BT Broadband Unlimited - P2P Speed at peak time?

I'm considering moving to BT for my broadband and they offered me their £26 unlimited deal for £10 a month for the full 18 months. Sounds good, a bit worried about an 18 month tie-in but the price sweetens it. We do about 35GB a month, mostly streaming and a handful of downloads.
Most downloads can be scheduled overnight (Im used to that), but I am curious to know just how hard they throttle P2P during peak times? Is it at all usable? What are their peak times?

Thanks.

In reply to a post by mouthrush:

how hard they throttle P2P during peak times? Is it at all usable? What are their peak times?

All the official spiel is here: http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10495...

Look under section B 3 'Traffic management key facts indicator', there are two drop down tables with all the network management information in them.

Oh and by the way BT's peak times are 4pm-12pm weekdays and 9am-12pm weekends.

A lot of streaming is not throttled: for example iPlayer and Spotify. People still sometimes get issues with them on Infinity, but people sometimes get issues with them on most ISPs,

Throttling of 'pure' p2p can be quite brutal, it depends on circumstances. On the rare cases I have tried I haven't seen any sign of throttling even at peak times, but it is clear from other posts that it can be really bad. I can't remember what the peak times are: check the ts&cs, I seem to remember peak covers quite a lot of the time.

Justr trying a torrent linux download at 17:30 on Saturday, certainly peak. Speed around 2MBps (16Mbps) ... just gone up to 2.5MBps (20Mbps). So, far from saturating a 70Mbps connection, but possibly not because of throttling, and certainly not the severe dialup speeds that people sometimes report from throttling.

Edited by StephenTodd (Sat 08-Dec-12 17:34:06)

Thanks - I shall read their "formal" info!

Peak is 4-12?

i would argue is more like 8-11 (well thats when my p2p slows anyways)

I have done 'some' testing on glasnot tests and live torrents.

glasnot keeps failing with 'internal failures' it worked about 3-4 times out of 20 so sadly it hasnt gave me much data.

all the times but 1 it said all my p2p up/down was shaped this included tests in mid afternoon on a weekday and evenings. A test at 7.30am'ish said port 6881 was throttled still but torrent traffic on other ports was not (both up and down). After that 7.30am result I tested a live torrent and got full line speed.

The live torrent tests only the 7.30am test got me unthrottled speeds, so far any tests I have done in afternoon's or evenings have been throttled to around 3mbit/sec max.

Thanks for the tests - surprising it was port-based in this instance.

I got glasnot debugging the errors with me right now. if we get it fixed I will do more tests.

just now looking very severe on the download, not sure why others have said they had no shaping.

Is your upload traffic rate limited?
Your ISP appears to rate limit your uploads.

Details:

Your ISP appears to rate limit your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests, uploads using control flows achieved up to 16674 Kbps while uploads using BitTorrent achieved up to 992 Kbps.

Your ISP appears to rate limit uploads on port 6881. In our tests, uploads on port 6881 achieved up to 16674 Kbps while uploads on port 57718 achieved up to 997 Kbps.

Is your download traffic rate limited?
Your ISP appears to rate limit your downloads.

Details:

Your ISP appears to rate limit your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests, downloads using control flows achieved up to 51669 Kbps while downloads using BitTorrent achieved up to 11 Kbps.

Your ISP appears to rate limit downloads on port 6881. In our tests, downloads on port 6881 achieved up to 51669 Kbps while downloads on port 57718 achieved up to 9 Kbps.

There's something very odd with those reports. The figures seem to be reversed compared to the commentary.

They say down and up 6881 is throttled, but have huge speeds compared to port 57718.

Throttling copper broadband to 50K download seems quite harsh. Not used to such draconian measures with current ISP!!!

I think the wording is off yeah. But its a good test I think. Seems to correlate with real world experience.

glasnost seem to have given up or are still debugging.

no tests worked this morning.

another manual ocremix torrent test just now got about 30mbit/sec after slow build up.

