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

I assume that "it was all fine on Virgin Media" sort of covers off that OPs hardware and network is not the issue

Have you tried hooking your PC direct to the ONT and seeing what the speeds are like? Maybe the bundled router is causing issues.

Edited by jpm (Sun 12-Dec-21 16:33:20)

That is a good point.

That reminds me of another issue I've seen, which is SSDs which can write at full speed for the first couple of minutes, and then drop down to some very slow speed: I have seen as low as 10MB/sec. I believe this is due to thermal throttling, which is not something the manufacturers trumpet about.

The thermal throttling in turn is caused by having to do block-erases of partly used blocks. You can make this much better by turning on TRIM, which allows the filesystem to tell the SSD which 128K ranges are no longer used, and can then be erased in the background.

Another more drastic option is to do a full SSD erase. This must be done via a special ATA command, not just by "reformatting" the disk in the OS.

However, if the drive that you're writing your USENET files to is a traditional spinning hard drive rather than an SSD, then this issue won't apply.

I would say that anyone who buys a service faster than 200 or 300Mbps, is likely to find that it highlights deficiencies in their home network, wifi, and/or client devices.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I would say that anyone who buys a service faster than 200 or 300Mbps, is likely to find that it highlights deficiencies in their home network, wifi, and/or client devices.

Yes. Untangling the real root cause(s) for the lay person can be challenging

It's a dedicated server with sabnzb and was able to handle a 500 virgin media connection no problems for quite sometime.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Ask them what their maximum speed is per connection.

I had no issue with the VM 500 connection get throttled so this is why i think it might be be shell.

Eueka is what I use and 50 connections on my package

In reply to a post by AlistairS:

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.

Do you experience the same issue with large file downloads from for example TBB Download Test Files page.

What's your elapsed download time for the 1GB file?

I downloaded a 10GB test file on SabNZB and initially got full speed but it soon dropped off

Could be a server issue or an issue further upstream from your ISP network. The larger and further away the file is located the more vagaries that are completely out of control

What newsswever / where are you pulling files from? Can you post a traceroute?

What about the TBB test files as noted - you should be able to pull that 1GB file down in around 10-12 seconds.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Could be a server issue or an issue further upstream from your ISP network. The larger and further away the file is located the more vagaries that are completely out of control

What newsswever / where are you pulling files from? Can you post a traceroute?

What about the TBB test files as noted - you should be able to pull that 1GB file down in around 10-12 seconds.

I am using Eweka in Netherlands. Their support asked for a traceroute which I have sent them. I am not at home just now so can't try that download just now

In reply to a post by AlistairS:

I am using Eweka in Netherlands.

What's the round-trip time if you ping them?

The maximum throughput of a single TCP stream drops off rapidly with RTT in the presence of even small amounts of packet loss:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_tuning#Packet_loss

e.g. with 20ms RTT and 0.01% packet loss (1 in 10,000 packets), max throughput is

1460/0.02/sqrt(0.0001) = 7300000 bytes/sec = 58.4 Mbps

If your USENET feed consists of multiple concurrent TCP streams, then the limit applies to each stream separately so is less likely to be the problem. OTOH, if it uses multiple concurrent streams to deliver the backlog, then only a single stream to deliver the newly arriving articles, it might be why the throughput drops off.

They may have quite heavily contended connections to the Usenet provider. If they know that virtually everything coming down is going to be dodgy there's not that much incentive to upgrade it - no ISP wants customers leeching 'Linux ISOs' from usenet if they can help it.

In reply to a post by AlistairS:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Could be a server issue or an issue further upstream from your ISP network. The larger and further away the file is located the more vagaries that are completely out of control

What newsswever / where are you pulling files from? Can you post a traceroute?

What about the TBB test files as noted - you should be able to pull that 1GB file down in around 10-12 seconds.

I am using Eweka in Netherlands. Their support asked for a traceroute which I have sent them. I am not at home just now so can't try that download just now

If it helps, I use Eweka as well as Giganews. With just Eweka enabled I get around 30-50Mb, if I add Giganews in there too I get 70-85Mb

Eweka support suggesting stuff I have already tried different ports, SSL non SSL, software versions of sab and other software, NZBGet.

