NTL/Chorus (UPC) Traffic Shaping on Torrents?

mik_da_man

Hi,

I have just moved to cork and got the 3MB BB from Chorus.
When I do a speed test i get between 2MB and 3MB but torrrents are only going @ around 30 kB/s Max.

I was using the same site on eircom 2MB in Dublin recently and was getting up to 200 kB/s

Anything I'm missing here??...

Mik

christophicus

While there is no official word on this . I believe that Chorus/NTL are implementing some form of throttleing limiting broadband speeds on torrents.

mik_da_man

It does seem like it all right... feckers..

Any way around it??

cheers

Mik

christophicus

Not that I have found, there are many people that were reporting the same problems here before . Although some people were saying they were not haveing any problems. Some people suggest using encryption but if anything that makes the speed worse as you will only be able get torrents off of people who are also using as encrypted client as far as I know.

CuLT

Solution: get a linux server abroad, install a torrent client on it, and FTP/SFTP/SCP/Download the files from it to your machine

This requires no small level of cop with linux though. And money of course.

Colonel Sanders

downloaded a torrent tonight for the first time in yonks. Slow as a funeral (I'm with magnet). Was getting speeds above 200 kb/s not so long ago.

mik_da_man

CuLT wrote:

Solution: get a linux server abroad, install a torrent client on it, and FTP/SFTP/SCP/Download the files from it to your machine

This requires no small level of cop with linux though. And money of course.

you don't happen to have one handy??...;)

carbsy

CuLT wrote:

Solution: get a linux server abroad, install a torrent client on it, and FTP/SFTP/SCP/Download the files from it to your machine

This requires no small level of cop with linux though. And money of course.

Add to that a symmetrical line abroad too with handy upstream... money money money

mik_da_man

OK - this really leads me to the Question
Are they allowed to do this..

They offer 'High' Speed broadband while limiting access to certain aspects of it.
I know this is prob to limit the strain on their network but if they really do limit torrents and the like then this should be clearly stated.

What do people think?..

Mik

dub45

mik_da_man wrote:

OK - this really leads me to the Question
Are they allowed to do this..

They offer 'High' Speed broadband while limiting access to certain aspects of it.
I know this is prob to limit the strain on their network but if they really do limit torrents and the like then this should be clearly stated.

What do people think?..

Mik

Have you checked their terms and conditions and other policies?

Cabaal

CuLT wrote:

Solution: get a linux server abroad, install a torrent client on it, and FTP/SFTP/SCP/Download the files from it to your machine

This requires no small level of cop with linux though. And money of course.

It doesn't require much Linux knowledge, I did it with pretty much no knowledge and it took me about 2hrs to iron out the bugs and get everything running

Torrentflux is a nice little client imho,

The benefit with a dedicated Linux box is even if NTL/Chorus or whoever throttle the hell our or bittorrent they won't throttle http/ftp traffic so you can pull down things at full speed from your Linux box, also saves having a box turned on all the time at home

christophicus

Well when I signed up there was no mention of throttleing or any traffic shaping type features. I dont know about now though.

I would have thought its illegal, false advertising and whatnot, But there is not really any way you can prove that NTL are doing this, and who are you supposed to go to Comreg????? pfffft.

thebman

I'm with IBB and they seem to traffic shape on common bittorrent ports.

I changed mine to port 80 and encrypted the connection and have had no problems since.

Worth a shot.

----
Torrentflux officially has the worst website I've ever seen. I think I've gone blind!

h8red

uTorrent has an option to encrypt traffic.

Click on Options -> Speed Guide.

This statement is beside the "Enable Encryption" check box:

"Some internet providers block uTorrent's communication to limit download speed. Enble encryption if you experience slow speed."

What client are you using?

edit: I always leave this option turned on and I always get full speed when there are enough seeds/peers

BKtje

I assume that it's not just a case of too many peers and not enough seeders?

