What exactly do BT throttle - and when ?

I'm giving some thought to the Unlimited option, but I know that BT throttle and 'traffic shape'.

I usually download aything from 2-3TB per month, plus use a lot of streaming services.

That being the case, which of the following am I likely to see throttled:

i.) Torrents;
ii.) Usenet;
iii.) FTP;
iv) Streaming.

Also, which hours/days are usually throttled .. and how bad is the throttling?

Everything, all the time. Much better ISP's out there !! Plus, if you go elsewhere you'll leave some bandwidth for me.

Have to concur with Squirrel its horrible 56k modem speeds, throttled to bits best choose someone else.

Torrents are the only thing that gets scaled back and that, in my experience, is occasional and rudimentary. It can be easily bypassed.

I've recently signed up with BT's No. 2 option, and just recorded an all time high of 17 Meg download speed.
As I watch footie sometimes on the net, their monthly 40Gb download allowance suits me fine. In my experience, it's the other ISPs that share their local exchange that get throttled - that's why I left Orange, in fact it should be renamed "Tortoise"!

Thanks for the replies ... I think

I remember 8MBit BT circa 2007/8 and swore I'd never return as evening and weekend speeds varied between pitiful and pathetic.

Guess it was plain foolish to expect BT to have caught up with the likes of Be in the past four years to offer a truly 'Unlimited' ADSL2 service with no 'controls' whatsoever. It's not as if you can get unlimited 50MBit for £20 per month in most countries East of Germany after all. Even a summer spent in Moscow in 2009 benefitted from a 100MBit LAN - installed in less than 24 hours for the equivalent of less than $15!

At least Infinity finally looks promising. Shame my local exchange isn't getting enabled until December 2012 .. which probably means Summer 2013 in all likelihood.

I assume you missed the item in invisible ink in the first two replies? I refer to the that cannot be seen in the cheek.

There has long been a standing joke on these forums - don't recommend your own ISP for heavy downloaders, in case you spoil your own party.

Generally the only thing that is heavily throttled these days is P2P traffic - IIRC if your a heavy user (over 300gig) then SSL connections, etc. will also be throttled to 2Mbit/s during peak times.

BT have changed the whole traffic management system now so it works by a "soft braking" principle taking overall traffic levels into account and then when the network starts to get busy it will start to slow down heavier users a little bit - in most cases you probably won't even notice it.

Using 2-3TB a month is gonna put you at the front of the line for traffic management tho and you'll feel it more at peak times than someone who DLs say 100gig - purely just as an example you might be slowed down to the point where your limited to 5MBit/s throughput whereas at the same time someone who has DLD 300gig is limited to 7Mbit/s.

Edited by Rroff (Fri 30-Dec-11 21:06:00)

Interesting info, but is it still current? Your mention of 300gig sounds like the 300GB FUP before individual management came into play, that was removed many months ago.

The OP has in any case today signed up to another provider, but my question stands .

talk about gullible, some folk just fell right into that trap eh!