Choked.

Hi, I've a pretty irritating problem and hope somebody here could shed some light on it.

As of the last fortnight my connection has been rendered pretty much useless. From 6pm onwards it's reduced to the point where my max download speed is 50k; not just torrents, all traffic. Seeing as this is a recent problem I was curious to know if BT has implemented some sort of all-incompassing throttling policy.

Thanks to anyone who can assist.

Yep, BT are throttling users, no matter what their usage. Port 80 (http) and torrent and other file sharing ports seem to be the ones throttled to 45kB/s.

And contention isn't the reason?

No, I highly doubt it. BT have a throttle going on, It starts at 1600 and ends at 2359. For me it kicks in at ~1605 and ends ~0005, I can sit and watch it everyday drop to 45kB/s at these times. If it was contention, it would slowly change over a period of time, not one minute at max speed, and then the next at 45kB/s at set times everyday.

I'm on a business account at home as well, so contention ratio is lower for me.


Go to http://www.samknows.com/broadband/phoneno.php and see the status of your exchange. Mine is green so it is not over capacity or have faults.

Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Jul-07 12:08:06)

Thanks for the responses.

My local exchange is green, so I think that rules out contention issues.

It's disappointing that this is effecting other users, I suppose there's little recourse other than change isp or stick it out and hope this is a temporary measure.

Is it connected to BT Vision.

There is lots of discussion in earlier threads about BT policy, T & C statements about traffic shaping and possible reasons why they are doing it.

Use the search function here and you will learn a lot.

Give the BT FUP (fair usage policy) team a call 0800 707 6044 they'll tell you if you

Nope - contention and congestion are two different things.

Contention certainly wasn't the issue when I was with BT. I had the same problems as everyone else. HTTP capped to around 50kbps. The day I was activated with my new ISP I went from downloading files on HTTP at 20-60kbps, to 860kbps.
Obviously BT are using some kind of traffic managment, or there is a fault, or they simply have too many customers.

Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Jul-07 17:52:23)

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they simply have too many customers.

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I'll bet anything that its this, but they wont admit it, nor would they put in more servers and such to deal with it. As it'll cost them

Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Jul-07 18:35:24)

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5453
Read the 5th post down the thread..

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http://www.dslzoneuk.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5453
Read the 5th post down the thread..

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If that is indeed true then that may go some way to explaining things...

Perhaps this is a reason why BT are keen to buy up other ISPs (Madasafish, Plusnet) as in theory it would mean that BT have more resources for things like Vision as bandwith could be "borrowed" from the other recently bought out ISPs if things get really desperate.

If BT Retail (ISP) are really in this bad shape and the shareholders start losing money, would the news item about VDSL actually happen... Even better if BT realise that even on 21C things are still poor due to the way that internet use is changing now and in the future, perhaps FTTC will become even more viable.

Anyhow, purely speculation on my part - but it does get the brain ticking over...

Interesting read however Surely if that was the case EVERYTHING and i mean everything would be slow, however its Not everything just certain protocols/ports

Annoyingly Http is one of the most affected.

Personally i'd love to see some kind of guaranteed bandwidth set at 1 - 2 mbit

I.e everyone gets that but if theres more available then they can go faster.

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Annoyingly Http is one of the most affected.

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You see, again a theory is that static webpages don't really need more than a few KB/s to load up in a reasonably speedy manner and as such by throttling port 80 down BT in there wisdom ( laugh ) thought that it wouldn't be noticed by users. Unfortunately the flaw in the plan was that they forgot that most webpages are no longer static, with embedded content, advertisments, etc..

Again this is purely speculation on my part...

this is why i've just left bt. i have a rock solid line. i can sync for weeks on end @ 8128/448 and the speedtester always shows a 7150kbps profile. and even when things get bad, the lowest speed test i've had is 60kb/s. now i remember my 512k days - they weren't as bad as the experience i'm now getting. even streaming low quality vids from youtube is a no go during peak times. that's how bad it's got for me to have to leave.... that and torrents being throttled to 12kb/s. i'm not a heavy downloader by any means but i would like to get the maximum possible bandwidth possible regardless of the protocol i use.

so i'm off to entanet. i realise they control overall speeds too during peak times but at least they don't discriminate. everyone is treated equally regardless of the protocol you use to download your monthly allowance.

