what is P2P/Bit-Torrent speed during peak on cable?

Iam being screwed over by SKY LLu - going from a 19Mb connection with BT & o2 to a whopping 3Mb connection with peak-time slowdown on SKY LLu SVBN Broadband Unlimited...

Iam thinking about moving to Virgin Cable , Iam a lite P2P user, can anyone tell me what speed Bit-torrent is restricted to during the peak hours of 10am-9pm..? is it 25kbps / 50kbps / 100kbps...?? just what is it? i tried contacting virgin but they could not give me an answer

any info would be great

thanks

They can't give any definitive answer as the degree of P2P shaping depends on the overall load of your CMTS at the time in question. Judging by the state of large sections of the VM network since they introduced unlimited 100Mbps getting around the shaping must be easy - from stuff I've seen it may even be as simple as turning on encryption in the client or maybe use of a VPN. At some point they will have to fix it though or they'll lose too many customers to Infinity who are sick of the poor performance.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Thu 12-Apr-12 15:40:47)

thanks for replies

I was toying with 30Mb package, anything else is not really affordable

on previous ISPs whre BT was restricted I could not get around it with encryption, doesnt that just encrypt the data and not the protocol? (so an ISP can still block the protocol) im not 100% sure on how it works so just speculating..

you can get by it using a paid proxy service but more cost...

not the same with VPN its an tunnel connection every thing is routed threw it, P2P can be detected even if encryption is enabled just not every ISP has DPI hardware to detect it

VM have an FUP, they throttle between 4pm and midnight depending what the network is doing in your area, newsgroups get cut back a lot, not sure about P2P as seems largely unaffected last time i tried it, Virgin also have an STM as well (download to much you lose 50% of your bandwidth for 5hrs, but still unlimited downloading)

thanks for the insight leexgx

whats latency like?

Edited by paulb100 (Thu 12-Apr-12 18:10:06)

I think it varies per area.

My area appears to be a magnet for torrenters, when I last tried it on a weekend I think I got about 1meg/sec or so. I am on the 30mbit package although I dont think thats rleevant fo rthe p2p shaping. Bear in mind tho I rarely use torrents.

Sky don't limit P2P or any other protocol for that matter meaing you may be on one of the congested exchanges listed on pulse.sky.com

Though would be interesting to know if you're syncing at 19Mbit with Sky?

It varies per area, there is standard traffic management which applies to just any throughput, which is really generous and is available on the VM website.

But on top of that they do manage P2P and newsgroups, the current situation on that seems to be that it's only managed in areas that are seeing congestion, so it depends what postcode you're in.

Luckily in Norwich almost no one is using high tier VM packages which is maybe why we're last to be upgraded to 100mb, however it does mean really clean speeds I get 50mbit on the nose almost 100% of the time, and that applies to torrents uploading/downloading as well, seeing a torrent come in at 6+MB/sec is nice

i spoke to someone else whoon VM 50Mb and he says 24-7 his torrent speeds very from 0-200kb/s and not just 5-12 ?? put me right off - he says when he uses bit-torrent it restricts all other traffic too so he cant use web hardly while its running?? he says stops utorrent and its all back to normal

with sky I did have 18Mb sync but its gone all too cock when they switched my phone from WLR3 to MSAN (SVBN) - my broadband was already ported onto the MSAN previously for 6 weeks with no problem, after switching phone to MSAN there was noise and voices on the line and sync would drop on incoming calls but it was still 26db and 16-17Mb, so they sent someone to fix it, its AFTER this fix I now have NO PHONE AT ALL and my 18Mb /25db LA broadband has gone down to 3Mb/35db LA - sky dont seem to be doing anything about it either, when email them they usually reply within the hour or so all the time, now it took them over 24 hours too say "someone will contact you" , how? phone is off..i told them that, useless - the mobile no. they have is my partners and she is at work until late and cant answer phone at work

ive been to the exchange on way to town and there is no-one there and its all locked up (probably for the weekend)

so unless SKY fix the line im pretty much stuffed, i dont fancy risking VM if its P2P is applied 24-7 and works like that guy said - with my luck I would sign up and be just like that..or start happening when im out my 30 day satisfaction

Edited by paulb100 (Fri 13-Apr-12 14:48:12)