DemonOfTheFall

Just get a newsgroup account... Really, you'll never look back. Forget paying a fortune for a server abroad with root access and the threat of legal action.

mik_da_man

B-K-DzR wrote:

I assume that it's not just a case of too many peers and not enough seeders?

Nope afraid not

mik_da_man

h8red wrote:

uTorrent has an option to encrypt traffic.

Click on Options -> Speed Guide.

This statement is beside the "Enable Encryption" check box:

"Some internet providers block uTorrent's communication to limit download speed. Enble encryption if you experience slow speed."

What client are you using?

edit: I always leave this option turned on and I always get full speed when there are enough seeds/peers

I'm using Utorrent and tried that with no difference - are you using Chorus?

00sully

what newsgroup would you recomment Demon? I've looked into a few but can never decide if its worth it or not!!

mik_da_man

brim4brim wrote:

I'm with IBB and they seem to traffic shape on common bittorrent ports.

I changed mine to port 80 and encrypted the connection and have had no problems since.

Worth a shot.

Cheers - wil give that a shot

thebman

h8red wrote:

uTorrent has an option to encrypt traffic.

Click on Options -> Speed Guide.

This statement is beside the "Enable Encryption" check box:

"Some internet providers block uTorrent's communication to limit download speed. Enble encryption if you experience slow speed."

What client are you using?

edit: I always leave this option turned on and I always get full speed when there are enough seeds/peers

I use Utorrent on port 80 with encrypted conection. Works fine and seems to get round any restrictions that IBB have put on torrents.

Cabaal

00sully wrote:

what newsgroup would you recomment Demon? I've looked into a few but can never decide if its worth it or not!!

I have no problem with people discussing using bittorrent and usenet and configuration of usenet and bittorrent clients.

But I don't want to see anyone recommending questionable websites or newsgroups, if people do I will be handing out bans

christophicus

What are newsgroups?? I have heard mention of them before when torrents are mentioned , but from their name it sounds like they just give you the latest news , so why are they mentioned in context with torrents?

Cabaal

christophicus wrote:

What are newsgroups?? I have heard mention of them before when torrents are mentioned , but from their name it sounds like they just give you the latest news , so why are they mentioned in context with torrents?

You can use binary newsgroups to download legal and illegal content, however they can also be used to discuss anything from using Apple Macs to how much you might hate Barney....imagine boards.ie but much much older and every topic under the sun covered (with loads of spam messages).

More info on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

eoinok

I have to laugh at people questioning here whether what Chorus is doing (torrent throttling) is legal or not?

And you think bittorrent is legal yea?

Lads, ye haven't a leg to stand on and I fully support any ISP who throttles any sort of p2p stuff if it means that there will be more bandwidth available to "normal" users.

mik_da_man

So What's your definition of a "Normal" user?
Somone who just goes on to check mails, some browsing and post on some boards?

What's the need for 3MB connection than @ alll??...

Mik

aoc

Newsgroups are an old forum-type technology that predates (by many, many years) the likes of torrents and even the WWW.
As the name suggests, they were (and still are) used to carry "articles" (posts). Unlike a Web forum like boards.ie, you can download the articles for offline reading (mind you, in the dial-up era this was a huge convenience) and read the posts offline. Outlook Express and Thunderbird both incluse a news client, and you need a news server to fetch the articles from.
In more recent times, the "download and read later" technology intrinsic in NGs has been exploited to facilitate download of files. "Binary" newsgroups (such as alt.binaries) are places where someone uploads a file (in chunks, due to limitations of the NNTP protocol) and someone else downloads the chunks, reassembles the original file and off you go.
Some news servers on the Internet offer a service that allows you to access these newsgroups and download what's on offer (be it legal material or not, if you know what I mean). Since newsgroups can and are used on a daily basis for legitimate posts, providers don't usually shape NNTP traffic, and you get to download stuff from a single server instead of relying on a peer to peer architecture, much like downloading a file from the Web.

aoc

nuada

eoinok wrote:

And you think bittorrent is legal yea?

