ntl traffic shaping/blocking ports?

CyberGhost

Has anyone experienced some slow downs with ntl lately? my emule started acting up, I changed ports and it's still says "ports unreachable" and constantly drops connections.

tman

I'm getting full whack (700KBps+) out of torrents at the moment, using a random high port for those...
are you using a router at all?

CyberGhost

Under further inspection, turns out to be my router(started working when I turned upnp on), sorry! false alarm

christophicus

What is upnp should I turn it on for my ntl connection?

CyberGhost

It stands for Universal Plus and Play, it's a feature in routers, it automatically and correctly forwards ports between LAN computers and WAN(when a request is received from WAN/Internet, it directs the signal to the correct computer on your LAN, you don't have UPnP on or manually directed ports, the signal won't know where to go, and you'll have connection problems, not all programs need forwarded ports, but most P2P programs do), so you don't have do it manually, if you are directly connected with modem only, you are fine!

Lots of places recommend turning Upnp off for security reasons, but for some reason my router won't forward ports when I enter them manually, so, have to turn it on.

Snake Plisken

No there is deffo a problem with NTL and torrents, my upload speeds for the last 2 weeks have drift down to 2 or 3 kb's a second I've checked everything Port forward is set up correctly but speed for uploading is crap, download seem to be the norm (crappy 4.5 meg max on a 6 meg service)

Snake

christophicus

Have you put an upload limit on your client app?

Big Chief

ping times on uk servers 20-39, must be doing something better recently.. are we still routing through amsterdam?

must check that infact...

Big Chief

1 12 ms 5 ms 21 ms 10.92.32.1
2 21 ms 14 ms 7 ms 089-101-162073.ntlworld.ie [89.101.162.73]
3 17 ms 10 ms 8 ms dbln-t2core-a-ge-2-2-0-0.aorta.net [213.46.165.9
]
4 24 ms 44 ms 28 ms nl-ams-rc-02-pos-2-0.chellonetwork.com [213.46.1
60.17]
5 26 ms 39 ms 22 ms uk-lon01a-rd1-ge-7-0.aorta.net [213.46.174.33]
6 32 ms 21 ms 22 ms 213.46.174.126
7 18 ms 26 ms 26 ms te1-3.cr05.tn5.bb.pipex.net [195.66.224.29]
8 27 ms 35 ms 21 ms g1-1-6.ar01.tn5.bb.pipex.net [62.72.140.142]
9 29 ms 24 ms 22 ms ge-0-0-0-3801.jolt-gw.cust.pipex.net [212.241.24
1.14]
10 23 ms 20 ms 28 ms secure.jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65]

Trace complete.


no more routing through holland ^

wonder how long it will last for this time though

fatherdougalmag

Amsterdam still there:

4 24 ms 44 ms 28 ms nl-ams-rc-02-pos-2-0.chellonetwork.com [213.46.160.17]

christophicus

O well at least the ping times are fairly good.

Snake Plisken

Hi Nope I've checked that upload is unlimited... Also tried Bit Tornado same issue.

Snake

christophicus wrote:

Have you put an upload limit on your client app?

christophicus

Im getting ****e torrent speeds againn.

DemonOfTheFall

Well I confirmed last week that they're blocking port 119 for newsgroups in evenings, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're blocking or shaping torrents.

christophicus

Hmm this is very disturbing news indeed. Any chance you can take a look adn download a torrent?


EDIT: I have actually been getting a steady 550 KB/s now with my torrents for about 10 mins now . SO either they stopped shaping at 12.40 or they never were. not tonight at least.

Snake Plisken

Is there any way to see what ports they are blocking? I've tried various different ports on my setup with no joy? This UPC crowd are a shower of w@nkers

Snake

OfflerCrocGod

christophicus wrote:

I have actually been getting a steady 550 KB/s now with my torrents for about 10 mins now . SO either they stopped shaping at 12.40 or they never were. not tonight at least.

It might just be that they are traffic shaping during "rush hours" and then removing traffic control in the late hours/early morning. Get your torrents in the middle of the night then to get the best speeds.

ct_roy

something is definitely going on with our good friends in ntl.

my pings have been going crazy this eve (from super fast to super slow - through amsterdam sometimes, staying in dublin others - plus no correlation with dub/amsterdam and good/bad pings)

i also think they must have started meddling with p2p traffic - up to 2 weeks ago my torrents were normally quite stable and consistent

where as now it's next or near impossible to grab anything over 100mb over the course of an evening

where as previous you could pull down 300mb in 2 hours no probs

Bob24

ct_roy wrote:

i also think they must have started meddling with p2p traffic - up to 2 weeks ago my torrents were normally quite stable and consistent

Same here, it was fine +/- 10 days ago and now it is very slow. I also think they are doing nasty things.

But isn't transport encryption in bittorrent supposed to prevent traffic shaping? I tried to enable it in Azureus and I can see most of my connections are encrypted, but it hasn't improved the situation ...

