because teh pirates are bad. But hey, as long as they get what they're entitled to that's what matters.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[fa2k]

This seems like an elaborate troll, but I'll bite. Your argument is confusing

[...] Then we can continue to consume content without paying the people who [created it]

(emphasis mine) You seem to be arguing that BT or high transfer rates are used mainly for pirating, and throttling only affects self-righteous people who like to get stuff for free,,

No one said you weren't entitled to some perfect level of Internet performance on torrents, regardless of anything. Perish the thought!

Is this supposed to somehow be related to your initial argument? Otherwise, well done, sir, I wasted 5 min trying to parse that argument.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[gnasher719]

To use a car analogy, it's like renting a car that is supposed to have a 150 hp engine (that's horsepower, not health/hit points) and then being told if you actually get up to 150 at any time your engine will automatically throttle back down to 50 hp.

Your car's engine doesn't actually produce 150 hp most of the time. Not even near 50 hp most of the time. To drive at 70 mph constant speed on a straight road in a resonably efficient car only uses maybe 15 hp. Even when accellerating you don't get anywhere near the 150 hp until the rpm of the engine is excessively high.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[jamstar7]

More like, you rent the same car the rental company rented out to 6 other people. You're supposed to get it 24/7 according to the rental agreement, but it's way overbooked. So, you only get to use it a fraction of the time you paid for.

ISPs consistently oversell their bandwidth. It's more profitable than actually upgrading their capacity.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

But this is about packet throttling. We're entitled to un-throttled packets.

Content creators are just bystanders. Content creators can't be given credit for why we're entitled to un-throttled packets.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[dyingtolive]

I'd like to offer my ISP 70% of their bill one month and then when they come after me, complain about how they're the "entitled" one like it's a bad thing.

I believe your line of thought requires some realignment. If I'm pay for a service, and I get a lesser service, then I am not getting that service. If I am paying for the lesser service, then fucking say so. Don't set my expectations and then fail to deliver.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[PoopCat]

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.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[jamstar7]

I'm 30, my grandchildren will doubtfully see the Beatles in the public domain.

No they won't. THEIR great-great grandkids MIGHT be able to sing 'Happy Birthday(C)' without paying royalties, but that's about it.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Kohath]

Short answer:

Throttling is an outrage against the entitlement mentality of people interested in this news. Otherwise, why would anyone care much?

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[fa2k]

OK fair enough, thanks for the explanation. I'd argue that it's correct to have a feeling of entitlement for a service that one is paying for, but you are right that one can't expect a perfect service 24/7 on a consumer plan.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[KingMotley]

You are an entitlement nag. You know the service you have. You might not have realized it when you got it, because you didn't PAY ATTENTION. You want some government body to step in and make rules and laws so YOU don't have to READ stuff BEFORE YOU SIGN IT. You know very well now what your service is. If you don't like it, please switch to another provider, and stop whining that you didn't know/read what you were getting.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[bws111]

Do you have a service level agreement stating guaranteed speeds, latencies, etc? If not, it is highly unlikely that you paid for anywhere near what you think you did. A real T1 line (1.5Mb/s) from AT&T costs $430/month. A T3 line (47MB/s) can cost up to $13000/month. The only way most people can afford internet service at all is by sharing the cost with a whole bunch of other people. Sharing the cost also means you are sharing the resource with them. Sorry, but your $50/month does not entitle you to any specific performance.

And before you say 'they shouldn't advertise it then', note that they ALWAYS say 'up to' a certain speed, and they NEVER say 'at least' such a speed.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[lgw]

I'm pretty sure there has never in my life been a content creator who forced my to consume his wares and pay a fee. Pretty sure that at worst they're offering content for a fee, which I can take or leave if the price is right. I don't think I'm any the poorer if I ignore them.

Conent distributors, OTOH, do all that annoying MAFIAA shit, but they'll be dead in a generation.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[pla]

The only way most people can afford internet service at all is by sharing the cost with a whole bunch of other people. Sharing the cost also means you are sharing the resource with them. Sorry, but your $50/month does not entitle you to any specific performance.

I understand that, and don't expect to literally get the "up to" speed 24/7/365.24.

I do, however, expect to "fairly" compete with other users for the available bandwidth. That way, when everyone gets to enjoy sub-dialup speeds right after dinner, the ISPs might actually feel enough pressure to invest at least enough to bring us up to 2nd world broadband speeds.

Hell, South frickin' Korea has 100Mbps residential service, and I, living in the last remaining superpower (albeit in its twilight days), have to bounce signals off a goddamned satellite just to get 1.5Mbps with a half-second latency?

We don't need network neutrality (just) to avoid a "walled garden", we need it to force the ISPs to upgrade rather than throttle us.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[dyingtolive]

You are an entitlement nag. You know the service you have. You might not have realized it when you got it, because you didn't PAY ATTENTION.

Oh, I know what I have. I am not happy about it, but I have no choice, because there IS no choice. That does not mean I, contrary to your apparent belief, need to be happy about it. In your mind, my options are apparently "shut up and be grateful like the good little pleb I am that I get service, period", and "live as an anachronism".

You want some government body to step in and make rules and laws so YOU don't have to READ stuff BEFORE YOU SIGN IT. You know very well now what your service is.

Yeah, laws and regulations that would force, well, companies to not lie in their advertising. I know, crazy, right?

I'll be honest, with the ISP I'm using right now, my roommate actually pays the bill. He's not in a contract. He 'purchased' service over the phone. I was standing right next to him while he did it. The only signature he provided was on a piece of paper that was from the tech that came out to check the wiring while we set up the router and confirmed the cable modem worked. This piece of paper signed was to acknowledge that the tech arrived on site and that services were rendered. No where that I am aware of did he actually agree to terms and conditions stating that his service would be throttled under X conditions, nor to what extent. Of course, I suppose it's possible that they slipped in some kind of "...and you also agree to the terms and conditions that are buried in our craphole of a website." Not that we actually see problems, though we are sure that they're throttling, it doesn't impact us much. It's the principle of the matter.

I should warn you that I'm also one of those _absolute_ sociopaths that finds the lack of truth in advertising seen to be appalling. For example I think that prescription drugs shouldn't be able to advertise.