There's nothing illegal about bittorrent, some people just use it to distribute copywrited material

Cabaal

eoinok wrote:

I have to laugh at people questioning here whether what Chorus is doing (torrent throttling) is legal or not?

And you think bittorrent is legal yea?

Lads, ye haven't a leg to stand on and I fully support any ISP who throttles any sort of p2p stuff if it means that there will be more bandwidth available to "normal" users.

The use of bittorrent is perfectly legal under every law I'm aware of,

Its what you download that makes it illegal, the fact I can goto a warez website and download copyright software using a http connection, should that make http (port 80) illegal?...no of course not that would be just bloody stupid

At the end of the day bittorrent has many legal applications in relation to releasing large files/content to the masses, bittorrent.com for example now offers legal tv/games/movie downloads in the US and its 100% legal.

The reason ISP's throttle bittorrent/P2P traffic is nothing to do with the legality of it and is more to do with the bandwidth it uses.

While NTL do impose a CAP on there products they do not stipulate any kind of Fair Usage Policy on there Terms & Conditions and as such they might be unfairly throttling ports that are used by common P2P protocols such as bittorrent, if they are doing this without informing customers then people do have a leg to stand on

If a bittorrent/P2P user is within there CAP for the product they signed up to then I fail to see how there doing anything illegal both in the eyes of the law and in relation to the Terms & Conditions of the product and/or service they signed up to, if I have a 40GB cap and I decided to download 35GB of it via bittorrent I'm simpling making use of the product they have supplied to me.

However if your downloading 100GB a month and your service/product has a 30GB CAP then your breaking the Conditions of your service and NTL in this case are well within there rights to follow there own Terms & Conditions and either force you to upgrade to a higher product, warn or terminate your account...that I won't argue with.

Additionally if NTL want to introduce a Fair Usage Policy and block ports I won't argue with that, however they should make there actions clear to customers so customers can make an informed decision relation to which ISP they wish to sign up to based on there needs.

Its obvious you don't understand exactly what bittorrent (applications and protocol) are, I suggest you read up on it and post again when your more informed instead of posting such wild comments.

christophicus

Hear Hear Cabaal , great post.

Thanks guys for explaining newsgroups to me. For most ot them do you need an account?? Or do you have to pay in some way?

CuLT

Cabaal wrote:

It doesn't require much Linux knowledge, I did it with pretty much no knowledge and it took me about 2hrs to iron out the bugs and get everything running

Torrentflux is a nice little client imho,

The benefit with a dedicated Linux box is even if NTL/Chorus or whoever throttle the hell our or bittorrent they won't throttle http/ftp traffic so you can pull down things at full speed from your Linux box, also saves having a box turned on all the time at home

Heh, give me your box's IP and we'll see just how well you've set it up

Just pointing out that it requires a bit of cop. Following how-to guides is all well and good until you're getting DDoS'd or accidentally lock yourself out.
Not to mention if you want to get the best performance. rTorrent and Torrget are fantastic combination that basically automates the entire process. I'm sure we could have a great thread about the best tools... but is is indeed another thread

Cabaal

CuLT wrote:

Heh, give me your box's IP and we'll see just how well you've set it up

Not to mention if you want to get the best performance. rTorrent and Torrget are fantastic combination that basically automates the entire process. I'm sure we could have a great thread about the best tools... but is is indeed another thread

I'd rather not, although the box is patched to the last and I've done some other little "fix's" here and there since so I'm pretty sure its safe enough

Agreed about another thread, as you said how to's are great and all but from my own experience they don't cover alot of things and I learned alot from friends in relation to best stuff to use and best way to config stuff, would love a ultimate how to thread somewhere,

Cabaal

christophicus wrote:

Thanks guys for explaining newsgroups to me. For most ot them do you need an account?? Or do you have to pay in some way?

There are a number of sites that offer paid access to usenet, generally speaking this is the best option if you want access to binary groups

Generally speaking most ISP's provide you with a usenet server address you can use to access usenet in the likes of outlook or thunderbird, its normally in the form of news.ISP.com, so for example Ireland On-Lines news server is news.iol.ie.