Fairly sure its Shell.

I would be happy enough with FTTC as there is no point in having 900 if i can't use it for what I want

In reply to a post by AlistairS:

Eweka support suggesting stuff I have already tried different ports, SSL non SSL, software versions of sab and other software, NZBGet.

Fairly sure its Shell.

I would be happy enough with FTTC as there is no point in having 900 if i can't use it for what I want

You probably know this but just in case (I didn't when moving from FTTC to FTTP)...

Eweka offers a speed of 50 Mbit/s per Usenet account

just tried a tweaknews free sign up to compare a 1 and 10GB downloads to eweka. Exactly the same starts off at 100 and tails off very quickly.

Try using a VPN, if they are traffic shaping based on types of traffic then that will hide it.

In reply to a post by D_an_W:

You probably know this but just in case (I didn't when moving from FTTC to FTTP)...

Eweka offers a speed of 50 Mbit/s per Usenet account

Is that not it then?

They're simply rate-limiting from their servesr. OP could have a 10G connection and it would make no difference.

In reply to a post by kommando:

Try using a VPN, if they are traffic shaping based on types of traffic then that will hide it.

Funny enougfh that's just what I was trying when I saw your post.

Speed was down but it was a constant speed.

I am on the chat to shell just now asking about bandwidth and throttling on usenet

I use Zen 900mb internet and eweka.nl with SabNzbd, and get full speed, but can I just ask are you just downloading or unpacking as it downloads, also drive speed and cpu is a lot to do with speed, you said it starts off full speed then dies off, is it filling the ram cache of then slowing down ? try upping the cache size of your download client

In reply to a post by idmanager:

I use Zen 900mb internet and eweka.nl with SabNzbd, and get full speed, but can I just ask are you just downloading or unpacking as it downloads, also drive speed and cpu is a lot to do with speed, you said it starts off full speed then dies off, is it filling the ram cache of then slowing down ? try upping the cache size of your download client

Its just downloading before any unpack or repair. Same setup and hardware as I had with the VM500 connection which didn't suffer from this issue. Shell say that they are raising it with Openreach but I truely don't think they understand what I am telling them.

In reply to a post by AlistairS:

Same setup and hardware as I had with the VM500 connection which didn't suffer from this issue.

The additional 400 Mbps is quite a significant increase, this is not the same as the 40 to 80 Mbps type change. I would compare all your application settings with idmanager and check if you use the same security / antivirus / malware software etc.

Unless ive missed it have you said what router you are using?
Obviously it should be able to cope, but you never know.

My router or the OP's?

There's a bit more work for the router to do on Openreach FTTP at close to gigabit than via VM cable modem, but I would expect a simple speed test out to prove the basic connection is hitting the target. f the hardware is struggling it wont make 900+ off the bat.

My Router is an Asus RT-AC86U runing latest Merlin Firmware

On Wednesday night I decided to change OS from Windows 11 to Linux Mint.



Full speed now on Linux Mint - RESULT

Going to give Windows 10 a try over the weekend. However, if its the same as 11 I will move over to Linux on the server permanently

Good that you found the issue, but when in your OP you said:

Never had this with Virgin Media.

What speeds were you previously running via VM when there was no issue?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Good that you found the issue, but when in your OP you said:

Never had this with Virgin Media.

What speeds were you previously running via VM when there was no issue?

The 500 connection with VM

Thanks. Apologies I just read the thread again and saw that you had noted the VM connection speed.

Windows builds do tend to be more problematic when it comes to being able to sustain near gigabit connections. Linux and MacOS generally cope much better.

If the machine is experiencing this on a clean build of W11 or W10 - without any other software that could compromise the throughout of the network (third party firewall, AV and anti malware are the usual suspects) then its down to Windows and NIC driver interaction / NIC capability. If you’re wanting to stay with windows then a different NIC (perhaps for example from Intel rather than an integrated mobo NIC) could help.

thanks for the explanation. Switching to linux isn't an issue, I have run it off and on for a few years now.

Yep I’d simply stick with a build of Linux you like then. Good luck with it all.