PDA

View Full Version : Problematic Download Speeds, caused by throttling?


buhsnarf
09-10-2010, 00:11
Hi,

I used to be a long time cable user back when it was Diamond Cable and then ntl:. However, I left the cable world for a while when I moved home to a non-cabled area and suffered a few years of ADSL woes with Sky and then Be.

However, just moved back and installed with the 3 for £19 plan which gives me the 10Mbps cable broadband. This was installed two days ago. Unfortunately as I'm using Linux I had to ring up for them to activate it manually. Which they did within minutes which was fantastic.

I did a speedtest.net test and it gave me 0.5Mbps up and 10Mbps down which was quite nice. However, things then started to slow down within 10 minutes of opening some applications, including a torrent program.. However, nowhere near downloading the 500MB needed to activate traffic management. This made everything slow to 0 including web browsing. It's now two days later and I'm still getting erratic download speeds varying from 0 to 500kbps. But this is on both torrents and web traffic. I thought bandwidth throttling was only meant to affect Bittorrent traffic? Not web / email etc? BTW, I have checked and double checked my torrent settings, plus these all worked absolutely flawlessly with Be previously. Considering I download a few ISO's and linux updates plus podcasts and vidcasts via torrent this could be a problem if everytime I have one open it's gonna kill all my connections. I can cope with having them reduced in peak times. But no web either?

Any ideas, could it be a fault somewhere or is this how it's meant to work with no internet connectivity?

I have just done a speedtest now and it's 11pm and I've got nothing uploading or downloading and it's given me 1Mbps down and 0.04Mbps up with a ping of 876ms!

Hope someone can help otherwise I guess I have to invoke my 28days right?!

If you need any further info please ask :)

Thanks in advance

B.

pip08456
09-10-2010, 00:29
If you are saying it only happens when the torrent programme is open then I would recheck the settings, the problem has to be there. I use a torrent programme with no problem or affect on my speeds at all but that is with XP not linux.

Unfortunately I'm not au fait with linux as an OS so can't be of further help.

buhsnarf
09-10-2010, 00:36
To be honest that was my first thought also, but I've got them set so low that it should not make a difference. Also, it carries on for a while after closing the torrent, usually until rebooting the router. The only other thing I thought it may be was the amount of connections the torrents was making so I reduced this to 100 and no joy.

Torrent speed restrictions are currently 200kbps down and 2kbps up... which it never reaches as it usually hovers around 30kbps down and 0.5kbps up.

Ignitionnet
09-10-2010, 00:52
Also, it carries on for a while after closing the torrent, usually until rebooting the router.

There's your answer, the issue is with the router if rebooting it clears the problem.

tidder23
09-10-2010, 03:41
I thought it may be was the amount of connections the torrents was making so I reduced this to 100 and no joy.

up.

100!!! my router has trouble with 70 put it on something like 20 to test it

adzii_nufc
09-10-2010, 05:11
Post Signal levels

But it does sound like throttling to be fair.

On 10mbps using a torrent program will simply cripple your browsing experience whilst downloading.

ceedee
09-10-2010, 07:22
The only other thing I thought it may be was the amount of connections the torrents was making so I reduced this to 100 and no joy.

Torrent speed restrictions are currently 200kbps down and 2kbps up... which it never reaches as it usually hovers around 30kbps down and 0.5kbps up.

I'd agree that 100 connections will hammer your router.

Why have you limited your speeds so tightly?
I'd imagine your torrent client is flat out reporting it's too busy refusing to upload data to actually get anything down!
:)

General Maximus
09-10-2010, 09:41
if you want to download at a reasonable speed and leave enough juice to browse at the same time I would change your settings to 800k down and 40k up

Toto
09-10-2010, 11:32
100 connections - ONE HUNDRED CONNECTIONS!!!!!!