Peanut

Bob24 wrote:

Same here, it was fine +/- 10 days ago and now it is very slow. I also think they are doing nasty things.

But isn't transport encryption in bittorrent supposed to prevent traffic shaping? I tried to enable it in Azureus and I can see most of my connections are encrypted, but it hasn't improved the situation ...

There are a number of different ways for the ISP to prioritise traffic, they could use something like "give x amount of bandwidth to known protocols" and give scraps to the rest etc. i.e. you can still degrade torrent speed without actually recognising what it is.

bushy...

Peanut wrote:

There are a number of different ways for the ISP to prioritise traffic, they could use something like "give x amount of bandwidth to known protocols" and give scraps to the rest etc. i.e. you can still degrade torrent speed without actually recognising what it is.

Finally a bit of sense , " blocking ports " wouldn't make much sense , and sensing p2p might get expensive , cheapest option is to let what you know through at full whack. Kinda like bouncer on the door theory

DemonOfTheFall

It really isn't a bit of sense though. That tactic hammers games/voice comms/everything else that isn't web or email. And if it comes to it, people will just start using port 443 for their torrents.

christophicus

why thank you for letting us know that thatport works for torrents. Why did you say if it comes to it?? is that port used for something else aswell?

Bob24

christophicus wrote:

why thank you for letting us know that thatport works for torrents. Why did you say if it comes to it?? is that port used for something else aswell?

For HTTPS. However you don't chose the port used by the other peer, and they could filter incoming https connections but no outgoing ones (ie filter it when other people use that port to connect to you but not when you use it to connect somewhere else so that your have no problem to access HTTPS we servers), which would make using that port useless because the other peers will be filtered when they try to connect to you, and you can not choose the port you use for outgoing connections.

I find it kind of ridiculous though to filter everything but well known protocols (HTTP/FTP/POP/... are definitely not the services requiring the best QoS)

Dariukas

Snake Plisken wrote:

No there is deffo a problem with NTL and torrents, my upload speeds for the last 2 weeks have drift down to 2 or 3 kb's a second I've checked everything Port forward is set up correctly but speed for uploading is crap, download seem to be the norm (crappy 4.5 meg max on a 6 meg service)

Snake

my upload speed for last 5 days can't get over 5kb/s it used to be 50kb/s with no probs before...

christophicus

My upload speed is hitting 50kB/s no problem

Peanut

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

It really isn't a bit of sense though. That tactic hammers games/voice comms/everything else that isn't web or email. And if it comes to it, people will just start using port 443 for their torrents.

Of course it's an arms race that no-one can win, however more standard services usually tend to be more well defined in terms of packet headers etc., so it can be easier to positively discriminate against them by inspecting packets.

That said, it will never be possible to traffic shape perfectly as any given protocol can usually masquerade/tunnel as something else.

christophicus

I have just opened up Utorrent and done teh port check. Im not getting any downstream of upstream and the port test says the port is blocked. I have not chacnged any settings and utorrent was working fine last night.

Dariukas

maybe your local address keeps changing ? from time to time it happens to me for some reason , so each time i have to change setting in router

christophicus

Hmm utorrent is working for me now. I didnt change anything.odd.

Snake Plisken

Well my upload speed is still piss poor, On Tuesday evening it was hitting 50kb but ever since its gone back down to a max of 8kb's a second, now I know your seeding speed depends on how many seeders and Leechers are on the torrent, but I'm seeding some of my own torrents on private trackers and and there is only 2-3 max leechers, and I"m still getting crap speed. Downloads are fine, So why would they hit uploads???

Snake

Dariukas

I suppose upload takes a lot of bandwidth from their exchanges, and other people suffer because of that... so they decided to lower upload speed on torrents etc... this is my opinion... What i find really strange that any time i do speed test i would get ~500kbps, but once i run torrents upload never gets over 5kb/s... in 8hours i only managed to seed 40mb, and i used to seed nearly 1gb

Snake Plisken

I suppose they know you can't ring up and complain about not been able to seed torrents, as most torrents are seen as illegal by the providers. I blame Comreg for allowing the sale of NTL go through to UPC, since they've took over they have degrade the service and are constantly looking for ways to make their customers pay for a service that is not up to scratch.

Snake

Dariukas

should ISP state that p2p is not allowed on their package??

zarquon

No throttling problems for me.

Peanut

There have been a lot of posts with questions about whether various ISPs are throttling p2p recently, however I think what people are forgetting is that the restrictions might easily be from the ISPs the other clients on a torrent etc. are using.

I don't know if this is more prevalent in the States for example than here, but it could be just that in the last year or so more ISPs worldwide are attempting to throttle it. Would be interesting if anyone had some info about this.

tylerdurden94

I had just come in to check if there was a problem with the ntl download, downloading torrents was ok a week ago no probs but the last few days have been bad, tonite for example tryin to download and not gettin over 30 and as soon as it turned 7 boom it shot up to over 500.

