(Not Really A) Packet Shaping Problem[solved]

fforde

Ok, so I have a problem. With my ISP I pay a little bit extra for a faster connection, and I actually use this connection; between streaming video, file transfers to and from work, downloading TV Shows/Movies from iTunes, etc I probably use more bandwidth than the average person. I realize that their buisness model does not support the assumption that everyone wil be maxing their bandwidth all the time, but I feel like it is kind of like an all you can eat buffet, some people eat a lot, some don't eat so much, but in the end it balances out.

So the issue, recently I noticed my traffic is being shapped. Running a speed test my connection rates right at what I am paying for, but certain types of traffic are being throttled, namely BitTorrent. Among other things, this is a huge inconvienience downloading patches for WoW. My connection never goes over 30 k/s. I have tried multiple well seeded torrents simply as a test and my total transfer speed always maxes at 30k/s. Be it with one torrent going, two, three, etc, total combined speed maxes at 30k/s every time.

So is there anything I can do here? I know some bittorrent clients support packet encryption, but that hasn't seemed to help (and even if that DID help, that would only be a partial solutiuon as the WoW downloader doesn't support it).

Wylder

Your problem is almost certainly that speed is being throttled on certain ports. Most torrent programs can support specific port selection. Choosing a non-standard port may help you with this.

With respect to the WoW patcher, there isnt anything you can do within their software, however you can get the .torrent files from the cache directory, and load them up in your torrent program of choice.

homeobocks

I am not sure, but I believe that there is a BT client that encrypts the packet header to make it hard for your ISP to tell what kind it is (it might not work on all other peer clients, I'm not sure).

fforde

Wylder wrote:

Your problem is almost certainly that speed is being throttled on certain ports. Most torrent programs can support specific port selection. Choosing a non-standard port may help you with this.

With respect to the WoW patcher, there isnt anything you can do within their software, however you can get the .torrent files from the cache directory, and load them up in your torrent program of choice.

You had me excited about the possibility of the throttling being port specific, however I switched to a different port and it unforunately didnt help. I even tried using port 80 (normally for HTTP connections) and my connection was still being throttled, so I don't think it is port based unfortunately.

Grabbing the .torrent for the WoW patches and using uTorrent or something though is a good idea. Now I just need to find a solution to get my normal bittorrent client back up to speed.

homeobocks wrote:

I am not sure, but I believe that there is a BT client that encrypts the packet header to make it hard for your ISP to tell what kind it is (it might not work on all other peer clients, I'm not sure).

Yeah, I use uTorrent and it supports packet encryption, which I have turned on. Unfortunately this did not fix the problem either.

Wylder

fforde wrote:

You had me excited about the possibility of the throttling being port specific, however I switched to a different port and it unforunately didnt help. I even tried using port 80 (normally for HTTP connections) and my connection was still being throttled, so I don't think it is port based unfortunately.

Ah. Hrmm. Well then....

homeobocks wrote:

Yeah, I use uTorrent and it supports packet encryption, which I have turned on. Unfortunately this did not fix the problem either.

Hrmm... well....




Thinking about it. Are you sure that this is originated from your ISP?

Torrent speeds are limited by the fact that the total upload must equal the total download for the entire swarm. That is, your data has to come from somewhere. Most people keep their uploads limited to a certain speed, in order to leave as much of the connection as possible for downloading. It may just be that your torrents are slow, because well.... torrents are slow.

You're always going to get the occasional torrent that just dribbles out.

Have you tried a good variety of torrents to ensure that it is actually an ISP limitation?

st0ned messiah

I know it's obvious but have you checked your download/upload maximums in uTorrent? I've had instances like this where something wonky happened and it reassigned them without me knowing.

fforde

Figured it out. I downloaded Azurues to try a different client and it turns out Azureus works fine. Poked around a little bit more on the FAQs page for uTorrent and aparently if your upload limit is set too low it throttles your download limit to 30k/s. I had just changed my UL limit from unlimited to 5 k/s and this triggered uTorrent's anti-leeching mode. Upped my UL limit to 8 k/s and problem solved. Thanks for the help though guys, you got me thinking and put me in the right direction.