BT Infinity & P2P

I'm currently with o2 on the 24mbps package but get around 6-7mbps download speed. Been like that for as long as I can remember, the highest I've ever got was 9mbps, so I'm thinking about switching to BT Infinity who have quoted the full speed as I live less than 100m from the cabinet (although I doubt I'll get this speed)

Question is, I'm a heavy p2p user. What are people's experiences with p2p speeds during peak time? I'm not interested in paying extra for a VPN service, and all the other providers like SKY/Plus Net require changing your line rental to them, and I'd quite like to keep my line rental with BT.

I did see a guy on here ("orly" I think his name was) get normal speeds during peaktime with some customization, but was wondering if anyone else had any luck with it? and what the normal speeds were during peak hours. I live in London if that makes any sort of difference?!

Thanks for your help

Im on the BT Infinity Option 2.
I do alot of P2P too. I can confirm that BT are throttling uploading heavily at ALL TIMES. Their policy is not to throttle upload between 1am until 7am (approx). This is not true. Upload is throttled at all times to 100KB (near 1Mbit/s). I have tried to raise this with BT, but ofc course Ive spent 3 months trying to get them to look into it, but its like asking a 1 year old to map out the exact structure of a DNA helix.

I came from a connection which gave me 11Mbit down and 1Mbit up.
My current infinity package performs better on all fronts bar P2P upload, which it performs about the same.
This is important for people who need to "seed". If you dont need to seed, i'd recommend FTTC in a heart beat.

55Mbit down on all protocols, P2P, FTP.

18Mbit up on FTP all times
100-120K up on P2P all times

Cheers

Cheers for that mate

You've mentioned your upload speeds, but what about downloads during peak times?

Sky FTTC is the best for P2P users.

BT P2P shaping is quite random. Most of the time download will run at line speed but may be limited to 10KB/s during heavy network load. Upstream seems to be limited to 1Mb/s quite a lot of the time.

"55Mbit down on all protocols, P2P, FTP." - I dont notice any throttling on download at any time. Whether this is due to contention in my area, im not sure. But its more than enough to live with to have anything 4 gig and below.

I cant comment on other FTTC providers, so i'd research the upload cap with others.

Cheers

In reply to a post by relax24:

... and all the other providers like SKY/Plus Net require changing your line rental to them, and I'd quite like to keep my line rental with BT.

You don't have to move your line rental to Plusnet. Scroll half way down this page and there is a clickable blue banner across the page.

I'm on a BT Retail line with PN Extra Fibre. P2P throttling is to 2Mbps, 8pm-10pm, unthrottled at all other times. 250GB is 8am-midnight, unlimited midnight-8am. £19.99pm, one-off £5 if you want a fixed IP address.

Edit - upload is not throttled at any time.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 08-Nov-12 14:04:03)

If keeping you line rental with BT is so important, then maybe getting a fibre connection with the likes of Aquiss, Vivaciti .or ADLS24 ,Xilo or other smaller isp
is for you, none provide a unlimited usage product,but i think all provide unlimited data use between certain hours of the day,and may be unlimited over the weekends
As far as i know there's no throttling on those products,

Edited by tommy45 (Thu 08-Nov-12 14:35:07)

Ahh cheers...didn't know if you meant at all times or during off peak hours.

Ta

Out of peak times

my upload is around 800KB/s

for p2p

Edited by epyon (Fri 09-Nov-12 01:28:38)

It's definitely worth considering a switch of the line rental and calls package.

I have BT infinity and Sky Fibre service so I can comment on both. I find that BT seems to throttle upload to anything between 1Kb/s and 100Kb/s. Usually around 70 Kb/s upload... This seems pretty much 24 hours a day & I think the upload on torrents is always restricted. I've never seen a quick upload with torrents.

Downloading can be anywhere between 80 Kb/s and 350 Kb/s during peak times & around 5 Mb/s off peak. There are peak times when there appears to be no throttling however this is rare. I live in a very busy area with high take up of fibre & BT so this probably doesn't help.

