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 deleted (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!

Everything, all the time.

56k modem speeds, throttled to bits

LOL .. like I took those comments literally. Past experience put me off BT for life .. but Infinity has great potential if it ever arrives at my exchange!

In reply to a post by lg56xbp:

LOL .. like I took those comments literally. Past experience put me off BT for life .. but Infinity has great potential if it ever arrives at my exchange!

It's awful http://speedtest.net/result/1678292942.png

Incorrect. They ditched the FUP many months ago.

Awful ... http://www.speedtest.net/result/1678736616.png

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by lg56xbp:

LOL .. like I took those comments literally. Past experience put me off BT for life .. but Infinity has great potential if it ever arrives at my exchange!

It's awful http://speedtest.net/result/1678292942.png

I wouldn't mind those speeds myself - are you on FTTP or some sort of FTTC 80Mbps trial ?

I jumped from Sky back in November and use Torrents quite often. Must say that so far I have had very little throttling, and when i did i just used protocol encryption on my downlaod client and then reach full speed, depending on seeds of couse, this being at peak times.....

Comes highly recommended from myself......

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

Incorrect. They ditched the FUP many months ago.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

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 .

Not talking about the 300gig FUP - thats gone - but there are still gradings for traffic useage that have different effects - you won't see any immediate effect any more when you go over 300gig but around about that level you will see additional measures taken at peak times on P2P traffic which I believe still includes slowing down encrypted traffic to reduce the impact of people masquerading traffic.

You are describing a fair usage policy. It doesn't exist. I know of people shifting several terabytes per month over port 443 SSL encrypted USENET and there is no sign of an artificial slowdown.

In reply to a post by Rroff:

Not talking about the 300gig FUP - thats gone - but there are still gradings for traffic useage that have different effects - you won't see any immediate effect any more when you go over 300gig but around about that level you will see additional measures taken at peak times on P2P traffic which I believe still includes slowing down encrypted traffic to reduce the impact of people masquerading traffic.

So you are saying that the "scrapped" 300GB FUP has been replaced by a more complex one with gradations, and BT are lying? That is what you have defined there.

No one is denying that they throttle P2P traffic at busy times, as they publish. In fact posters are saying they do, but you are the first to suggest that the severity of it is based on the individual user's usage.

It's awful http://speedtest.net/result/1678292942.png

Great to see at least 0.0001% of BT customers are satisfied with their speeds

There is no fair useage policy like there used to be - going over a mysterious number won't suddenly see your connection clamped to 1Mbit/s during peak times for the next 30 days. Its not turned into an all you can eat buffet tho either.

I can check with my brother (BT whitelabel reseller) to update info as its been a couple of months or so since I asked about it and BT are forever changing things without telling anyone... but it used (and I assume still does) to work since they removed the FUP by grading users and monitoring overall traffic levels in the BT network and when the network started to get busy those users with higher useage levels would get lower priorities (how much lower depending on how heavy a user they are) for bandwidth. For the most part no one would really notice anything unless the network was very congested - someone sitting downloading torrents all day isn't going to notice an extra 10-20ms latency and speeds dropping off a couple of mbit/s at peak times but doing that to a couple of hundred "heavy" users can make quite a difference to the overall picture.


Regarding encrypted connection throttling it may be this only applies on exchanges that are over subscribed or an additional measure that reseller can enable.

Edited by deleted (Sun 01-Jan-12 16:46:15)

http://speedtest.net/result/1679118596.png

At least I'm getting 75% of my "target" max download speed with BT - all I could squeeze out of Orange was ................ pips

Certainly no throttle tonight!

http://speedtest.net/result/1691208104.png

23.3 Meg download!!, not bad for a 21 Meg max achievable speed !
or a 17.5 Meg DSL connection rate, and a 15.4 IP Profile.

I'm living the dream ................ with BT, after some nightmares with others

Edited by shrimper1 (Fri 06-Jan-12 23:52:05)

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by lg56xbp:

LOL .. like I took those comments literally. Past experience put me off BT for life .. but Infinity has great potential if it ever arrives at my exchange!

It's awful http://speedtest.net/result/1678292942.png

That's Nothing!!! http://speedtest.net/result/1678292942.png