Do NTL/UPC throttle Usenet traffic?

FrankGrimes

I'm on the allegedly 20MB package in D12 and though I never get what should be full speed for a 20MB connection, I can download from websites at about 900KB/s.

I have an account with usenetmonster and downloads from there should be maxing out my connection, and sometimes they do. But it's never too long until they slow down dramatically. I'd say during the week they go to about 500KB/s and then at times, seems to be mostly at the weekend, it goes to about 90KB/s. At those same times I have tested the download speed for HD samples from microsoft.com and I can get 900KB/s on these but yet at the same time my usenet client (GrabIt) can only get 80KB/s.

This points to a level of throttling that would lead me to either go elsewhere entirely or else drop down to one of their cheaper packages as I'm not getting the service I'm paying for right now.

My usenet client normally uses port 119 but I've tried changing it to a few others the provider says they accept but it's no different. One of those ports is 80 and I would have thought I'd get the same speeds on that as I do through my browser (IE7). But instead it starts at about 800KB/s and then rapidly drops to under 100KB/s.

Before I go spend a lifetime getting through to NTL (which involves more than getting the call answered), I thought I'd check to see if anyone else has experienced this or if anyone knows a workaround or can confirm that NTL do throttle usenet.

stanley1

downloaded a movie tonight on usenet, connection never dropped below 2mb on 20 mb UPC deal, using newsleecher + usenet-news.net server, D12 also.

Chris_533976

Getting 2300kb/s from Usenet here. You sure you are using a good usenet provider?

FrankGrimes

Mmmm, that's interesting to see....I have an unlimited account with usenetmonster who are generally a good provider I believe. Their support team were responsive and got back to me telling me to try the other ports, but that didn't work. I wonder could some of my old port forwarding settings be causing an issue?

If nothing else works I'll try sign up with usenet-news.net server and use newsleecher instead of GrabIt and see if that improves things.

stanley1

you can buy 5gb block for $3, just for trial purpose.

ROC1977

The only thing UPC is blocking in regarding to DL's is torrents. I don't use Usenet but as far as I know thats a dirrect download from a server. Like rapidshare thats not a problem with internet traffic.

T-b0n3

Yea I was getting decent speeds on utorrent about 2 weeks ago but no its horribly slow. Is there any chance they will change it back? Was loving the good speeds for once!

Adam

clansman

i know this is a bit off topic but can someone explain in a nut shell what Usenet monster is or what it provides?

I Get 18.4mbps/ 2.3MBs on 20 meg off usenet.


If you think they are throttling Your connection to usenet the get a news provider with SSL connections on port 563


This will make it next to impossible to be throttled.

clansman

clansman wrote: »

i know this is a bit off topic but can someone explain in a nut shell what Usenet monster is or what it provides?

The predecessor to the internet, Anything that has ever been digitally produced has been posted somewhere on usenet.


It is no place for Noobs but if you take your time to learn about it you will reap fantastic rewards.


Pretty much any torrent of a cd, game, application, video , anything has been ripped by scene groups to usenet then may be posted on bitorrent.



It was the place where Tim Berners-Lee announced the launch of the World Wide Web, where Linus Torvalds announced the Linux project, and where Marc Andreesen announced the creation of the Mosaic browser and the introduction of the image tag, which revolutionized the World Wide Web by turning it into a graphical medium.




Many terms now in common use on the Internet—so-called "jargon"—originated or were popularized on Usenet. Likewise, many conflicts which later spread to the rest of the Internet, such as the ongoing difficulties over spamming, began on Usenet.

clansman

cheers for the reply. you said its not for noobs, is that cos its hard to navigate and in say
that is there a program need to be used to access Usenet? i might sign up for a month and
give it a go.

Ye it is quite hard to navigate, you will need a program such as newsbin.


It is easier nowadays as there are sites that index whole files into 1, a .NZB file, similar to a .torrent file it can be opened in newsbin program and it will the do all the work.


The best indexing site is www.newzbin.com it costs a fe euro a year but is worth it.

The news provider i use is http://www.news.astraweb.com/ you can but once of packages like the 25gb or 115gb.


Once you get used to it you wont go back to torrents.

L31mr0d

no issues with usenet here. I use newzbin, newshosting.com and SABnzbd as the client

FrankGrimes

I just signed up for a usenet-news.net account as recommended by stanley1 and downloads are flying along at 1.5 MB/s.....bye bye usenetmonster so - looks like it was their server causing the delays.

GrabIt is now SSL enabled and usenet-news.net offer SSL usenet access. I can see benefits of using SSL, but are there any downsides (i.e. why wouldn't I do it) such as a performance hit? QuickPar and WinRar do already slow my machine down somewhat so if SSL was to slow it further I'd do without, but would be nice to have it.

SSL dosent slow anything down.

quarryman

Bringing this thread back to life to ask has anyone noticed what the OP queried above. I'm using Usenet and find that the .AVIs seem to be throttled. When I zip them up before download it works fine. Abit annoying as it looks like I'll have to zip anything before downloading.