Generally speaking the selection of binary groups on ISP's servers are poor (if thats what your looking for) but they do give access to the likes of ie.comp, ie.general and hundreds of thousands of alt.* groups.

If you just want to have a look at what usenet is like I suggest use your ISP's news server or use Google groups

christophicus

Yeah I am interested in this, Never knew it was a different way of using the internet. Your on NTL too arnt you? Can you tell me how to get to ntl's one if they have one?



I have outlook express can it be done with that?

Cabaal

christophicus wrote:

Yeah I am interested in this, Never knew it was a different way of using the internet. Your on NTL too arnt you? Can you tell me how to get to ntl's one if they have one?

I have outlook express can it be done with that?

I'm on NTL but to be honest I've not used usenet in sometime, I'd imagine its news.ntl.ie...you could check there website or the settings you were given when you signed up.

Outlook express will allow you to use it but its not really the best client to use, again I don't use outlook either so couldn;t tell you how to setup newsgroups through that...generally its tools > accounts or something like that...if memory serves me right.

Google is your friend for this, plenty of how to's if you do a search

christophicus

OK thanks man .

stanley1

Forte Agent, been using it a few years now.

eoinok

Cabaal, I am a Cisco CCNP, Checkpoint certified and various other networking/firewall certifications that are too numerous to mention.

I have been working in various networking roles for the last 10 years.

I am also involved in a WISP.

I have probably have forgotten more about networking/firewalls etc than most people here will probably ever know.

So, I dont need to be told to read up about how bittorrent works and ports etc etc.

I will probably get chastised for not posting some more noe but some of the stuff I read on here, doesn't really intice me to.
I prefer to keep my thoughts and advise to other technical forums rather than waste my time here.

P.S. I will now await the deluge of "nit picking" posts that shall follow where people shall highlight one line of this post and elaborate for 2 paragraphs on it.
Good night.

Terry

I don't want to hi-jack this thread with my problem, but if someone could have a look at this and help me out, it would be greatly appreciated.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055124987
Similar to the newsgroup thingy alread mentioned.

CuLT

eoinok wrote:

Cabaal, I am a Cisco CCNP, Checkpoint certified and various other networking/firewall certifications that are too numerous to mention.

I have been working in various networking roles for the last 10 years.

I am also involved in a WISP.

I have probably have forgotten more about networking/firewalls etc than most people here will probably ever know.

So, I dont need to be told to read up about how bittorrent works and ports etc etc.

I will probably get chastised for not posting some more noe but some of the stuff I read on here, doesn't really intice me to.
I prefer to keep my thoughts and advise to other technical forums rather than waste my time here.

P.S. I will now await the deluge of "nit picking" posts that shall follow where people shall highlight one line of this post and elaborate for 2 paragraphs on it.
Good night.

That's splendid, though unfortunately it means absolutely nothing when it comes to you talking out of your arse about the legality of using the bittorrent protocol.

mik_da_man

CuLT wrote:

That's splendid, though unfortunately it means absolutely nothing when it comes to you talking out of your arse about the legality of using the bittorrent protocol.

Well Said

eoinok

Ok, one last more time on this......

Who do people here think they are trying to kid by standing up for bittorrent? Yes it is legal, yes it can be legally used to download legally available software but when was the last time that anyone used it to down download anything other than pirated games/software/moves/mp3's etc? If someone replies to this saying they use to download legally availabe stuff yada yada yada, go look at yourself in the mirror and say it again.....


I put it to you like this lads (and lassies). I will give you a real life example. In the WISP that I am involved in, we had a nice steady average usage of 4Mbps one night in the early days. Turned off p2p shaping and this usage went up to 28Mbps instantly :eek:
Let me tell you, it was turned back on pretty sharpish.
I would now be actually afraid to turn if off again now in case steam starts coming out of our radio gear.