With Sky I see 8.2 Mb/s at all times on peer to peer & torrents. Upload can easily max out at 2.1 Mb/s.
Overall the Sky connection is better I find. I do use the sky connection 99% of the time. The BT is just a freebie from work.

BT is full wack on everything else although I notice iplayer buffers quite a few times throughout a program whereas on Sky it doesn't.

I would definitely consider a line rental switch over. I did so and don't regret it. Sky gave me line rental for £1 for 12 months now too. They have some good deals once you're an existing customer.

Should add really I'm not too keen on the homehub. My ethernet keeps slowing down to around 0.7Mbps for some silly reason. Still haven't got to the bottom of that but luckily I mainly just use WiFi. I have had far more slowdowns on BT, e.g. it may give me 40Mbps on speedtest when I'm synced at 80 for a little while. This being said, this never lasts long and if I test later it's all back to normal.

Overall both services are good. The BT 80Mbps service is cheaper than Sky's. I pay £30 to Sky + line rental.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 09-Nov-12 05:30:04)

Thanks so much for that. Out of interest, whereabouts do you live roughly? I live in SW London, is there a way to see what the take up of fibre is like in my area?

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I find that BT seems to throttle upload to anything between 1Kb/s and 100Kb/s. Usually around 70 Kb/s upload

I've never seen any indication of upload throttling at any time on non-p2p. With appropriate software (eg FileZilla) connected to a decent server (eg SquirrelSave) I see pretty rock solid 17Mbps upload whenever I need it; and I understand I could increase that a little to around 18 maybe if I turned QoS off on my modem. I might have chosen Sky, but they didn't offer the nominal 20Mbps upload when I signed up.

Hmmm ok so I've narrowed it down to Plusnet and BT.

Sky is too expensive for their highest package.

Decisions decisions!!

I live in SW London and torrents are fine, at peak time get at least 1 mega bytes per seconds up and down.

In reply to a post by AJHB:

I live in SW London and torrents are fine, at peak time get at least 1 mega bytes per seconds up and down.

There's so many conflicting reports about this. Is there any reason why some people get throttled, and some not?

FYI - I too am a fellow south londoner, which I assumed would be quite a busy region in the UK with a high uptake of fibre.

And amongst the most likely places to have high MSIL capacity allocated.

Wish I knew what MSIL capacity even meant!

http://www.robertos.me.uk/html/wbc-wbmc-ipsc.html

Edit - Just read my page - it needs to be clarified by saying BT Wholesale rather than BT. Also the bit about O2/Be being able to use it is true, but they don't.

Each ISP has its own MSILs, the loads on Entanet's are shown here.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 11-Nov-12 13:09:57)

In reply to a post by relax24:

I'm currently with o2 on the 24mbps package but get around 6-7mbps download speed. Been like that for as long as I can remember, the highest I've ever got was 9mbps, so I'm thinking about switching to BT Infinity who have quoted the full speed as I live less than 100m from the cabinet (although I doubt I'll get this speed)

Question is, I'm a heavy p2p user. What are people's experiences with p2p speeds during peak time? I'm not interested in paying extra for a VPN service, and all the other providers like SKY/Plus Net require changing your line rental to them, and I'd quite like to keep my line rental with BT.

I did see a guy on here ("orly" I think his name was) get normal speeds during peaktime with some customization, but was wondering if anyone else had any luck with it? and what the normal speeds were during peak hours. I live in London if that makes any sort of difference?!

Thanks for your help

Yep back when I had Infinity I never had issues with P2P throttling. Can't comment any more as I've emigrated to Canada so obviously I no longer use BT.

In reply to a post by orly:

Yep back when I had Infinity I never had issues with P2P throttling. Can't comment any more as I've emigrated to Canada so obviously I no longer use BT.

Hi . Good to see you still watch this place. How's tricks over there?

Re the OP, looks like he's been rather unlucky . See the thread this post is in.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by orly:

Yep back when I had Infinity I never had issues with P2P throttling. Can't comment any more as I've emigrated to Canada so obviously I no longer use BT.