Dont quite get what your saying about zipping stuff before you download em.

On Usenet most of the content is SplittRARed, you download all the parts and the unRAR em.

I use a newsprovider with SSL so it makes is nearly impossible to be throttled, actually it never is.

quarryman

cisk wrote: »

Dont quite get what your saying about zipping stuff before you download em.

On Usenet most of the content is SplittRARed, you download all the parts and the unRAR em.

I use a newsprovider with SSL so it makes is nearly impossible to be throttled, actually it never is.

with my news-server i can bunch files together and download them as one zip file. What i do now is just zip a few AVIs and download that. It never seems to get throttled.

GigaByte

I don't see what all the fuse is with Newzbin? I don't think its anywhere near as good as NZBMatrix and if there beta list interface is anything to go by they're trying to look like NZBMatrix!?!

chopperbyrne

They throttle all high bandwidth activities between 17:00 and 00:00 Monday to Friday.

Not sure about weekends.

Stevek101

chopperbyrne wrote: »

They throttle all high bandwidth activities between 17:00 and 00:00 Monday to Friday.

Not sure about weekends.

Is this actually true, can you show me the proof?

wayne040576

Stevek101 wrote: »

Is this actually true, can you show me the proof?

I know I can't prove any thing ins this regard but I have some suspicions. I think they auto throttle people if they've had a lot of activity over a short period. I usually don't do much downloading except when I buy games over steam etc. I usually notice my speed going down after downloading a new game for a few days.
For example, I bought a game on Thursday night over Gamersgate. It was an 8GB download and I left it running through the night. My connection speed has dropped considerably since then over the last 2 days on a 20mb line. I've had a lot of connection timeouts on many websites.

Of course, it could be argued that because it's a long weekend, more people are online bringing down the total speed.

chopperbyrne

Stevek101 wrote: »

Is this actually true, can you show me the proof?

wayne040576 wrote: »

I know I can't prove any thing ins this regard but I have some suspicions. I think they auto throttle people if they've had a lot of activity over a short period. I usually don't do much downloading except when I buy games over steam etc. I usually notice my speed going down after downloading a new game for a few days.
For example, I bought a game on Thursday night over Gamersgate. It was an 8GB download and I left it running through the night. My connection speed has dropped considerably since then over the last 2 days on a 20mb line. I've had a lot of connection timeouts on many websites.

Of course, it could be argued that because it's a long weekend, more people are online bringing down the total speed.

Direct from the horses mouth:

Ref: 401409

Dear Mr Byrne,

Thank you for your E-Mail.

To serve all our Internet customers in the best possible way Ntl/Chorus deems it important to prioritise real time activities like email, MSN, chatten, browsing, streaming at times of high network utilization.



Traffic prioritising is limited to a limited number of traffic types, and only during peak times. Subsequently only the Internet experience a small group of Internet subscribers could be affected by this policy.



As a result these customers could experience, during short time intervals, a small decrease in the download and upload speed, when using news or P2P services.



UPC continuously tracks market developments, customer needs, and new applications to continue to deliver an optimal service.



Peak times are between 17.00 and 24.00 hrs.

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us on our freephone number 1908 or email us on customer.support@upc.ie

Kind regards,
Catriona

Chorus ntl Customer Support Team

quarryman

cisk wrote: »

On Usenet most of the content is SplittRARed, you download all the parts and the unRAR em..

that is pants tbh, takes extra time to unrar after you download. A while back Easynews provided the ability to directly download files without getting bunch of rars, its all i ever do now.

cisk wrote: »

I use a newsprovider with SSL so it makes is nearly impossible to be throttled, actually it never is.

SSL, can you explain a bit more on that?

Stevek101

Fair enough but I find it hard to believe they list MSN as one of the priority's. The thing constantly disconnected 24 hours a day.

quarryman

quarryman wrote: »

that is pants tbh, takes extra time to unrar after you download. A while back Easynews provided the ability to directly download files without getting bunch of rars, its all i ever do now.



SSL, can you explain a bit more on that?

It compress the files so you save on downloads, do you use indexing sites lie newzbin ect?


And SSL is an traffic encryption protocol, so your ISP cannot see what the traffic is, so its safer ect.