If you don't like it, please switch to another provider, and stop whining that you didn't know/read what you were getting.

Again, I see that talking point parroted. I am not sure that works the way you think it works. Out of curiosity, which one of the ISPs was it that you worked for? You have kind of a shitty attitude, and I was thinking that I wanted to avoid subsidizing your paycheck. There's always internet at work after all.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[imric]

No it's only a contract if it's between large corporations. Anything paid for that benefits an individual (provided they make less than 7 figures - you know, the 'value producing' class) is an 'entitlement', and it's only right and legal that those so-called 'contracts' go unfulfilled. Only corporations and the upper class are worthy of 'entitlement'. And false advertisement? piffle. That's just the guaranteed right to free speech that the founders MEANT to grant to corporate entities.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[phluid61]

Perhaps we need some new language to describe what they are actually doing, but Unlimited is not it.

You could call it the Fricative model. Flow is restricted but never Stops. By the way, my experience here in Australia is that they say it's "capped, but we'll throttle if you go over" as opposed to the other, which is "capped, but we'll charge your for excess". I don't recall ever seeing an "unlimited" plan here.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not now, or have I ever worked for any ISP. I have ordered, and researched Internet connections for companies in the past, and have had multiple dial up lines, isdn, frame relay, fractional t1's, full t1s, multiple bonded t1s, fractional ds3s, dsl, and cable connections. And I always knew what I was getting before I got it, including the connections I have at my house -- from AT&T for DSL, and Comcast for cable Internet.

I actually practice what I preach, and I read every contract before I sign it.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[igreaterthanu]

Once these ISPs learn that we're entitled to everything we want, they'll finally have to stop throttling us. Then we can continue to consume content without paying the people who spent their lives creating it.

You aren't entitled to everything you want, but you are entitled to everything you have already paid for. There is a big difference.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[djlowe]

It's the principle of the matter.

And what principle would that be, exactly? By your own admission you don't even pay for the service, which gives you no say at all. In addition, your roommate apparently signed up without a contract establishing any terms of service at all - that makes him an idiot, and you even more so for thinking that you are entitled to complain.

No where that I am aware of did he actually agree to terms and conditions stating that his service would be throttled under X conditions, nor to what extent

Which would make sense, considering the fact that he didn't agree to any terms at all.

Did you even bother to read what you wrote before posting it? It proves the parent's point: You ARE an entitlement nag.

I should warn you that I'm also one of those _absolute_ sociopaths that finds the lack of truth in advertising seen to be appalling

I'm not sure why you'd feel the need to warn us, it's not likely that anyone here really cares, not even if your sociopathic tendencies were to turn to violence. After all, what are you going to do, kill us over the Internet with the sheer force of your moral outrage? If you were to go postal in the real world, odds are the people that you killed wouldn't be any of us. I do, however, pity your roommate...

To quote the late Warren Oates in his role as Sergeant Hulka: "Lighten up, Francis".

Regards

dj

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[dyingtolive]

It's the principle of the matter.

And what principle would that be, exactly? By your own admission you don't even pay for the service, which gives you no say at all. In addition, your roommate apparently signed up without a contract establishing any terms of service at all - that makes him an idiot, and you even more so for thinking that you are entitled to complain.

I pay him back for part of the service, though my name is not on the actual bill. Were my name to be on the bill, would it make my complaint any more legitimate? You sound like you would so eagerly white knight for ISPs that it wouldn't matter much if Charter sent jackbooted thugs to beat me in the street. Tell you what, instead of being insulting and snide, deriding me for having the sheer audacity to complain about a service so graciously provided to me, point me to an ISP in the St. Louis area who can provide me with a 20 mpbs, hell, even a 10 mpbs, connection with an SLA. Conditions are that they offer a contractual agreement not to throttle bandwitdh, or even if they are going to throttle, then a well thought out and concise list of circumstances and rates for which they will do so. That's all I'm asking here. I don't want the magic network fairy to hit me with her magic wand. I just want expectations set. If I'm an "entitlement nag" for wanting that, then I guess it's not as bad a thing as I initially felt it was meant to be.

No where that I am aware of did he actually agree to terms and conditions stating that his service would be throttled under X conditions, nor to what extent

Which would make sense, considering the fact that he didn't agree to any terms at all.

I know: You'd think legitimate business would be more inclined to draft contracts for services rendered, or something. I'm not a lawyer; I try not to worry about such things.

Did you even bother to read what you wrote before posting it? It proves the parent's point: You ARE an entitlement nag.

Yes... yes I did. Why? How does wanting expectations set make me an entitlement nag? Why are you so completely angry that I just want to understand the conditions in which that the QoS changes?

I should warn you that I'm also one of those _absolute_ sociopaths that finds the lack of truth in advertising seen to be appalling

I'm not sure why you'd feel the need to warn us, it's not likely that anyone here really cares, not even if your sociopathic tendencies were to turn to violence. After all, what are you going to do, kill us over the Internet with the sheer force of your moral outrage? If you were to go postal in the real world, odds are the people that you killed wouldn't be any of us. I do, however, pity your roommate...

I warn you because I feel absolutely fucking insane when I see posts like yours, and I somewhat hope that you can ignore my posts, because I can't help but have that fear in the back of my head that I am in fact crazy, and somehow I will infect the rest of you. I warn you because something happened sometime recently causing people to stand up in the name of corporations. Why, I have no idea. It's off-topic, but the only arguments I've seen against the OWS crowd is that they're "entitled", or that they're "jobless hippies". I still have yet to see anything consisting of an actual argument not made from emotion with regard to them. This is the same situation. Why do you feel like they're justified in throttling? Why do you feel like they are in spite of the legal monopolies and subsidies?

Why do you feel sorry for my roommate? While I'm sure he appreciates your apparent concern and goodwill, when he heard of this story, he became concerned, as most of the cursory throughput tests he did during peakhours showed less than optimal results already and asked me if I thought we had a problem with getting throttled and needed to try to do something about it.

To quote the late Warren Oates in his role as Sergeant Hulka: "Lighten up, Francis".

