Shell 900 throttling usenet?

Got my Shell 900 FTTP setup last week.

Running Speedtests I get the full speed. However, when I start downloading via usenet I get full speed initially but quickly drops off to around a ffth of my quoted speed. Never had this with Virgin Media.

Looks like they use TalkTalk according to Ookla.

Do I have acooling off period to leave them?

Thanks

900 FTTP is not a leased line: it does not guarantee that you can use 900 continuously 24x7. Up to 32 customers can be sharing a single PON with 2.4Gbps bandwidth down, 1.2Gbps up. In periods of congestion, the OLT will reduce the bandwidth to each user to ensure fair sharing.

It's also *possible* that Shell do their own burst rate shaping on top of that - I don't know if they do. Equally, it's possible that your Usenet feed is doing some rate shaping of its own, to share its own outbound bandwidth more fairly between its users. It would be a waste of time to walk to another provider, just to find the same thing happening.

You might want to try some other tests. e.g. when Usenet is running and falls off to "a fifth of your quoted speed", what happens if you try a Speedtest at that time? If you're getting 200M of Usenet and at the same time Speedtest shows 700M, then you're getting your full bandwidth.

As for cooling off period: it will be whatever's in your contract, but for most ISPs the cooling-off period ends as soon as the service goes live, or 14 days after order is placed, whichever comes first. This is why line migrations generally take a minimum of 2 weeks.

In reply to a post by AlistairS:

Do I have acooling off period to leave them?

Very likely not.
Shells 14 day cooling off period starts the day after you place your order.

Cancellation or suspension of the Service 3.1. If you change your mind and cancel within the Cooling Off Period 3.1.1. You have the right to cancel your Order within 14 days starting from the day after the day on which your Agreement has been entered into. We call this the Cooling Off Period and you can do this by contacting us via any of the methods detailed at clause 4 of the Introduction to these terms and conditions or by completing the cancellation form which can be found on our website. You won’t be charged an Early Termination Charge, but if you’ve agreed to, and we have already started to provide the Service by the time you cancel it, you'll have to pay us the full cost of the Services you've received and the cost of any installation work we may have carried out up to the point when you notify us.

Hi mate,

Quick bit of advice setup your connection (usenet) to use a non standard port.

A lot of ISP’s can throttle typically used ports.

Dave

Thanks, I use an SSL port anyway, is that what you mean?

I mean use a non standard port for instance ssl might use port 443, you want to see what other ports your usenet provider offers, if they have a non generic one like 4037 go with that.

Your ISP will likely monitor the typical ports and apply throttling.

Actually messaging provider just now as both their SSL ports 443 and 563 produce the same result

Ask them what their maximum speed is per connection.

I use a download manager for usenet and go for 20 sections per file, so 20 consecutive connections per file but only one file at a time, this typically will max out the connection. My usenet provider also has lots of alternative servers and ports plus auto tests you can run to see which server and port combination gives the best performance. I do get issues on rare occasion's with download speeds, a reboot of the PC or a port/server test and changing to the recommend server and port cures them. But I am not with Shell so it may well be them that are traffic shaping your download.

Edited by kommando (Sun 12-Dec-21 16:13:23)

What software and machine are you using for the usenet connection, can it cope with download at full speed then also par'ing the files etc