My downloads are suddenly so slow and I can't figure out why!

Hi guys,

First let me begin by giving you relevant information.

Usenet Provider: Giganews Diamond Package
Client: sabNZBD
Connection: Virgin Media 50mb Broadband

Basically, for a long time (ever since I upgraded to 50meg) pretty much all my downloads were downloading at about 5.8 megabytes/s. Obviously I had the occasional download which didn't hit that but 95% of the time I was topping out, sometimes hitting 6mb/s.

Anyways, recently I've been having issues with my speed... I can't say for exactly how long, but now I feel like I'm lucky if I'm hitting 4 mb/s. I'm often stuck with between 1 and 2 megabytes/s which isn't very impressive. It doesn't appear to be related to post age and sabNZBD isn't giving me back any warnings. Sometimes I do still get to the high 5s (mb/s) and it's great! But more than half the time I'm stuck with horrible speeds and I can't figure out why.

If anyone could provide any insight I would be truly grateful, as someone who uses usenet for downloading obscene amounts of data it has affected me a lot.

Let me know if you need any more information!

Cheers
Nathan

Maybe they are throttling you?

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File sharing
We moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer ("P2P") applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic.

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Quote:

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Customers with Broadband size: XXL (50Mb) – your downstream usage excluding file sharing traffic (see below) remains unaffected and we'll soon be increasing your upload speeds from 1.5Mb to 5Mb. However during peak times we'll need to slow you back to 1.75Mb if your upload usage is particularly high.

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if they throttle him does switching to SSL(port 443) help?

With Virgin Media, I assume you are located in UK. I think I remember that someone posted here a few weeks ago (I can't remember who) and reported getting much better speed in UK with Astraweb than Giganews.

That seems like typical line congestion symptoms. Does it make any difference to add more connectons? Or use another Giganews server? Is speed dependent on the time of the day?

It's something that Giganews tech support might help with by re-routing your connection around bottlenecks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sandman_1

Maybe they are throttling you?

Quote:

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Customers with Broadband size: XXL (50Mb) – your downstream usage excluding file sharing traffic (see below) remains unaffected and we'll soon be increasing your upload speeds from 1.5Mb to 5Mb. However during peak times we'll need to slow you back to 1.75Mb if your upload usage is particularly high.

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No they aren't, as mentioned there the 50mb users aren't affected by the download throttling and I don't really do much upload (it's only the upload that gets throttled anyways).

To address the other replies, I don't know the exact details but I was told by someone in the know that the 50meg is delivered seperately from the lower packages and isn't affected by congestion on the lower speeds that most people have.... also it seems strange that all of a sudden i'd have this problem, congestion hours have always been there.

Additionally, sometimes I've run a speed test when having usenet speed issues and I've gotten a much quicker result!

Would you suggest I try astraweb instead?

Cheers

I was under the impression that your speed was fluctuating all over the place, which would be typical of line congestion.

If speed remains a rock-steady (but low) rate, then throttling is indicated.


I suggest getting a real-time bandwidth graph like NetMeter. If the speed graph is straight, sharp, and rectangular, that's throttling kicking in. But if it's got a very jagged edge, like a Rocky Mountain ridge, that is likely line congestion.

I keep Netmeter running at all times, and have been for years. It's a great diagnostic tool.

They do throttle P2P and Usenet traffic on ALL plans.

Quote:

---

File sharing
We moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer ("P2P") applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic.

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The other stuff that doesn't involve P2P and Usenet is NOT throttled per graph here for your plan http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/tra...icy.html#table.

Don't believe me? See 2nd post here http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...ms/td-p/165074

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sandman_1

They do throttle P2P and Usenet traffic on ALL plans.

Quote:

---

File sharing
We moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer ("P2P") applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic.

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The other stuff that doesn't involve P2P and Usenet is NOT throttled per graph here for your plan http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/tra...icy.html#table.

Don't believe me? See 2nd post here http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...ms/td-p/165074

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Damn!! You are right, thanks so much for linking me to that thread!

They really snuck that one in under our noses and don't even mention it in the table (listing N/A for all)...

I was wondering why I was experiencing it sometimes and not other times, I didn't take note of the hours either.

Apparently they did a ninja-update to their policy and now traffic P2P and usenet traffic between 5pm and 12am on their 50meg service. It's 4am now and I just started a download at a cool 5.9MB/s.

Guess I'll have to upgrade to their 100meg when it comes out! They probably want to entice their 50meg customers like me over to it which is why they made the change.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sandman_1

They do throttle P2P and Usenet traffic on ALL plans.

Quote:

---

File sharing
We moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer ("P2P") applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic.

---

The other stuff that doesn't involve P2P and Usenet is NOT throttled per graph here for your plan http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/tra...icy.html#table.

Don't believe me? See 2nd post here http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...ms/td-p/165074

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In that case, he should probably use the "free" VyprVPn provided by Giga to avoid throttling.

Would recommend you save yourself some money and switch to astraweb or newshosting and simply use SSL to connect to the servers, that should correct the speed issue - newshosting is $10 a month and speed is excellent up to and beyond 100Mbit

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if they throttle him does switching to SSL(port 443) help?

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Regular SSL doesn't seem to help. As Hypatia suggests, port 443 SSL is supposed to bypass the throttle.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NMFord

Damn!! You are right, thanks so much for linking me to that thread!

They really snuck that one in under our noses and don't even mention it in the table (listing N/A for all)...

...

Guess I'll have to upgrade to their 100meg when it comes out! They probably want to entice their 50meg customers like me over to it which is why they made the change.

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Yea these ISP's can be sneaky bastards for sure. Even on 100meg, I would think they would do the same thing, though 100meg would be nice. The best bet is to somehow hide your type of traffic either by using SSL (using different ports) or using a VPN.

WOuldn't it be a problem to find not overpriced VPN service that could sustain 100 mbit?
it heavily depends on routes as well.. my friend lives in the same town as me but he is subscribed to a different ISP, We used the same VPN service once and both had 50mbit plan. he could easily get 6MB ,yet mine was limited to 3+MB and never spiked higher than that though without VPN i did get my 6MB as well