Yea-fucking-verily.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[KingMotley]

If you want an internet connection with a SLA, all you have to do is call AT&T and request a fractional DS3 line. I haven't checked in a while, but last time I did, it was approximately $12,000/month for a full DS3, and probably $6000 for a 1/4. There, your expectations are now set, enjoy. Oh, you wanted the SLA, the no throttling, but you didn't want to pay for it. I see.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[dyingtolive]

Great. While I realize that such a connection is impractical for a home connection, I notice that you sidestepped my alternative, which was a

well thought out and concise list of circumstances and rates for which they will do so. (throttling)

And again, I really don't get why people are still being snide. Why are you so angry at me for wanting this? Is it worth it? From a technical standpoint, it shouldn't be difficult to provide. I mean, they HAVE proceedure for this, right? It's not just some guy tossing commands at a packet shaper on a Saturday night, throttling because he's pissed his girlfriend dumped him and he got stuck working the late shift, right?

Just give me something telling me how much bandwidth I can use before I start to get throttled, or how much percentages of what type of traffic will cause throttling, and for either of those, at what rate the throttling commences. THOSE are the expectations I want fulfilled.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[KingMotley]

The answer is simple, they already have a written policy, although you likely don't like the answer. It's they can throttle your connection whenever they want for whatever reason they want. Does that make you happier now that you have it written down (again)? Didn't think so.

Why do some of us get a little peeved when entitled fools like yourself start going off at the mouth? Because we actually know what the costs of an internet connection is, what the connect fees, wire fees, etc are because we've worked with them since the beginning of time. You demand business class connections.. That cost $6,000 a month with a full SLA, and bandwidth guarantees, then complain about your $50/month bill. You want to get the government involved to start mandating this or that because you don't like the service you are getting. Of course, they don't realize that won't make things just magically better. Your ISP will just have to raise everyone's monthly rate to cover the cost of implementing the new policies, or buying more upstream bandwidth etc. I don't want to pay more just because there are a few vocal minority that want to ruin a good thing for the rest of us.

You want a full SLA, no throttling, full bandwidth available at all times? Like I said, it's available in almost every city in the united states, however, you won't like the price (most likely). You DO have a choice, you've ALWAYS had a choice. People complain that there is no alternative, but there IS. What they always mean is that they can't get everything they want, and still pay sub $50 a month. There is a reason for it, and all the whining, name calling, and pointing figures at "the big bad companies" out to screw the little guy comes off as ignorance.

Personally, I'm tired of paying for a government agency to try and protect everyone from themselves. That isn't what this country was founded on and goes against everything in the constitution. People like you are ruining this country one stupid legal ruling at a time. Turning what was supposed to be the country of the free into the country of the nanny state that watches everything everyone does and takes all their money to pay for the privilege of it.

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[dyingtolive]

The answer is simple, they already have a written policy, although you likely don't like the answer. It's they can throttle your connection whenever they want for whatever reason they want. Does that make you happier now that you have it written down (again)? Didn't think so.

Okay, so there's a few problems with that. How do I know Comcast isn't filtering Netflix/Hulu because it wants to force people back to cable? How do I know AT&T isn't filtering VOIP because it wants people to give up and go back to POTS? I suppose your reasonable answer is "You don't and you shouldn't. Consider yourself lucky that they're even willing to take your money."

Why do some of us get a little peeved when entitled fools like yourself start going off at the mouth? Because we actually know what the costs of an internet connection is, what the connect fees, wire fees, etc are because we've worked with them since the beginning of time. You demand business class connections.. That cost $6,000 a month with a full SLA, and bandwidth guarantees, then complain about your $50/month bill. You want to get the government involved to start mandating this or that because you don't like the service you are getting. Of course, they don't realize that won't make things just magically better. Your ISP will just have to raise everyone's monthly rate to cover the cost of implementing the new policies, or buying more upstream bandwidth etc. I don't want to pay more just because there are a few vocal minority that want to ruin a good thing for the rest of us.

Again, I'M OKAY WITH THROTTLING, if the network genuinely needs it to not go tits up. That's not unreasonable. Just give me a less bullshit set of circumstances it will happen beyond "Cause we feel like it." I never said I wanted the government to come rushing in and saving me. I just checked. Not said once.

You want a full SLA, no throttling, full bandwidth available at all times?

I feel like you're not listening. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on the fact that I'd accept merely a list of circumstances and rates for which that throttling will occur. If that's the case, I apologize.

Like I said, it's available in almost every city in the united states, however, you won't like the price (most likely). You DO have a choice, you've ALWAYS had a choice. People complain that there is no alternative, but there IS.

If the 'choice' is outside of the budget of at least 90% of individuals in the country, then it's not really a choice and I would hope you realize that. Your 'helpful suggestion' is so far beyond the constraints of my requirements anyway, that I gotta imagine perhaps you're in sales.

What they always mean is that they can't get everything they want, and still pay sub $50 a month. There is a reason for it, and all the whining, name calling, and pointing figures at "the big bad companies" out to screw the little guy comes off as ignorance.

Actually, I can't in good conscience say that they are out to screw the little guy. Their system isn't open enough for me to be able to honestly say one way or another. Also, we pay about $70/month last time I checked for internet, because we bought the top tier package. We were actually at once point wanted to go to one of the small business packages, but the ISP balked at giving that to us because we were in a residential area. Still not sure what difference that would make, but perhaps if I had an EIN they'd let me do it. Something I suppose I will need to look into in the future.

Personally, I'm tired of paying for a government agency to try and protect everyone from themselves. That isn't what this country was founded on and goes against everything in the constitution. People like you are ruining this country one stupid legal ruling at a time. Turning what was supposed to be the country of the free in

Re:I'm sure they'll stop

[Tharsman]

But when was the last time any ISP or phone offered unlimited speed?

They offer Unlimited Data left and right, but they always state a speed limit, and never even claim that speed limit will be consistant, they always say "up to X MbPS".

Re:BP? they could not throttle the oil let alone..

[ackthpt]

..bit torrents, me thinks you mean BT.

Give them time. David will likely see BP take over BT, because too big to fail is always a good thing.

Send a Message!

[twiddler69]

Anyone using ComCast for their ISP, look for an alternative because it's guaranteed they throttle your bandwidth! Send them a message and maybe they will stop this Internet Control!