So, now you have a choice. Will I turn off p2p shaping and your "perfectly legal" p2p traffic will really be flying and you will be happy. Then try the likes of http://www.rte.ie/news and it will be dog slow and you will be on here then hissing and moaning that your bebo's etc are slow to load.
I will turn on p2p shaping then and "surfing" will go back to being fine but your "torrents" will be slow and you will be on here moaning about that.

So, as an ISP, you are damned if you do, damned if you dont.

Now, must go off and do something more constructive with my day then posting paragraphs on here which will just be torn apart bit by bit and everyline discected and analysed....... I know what I will do, I will go throttleing some more torrents.....

thebman

eoinok wrote:

Ok, one last more time on this......

Who do people here think they are trying to kid by standing up for bittorrent? Yes it is legal, yes it can be legally used to download legally available software but when was the last time that anyone used it to down download anything other than pirated games/software/moves/mp3's etc? If someone replies to this saying they use to download legally availabe stuff yada yada yada, go look at yourself in the mirror and say it again.....


I put it to you like this lads (and lassies). I will give you a real life example. In the WISP that I am involved in, we had a nice steady average usage of 4Mbps one night in the early days. Turned off p2p shaping and this usage went up to 28Mbps instantly :eek:
Let me tell you, it was turned back on pretty sharpish.
I would now be actually afraid to turn if off again now in case steam starts coming out of our radio gear.

So, now you have a choice. Will I turn off p2p shaping and your "perfectly legal" p2p traffic will really be flying and you will be happy. Then try the likes of http://www.rte.ie/news and it will be dog slow and you will be on here then hissing and moaning that your bebo's etc are slow to load.
I will turn on p2p shaping then and "surfing" will go back to being fine but your "torrents" will be slow and you will be on here moaning about that.

So, as an ISP, you are damned if you do, damned if you dont.

Now, must go off and do something more constructive with my day then posting paragraphs on here which will just be torn apart bit by bit and everyline discected and analysed....... I know what I will do, I will go throttleing some more torrents.....

People use it all the time to download Linux distro's and other large files from Open Source projects and the like. Just because you don't use it all the time, does not mean other people aren't.

Bittorrent is an incredibly good idea with a bad reputation.

mik_da_man

eoinok wrote:

So, now you have a choice. Will I turn off p2p shaping and your "perfectly legal" p2p traffic will really be flying and you will be happy. Then try the likes of http://www.rte.ie/news and it will be dog slow and you will be on here then hissing and moaning that your bebo's etc are slow to load.
I will turn on p2p shaping then and "surfing" will go back to being fine but your "torrents" will be slow and you will be on here moaning about that.
..

Look, I like most other people here who use torrents are not thick :rolleyes:
I relaise that if I have torrents/downloads running in the background @ 80 - 90 % of my bandwith that the browsing WILL be slower.

But I am never going to need 2MB + speeds to just browse.
I would like to be able to fully utilise the speed that was advertised.
And It's my business what I do with it

What's going to happen next? PAYG Phone Customers not allowed to use their phones @ peak times to keep the network free for "Normal" Bill Pay???....

Mik

Cabaal

CuLT wrote:

That's splendid, though unfortunately it means absolutely nothing when it comes to you talking out of your arse about the legality of using the bittorrent protocol.

Agreed,

Don't get me wrong, good job eoinok for obtaining all those certs but it doesn't change that you posted was incorrect

Cabaal

eoinok wrote:

Ok, one last more time on this......

Who do people here think they are trying to kid by standing up for bittorrent? Yes it is legal, yes it can be legally used to download legally available software but when was the last time that anyone used it to down download anything other than pirated games/software/moves/mp3's etc? If someone replies to this saying they use to download legally availabe stuff yada yada yada, go look at yourself in the mirror and say it again.....