More glasnost BitTorrent tests, 13:40 on Monday ... I'm not trying to interpret these, just passing them on for info.

~~~~~~
Is your upload traffic rate limited?

Your ISP appears to rate limit your uploads. Details:
- Your ISP appears to rate limit your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests, uploads using control flows achieved up to 15850 Kbps while uploads using BitTorrent achieved up to 985 Kbps.
- Your ISP appears to rate limit uploads on port 6881. In our tests, uploads on port 6881 achieved up to 15850 Kbps while uploads on port 57576 achieved up to 985 Kbps.

Is your download traffic rate limited?
- There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your downloads.

~~~
Looking at more detail on the download, all the figures came in between 25Mbps and 36Mbps.
For comparison, on best download sites I typically get 60 to 70Mbps.

Edited by StephenTodd (Mon 10-Dec-12 13:53:32)

yeah it seems to vary per area, qas also gets no downstream throttling showing up as well. I think the test issue is local to me, as others seem to run it fine, I am trying it now on a windows VM.

still fails on the VM, now retesting on my cable connection.

ok confirmed its browser issue specifically IE, not saying IE itself has a problem it may be my IE configuration but its the same on my windows XP VM and windows 7 main PC. chrome on the VM is having no such issues.

so this is from about 20 minutes ago, I will do some tommorow if I remember and have time at intervals throughout the day.

s your upload traffic rate limited?

Your ISP appears to rate limit your uploads.

Details:
Your ISP appears to rate limit your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests, uploads using control flows achieved up to 10748 Kbps while uploads using BitTorrent achieved up to 967 Kbps.

Your ISP appears to rate limit uploads on port 6881. In our tests, uploads on port 6881 achieved up to 10748 Kbps while uploads on port 33266 achieved up to 952 Kbps.

Is your download traffic rate limited?

Your ISP appears to rate limit your downloads.
However, some of the measurements were affected by noise, which limits Glasnost ability to detect rate limiting.

Details:
Your ISP appears to rate limit your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests, downloads using control flows achieved up to 40410 Kbps while downloads using BitTorrent achieved up to 81 Kbps.

Your ISP appears to rate limit downloads on port 6881. In our tests, downloads on port 6881 achieved up to 40410 Kbps while downloads on port 33266 achieved up to 85 Kbps.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 10-Dec-12 18:52:39)

here is one from just before 9am.

this is the first glasnost that has told me downstream completely untouched.

s your upload traffic rate limited?

Your ISP appears to rate limit your uploads.

Details:
Your ISP appears to rate limit your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests, uploads using control flows achieved up to 10408 Kbps while uploads using BitTorrent achieved up to 966 Kbps.

Your ISP appears to rate limit uploads on port 6881. In our tests, uploads on port 6881 achieved up to 10408 Kbps while uploads on port 33390 achieved up to 948 Kbps.

Is your download traffic rate limited?

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your downloads.

I was looking for this thread, but didn't manage to find it. Courtesy of BatBoy here it is - you should find it interesting.

have already seen it but its from months ago. Bear in mind I didnt start this thread I am just participating in it.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 11-Dec-12 10:30:09)

It's got some resurrection posts, including yours.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 11-Dec-12 12:30:57)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

have already seen it but its from months ago.

Surely it confirms reports of upstream throttling?

yes but you are telling me to ignore a newer thread I decided to give feedback on?

Nope. I was posting the link to earlier evidence that I intended to help all those affected here. Now if you had done that ....

this be my last update unless you request more, I have done further tests during the day, up until about midday it said no shaping detected at all on the downstream.

tests at 3pm and 4pm stated no shaping detected but "noise" detected, not sure what that means, the speeds reported were lower but the non torrent and torrent speeds still matched.

now I just done another test, which still says not shaped but check the speeds.

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests, downloads using control flows achieved up to 164 Kbps while downloads using BitTorrent achieved up to 153 Kbps.

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits downloads on port 6881 or 60508. In our tests, downloads on port 6881 achieved up to 154 Kbps while downloads on port 60508 achieved up to 153 Kbps.