Re:Send a Message!

[unimacs]

Problem is that locally at least they have horribly inconsistent download speeds and that some throttling is probably necessary. I don't know what their user agreements are like. I don't have a problem with throttling in principle as long as the provider is very clear about the circumstances that will trigger it. There needs to be truth in labeling.

Re:Send a Message!

[rrossman2]

Mine here hasn't been throttled, and I have comcast at two different locations on two different segments of their networks (in two different towns about 35 minutes apart by car)

Re:Send a Message!

[ryocoon]

Yeah, when I have the option to use Comcast as opposed to _EVEN WORSE_ options of MediaCom, then I'll maybe think about it. Right now, I wish I had Comcast's crappy levels of service and ridiculous capping schemes because they are nothing on the shit MediaCom pulls.

It isn't the Nineties

[tepples]

Probably a defect in a Clacks tower along the Grand Trunk.

Probably because it the nineties are over, and there is no more time for Clacks.

Re:It isn't the Nineties

[Anonymous Coward]

"Probably because it the nineties [wikipedia.org] are over, "

You mean, it's no longer the century of the fruitbat.

Why is this not considered theft?

[sgt scrub]

If they throttle you so your bandwidth does not exceed the agreed upon bandwidth speeds then it should be no big deal. If they shape you below your agreed upon speeds because "it is busy time on their network" it is theft.

Re:Why is this not considered theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

well if they're throttling your bittorrent, it probably falls under anti-theft.

Re:Why is this not considered theft?

[Enderandrew]

Linux distros distribute over BitTorrent, along with some legal movie services, and some game updates. If I'm not mistaken, WoW distributes their large patches with BT.

It is probably fair to say the majority of BT traffic is used for piracy, but not all is. And either way, a common carrier is supposed to treat all traffic as equal. Admitting to policing the data on their network is actually bad, because it then opens them up to liability for anything illegal they don't police.

Re:Why is this not considered theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Find me an ISP in this day and age who aren't advertising their service as, "speeds up to..." and you might actually have a point.

Re:Why is this not considered theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it isn't theft. Depending on their advertising it may or may not be fraud, but theft involves taking someone's property hence depriving him of the use of that property. Copyright infringement for example is also not theft, because when you download a song the party you downloaded it from still has the song. Theft has a very specific meaning, and there are many activities which aren't theft, many of which illegal.

Re:Why is this not considered theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on what you've actually agreed upon. In my country, it's normal that the advertised speed is the theoretical maximum you can achieve with the advertised plan. The actual speed depends upon not so well specified factors...

Re:Why is this not considered theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they throttle you so your bandwidth does not exceed the agreed upon bandwidth speeds then it should be no big deal. If they shape you below your agreed upon speeds because "it is busy time on their network" it is theft.

How do you figure? You were promised speeds up to a certain amount, you were not guaranteed anything. Go buy a dedicated circuit which does have a bandwidth guarantee before you start calling it "theft". (And technically it would be Fraud at worst but most likely a simple Breach of Contract, not "theft")

There are multiple types of throttling. You will always see some throttling just due to the nature of TCP/IP. Especially if you run your torrent client with no limit set on connections or bandwidth usage; it will attempt to consume as much as possible until it saturates your connection and has to back off a little bit. The point being that you can "throttle" yourself on accident if you don't set up your client properly to start with, even absent any Evil on the part of the ISP.

The tests being run are not specified in any detail, and since the article is behind a NYTimes paywall it's worthless as a source of information.
How this type of test should be performed, but usually isn't, is as follows:
Setup the torrent software to only open a limited number of connections. Keep this reasonable, say around a dozen. Then limit the bandwidth to somewhere between 10% and 25% of the connections advertised speed. This will ensure that we're not running into simple network congestion throttling, or basic TCP/IP protocol reactions to bandwidth over-use. Now, if we run this test for an extended period of time, and see no changes to our torrent thoroughput, or other protocols, then it's safe to say the ISP is only "throttling" in cases of network congestion or link over-utilization. But if we see a sudden drop-off after a certain period of time, or sudden impact to other protocols which only appears when torrents are running, then we know the ISP is engaging in hostile throttling where they are reacting to your use of torrent specifically, as opposed to a reaction to scarce network resources.

Most of the "tests" I see ran just throw the door wide open and then scream "Look! Look! They're Repressing Me!" if speeds do not remain at 100% of the advertised theoretical rate. Not scientific.

That low eh?

[itchythebear]

I'm not surprised at all that ISPs are throttling internet speeds. If a cable company throttles netflix and youtube data then that increases the probability that people will get frustrated and just watch cable tv (especially the advertisements). If Verizon deprioritizes VOIP traffic to reduce call quality then that increases the probability people just go back to using P.O.T.S (which they conveniently sell). Maybe my tin foil hat is a little to tight today, but I think the only real way to prevent this kind of stuff form happening is a decentralized internet.

Re:That low eh?

[bonch]

Maybe my tin foil hat is a little to tight today, but I think the only real way to prevent this kind of stuff form happening is a decentralized internet.

The way to prevent businesses from doing things you don't like is to stop being their customers.

Re:That low eh?

[RazorSharp]

That might work in a big city where multiple options exist, but rural customers don't have that luxury. Often there is only one option available, or very few; usually the cable company and the phone company - neither of which will be reasonable on price unless you bundle with their other services (that you often don't need/want).

So basically, the options for "stop being their customers" include:

1. Don't use the internet at home. That just isn't feasible for most, or they wouldn't be shopping for an ISP in the first place.

2. Move. Again, just not feasible for most, especially considering the state of the housing market and the fact that most people who live in rural areas don't want to live in a city.

Not to mention the fact boycotting a cable/telephone monopoly isn't going to hurt their business in the least bit. And this isn't exclusive to the countryside - suburban areas are also often limited by monopolies on telecommunication services.

Re:That low eh?

[watermark]

Eventually, someday, there will be legislation to prevent this. I'd have to imagine that any decentralized, mesh network is going to be much slower than any throttle these ISPs put on the traffic.

Re:That low eh?

