ISPs Throttling BitTorrent Traffic, Study Finds

hypnosec writes "A new report by an open source internet measurement platform, Measurement Lab, sheds light onto throttling of and restriction on BitTorrent traffic by ISPs (Internet Service Providers) across the globe. The report by Measurement Lab reveals that hundreds of ISPs across the globe are involved in the throttling of peer-to-peer traffic, and specifically BitTorrent traffic. The Glasnost application run by the platform helps in detecting whether ISPs shape traffic. Tests can be carried out to check whether the throttling or blocking is carried out 'on email, HTTP or SSH transfer, Flash video, and P2P apps including BitTorrent, eMule and Gnutella.' Going by country, United States has actually seen a drop in throttling compared to what it was back in 2010. Throttling in the U.S. is worst for Cox at 6 per cent and best for Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others at around 3 per cent. The United Kingdom is seeing a rise in traffic shaping and BT is the worst at 65 per cent. Virgin Media throttles around 22 per cent of the traffic while the least is O2 at 2 per cent. More figures can be found here."

Comments

Re:Good

[Ultra64]

"Chronic torrenters use the bandwidth they purchased. The ISPs greedy oversubscribing of their bandwidth shouldn't affect my typical internet usage that we pay the same amount of money for."

Fixed that for you.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you would like to pay for dedicated bandwidth, you can definitely do so, however you are taking advantage of the cost of the pipe being spread among many people with the expectation they won't all max it out at once. Just a hint, your measily 60 bucks a month doesn't come close to covering a dedicated 50 mbps pipe, it doesn't even come close to a dedicated 1.5 mbps pipe.

Just keep sticking it to the man though.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't, they sell speeds "up to".

File under "No shit Sherlock"

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Name another industry in which you pay for an advertised service and then get far far less.

Would you buy a computer that claims 8GB of ram but you could only utilize 3?
Would you buy a camera that claimed it could take 1000 pictures but only could store 100 maximum?
Would you buy a car that advertised 200 HP but could only output 50 HP?
Would you buy a 3 bedroom house that only has 1.5 bedrooms?
Would you buy a food product with printed 350g on the container but the contents only weigh 180g?
Would you pay for a meal if it claimed it would come with sides that you never received?
Would you buy a gallon of gas if you only got a pint?
Would you buy a 24 pack of beer if you only got 16?

So in what FREAKIN reality is it acceptable for ISP's to charge you for an advertised speed and then offer you something far less then that on average.

Re:Good

[BronsCon]

Then as long as my torrenting doesn't increase your speeds above the "up to" number you're buying from your ISP, you can STFU, you're getting what you're paying for. If my torrenting ever causes your speeds to exceed your purchased "up to" rate, then you can complain about it.

Wait, what? Why are you defending that practice?