Test: Does Your ISP Slow Down BitTorrent Traffic?
Written by Ernesto on May 07, 2008Hundreds of larger and smaller ISPs all over the world try to limit BitTorrent traffic on their networks. Unfortunately, most companies are not very open about their network management solutions, with Comcast as the prime example. Thanks to the Glasnost project, you can now test wheter your ISP is one of the bad guys.
A while back we posted about the plugin Azureus had developed, which allowed people to check whether their ISP is interfering with their traffic. The results showed that indeed quite a few ISPs were, but the plugin didn’t provide the user with direct feedback.
The new tool developed by the “max planck institute for software systems” can be used without having to run your BitTorrent client, and compares BitTorrent traffic to regular traffic. On top of that, it will give you more information than the Azureus plugin does.
“The goal of our Glasnost project is to make access networks, such as residential cable, DSL, and cellular broadband networks, more transparent to their customers,” the Glasnost team writes. We couldn’t agree more of course, as we have said many times before.
The way it works is pretty straightforward. The Java applet developed by the Glasnost project uploads and downloads data via BitTorrent for a few seconds, and compares that to your regular download speed. It detects if your ISP is limiting all BitTorrent traffic, or just traffic on well known BitTorrent ports. All in all this tool should be able to tell you whether your ISP is messing with BitTorrent traffic or not.
Please keep in mind that the degree of traffic shaping varies a lot between different ISPs. Some ISPs only limit BitTorrent traffic during certain times of the day or do not throttle until the customer has exceeded a certain data threshold, others only slow down traffic in specific regions. More advanced tools have to be developed to detect these methods.
Thus far, over 5,300 users have performed the test, and the preliminary results show that at least 10 ISPs in the United States are slowing down BitTorrent. We asked the researcher for some more details (names) but we haven’t heard back from them. However, on their website, they promise to provide more detailed results later, once the code is peer-reviewed.
We encourage you to do the test, if the test results show that your ISP is limiting BitTorrent traffic, please let us know. We will add a lits of offenders at the bottom of this article.
1. Comcast, USA
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63 Responses
first. and
We are sorry. Our measurement servers are currently busy. Please try again later.
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edit worked just had to refresh it
[quote comment="378534"]edit worked just had to refresh it[/quote]
They have limited capacity, so you might have to try a few times indeed.
Worked first time… :D
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I don’t my ISP does anything. But back here in India the speeds are very slow anyway. Currently the max plan they have is for 2 mbps unlimited. 8Mbps costs a lot and have to pay for additional bandwidth.
Rocky
Webmaster @ http://www.pokermoviefanatic.com
If not for net neutrality, ISPs would simply be able to block this page entirely so you couldn’t see it to test if your’e being blocked in the first place.
YAY FREEDOM AND CAPITALISM!
Wasn’t this on TF before?
[quote comment="378565"]Â[/quote]
[quote comment="378574"]Wasn’t this on TF before?[/quote]
its a dejavu. run, run for your life.
thank you for your work torrentfreaks, great articles every time. keep with the good work. and for rest of you, folks: Sharing = Caring
slashdot effect
“max planck institute for software systems?”
otherwise known as M PISS lol, bloody academics and their acronyms!
Thanks, nice article. As for the results of the test – I guess I have a good ISP cause download and upload speeds are better when using torrent than normal TCP transfer. :
Lucky you.
you must go to the page and keep hitting the ‘refresh’ button.
again and again and again.
or get a bot to do it.
[quote comment="378602"]Thanks, nice article. As for the results of the test – I guess I have a good ISP cause download and upload speeds are better when using torrent than normal TCP transfer. :[/quote]
Hey me too!
I actually got in on the first try too.
I’d be surprised if my ISP (Virgin Media) was limiting torrents. They’re very open about the traffic management they enforce (by imposing download limits in peak times).
I get 2.2MB/Sec average when torrenting (From a private tracker), which isn’t bad at all. (20Mbit Connection)
my ISP , telus , aparrently does not throttle bit torrent[in british columbia, Canada]. THat’s awsome. Glad I made a nice decision.