Hmm ok, you've never played World Of Warcraft have you?
While I don't personally play it its one of the most popular on-line games in the world and guess what? Yep you guessed it, it uses bittorrent to distribute updates for the game

Also as for other uses, its one of the best way of obtaining large files such as legal movies and Linux ISO's,

I'm not saying its not used for copyright material but it is used for many legit reasons as well, again bittorrent.com in the US is a very very good example.

I put it to you like this lads (and lassies). I will give you a real life example. In the WISP that I am involved in, we had a nice steady average usage of 4Mbps one night in the early days. Turned off p2p shaping and this usage went up to 28Mbps instantly :eek:
Let me tell you, it was turned back on pretty sharpish.
I would now be actually afraid to turn if off again now in case steam starts coming out of our radio gear.

Again I won't argue that it doesn't use alot of bandwidth, hell in general it accounts for the majority of any ISP's bandwidth usage. But again if an ISP sells you a service with a 40GB cap and you want to download 30GB of that via bittorrent how is this illegal?

If they don;t want you using 40GB in a month then perhaps they should market there product with a lower cap or like some ISP's in the UK recommend that you download large files at night


[

mik_da_man

Oh just to let ya know,
I have changed settings as recommended and am getting d/l speeds of 200kB/s + now

Cheers

Mik

christophicus

Do you mean you have changed to port 80??? Wouldnt that slow down your browsing terribly?

Colonel Sanders

brim4brim wrote:

I use Utorrent on port 80 with encrypted conection. Works fine and seems to get round any restrictions that IBB have put on torrents.

Hi sorry to resurect this thread. Do I just go to: options -> speed guide.

at present there are 3 things it tells me about. Number 2) tells me my current port is 41677. Do I just change this number to 80?

have used option 3) to encrypt and it has improved but still not the kind of download speed I was getting before.

sorry if this is a very stupid question, I am a complete retard when it comes to all things technilogical!!!!

johnnyrafter

eoinok wrote:

Ok, one last more time on this......

Who do people here think they are trying to kid by standing up for bittorrent? Yes it is legal, yes it can be legally used to download legally available software but when was the last time that anyone used it to down download anything other than pirated games/software/moves/mp3's etc? If someone replies to this saying they use to download legally availabe stuff yada yada yada, go look at yourself in the mirror and say it again.....


I put it to you like this lads (and lassies). I will give you a real life example. In the WISP that I am involved in, we had a nice steady average usage of 4Mbps one night in the early days. Turned off p2p shaping and this usage went up to 28Mbps instantly :eek:
Let me tell you, it was turned back on pretty sharpish.
I would now be actually afraid to turn if off again now in case steam starts coming out of our radio gear.

So, now you have a choice. Will I turn off p2p shaping and your "perfectly legal" p2p traffic will really be flying and you will be happy. Then try the likes of http://www.rte.ie/news and it will be dog slow and you will be on here then hissing and moaning that your bebo's etc are slow to load.
I will turn on p2p shaping then and "surfing" will go back to being fine but your "torrents" will be slow and you will be on here moaning about that.

So, as an ISP, you are damned if you do, damned if you dont.

Now, must go off and do something more constructive with my day then posting paragraphs on here which will just be torn apart bit by bit and everyline discected and analysed....... I know what I will do, I will go throttleing some more torrents.....

mmmm Thats fine............if you make sure your customers know this in advance.
Warnerbros and the BBC have started selling episodes on torrent sites now

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/12/21/BBC_goes_torrent It reminds me of eircom saying in 2000 about people not wanting boardband.... Maybe us irish just dont want torrents........yeah right!!!!

mik_da_man

Colonel Sanders wrote:

Hi sorry to resurect this thread. Do I just go to: options -> speed guide.

at present there are 3 things it tells me about. Number 2) tells me my current port is 41677. Do I just change this number to 80?

have used option 3) to encrypt and it has improved but still not the kind of download speed I was getting before.

sorry if this is a very stupid question, I am a complete retard when it comes to all things technilogical!!!!

Yep that works but it will slow down your browsing speeds.
I'm getting downloads over 300kB/s now