BT Broadband Traffic Shaping == Denial of Service

I've been suffering from unpayable gaming during peak times on BT Internet. After a lot of research I have found this is because of BT's traffic shaping system. BT are maintaining that so long as the broadband works, the speed is irrelevant and they do not have to do anything about poor service. However, the games I play are not only unplayable because of the dreadful latency, they terminate my connection due to it (obviously the game servers measure latency and terminate all players that are too high). I have contacted OFCOM and sought legal advice on the issue and have found that I may have a claim against BT for Denial of Service. The software they are running is the direct cause of me NOT being able to use an internet service that falls well within fair usage (game traffic is not heavy use). They are aware of the issue as I have presented them with numerous help requests and evidence of the effect their traffic shaping is having and still they have not rectified the problem. This may be enough for me file charges against BT for deliberate Denial of Service. I am trying to rally support for this by asking all other BT users suffering from this problem to make similar claims against BT.

Which game(s)?

Quite a few,
Conquer-Online, Wow, Rift, Eve to name a few.

It's not the speed, as these games do not require super fast or heavy usage connections, It's the latency that makes them unplayable/unusable as the traffic shaping is causing packet queuing which is denying the service. I am currently (under legal advice) putting together a cease and desist letter that needs to be sent to BT's legal department to officially register the complaint in a legal manner.

I'm trying to find the correct legal definition of Denial of Service, the closest I have found is
"A denial of service (DoS) is an incident in which a user or organization is deprived of the services of a resource they would normally expect to have"
Which does seem to fit this problem.

traffic management is normally the gamers friend , with gaming packets being given priority , i say this as a TalkTalk customer .TalkTalk traffic manage there net work with P2P being throttled to death at peak usage times , which is good for me as a gamer .

Now i know allot of people with BT connections that game regularly with out many problems , sure some times they hit a bad central and suffer packet loss but turning the router off for ten minutes can give you a new central .
Things are a bit different if your exchange is 21CN and it may well be a node over loaded

I think some further investigation is needed , would it be possible to see your full router stats ? and a tracert to one or maybe a couple of the gaming servers you use ?

Edited by deleted (Mon 12-Sep-11 20:32:33)

Are you using this site's Broadband Quality/Ping Monitor tool? What does it have to say about latency in general on your connection?

Have you tried using something like pingplotter to record the network-level (rather than game level) ping to the servers of interest?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping
http://www.pingplotter.com/freeware.html

A LOT of investigation has been done. Firstly, the latency only occurs at peak times, at around 11pm most nights it INSTANTLY vanishes. I assume this is because the shaping system is turned off at around this time. Similarly it instantly appears at around 5pm. This is clearly something being activated and de-activated. The main game that is suffering is Conquer-Online. Their game traffic protocol is a 512 bit encrypted SSL and more than likely being mistaken as P2P traffic by the shaper.

A command line ping of Conquer-Online's server yields an average reply time of 72ms. The company that run Conquer-Online (TQ Digital) have been helping me, and they sent me some software to run along side the game to track ICMP vs TCP Game Data reply times. Latency from their server to BT's initial gateway was in the region of 60ms, however, from there, I end up with latency often over 5000ms which is clearly being added by the BT network. 100% proof.

BT seem to think that they can play the "Tough Luck" card and get away with it, however, they might get their toes burned this time.

Could i see the proof ? which is what i obviously would like to see and you say you have 100% proof, as said i know allot of people that play with BT connections .

My brother in law is mental for playing Eve and i know loads that play WOW all with BT connections , with out issue . I know nothing of Conquer-Online and its very possible the packets are being misidentified by BT traffic management but with out seeing the proof you say you have , i'm unconvinced and don't fancy your chances of taking this further.

Rather than taking BT to court it might be a better idea to get BT network team to look at the priority of Conquer-Online packets .

Create a thread regarding the issue on the BT forum. Fingers crossed they'll be able to create a management profile for the game.

DoS is generally taken as a hacking attack.

BT traffic management is nothing of that sort, and your issue may be nothing to do with that.

It might actually be a peering issue rather than a management issue, or a congestion issue, i.e. other people on the exchange saturating the BT links at that time.

512bit SSL tells us nothing - what tcp/udp ports does the app use?

Please do make your claim immediately, this will be interesting. I have no idea at all how this will work but it will be fascinating to see how it pans out.

Just remember when you file your legal complaint to paragraph it.

Also do let us know, if you do somehow win, how much compensation you get for not being able to play the game.

Wouldn't it be easier to demand BT release you from any ongoing contract so that you can try another ISP?