Are Sky now throttling Usenet on Fibre?

For the last few days my usually top-speed astraweb & blocknews download speeds have dropped by a quarter in the evenings.

I'm on Sky Fibre Unlimited which syncs at 39998 down, and used to get a solid 4.3 MB/s for every download. As of 5 days ago they've been around 2.8MB/s in the evenings. I've tried different ports and different providers, but everything usenet-related downloads at 2.8MB/s. My Router Stats haven't changed and neither has my PC setup or software. If I run a speed test during these times I get the usual speeds. Browsing speeds aren't affected.

Earlier this afternoon I tried a download and got 4.3MB/s again, so I thought the problem was sorted, but as of this evening, it's back to 2.8MB/s. This really feels like some kind of traffic management. Anyone else experiencing anything similar?

Could be early signs of a capacity issue on your exchange. Pop your postcode into the following page and see if it says there is a known problem.

http://exchange-checker.sky.com/serviceupdates

If nothing is listed, it might be worth a call to report it to them. If it is a capacity/congestion issue, they will often compensate from when you report it once its fixed.

No there is no traffic management or throttling. Any issues are usually local to your area i.e. you may have a number of users in your area torrenting 24/7 causing the slowdown.

You have to remember you do not have a 1 to 1 ratio with broadband, you effectively share one pipe with a tonne of people.

In regards to the slowdowns though, the most likely cause is WiFI. During an evening the neighbours come home, connect to their WiFi, fire up various wireless devices and it affects the speeds you get. Have you verified with a wired connection?

My WiFi speed slowed down drastically when next door arrived with a family of 6 and stuck their router on the same channel as mine. Every evening it would half the speed I got.

Again WiFI is a shared medium. Having multiple houses close together, all using WiFi at once, often on the same WiFI channel may cause slowdown.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 31-Jan-15 00:06:56)

Thanks for the replies, I should have mentioned that I'm wired directly to the router which in turn is wired directly to the master socket. I've tried disconnecting everything except the pc and turning off wifi just in case another device is using bandwidth and it hasn't helped. I've run multiple antivirus checks but it's come back clean. Steam downloads aren't affected during these times. I've got the latest sky hub.

The exchange checker shows no problems and I suppose contention could be the issue, I live in a small town full of retirees so I'd say it was a slim possibility at best. I know it's far from scientific but there are only three other routers visible when searching for wifi at my house, so it's not exactly a high use area. Even so, how could I fix this if it is the problem, can sky help with this?

I was just about to sign up for fibre pro as my speed were so good and I've got good router stats, I thought I might as well take advantage, but I don't want to sign up for 18 months then find I only get 2/3rds of the speeds I should!
Cheers

Could just be the usenet server itself is busy

Could be but I've tried Astraweb- and Readnews-based services at the same time with the same results. I'm going to phone sky today to see if they can take a look for me.

Maybe a pinch point in the network between them too, i.e. outside Sky network. Peering links can get congested as it might be a peer of peer that is the issue.

Hmmmm.

It's not traffic management they would have declared it on their terms and conditions which they haven't. Sky can't just activate it and tell nobody.

No issues at my end so almost certainly congestion somewhere.

It's unlikely to affect a speed test as that often has multiple download streams at once to kind of mask congestion.

It could be at exchange level or if your area is small, your exchange is likely to be daisy chained to another exchange and eventually get to an almost main exchange. So the scope for users to be hammering their connections does increase.

In terms of resolving Sky virtually always increase the backhaul once a problem creeps in, although it's usually much worse than you're seeing before they do this. It also takes a fair few months.

Re getting fibre pro, it's the same backhaul so you would see similar speeds yes. Advice don't jump into the upgrade.

Try testing a torrent. If they are throttling usenet (which I doubt) then it would be very likely they would be throttling bittorrent too.

Don't think the WiFi nearby would half your speed. Surely it's more like congestion.

Nope it's WiFi. 5ghz and wired is fine.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Nope it's WiFi. 5ghz and wired is fine.

I have that problem on Saturdays - too many kids using 2.4ghz kit.

Solved it, it's not throttling it's something to do with the usenet provider I was using. Both the providers I was trying had the same problem but I I tried a third earlier today and got full speeds again. The first two must be linked at some level.
I'm going to check speeds again at Monday teatime just to be sure. Thanks for the help and advice everyone!

Really glad to hear it. It's honestly highly unlikely these broadband providers will bring back traffic management and throttling. It was largely needed due to a lack of investment in some providers networks, obviously fibre is 80Mbps and 10 times faster than the "old days" upto 8Mbps speeds. As such the providers have had to massively invest in their networks and most are at a stage where the network can handle torrenting etc at full speed - even the budget providers such as TalkTalk are working fine with users downloading at 9Mb/s on uTorrent and also have no throttling or fair usage anymore.

If any ISP brings it back who doesn't have it already you will hear it here first I am sure.

Not WiFi after all!

Yep, was a stab in the dark.