P2P and Speeds

Hi All,

I am thinking of switching to Orange as they are offering a service without any caps. Current prediction for my line is 17.0Mb

Sam Knows shows my exchange now has a 21CN date of 30/11/2011, will there be an automatic speed increase after then?

Orange say the only traffic which is clobbered is P2P between 18:00 and 23:30 weekdays and 17:00 to 23:00 at weekends.

How bad is the throttling of the P2P traffic likely to be?

I've found this on their website

http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/com.instranet.Inst...

Their T&C state that they have removed their FUP (which used to be 75gig p/m if I think right?), but the above document says they throttle P2P and newsgroups. I can't see anywhere which they state by how much.

It is of my understanding that Orange monitor the 'usual' ports that are used by P2P/newsgroups and throttle those depending on how much traffic is actually going through. I am being careful here as I do not want to contravene any forum rules (apologies if I do), but there could be ways and means around this, if you catch my drift!

My understanding from others is that P2P speed can sometimes drop by over half but this can happen with any ISP who monitor this kind of traffic.

I used to be LLU'd on Orange and received an email with a date of when I was being moved over to WBC/21CN. There was about 15mins downtime. There is no 10 day 'line training period' when someone goes from 20CN to 21CN whilst with the same ISP during this time, but may experience a bit of speed fluctuation whilst a happy medium is found for a couple of days or so. Some people don't notice a huge difference in speed, maybe 1-2Mbps at the most. Some people have noticed a significant drop in speed when being transferred from LLU but this is because their exchange hadn't been upgraded to 21CN at that time. It may be worth you ringing Orange to see if the 21CN date is correct for your exchange and if you are still considering changing to Orange, do it from that date. I'm not sure, but you may have the 10 day training period as you are moving ISPs, but Orange should advise you if this is the case.

In reply to a post by Mike_Williams:

How bad is the throttling of the P2P traffic likely to be?

Bad....Very bad
If I start something in the evening I am now getting 5 kb/s. If I restart it around midnight it gets upto 525 kb/s.

In reply to a post by Ricinus:

In reply to a post by Mike_Williams:

How bad is the throttling of the P2P traffic likely to be?

Bad....Very bad
If I start something in the evening I am now getting 5 kb/s. If I restart it around midnight it gets upto 525 kb/s.

Thanks,

Pretty severe then.
Would using uTorrent's forced encryption setting help?

Hi Mike, downloads are unlimited with Orange, but they do restrict peer to peer (P2P) traffic at peak times.

Orange Broadband Traffic management.
Traffic management is where we sometimes apply restrictions to the amount of network capacity a customer can use, which can affect your speed. We do this to stop a small number of customers who excessively download during peak times (6pm to midnight) as this affects the quality of the service we provide to all other customers. It also means that we are able to prioritise certain types of Internet traffic on time sensitive applications such as our second line phone service or gaming.

We believe we are protecting our customers by doing this and helping to stop a handful of people affecting your service.

Orange traffic management policies:
Unlike other ISPs, Orange will only restrict peer to peer (P2P) traffic at peak times.
Peak times are defined as being between the following times: 6pm to midnight every day of the week.

http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/support/personal/b...

http://shop.orange.co.uk/broadband/compare-all/

In reply to a post by Ricinus:

If I start something in the evening I am now getting 5 kb/s. If I restart it around midnight it gets upto 525 kb/s.

Do you mean Bytes or bits? Bits seems extraordinarily slow esp. for non-peak time, unless you have a very long line and only get a low sync speed < 1 Meg. In which case, yours is not a good sample to go by.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Wed 09-Nov-11 13:45:52)

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by Ricinus:

If I start something in the evening I am now getting 5 kb/s. If I restart it around midnight it gets upto 525 kb/s.

Do you mean Bytes or bits? Bits seems extraordinarily slow esp. for non-peak time, unless you have a very long line and only get a low sync speed < 1 Meg. In which case, yours is not a good sample to go by.

alright it's a capital B. Sync is reported as 5.3 Mbps.

"switching to Orange" ????

Don't do it - their support is rubbish.

Not worried about support if the quality is ok

Never found an ISP with good support yet...