Unless you connect directly to the CMTS, i'd knock it down a few hehehehe. Seriously, your router isn't built for that kind of ermmmm, hammering. :)

General Maximus
09-10-2010, 18:53
you say that but I am sure my linksys router can handle 700 connections. The number of connection is never something i had to change in my torrent settings and I have always managed to get full speed when I was on 10mbit, 20 and now 50

Risco
09-10-2010, 21:25
Are you using ESET Antivirus? It has known compatibility issues with torrents, which they never fixed and was the reason I dumped their subscription.

pip08456
09-10-2010, 22:43
Are you using ESET Antivirus? It has known compatibility issues with torrents, which they never fixed and was the reason I dumped their subscription.

That's news to me as a long time user of both eset and utorrent. There never has been a compatability issue

Risco
09-10-2010, 23:31
That's news to me as a long time user of both eset and utorrent. There never has been a compatability issue

Oh yes there has been, please don't a blanket statement based purely on your own experiences. It also caused my firefox downloads to freeze a lot of the time with big files, meaning I had to disable parts of the antivirus to prevent it.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/search.php?searchid=3768038
http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=15992#p258231

So again, I ask the OP whether you have ESET installed?

pip08456
10-10-2010, 01:41
It was never a compatability issue, it was a failure on the part of users to exclude utorrent being treated as a web browser.

Mick Fisher
10-10-2010, 14:25
I tried to use ESET on an ACER Laptop and had nothing but issues with updating, false positives by the bucket load and staggeringly it failed to complete a scan for the whole time it was installed. It would always stop at the same point and the computer would hang forcing a reboot.

I'm not alone in this as I took the trouble to read a huge thread about it at Wilders. IIRC no fix was ever found or offered by ESET's so called support.

I dumped ESET with 6 months still to run for the FREE M$ Security Essentials. I haven't had a single issue since.

Strangely others swear by ESET so I guess it can't be all bad. ESET don't seem to like ACER though, for some reason. :)

buhsnarf
11-10-2010, 11:15
100 connections - ONE HUNDRED CONNECTIONS!!!!!!

Unless you connect directly to the CMTS, i'd knock it down a few hehehehe. Seriously, your router isn't built for that kind of ermmmm, hammering. :)

I used to have it set to 250 per torrent with a max of 600 on my Be ADSL connection which was only ~3Mbps downstream and that seemed to cope fine through a cheapo Thompson router! So I don't think this will be the problem.

Having a look in to it it seems to be the throttling, although I thought it was only meant to throttle the P2P traffic? But anyways, I've just setup a shell script that restricts any torrent traffic in the 'peak' periods to minimal and turned off the router's built in firewall and that seems to have sorted it.

To Risco, no, I have not used Eset or any kind of virus detection. I use Linux and it's built in firewall.

Thanks for all the help though guys! :)

pip08456
11-10-2010, 11:50
Having a look in to it it seems to be the throttling, although I thought it was only meant to throttle the P2P traffic? But anyways, I've just setup a shell script that restricts any torrent traffic in the 'peak' periods to minimal and turned off the router's built in firewall and that seems to have sorted it.


Torrent traffic is P2P.

Wad_2002
11-10-2010, 11:53
Set your upload rate to 6kbps and restart...you will see an instant difference!

Ignitionnet
11-10-2010, 15:44
Set your upload rate to 6kbps and restart...you will see an instant difference!

Indeed, you'll get kicked off trackers for leeching.

This is about the router's memory getting maxed out by lots of connections getting opened up, not the upload getting caned though.

Sharing is caring.

Wad_2002
11-10-2010, 17:21
Indeed, you'll get kicked off trackers for leeching.

This is about the router's memory getting maxed out by lots of connections getting opened up, not the upload getting caned though.

Sharing is caring.

I agree, but it is helpful during throttle hours by VM.

I use the utorrent's Scheduler and its great!

buhsnarf
11-10-2010, 19:08
Torrent traffic is P2P.

Yes, I understand this.

However, as stated in my original post ALL traffic is restricted. Web, email etc. And these are not P2P.

However, doesn't really matter as I've worked a way around it.