[loimprevisto]

To be fair, in most places there are options for satellite. Many rural locations also have small-business ISPs that can set up a LOS shot. Not always economical, but definite alternatives to the nationwide ISPs.

Re:That low eh?

[MBGMorden]

So as a complaint against throttling you're going to go to a *satellite* connection where the default speed is slower than throttled broadband and if you exceed a miniscule amount of data traffic (using on the order of 5gb per month) they'll throttle you to dial-up speeds?

Satellite simply isn't a real option. The model of marketplace competition is sorely broken in the broadband industry today. It's mostly just a bunch of localized monopolies.

Re:That low eh?

[Miamicanes]

Satellite has terrible latency that's about 50% due to the laws of physics, and 50% due to the horrible way Hughes implemented the physical layer protocol (ie, Hughes' equipment takes already-bad latency due to the 50,000-mile round trip and adds another 500-1500+ ms of latency on top).

The ideal protocol for rural broadband would be IDSL + satellite in parallel. Send everything both ways through both routes, and simply ignore (and terminate, if it would matter) the one that would finish second. So, you'd do your https handshaking via the IDSL link, send the page request via IDSL (short, no latency), receive the response via both (with the IDSL response probably finished faster since the html page is likely to be shorter than everything it references), then request the linked content via IDSL and receive it in parallel via satellite. Likewise, for email, you could handshake with the mail server via the IDSL link, have it send the header responses via IDSL, and send the bulk of the message and attachments via satellite. You'd be shoveling around lots of redundant data, and you'd need a more sophisticated router at the end user side with application-level gateway capabilities (to decide which chunk to use and which chunk to abort and/or throw away), but it would go a long way towards making satellite more usable. The nice thing about IDSL is that it can be made to work just about anyplace urban enough to have a paved road, landline phone service, and electricity. It's not really fast, but it has almost zero latency compared to satellite, so a transport protocol that used each independent stream to its best use would give you generally fast service capable of transparently bursting (with higher latency) as needed.

Re:That low eh?

[nine-times]

That might work in a big city where multiple options exist

I live in NYC, and I have no real options. It's Time Warner Cable, dialup, or cell phone networks. Dialup and cell phone networks aren't real options.

Re:That low eh?

[Stormthirst]

It'll never happen because someone in the Republican Party will bitch about regulations, and how it's killing business/innovation etc.

Re:That low eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a cable company throttles netflix and youtube data then that increases the probability that people will get frustrated and just watch cable tv

Most ISP's do not do this, because they would risk violating various Unfair Trade Practices laws.

If Verizon deprioritizes VOIP traffic

You don't understand how traffic priorities work. If you purchase a data connection from them, ALL your traffic is marked as data. If you choose to use some of your data traffic to carry VOIP packets, that's your business not theirs. All your internet traffic is marked at an equal priority, so there is no way to "de-prioritize" your VOIP data because it's already at a "best-effort" priority level.
Or to put it another way, priority queues only apply within a single network they do not get passed along to the next provider. Whatever you mark within your own private network will not matter when you hand your traffic to anybody else.

Maybe my tin foil hat is a little to tight today, but I think the only real way to prevent this kind of stuff form happening is a decentralized internet.

That really has nothing to do with anything. The only real issue is when an ISP intentionally throttles a specific protocol, or your entire connection because they see traffic of a certain type. And that has nothing to do with de-centralization, it has to do with laws and regulations.

Go back to dial-up?

[tepples]

For people living in Comcast territory and outside the service area of FTTH, or for people living in Comcast territory who have give up a land line in favor of a cell phone with an unmetered voice plan, what's the alternative to Comcast other than dial-up?

Re:Go back to dial-up?

[twiddler69]

If there is no alternative then their isn't much you can do, but if DSL is available in your area I would make the switch!

Re:Go back to dial-up?

[Anonymous Coward]

dry-loop DSL.

Re:Go back to dial-up?

[compro01]

You mean that service that pretty much disappeared in 2005 when the FCC removed the line leasing requirements from ILECs?

So what?

[bonch]

So what? ISPs are allowed to regulate the traffic of their networks. Why is this a story?

Re:So what?

[Bing Tsher E]

It's a free speech issue because people are not being allowed to shuttle around the same prerecorded comtent to and fro to each other that none of them produced. Though I suppose by some definitions the fact that the program material was ripped and re-encoded makes it original content. The noise and artifacts are protected free expression I guess.

Re:So what?

[Enderandrew]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

They're supposed to treat all traffic as equal, and yet they don't. ISPs have been caught lying to the government and to consumers about specifically throttling traffic from BitTorrent, Netflix and online games.

Re:So what?

[Frosty Piss]

Comcast is a "common carrier"? Random XYZ ISP os a "common carrier"? Really?

Before you parrot something, get a clue about the subject.

Re:So what?

[Enderandrew]

I have a web server hosted in location X. My ISP is company Y. I transport data to people hitting the site all using different ISPs. That data is carried by several different companies. They are very much covered under the definition of common carriers.

Telephone companies were considered common carriers. ISPs have fought back against being branded common carriers, but they aren't any different in principle to phone companies. The FCC hasn't gone out of their way to rule definitively on the matter, only vaguely determining that telecommunication companies can be considered common carriers.

The net neutrality debate could be made considerably simpler if the FCC would outright call all American ISPs common carriers.

Re:So what?

[Frosty Piss]

ISPs have fought back against being branded common carriers, but they aren't any different in principle to phone companies.

Maybe not "in principle", but in fact of law, yes, cable and ISP are not "common carriers". And that's what counts.

Re:So what?

[Enderandrew]

I don't believe any court has ruled on the matter. And as the law is written, they would be easily covered by the definition.

Please show me where the FCC or any major court has ruled definitively that they are not.

Re:So what?

[compro01]

The Supreme Court in NCTA v. Brand X ruled that cable ISPs are "information services" rather than "telecommunications services", and thus are not subject to the taxes and regulations of the latter, which includes common carrier status. The next month, the FCC reclassified DSL ISPs as the same (link (PDF)), which also removed the requirement that incumbent carriers lease lines to independent ISPs, effectively obliterating competition.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe any court has ruled on the matter.

Do you know how to use Google? Try this on: "Brand X". You're a fucking MORON.