Hi . Good to see you still watch this place. How's tricks over there?

Re the OP, looks like he's been rather unlucky . See the thread this post is in.

Pop in from time to time.

Lots of snow and ice at the moment but it is Canada after all. Got married in August and working in web design at the moment. Earning more than ever did back home. Internet is a bit ropey...no such thing as universal ADSL here. Live 5 minutes from the edge of a reasonably large town and get "mobile" broadband in my house...works out about 60 quid if I dare to use more than 10GB a month. Takes a bit of getting used to after using whatever I liked on BT. Hopefully move into the city in a few months and then it's a bit more comparable to back home

Edited by orly (Tue 08-Jan-13 22:31:41)

In reply to a post by orly:

Pop in from time to time.

Lots of snow and ice at the moment but it is Canada after all. Got married in August and working in web design at the moment. Earning more than ever did back home.

Sounds really good!

Internet is a bit ropey...no such thing as universal ADSL here. Live 5 minutes from the edge of a reasonably large town and get "mobile" broadband in my house...works out about 60 quid if I dare to use more than 10GB a month. Takes a bit of getting used to after using whatever I liked on BT.

Shhh - don't say that! We all know that the worst possible place in the world to get a decent internet connection is the UK. You'll get burnt at the stake as a heretic if you ever come over to see anyone.

Hmm well I used to get throttled at peak 100kbps or so but the last few nights I've been getting 30Mbps or so strange.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by orly:

Pop in from time to time.

Lots of snow and ice at the moment but it is Canada after all. Got married in August and working in web design at the moment. Earning more than ever did back home.

Sounds really good!

Internet is a bit ropey...no such thing as universal ADSL here. Live 5 minutes from the edge of a reasonably large town and get "mobile" broadband in my house...works out about 60 quid if I dare to use more than 10GB a month. Takes a bit of getting used to after using whatever I liked on BT.

Shhh - don't say that! We all know that the worst possible place in the world to get a decent internet connection is the UK. You'll get burnt at the stake as a heretic if you ever come over to see anyone.

The UK does generally excel when it comes to internet speeds / usage / availability. Of course it's easy to say "But in Holland..." or "But in Korea...". Compared to the vast majority of countries it's pretty decent.

Internet usage and availability is far lower here. Rather than tell me what services I can get, Most ISPs here are actually unable to find my address in their databases. I'd understand if I was truly in the middle of nowhere but I actually have what is classed as an "urban" post code here. Quite ridiculous when you consider BT has been able to tell you how fast your connection should be for like a decade. I've determined I'm about 7KM from the phone exchange and it's pretty much a straight road the entire way there. Won't even attempt to supply ADSL to me. Even getting a home phone line was met with "hmms and hahs". Nearly farcical but nowhere can be perfect If I moved into town I might be able to get a 175Mbit symmetrical connection which sounds very nice. Unfortunately further analysis revealed a 300GB usage allowance and the bargain price of $230/month (about 140 quid). I think I'll pass.

People here actually prefer to visit stores in person still. I find that a bit alien as I'm happier using Amazon, Netflix, Spotify etc. Not sure the government has grasped the importance of super fast infrastructure moving forward.

Edited by orly (Wed 09-Jan-13 14:48:38)

There are many people that I know in the Toronto area that buy all their stuff online and have high speed broadband. The most popular ISP for high speed is Rogers: http://www.rogers.com/web/link/hispeedBrowseFlowDefa...

That's if you can afford it though.

In reply to a post by robertcrowther:

There are many people that I know in the Toronto area that buy all their stuff online and have high speed broadband. The most popular ISP for high speed is Rogers: http://www.rogers.com/web/link/hispeedBrowseFlowDefa...

That's if you can afford it though.

Yea but Rogers generally suck for phone/internet. Their TV plans are better than Bell though. It's basically a cartel here...all the companies offer pretty much the same things for roughly the same prices.