Throttling speeds

I'm very new to all this and have been reading through a lot of the threads.

How do you know if your ISP is throttling your download speeds?

I'm guessing that mine is..........I'm with Tiscali and have been trawling through the threads trying to find recommendations for a new provider cos I'm not happy with Tiscali. I've not had any problems with them until just before Christmas when my speeds on my 2meg connection got really slow. I'd just discovered the joys of downloading music and torrent files. I've not downloaded that many - about 8 torrent files in all but this last one is ridiculous. I started downloading it on 7th February and as of just now, its only at 64.7%!!!! Running a speed test shows that the best speeds I'm getting vary between 10kbps and 87kbps.

Back to the threads now looking for a decent ISP.

Alison

Prob best to have posted in General Broadband Chatter. Would get more responce there !

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the usual recommendation is to go with a short contract, 1 to 3 months... then you can get an accurate picture about what is happening at your location...

the Bath and Hull area seems to have some awful results for tiscali, but BT is getting good results AFAIK...

nearer to london, (twick and richmond exchange) BT is scoring worse, and tiscali is getting good results....

It is pointless to base your choice of ISP on someone who lives 100's of miles away from you....

and note that these problems may be nothing to do with the ISP, but other problems in the 'chain' ....

starting from...
- Your computer - bad config, so packets are broken often causing many retrys, so the connections seems slow..

- Network card - drivers all upto date, no compatability problems? (especially if it is USB...)

- cable - bad quality cable, too long, kinks, breaks, etc....

- ADSL modem - setup correctly?

- phone cable - bad quality cable, too long, kinks, breaks, etc....

- Line filter - are these good quality, and in *all* your phone sockets?

- roadworks in your area, causing more interference?

- problems at your exchange, due to BT taking a long time, and other arguments...

Only then can you start pointing the finger at your ISP, who is most likely as sick as you, about BT delays, and about some users 'hogging' an already 'overstretched' line, and having to endure complaints, while bandwith is reduced while they get the newer server going to help increase the bandwidth, *again*.... and those are not cheap....

Servers don't have much to do with bandwidth. BT centrals do though. And they definitely aren't cheap.

Got back tonight and started downloading my fav program from the states, 11000 seeders and the connection is throttled to 10kb/s.

Thats a little OTT and there was nothing about this sort of severe traffic shaping in the T&C.

Since moving over we have repeatedly lost service over the last 2 months, this is the incumbent BT that I signed up to wasnt it and not Joe Bloggs one man band internet company.

I recommend UKFSN - http://www.ukfsn.org/

Hi,

I was with Freeserve for dialup, Tiscali (DSL) and now Zen for over a year.

Tiscali were TERRIBLE, always trying to traffic shape, crappy banwidth, the worst customer service i've ever experienced. Billing department forgot to charge me for 2 months then charged me 4 times for one month and took about 5 months to refund my money after I cancelled and that was with twice a week phone calls. They refused to give me a mac code, they eventually said they would but told BT to disconnect me so I had no internet apart from Zen dialup until they released the line.

Zen are great, never in a hurry to get you off the phone if you have a problem, really helpful NO traffic management. You could use bittorrent or other p2p all you liked on the old 2meg lines. I recently regraded to DSLmax because on the 2meg line i never hit the 50meg limit anyway they have on max, and its giving me twice the speed even though I am quite far from the exchange.

There are some other ISPs that are ok, my sister uses Pipex, but she is moving to Zen too now. Pipex never told her the line could be upgraded for no cost. Left her on a 250k line :@

Zen email you and let you know if you have an option of a regrade.

Best Wishes,

sid

--------I'm very new to all this and have been reading through a lot of the threads--------

It's not a good idea to the same "post" on different forums.

I was getting the same throttling with Freedom 2 Surf after Pipex bought them over, p2p, torrents etc were all getting about 2 - 10Kb/s, even running just a single program made no difference. I would have been better off on a 56k dial up. It's scandalous the way people in this country are treated. You pay for a service and then all of a sudden the goalposts are moved by the ISP and you have to take it or leave it. Complaining gets you nowhere. It's a different matter though when you try to move the goalposts, they start bleating about contracts etc, I read on a newsgroup about a week ago, that the vast majority of the ISP's in this country wouldn't have a leg to stand on with their contracts if they were taken to court, if I had the time and more importantly the money I'd haul their collective arses into court. Power to the people, that's my motto.

Chuffer

Their peak hours are a joke!

Monday to Friday 8am to 10pm

Edited by deleted (Sun 11-Mar-07 12:54:24)