General : Traffic management - Still a thing?

[cje85]

Originally Posted by The PIT

Just done a test today and 100mb on single download and full whack on multi thread download.
I'm on a cisco cmts so that put's a hole in the motorola idea.
I do suspect it's some sort of traffic management. It would be interesting too see those who have this capping are in areas where congestion is a problem or potentially can be.

That's an interesting development and perhaps the first confirmation of this issue on a non-Motorola CMTS.

When downloading do you get a stable 100Mbps, or does the speed fluctuate?

I've attached a graph showing how unstable the download speed is for me. This was done at 10:30 on a Friday morning so the traffic on the local network should have been quite low.

I could accept a 70Mb per thread cap (as long as they were honest about it) but the speed variances seem far too extreme for this to be a deliberate policy. It can reach 170Mb then fall to 7Mb.

[Ignitionnet]

One person reporting something is hardly confirmation.

Traffic management, at least at the level of the CMTS, does not work at a TCP flow level. It works per service flow, and all VM customers bar those trialling the WiFi sharing only have the one right now.

Something that does have visibility per flow, though, is the scheduler that runs on the CMTS. The Motorola BSRs have different schedulers from either the Arris or Cisco kit. If the issue is there it's not going to be fixed as the BSRs are almost all replaced now and what's left will be going in the not too distant.

Curious what people are using to test this, in terms of remote site and operating system, and whether the same issue is present on UDP flows.

[cje85]

It would be easier to list sites which aren't affected, as I've only ever found one! www.twit.tv has videos available to download hosted on the CacheFly CDN, and these always download at solid full speed (200Mb off-peak).

Everything else shows poor download speeds and huge variations during the download. This includes DropBox, Google Drive, music downloads from Amazon, Windows updates, app updates from Google Play, or even just things like downloading a large PDF file from the Ofcom website.

I've tried connecting to the SuperHub directly instead of going through my ASUS router but the problem is still evident. It affects every device including Windows PC, Chromebook and various Android devices.

I suspect it's somehow related to the Motorola CMTS, as Jen_A believes on the VM forum. As you say, one person reporting something similar on a Cisco CMTS isn't confirmation of anything and might not be directly related to this problem. I'm told there are no imminent plans to replace my CMTS (KNOW12) with an Arris or Cisco, but to check again every so often.

Are there any sites to test UDP speeds?

[pip08456]

http://testmy.net/hoststats/udp

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by cje85

I suspect it's somehow related to the Motorola CMTS, as Jen_A believes on the VM forum. As you say, one person reporting something similar on a Cisco CMTS isn't confirmation of anything and might not be directly related to this problem. I'm told there are no imminent plans to replace my CMTS (KNOW12) with an Arris or Cisco, but to check again every so often.

Are there any sites to test UDP speeds?

All hubs are being migrated to CCAP, which precludes use of Motorola BSRs. If it's not imminent it should be pretty soon.

[The PIT]

Originally Posted by cje85

It would be easier to list sites which aren't affected, as I've only ever found one! www.twit.tv has videos available to download hosted on the CacheFly CDN, and these always download at solid full speed (200Mb off-peak).

Everything else shows poor download speeds and huge variations during the download. This includes DropBox, Google Drive, music downloads from Amazon, Windows updates, app updates from Google Play, or even just things like downloading a large PDF file from the Ofcom website.

I've tried connecting to the SuperHub directly instead of going through my ASUS router but the problem is still evident. It affects every device including Windows PC, Chromebook and various Android devices.

I suspect it's somehow related to the Motorola CMTS, as Jen_A believes on the VM forum. As you say, one person reporting something similar on a Cisco CMTS isn't confirmation of anything and might not be directly related to this problem. I'm told there are no imminent plans to replace my CMTS (KNOW12) with an Arris or Cisco, but to check again every so often.

Are there any sites to test UDP speeds?

That site is certainly affected downloads at the same speed as any other site.

---------- Post added at 12:27 ---------- Previous post was at 12:25 ----------

Originally Posted by cje85

That's an interesting development and perhaps the first confirmation of this issue on a non-Motorola CMTS.

When downloading do you get a stable 100Mbps, or does the speed fluctuate?

I've attached a graph showing how unstable the download speed is for me. This was done at 10:30 on a Friday morning so the traffic on the local network should have been quite low.

I could accept a 70Mb per thread cap (as long as they were honest about it) but the speed variances seem far too extreme for this to be a deliberate policy. It can reach 170Mb then fall to 7Mb.

Depends on the time of day evenings it will vary. The one I did yesterday was rock solid at lunch time.

[vm_tech]

Igni is correct. The BSRs are old hat now. In the franchises I work in, there are 3 hub sites remaining to be moved over to E6000s. These are taking a bit longer as due to space issues the transmission suite has basically been rebuilt, but I'm told the cutover is in the next month or so

[cje85]

Originally Posted by The PIT

That site is certainly affected downloads at the same speed as any other site.

For me it's the only site which is able to download at full speed and remain stable throughout the download.

Here are two graphs again showing a 1GB file from Thinkbroadband vs. 1GB from twit.tv

[The PIT]

Originally Posted by cje85

For me it's the only site which is able to download at full speed and remain stable throughout the download.

Here are two graphs again showing a 1GB file from Thinkbroadband vs. 1GB from twit.tv

What software on ubuntu are you using for that graph?

---------- Post added at 13:09 ---------- Previous post was at 12:57 ----------

Interesting test just now http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedt...0282393855.png

---------- Post added at 13:10 ---------- Previous post was at 13:09 ----------

Interesting graph just now http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedt...0282393855.png

[cje85]

The graphs are from my ASUS router's admin interface, I've also tried connecting directly to the SuperHub (in both Router and Modem mode) but got the same unstable download speeds.

As downloads from twit.tv aren't affected it seems to point to something at the VM end, finding out what causes that site to behave differently may be the key to solving the problem, although we've gone through Traceroutes etc on the VM forum thread and haven't found any clues.

[The PIT]

Originally Posted by cje85

The graphs are from my ASUS router's admin interface, I've also tried connecting directly to the SuperHub (in both Router and Modem mode) but got the same unstable download speeds.

As downloads from twit.tv aren't affected it seems to point to something at the VM end, finding out what causes that site to behave differently may be the key to solving the problem, although we've gone through Traceroutes etc on the VM forum thread and haven't found any clues.

Like I said before downloads from twit.tv are affected and other users have confirmed this.

[Ignitionnet]

suspect if it were some kind of traffic management speeds would be a tad more stable.

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The DPI stuff is, depending on route traffic takes, either in monitoring mode only, no more policing of traffic, or will be shortly.

The proportion of traffic that's P2P has dropped dramatically as more convenient and relatively cheap options to get content legitimately have been introduced, so the hardware being there to monitor network traffic patterns is really useful but there's limited value in having it police anything.

Traffic also has dropped, at least in the UK, because most torrent sites are denied to all but the determined file sharer. To access them, VPN is essential.

I hadn't realised that P2P traffic had dropped so much, to the point that policing may not be worthwhile. The number of seeders does not appear to have dropped per torrent, but I guess the global picture is different than the national one.

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Traffic also has dropped, at least in the UK, because most torrent sites are denied to all but the determined file sharer. To access them, VPN is essential.

I hadn't realised that P2P traffic had dropped so much, to the point that policing may not be worthwhile. The number of seeders does not appear to have dropped per torrent, but I guess the global picture is different than the national one.

People still torrent? It is all about Newsgroups now at least it is with me for several years.

[Skie]

Their torrent throttling isn't terribly effective anyway.