I can attest to this.

[mcalchera]

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.

Re:I can attest to this.

[Machtyn]

I'm also an Insight Comms customer in Louisville. I was going to come on in defense of them. But as I think about it, with their recently being acquired by a bigger provider and I having noticed suspect reduction of quality on line (for my 10Mib/s subscription)... I'll have to look into this a little more. However, what other choice do I have? Bellsouth/AT&T? DSL maxes at 6Mib/s and most people don't even get that.

Do remember that you pay for service "up to" 20Mib/s.

Re:I can attest to this.

[mcalchera]

I understand, but why do I pay an extra premium for "up to" 20Mbits, when I'm getting a (very small) fraction of the 10Mbit service? And you're right, choices are very little in Lexington as well. In Louisville I've heard UVerse is a decent service but that's pure word-of-mouth, I have no experience with it myself.

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.

Re:I can attest to this.

[DriedClexler]

That's stupid. If you're only going to accept the results of your chosen "official speed test site", why bother making it even do a stacked test? Why not just have the site spit back entirely artificial results each time?

I mean, if you're not going to allow an unbiased judge anyway...

Re:I can attest to this.

[petermgreen]

Because then you can tell them that their connection is fine and be technically telling the truth. Their connection IS fine it's the core network that isn't ;)

Not that I agree with such tactics but I can see the point in them...

Re:I can attest to this.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not really legally binding...in fact it would seem like that would be knowingly participating in fraud via telecommunications which cross state lines.

Re:I can attest to this.

[Machtyn]

I understand the complaint. Whenever I'm asked to upgrade to 20Mib/s or higher, I usually say, no thanks. I know my 10 Mib/s is not being fully utilized, even when I have 2 computers and a Wii streaming video and/or playing online games. Insight's bigger concern for me would likely be the 5-10Gib I'm pulling per day, hehe.

Get rid of the FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

And all laws preventing anybody from setting up an ISP of any kind. Then you will see thousands of competitors pop up that will pressure on the current firms in place into being more honest.

That they're selling spectrum is retarded. It takes billions for anybody to get in the way it is now. The current system is closed to anybody that doesn't play ball with the FCC. Let's have a free market.

Re:Get rid of the FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it the FCC's fault when a City basically permits a Cable operator an exclusive license to provide broadband, and justify it by saying DSL is there also? Why can't other Cable operators come in and setup? because they didn't pay the City enough dough to get a "permit" to add their lines to the poles.

Re:Get rid of the FCC

[Miamicanes]

> And all laws preventing anybody from setting up an ISP of any kind.

And what laws might those be? If anything, we need federal laws to force municipalities and deed-restricted communities to allow competition, instead of allowing them to sign away the rights of their residents in near-perpetuity. The fact is, housing is about as non-elastic of a market as you can get, and it's hard to guarantee your own rights to competitive broadband in perpetuity EVEN IF you do your homework and make it a point to check out before buying a house somewhere.

Hell, before I bought my house, I actually (over the realtor's vehement objections) made the offer contingent upon DSL availability. I did my homework, verified that the neighbor had DSL, and signed off on the contingency. Two weeks before moving in, I called AT&T to order DSL, and was informed that the DSLAM was at capacity, and I couldn't get service until somebody moved, died, or disconnected. Fuck. Damn. Crap. And several other key expletives.

Living in a neighborhood with a HOA (and, in South Florida, and most parts of the country, it's damn near impossible to buy into a neighborhood less than 50 years old that DOESN'T have one), there's the ever-present risk that some future board might cut a deal with someone like Comcast to eliminate physical access to competition. If it ever happened, short of going postal and doing very, very illegal and immoral things in retribution to punish them for screwing up my broadband, there's not much I could do because the house is (slightly) underwater and unsellable. The idea that someone can casually sell his house and move to take advantage of preferable free-market broadband opportunities elsewhere is a sick joke that fails miserably in real life.

Here's some food for Libertarian thought: the FCC's supposedly oppressive yoke of burdensome regulation is PRECISELY the reason why you can tell your city and/or homeowners association to fuck off and go to hell if they try to prohibit you from pointing an 18" dish at the sky and doing an end run around their local mischief. When a higher level of government tells a lower level that it's not allowed to limit your freedom, that's a GOOD thing worthy of celebration, regardless of whether or not it passes an ideological purity test.

Re:Get rid of the FCC

[DragonWriter]

And all laws preventing anybody from setting up an ISP of any kind.

The main legal obstacle to setting up an ISP that actually reaches customers is property rights.

Advertised service

[Enderandrew]

Telcos like to cry about heavy users, but at the same time they brag about the capabilities of their service. Just don't try to use the service as they've advertised it.

Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all advertise that you can watch streaming video over their data networks, but then cap data and cry foul because people want to stream video. AT&T ran an ad campaign about the original iPad launch and how you could watch video over their network on the iPad, and then two weeks after the iPad launch they ended unlimited data because they didn't realize people would stream video over the network.

ISPs brag how fast their network is, and talk about downloading large files, streaming video and playing games. But God forbid you want to do any of those things with the service you're paying for.

These companies are subsidized by my tax dollars to build infrastructure. They charge more for less service than their counterparts around the globe. They advertise a service and then complain when people buy and want to use the service.

And while people would scream foul if Google got into the ISP business (despite allowing a Comcast/NBC/Universal merger) frankly I would welcome some competition.

Re:Advertised service

[omnichad]

Netflix + public transit commuters = what was AT&T thinking? If I had unlimited data on a smartphone I'd even pay the Apple tax to buy a video out cable to watch Netflix in a hotel room.

He won't be able to download it, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

His connection is throttled.

My experience has been strange

[_0xd0ad]

Sometimes, firing up a bittorrent client and downloading something will rapidly cause my internet to slow to a crawl... I'm talking pings of 2500+ to google.com.

However, capping the upload speed to something ridiculously low (10-30 k/sec) seems to fix the problem.

It makes me wonder if the upstream pipe is just saturated with all the connections made in the P2P network.

Furthermore, it doesn't always happen. Sometimes it does just fine with higher upload speeds, so it must have something to do with time of day and/or network conditions.