FIRST! ZOMG! IM FIRST!!!
lol
This doesn’t Test TCP RST packets so its useless…..
I just did the test and my ISP DOES NOT do any throttling of any kind according to the quick test.
DCCNET is the my ISP right now. Been with them for 4 years and they have been great.
And thanks TF for brining up this cool tool
[quote comment="378698"]This doesn’t Test TCP RST packets so its useless…..[/quote]
yeh on the first test test on tf my isp was listed as a throttler, 20% or something. but this test says it doesnt throttle.
Gush
We are sorry. Our measurement servers are currently busy. Please try again later.
From Russia there were only 2 checks so far :(
I got all green ;). Switzerland – Swisscom (Bluewin) VDSL 20′000. If anyone wonders.
Lot of throttling in the US.. *wonders why*
[quote comment="378685"]FIRST! ZOMG! IM FIRST!!![/quote]
Don’t laugh, being first seems to be important to a number of the specimens here.
Most likely THE high point in most of their pathetic existences.
Comcast has been reported as NOT interfering with BT traffic. Woo-hoo. Mind you, this is northern new england. Dunno if it’s the same everywhere.
Glasnost… Excellent choice of name :)
mines throttles from 2pm til 2am
so still get nice speeds overnight, but its annoying when i want something quickly in the afternoon
Why is this tool checking bittorrent speed against non-bittorrent speed? First off, speeds tests are unreliable – there are too many factors for them to be useful. If you then apply speed tests to bit torrent, you will get all sorts of differing numbers. A better and more fullproof solution would be to check for RST packets, and to check speeds against bittorrent traffic from different locations and peers during different times. Really though, either way you look at it, checking bittorrent speeds is not a reliable method to see if you are being throttled.
I believe Post 32 above (Valect) is completely right. Speed doesn’t measure diddly.
my ISP , telus , aparrently does not throttle bit torrent[in british columbia, Canada]. THat’s awsome. Glad I made a nice decision.
#22 is an idiot they DO test for rst packets jesus christ people are fucking morons and need keep their mouth shut if they dont know what they are talking about.
Note: ISPs may throttle (rate-limit) BitTorrent traffic without blocking it. The results we present here are limited to hosts whose BitTorrent transfers to our servers are interrupted by RST packets generated by some ISP along the path. We do not report throttling as blocking, and thus we do not mark such throttled hosts in red.
[quote comment="378912"]Why is this tool checking bittorrent speed against non-bittorrent speed?[/quote]
Err, shouldn’t that be rather obvious? Is it not true that the service performs a test, or tests, to try to determine whether there be a discrepency between differing file-transfer protocols thus indicative of biased traffic policy?
[quote comment="378912"]First off, speeds tests are unreliable – there are too many factors for them to be useful. If you then apply speed tests to bit torrent, you will get all sorts of differing numbers.[/quote]
If a result indicated HTTP:80 transfers hitting 100KB/s, yet BitTorrent protocol transfers hitting only 30KB/s, would this not prove a useful indicator of manipulative traffic policy?
[quote comment="378912"]A better and more fullproof solution would be to check for RST packets, and to check speeds against bittorrent traffic from different locations and peers during different times.[/quote]
No, testing for RST packets is quite a bullshit way of doing things, it doesn’t reveal much and is far from fool-proof. Very few ISPs throttling BitTorrent traffic do so by utilising spoofed-packet injection. It would though, indeed, be worthwhile to run such tests from a multiple of locations at different times though I don’t think you can really blame the site for that.
I don’t think it applies in Australia as it’s all slow here. The fast transfer speeds have a monthly limit of about 2 Mb so we wouldn’t have time to test it and the test would take us over that limit, so it’s only for newbs to get sucked in and they wouldn’t know the first thing about a PC
[quote comment="378802"]Glasnost… Excellent choice of name :)[/quote]
Again I say users should refrain or be restrained from replying to their own posts!
I wonder if they’ll come up with plugins for different torrent clients …
I’m on DirectPC (aka. HughesNet), and for the last 3 days utorrent has NOT been able to connent to any trackers.