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

Luseifer

Im on a 20 mb ntl line,my max dl is 1.9 mb.As of today my its 600 kbs wtf.I have not really used it this month tbh. My speed test stats 8.31 down 1.21 up.I cant even play Counterstrike source as my ping is 300.Best ping i can seem to get for gaming is 30-40 in the early hours of the morning.My old IBB 3mb line gave me a ping of 20.Im very unhappy with the service,and I am thinking of getting shot of this ****ty connection. Problem is I only signed up 2 weeks ago,and dont fancy paying the 100$ cancellation fee.

quarryman

cisk wrote: »

It compress the files so you save on downloads, do you use indexing sites lie newzbin ect?

yep i use newzbin. I thought the purpose of the rar files was not to compress but rather provide the ability to break up the file into smaller chunks and allow downloading of pars to fix corrupt parts? Are avis, mp3s not as compressed as they are going to get anyway?

kaimera

Had no issues with usenet, consistently 2.3Mb down on NTL in Milltown d6

quarryman

kaimera, can you try download a large AVI file and see what D/L speeds you are getting.

kaimera

i'll throw up results later.

work atm and busy until 8-ish this evening

Sudsy86

www.opensuse.org

4 options

1 32bit
2 Live Cd
3 Standard http or FTP
4 Live Gnome(its a download mirror)

4Gb file on 20Mb through a linux server,
You should be getting 2.5MB on a 20Mb connection if you have a full DL speed...Anything less than 1.8Mb is a problem...Please direct connect when trying and dont post results done through a router...

You are checking the transfer rate on the file...Leave it DL for about 2mins before checking rate and cancel download after testing...

quarryman

heh? what's that got to do with usenet?

kaimera

working fine for me

quarryman

interesting...

i have to give that sabanazzedd program a go.

Tazzle

I've always got upwards of 2.3MBs on mine too. UPC Cork. Dutch Server.

hightower1

wayne040576 wrote: »

I know I can't prove any thing ins this regard but I have some suspicions. I think they auto throttle people if they've had a lot of activity over a short period. I usually don't do much downloading except when I buy games over steam etc. I usually notice my speed going down after downloading a new game for a few days.
For example, I bought a game on Thursday night over Gamersgate. It was an 8GB download and I left it running through the night. My connection speed has dropped considerably since then over the last 2 days on a 20mb line. I've had a lot of connection timeouts on many websites.

Of course, it could be argued that because it's a long weekend, more people are online bringing down the total speed.

Even if they were to throttle connections its stated in their terms and conditions that they reserve the right to do so at any stage if they deem its needed. Seems harsh but it was part of their conditions openly available to read to any potential customers.

http://www.upc.ie/termsandconditions/

paragraph 23.1 reads...

INTERNET SERVICES TERMS AND CONDITIONS
23. Internet Services
23.1 We reserve the right to monitor and control data volume and/or types of traffic
transmitted via the Internet Services as well as monitoring the Services for abuse or
breach under the Agreement or User Policy. We reserve the right to restrict access to
the Services and to impose data traffic restrictions at our discretion, in order to
implement new facilities, allow data retrieval and maintain Service levels. You expressly
accept that any such actions on our part may affect the quality and availability of the
Internet Services.



As I said, seems harsh but its what you signed on the dotted line to agree with.

nickhx

Just wondering whether any one else is experiencing low speeds with Astraweb recently?

I am wondering whether UPC have started throttling Usenet / Astraweb traffic as the download normally starts at around 1000k per sec and then reduces to around 400k per sec...

Anyone else experiencing similar issues?

Cheers

FloatingVoter

No, I'm getting 2 MB/s most hours. Maybe slowing to 1.3 or 1.4 in the evenings.

nickhx

nickhx wrote: »

Just wondering whether any one else is experiencing low speeds with Astraweb recently?

I am wondering whether UPC have started throttling Usenet / Astraweb traffic as the download normally starts at around 1000k per sec and then reduces to around 400k per sec...

Anyone else experiencing similar issues?

Cheers

Fine here also, i believe Astraweb have been having a few problems of late, im getting a few missing filles here and there.

Elessar

Make sure you're using the SSL connection aswell. I'm generally always getting 2MB/s except in the evenings.

nickhx

Which server are you using? I'm using ssl-eu.astraweb.com tonight and only getting 200k download speed...

aidodo

I was getting 1 Mbs with UPC/Astraweb up until about 2 weeks ago and am only less than 200k usually.

Tazzle

I'm still getting a solid 2.3 all day every day with my usenet provider, Cork City.

AlmightyCushion

Still haven't moved into my new place yet but I was downloading off astraweb at over 2MBps. Doesn't seem like they are.

FloatingVoter

Still maxing out my connection here most times (EU Astraweb server). I just hope they don't start throttling when/if the torrent kiddies fleeing from TPB and Mininova climb on board.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Only scanned through the thread, so his may have already been mentioned, but anyone who finds their bandwidth is too low who is on a wireless connection should first make sure the bottleneck isn't their wireless link.

craichoe

Was getting 13.4 megabytes / second on Astraweb with 8 concurrent connections with UPC Netherlands.

Getting around 3.7 megabytes /second since i've gone back down to 30mbit.

Skittle

You're obviously not in Ireland then

cassette50

Having been using Astraweb with UPC/NTL 10mb service for the last year so, however for the last day or so I'm only getting pretty crap speeds (around 150-200kbs intermittently). Each article is downloading very slowly in little bursts....

Before I could max out the connection.

Anyone have trouble downloading from Astraweb this weekend?

FloatingVoter

Nope, downloaded about 2 GB in 10 minutes this morning. Though I am on the 20 Mb package from upc.