Re:My experience has been strange

[Nyder]

Sometimes, firing up a bittorrent client and downloading something will rapidly cause my internet to slow to a crawl... I'm talking pings of 2500+ to google.com.

However, capping the upload speed to something ridiculously low (10-30 k/sec) seems to fix the problem.

It makes me wonder if the upstream pipe is just saturated with all the connections made in the P2P network.

Furthermore, it doesn't always happen. Sometimes it does just fine with higher upload speeds, so it must have something to do with time of day and/or network conditions.

Well, if you had bothered to google how bit torrent works, or proper settings, you'd find that they suggest capping your upload speed to half your upload speed.

For example, i have DSL, with like a crappy 70k upstream. I run my bittorrent at 35k UPstream cap. And as long as I'm not getting greedy and trying to download a bunch of shit at once, my connection if fine.

If i'm playing EQ2, i cap my download at 350k, and i can play eq2, download stuff with utorrrent, no problem.

Most bit torrent programs suck right out of the box and don't perform well unless you change settings, which most users are way to stupid to understand.

Re:My experience has been strange

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're on a heavily saturated cable node with a lazy ISP the upstream channels are going to get saturated quicker. You can saturate your own upstream quick but the total upstream for your node can get saturated too. Without being able to send ACKs back in time it won't be able to hit any particular high speeds.

Re:My experience has been strange

[_0xd0ad]

that they suggest capping your upload speed to half your upload speed

But my download speed is generally 200-500 k/sec (during off-peak times can reach 1 m/sec), and capping the upload speed only seems to help once it's been set to some ridiculously low speed, much less than half of the download speed.

Re:My experience has been strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Google "Linux Wondershaper" for some information on this phoenomenon; even if you don't want to run a Linux router it's educational.

Re:My experience has been strange

[burning-toast]

Cable tends to be 1/5 of the download bandwidth allocated for upload. Check your bandwidth with a speed test and then multiply the upload result by 0.90, then cap it to that. The extra 10% wiggle room is for DNS lookups and other traffic. Just be sure to check for the bits/bytes problem between different tools.

- Toast

Re:My experience has been strange

[lgw]

that they suggest capping your upload speed to half your upload speed

But my download speed is generally 200-500 k/sec (during off-peak times can reach 1 m/sec), and capping the upload speed only seems to help once it's been set to some ridiculously low speed, much less than half of the download speed.

Admittedly, the original quote could have been worded better, but it wasn't that hard to understand. You do realize that your max upload speed is very small compared to your max download speed on most consumer ISPs, right?

Re:My experience has been strange

[Anachragnome]

"However, capping the upload speed to something ridiculously low (10-30 k/sec) seems to fix the problem..."

After monkeying around with BT settings over the last year or so, I've come to the conclusion that Comcast is simply applying a different cap to P2P bandwidth.

I encountered the exact same threshold that you did--30kb/sec Upload. But there is a caveat--I can exceed that cap in the middle of the night.

Here is how it usually plays out. I have my BT upload capped at 30kb by default. At night I can slowly jack it up in increments of 5kb until, eventually, my entire download just stops (pretty sure it is a batch RST packet send)--I do not lose connection with any peers or seeds, it is as if I just started the download and am once again polling nodes...then suddenly the download starts again, right back up to the cap of 1.5mb/sec (I've NEVER had a better BT download rate with Comcast).

Basically, I can adjust my UPLOAD to the point where I am getting the greatest amount of download without triggering that landslide RST on all my BT connections. At around 3am locally, that can be as high as 165kb/sec upload and still get a stable, uninterrupted flow of data.

The odd thing about this is that this is all on top of whatever else I am doing on the internet, such as gaming, Netflix streaming or surfing (including browser downloads!). Netflix used to "reset" on television reruns a lot, but that has stopped for the most part after firmware updates to my Samsung DVD player. I still don't know if that was Netflix responding to throttling on the part of Comcast with a firmware fix, or simply an upgrade that fixed something. Either way, I don't have any problem with throttled Netflix and I'm not sure I ever did.

In short, yes, Comcast throttles the shit out of me as far P2P is concerned, but that is only if I upload a lot, and even then it is only the P2P traffic they mess with. It sounds to me like they have done only what they can to combat serial-uploaders--I am constantly getting data from other Comcast customers (based on IP), but always in trickles.

Re:My experience has been strange

[_0xd0ad]

Yes, I was thrown by the wording and assumed he meant to say half the download speed.

Re:My experience has been strange

[Kunedog]

However, capping the upload speed to something ridiculously low (10-30 k/sec) seems to fix the problem.

It makes me wonder if the upstream pipe is just saturated with all the connections made in the P2P network.

It's that, and the fact that higher upstream traffic causes higher (corresponding) downstream traffic. In fact, manipulating upstream traffic is exactly how linux QoS works. This is a very well-written guide:

http://tomatousb.org/tut:using-tomato-s-qos-system

You should look into getting a router that supports third-party linux firmware with QoS, like Tomato and TomatoUSB (not DDWRT, its QoS GUI (among other things) is long-broken with no fix in sight). Then you can not only cap your upstream traffic, but also give priority to certain traffic (such as DNS, HTTP, IRC, POP, IMAP, etc.) so that your internet connection is always responsive no matter what you're doing.

Re:My experience has been strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up bufferbloat. It describes the problem most people have with p2p or any upload usage without some type of QoS severely kills the latency of the connection.

In short: TCP depends on dropped packets as a method for measuring the overall throughput speed of the line and to know when to back off. Today most routers are tuned such that packets almost never get dropped, but buffered to hell. This causes the TCP congestion control to basically fail when it comes to measuring congestion, but throughput stays relatively good.

When you cap your upload "ridiculously low" you are essentially fixing this issue at your end by not allowing the buffers to fill.

bufferbloat.net has more much discussion on the issue. It's a complex problem to solve, though simple steps can be taken to fix most of the issue.

Re:My experience has been strange

[_0xd0ad]

I tried changing the QoS rules to de-prioritize bittorrent traffic. No luck.

Re:My experience has been strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no. Saturating the upstream can definitely hurt your downstream bandwidth (if you can't send acks you can't get more data). It is possible to do this, but in my experience bittorrent usually doesn't exhibit the problem unless you are saturating the bandwidth with something else.