Do you think they are restricting it at certain times?

coward

I'm having the same issue as most people - within the past week or two downloading torrents is painfully slow. I've only got one popular one going at the moment and the download speed keeps spiking - going to about 40kB before dropping down to almost zero for ages. I used to be able to get a torrent within an hour but now it takes most of the day.

I remain within my download/upload limit. I can't exactly complain because I should not be downloading that torrent. I have no other reason for paying for the more expensive package as I don't exactly need 6Mb to get html. Hopefully it's just another new problem they'll fix in a few months.

VeVeX

coward wrote:

I'm having the same issue as most people - within the past week or two downloading torrents is painfully slow. I've only got one popular one going at the moment and the download speed keeps spiking - going to about 40kB before dropping down to almost zero for ages. I used to be able to get a torrent within an hour but now it takes most of the day.

I remain within my download/upload limit. I can't exactly complain because I should not be downloading that torrent. I have no other reason for paying for the more expensive package as I don't exactly need 6Mb to get html. Hopefully it's just another new problem they'll fix in a few months.

Im exactly the same cannot download a torrent even at a steady dial-up speed. Normal website viewing has however improved today. Over the last week or so its painful to browse the web due to the lack of speed and high latency.

Bob24

I was downloading a torrent this evening, very slowly in spite of a very high number of seeds (fluctuating between 0 and 10 KB/sec), and a few minutes ago it got up to 170-200 KB/sec and has been steady ever since. So for me no doubt they are messing around with bittorrent. Anyone else who had problems with bittorrent and is downloading right now and could confirm it is working well?

Snake Plisken

No the speed was fine for a while today now dropped back down to max 5 kb's a second

Snake

OfflerCrocGod

Bob24 wrote:

I was downloading a torrent this evening, very slowly in spite of a very high number of seeds (fluctuating between 0 and 10 KB/sec), and a few minutes ago it got up to 170-200 KB/sec and has been steady ever since. So for me no doubt they are messing around with bittorrent. Anyone else who had problems with bittorrent and is downloading right now and could confirm it is working well?

You posted that at around 11:00 so it seems that they remove the throttling at around 10:30 or so, the solution seems easy enough do your downloading during the night so you get full speed.

christophicus

We shouldnt have to wait though. this is really annoying me now!!

VeVeX

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

You posted that at around 11:00 so it seems that they remove the throttling at around 10:30 or so, the solution seems easy enough do your downloading during the night so you get full speed.

If thats what their trying to achieve then whats the point in having 6meg. Even on a 2meg connection there are few files youd have trouble getting downloaded over night.

tonyj

When did UPC take over? - I just posted to another thread on here where a bunch of NTL users haven't been able to access blogspot.com for a few days now. And over the past couple of months I've noticed that some websites just appear to be 'blocked' - i.e. they give the network error page in Firefox (but I can access them fine on dial-up or on my mobile)

Mostly photo sharing sites, that sort of thing.

So apart from port blocking, is there http site blocking going on as well? - Damn, and I'd been quite happy with NTL up until now.

OfflerCrocGod

VeVeX wrote:

If thats what their trying to achieve then whats the point in having 6meg. Even on a 2meg connection there are few files youd have trouble getting downloaded over night.

They may not be able to sustain smooth browsing during the peak hours unless they throttle P2P.

mower

still no access to blogspots,down 2 days now,waiting to hear from ntl.:mad:

christophicus

Torrents still ****e slow!!

VeVeX

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

They may not be able to sustain smooth browsing during the peak hours unless they throttle P2P.

Everything was fine until the ownership changeover.

Since then there has been a lot of debate about the quality of the ntl service. The service that I initially signed up for has changed dramatically over recent months and its all related to the ownership change and the re routing of the service through mainland Europe.

Lets be honest, the 6meg package is sold to people who like to download. These people including myself download at all times of the day. To limit and block all P2P traffic during the day is capping your use of the service. There was no problem with http speed and download speed prior to the Chello move. They will charge the same money for a crippled service and probably make more themselves due to the inevitably cheaper routing through Europe.

NTL broadband was without doubt the best broadband provider in this country. It has turned into a complete sham at this stage and theres literally no point in voicing frustration towards the idiots in their customer service dept.

christophicus

I would agree with you sentiments I just want to give a possible reason for the poor service of late.

NTL were Using INEX. UPC did not originally have an agreement to use INEX. However now they do as far as I know. I think UPC may not be using their full resources while they are upgrading their network and trying to sort out their routing through INEX I dont think they are maliciously targeting people using torrents. Once they have everything working properly , everything should be OK for us..............I hope.

VeVeX

christophicus wrote:

I would agree with you sentiments I just want to give a possible reason for the poor service of late.

NTL were Using INEX. UPC did not originally have an agreement to use INEX. However now they do as far as I know. I think UPC may not be using their full resources while they are upgrading their network and trying to sort out their routing through INEX I dont think they are maliciously targeting people using torrents. Once they have everything working properly , everything should be OK for us..............I hope.

I hope so too