Also reguler internet is as slow as dailup for the same 3 days.
I called them and they said “I’m sorry but I do not know”, so yeah just wait “a week” and “see if it “gets better”!!
I’m I alone?
Comcast, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Messing with uploads on all ports. Nothing on downloads, surprisingly.
[quote comment="378578"][quote comment="378565"]Â[/quote][/quote]
I agree!
I cant host a server for them, have a windows 2003 server running…. a shame…
Want to test still too, trying total day now. didn’t get through.
let other people do the test! this isn’t only an America’s issue.
look at the stats:
Country # measured
Canada 988
France 377
Germany 342
Neth. 372
U K 378
U S 1527
—-
Greece 10
I had the chance to run the test twice, but when it finished, both times, my DSL disconnected so i haven’t seen my results yet. Is there an issue with the USB modem?
tried a lot over the last day and still can’t get on their stupid lame servers. ah well
has anyone else not been able to take the test due to it being too busy ever since this article came out?
its comcast doing it!#
It’s well known, and in the news, that the Candian provider Bell Sympatico, throttles bittorrent traffic. That’s a good one to add to the list.
Absolutely no indication of throttling using orange.fr (France Telecom) just across the border from Geneva (St. Genis-Pouilly).
I’ve been trying to test my Mobile ISP but with no luck so far, Iam from Russia I seen only 2 checks have been done from Russia…
Got the test running after about 5 refreshes – not too bad.
I’m on Virgin Media 2Mb Cable and it told me that there is no evidence of throttling of any sort, which seems strange as other Virgin Media users have reported throttling!
It even says my BitTorrent upload/download is faster than my TCP!, heh.
Okay, I tested my ISP which is HughesNet (domain name direcpc.com) and found out some interesting things. Instead of throttling individual ports related to torrents, as soon as they detect you’re accessing a torrent they THROTTLE YOUR SUBNET and everything behind it. Once I did the test, I was only able to download at 10KB until 12AM, EST. So Hughes will let your torrents through without shaping them, but will then flag your ENTIRE connection! They should be added to the list.
Also, the azureus bad ISPs wiki entry for direcpc.com is totally wrong: http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs#United_States_of_America
HughesNet has NO real flatrate, LIMITS bandwidth during certain times of the day. LIMITS bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume, and should have a proposed encryption level of 3+ (as soon as they see a classic BT port being used, they will throttle everything on your subnet, not just torrents.)
well my isp isnt throttling, but neither of my torrents are downloading at all….
Comcast, Cox block BitTorrent 24/7
Posted by Richard Koman @ May 15, 2008 @ 8:52 PM
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3822
Comcraptastic gets great download speeds… and then its TCP RST packets on all connections trying to be open to seed. 100% seeding connections were dropped because of a forged TCP RST packet according to the test.
nothing new though, I leave uTorrent on all night and it doesn’t seed a damn thing. Not one KB.
Telekom Srbija everything works fine :) Im happy
I’m on Comcast but have been unable to run the test. I wish they could find more servers.
Usenet wins every time
We are sorry, the test failed due to a problem.
get that every single time
Good results from Rogers here in Canada.
http://blog.andresvalera.com
Unsurprisengly my comcast is blocking my bittorrent traffic down in FL. A few months ago my upload speed dropped from 90KB/s to 45KB/s. Well its better that a total block, at least I can still seed files I download.
Comcast HAS admitted in hearings (and reported in various newspapers) that they DO limit the speeds for Bittorents!
The company admits that Bittorent users congest the cable bandwidth thereby slowing everyone else’s speed!
If that’s the case, why is Comcast advertising that their service is “speedy”?
All Comcast’s “Speedboost” feature does is compress the first megs of the data then sends it speedily off.
But what if the person is online for “hours”????
What a joke!
Don’t want to pitch for any company but… Verizon’s Fios service is MUCH better and faster than Comcast’s service!
Verizon’s Fios service also does NOT limit the speed! Woo-Hoo!
So glad not a Comcast subscriber anymore!!
Oddly enough the test says my isp (Comcast) doesn't throttle the traffic.
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