More likely this is based on the number of connections you have open. If you have a cheap ass router (i.e., quite a few of the popular ones), there isn't enough memory in the routing table for a large number of connections. Not only that, but it won't tear down a connection for several minutes. The symptoms of this are that when you open up a large number of connections everything slows to a crawl. They remain slow for about 5-10 minutes after you stop the activity and then everything returns to normal. The definitive test is that if you reboot your router everything suddenly works for a while and then slows down again. The fix is to either get another router or configure the the connection tear down time to something reasonable like 10 seconds.

Trying to figure out where the problem is is sometimes difficult. Sometimes it is in your cable/DSL modem itself. You can test this by hooking your computer directly to the modem and see if it still exhibits the problem. If it does, you are likely not going to be able to fix it because there is probably no option on your modem to alter the connection teardown time. My modem was like that. However, it actually had an option to turn off NAT. This will also fix the problem since it no longer needs to maintain a routing table (just make sure you hook up a router between your computer and your modem if you want NAT).

If you can't do any of those things, and you can't change providers, the other thing you can do is set up your bittorrent client to severely limit the number of connections you can handle (At one time I had something like 10). Your bittorrent will be slow, but at least you won't blow your entire network out of the water.

The other possibility is that your ISP is throttling you based on a number of factors (and open connections can be one of them). In Canada, Bell is well known to do this. However, from the description of your problem I think it is almost certainly a routing table problem.

Troll? People really do think they're entitled

[Kohath]

Why is this being modded "Troll"? I'm not trolling. People really do think they're entitled. It couldn't be more obvious.

Throttling bittorrent is an outrage against our entitlement.

Re:Troll? People really do think they're entitled

[PoopCat]

Throttling bittorrent is an outrage against our entitlement.

You misspelled "what we paid for". I'm really not sure from where your misplaced holier-than-thou sense of injustice springs, but it seems the only person seeing what you consider obvious, is you.

Re:Troll? People really do think they're entitled

[Kohath]

You misspelled "what we paid for".

Perfect performance on every single packet. Or it's false advertising and the ISPs are evil.

Re:Troll? People really do think they're entitled

[PoopCat]

You act like that is somehow wrong.

Re:Troll? People really do think they're entitled

[Anonymous Coward]

You act like that is somehow wrong.

That is often the sign of somebody with an entitlement attitude: they take their stance on right and wrong as fact and act accordingly, and nothing can contradict it. People who disagree with their world view must be crazy or something.

Resolving Host

[Anonymous Coward]

That's my favorite. What throttling? You're pings to IP addresses looks fine.

I don't mind throttling.

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they don't block or terminate connections, I am fine with them throttling a non-realtime protocol like BT.

Selective Throttling

[mk1004]

As has been pointed out here, none of the power companies, telcos, and ISPs could provide 100% of all customer's maximum usage at the same time. Throttling isn't in and of itself bad. The issue is if an ISP throttles, say, my Netflix download not because of congestion, but because Netflix competes with their services.

Dear Anonymous Idiot,

[bussdriver]

I would love to setup an ISP; however, ignoring all the regulations I find that I still have a massive logistics problem and do not have sufficient funds to run the cables to the high paying customers.

I also am short of telephone poles, since no regulations are there to allow me to use the existing ones. I looked at wireless but tests indicate there is too much noise from competing services running into the bandwidth I wanted to use, along with the differing pockets of open bandwidth between locations there is also a risk that somebody will jam up my signals after I installed my network. At least I'm free to attempt anything I want, being that there are no more regulations... Maybe I'll just pull down power to run my computer to lower my power bill... I don't think my neighbors should watch TV anyhow...

Is it neutral?

[PPH]

If the broadband operators throttle during heavy traffic times to manage their network, that's one thing. But if they throttle BitTorrent while their 'partner' web sites or streaming video services are still running full speed, I'd be concerned. Very concerned. The former is just a means of keeping a rickety network from collapsing. Yeah, its false advertising if they promised you certain up/download speeds (but only at odd times when no one else is on line). But if its a means of driving business to their preferred services (or crippling all the others that won't kick back part of their revenue), its time for the antitrust people to step in.

Anyone know of a test suite that looks at simultaneous BitTorrent/commercial site download speeds?

yes

[unity100]

if electricity providers sold me unlimited power draw. they are not. they are charging per usage. isps, are not doing that.

free content

[Sebastopol]

I'd like to know if the bandwidth throttling happens to normal users, or people trying to download pirated videos and music. I could care less about the latter, but the former is quite troublesome.

Re:free content

[Anonymous Coward]

A torrent is a torrent. The ISP can't tell the difference.

This comes as no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Most sessions of websurfing I do end up with me throttling something...

BT customers - there is an alternative

[jc79]

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.

throttling or congestion?

[Anonymous Coward]

How are they differentiating from intentional throttling and simple congestion? A protocol like bittorent makes lots of connections, meaning lots of TCP overhead and round trips. It'll be more sensitive to congestion.

Gov. intervention

[hesaigo999ca]

When you pay for a service that not only is advertised to be what it says, but also shows you on your monthly bill, the payment for that service, are you not obliged to fork up that service, and if you downgrade it, are you not subject to legal action, and being this is a nation wide problem, should the government not step in (as they do when they hear about price fixing) and set them straight with fines that are so massive, not only could the government get out of debt quicker, but once or twice would be enough for those big companies to not even attempt doing it again...

Re:Gov. intervention

[Joe Mucchiello]

If the Gov't fines the ISPs for this, what do you think happens to the average price of service at those ISPs?

Re:Gov. intervention

[hesaigo999ca]

Only in Canada do we pay so much for the same services that other countries have, maybe because greed is what is wrong with it...so get the government to give fines AND fix the prices to be unchangeable, like rent control.....it is law and they are after all OUR government, they can do anything, we just have to make them believe if they don't we will revolt, else they will keep getting payed off by those companies and line their pockets with their dirty cash.

Re:BP? they could not throttle the oil let alone..

[Fjandr]

Maybe BP is buying BT to learn how to throttle pipes when they lose control of the flow rate.