Business Broadband and Residential broadband are connected to the same DSLAM's therefore subject to the same contention (unless you choose the BT Business Network product where contention is 20:1 instead of 50:1) however if you are on ADSL Max, contention is fairly moot anyway.

From what I have been able to establish watching the forums and newsgroups and so forth, port 80 isn't being throttled by BT to cause trouble for any particular user, I would assume because port 80 is the most popular port (for web browsing) that it actually has a fairly high allocation of bandwidth, but then with so many customer using it they would have to do something otherwise their network would grind to a halt. I suspect this reflects a lack of investment in the current network setup.

On the plus side 21CN seems to be rolling out seemlessly so this should improve as that get activated accross the country

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http://www.dslzoneuk.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5453
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Looks like i will have to join up to BT Vision to ensure at least a 2Meg line during peak times then or jump ship when contract is up

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On the plus side 21CN seems to be rolling out seemlessly so this should improve as that get activated accross the country

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Quite a number of people I have asked about this, their exchanges aren't going to get it until 1.5 to 2 years away. Sadly.

I can see it now, by the time that happens everything will have ground to a halt. Or maybe it will come to a snails pace sooner. Think of the amount of people thats signing up to Broadband everyday before then.

Edited by deleted (Sat 21-Jul-07 15:56:06)

Unfortunately 21CN isn't something that can just be popped in overnight.

Fraid not...I have BT Vision and I still get capped to around 1Meg at peak times. When I watch Vision, it activates the QoS service, which gives 1.5Meg to Vision and 0.5Meg to surfing. This still works correctly.

By too many customers you may of course mean that contention at you location is close to the 50:1 ratio. So are you sure is wasn't contention?

I read that post and found it very disturbing. Especially the bit about BT vision because I have BTV and about the only thing that doesn't go wrong is the VoD.

If I was 'in the trade' I would not share that kind of stuff with someone that I have never met. Remember hearsay is not allowed in court for very good reasons. And yes my BT BB works very well. Slows down a bit I suspect during peak hours - probably contention but that's what I signed up for.

I'd just like to say thanks for posting the FUP phone number.

I've been struggling with a 400kbps connection on a 8mb line for months now - driving me up the wall. Last night I spent 45 mins on the phone to the indian call centre and they insisted that it's my equipment that is at fault.

I've just spent 5 mins on the phone to a nice local lady who told me it's because we've been throttled for over-use (70gb last month) on an Option 2 account (8gb limit). So for another

Ah yes...I just called this number and found out interesting things indeed.

I am on Option 3.

According to them I used about 10Gb in each of months Feb-May. Then in June I apparently used about 40Gb and this month so far is 15Gb.

They said, that because my use in June affected other users, they have throttled me for July. It should come off at the end of the month. The guy I spoke to kept emphasising that they introduce throttling where a customer's usage impacts the speeds of other users.

However, I think the switch triggers a little easily don't you think?

Do you look at your BT Broadband e-mail? Once I got them to tell me earlier today what my address was and how to get at it, I found that they were emailing me details each month of how much overage I had used the month before, and what it was going to cost me!

This info is also on your phone bill, but I'm setup for paperless billing and my company just pays the bill on direct debit so I never really noticed.

Now I've been upped to the "unlimited" package, I notice that in the BTYahoo control panel it says my bandwidth limit is 50gb. Since I've been using around 70 a month I wonder if my troubles are not over yet.

I do look at my BT Broadband email and I have never seen an email about usage. I checked the Outlook junk filter and it wasn't there...but I know there is a junk filter in Yahoo as well. I wonder if its getting stuck in there.

But I am only hitting 40GB once and I got throttled! Also, my account in the BT Yahoo control panel says

Product: BT Total Broadband Option 4 - Product details Usage allowance: 50GB


But my BT bill and the FUP person I spoke to says I am definitely on Option 3. I am not sure you can rely on what it says on that control panel page.

Jonathan