so after some heavy MW2'ing for the last few weeks, three days ago the internet for the whole house, all of sudden, became ridiculously slow. it's not great at the best of times, but now it's nigh-on unusable. my guess is that we're being throttled - the modern warfare hosting system is probably something that doesn't sit too well with my ISP when i'm the one hosting, and according to Cherry, BT are an ISP that does some deep package monitoring (i think) and are pretty given to throttling people.

so what's to be done? how do i find out if i'm actually being throttled? and if i am, what can i do about it (other than phoning up BT and threatening to swap)? how long will they throttle me for anyway?

a few things;
- there are other people on the network, but everyone gets the same problem, even if they are the only one using the internet at the time
- i haven't fiddled with anything recently, and i'm certain that i'm not doing anything stupid like leaving a huge file on download - i've checked all computers on the network
- one diagnostic i ran suggested that the client's (that presumably being me) recieve buffer is too low. but because everyone on the network is getting this problem, and that i haven't tweaked anything and that vista supposedly manages this by itsself well enough, i doubt that this is a problem. still, any thoughts?
- strictly no torrents happening anywhere on the network, ever

i can post results of said diagnostic if anyone want a looks. cheers

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ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless

Glasnost will tell you if your ISP is traffic shaping:
http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparen ... t-mlab.php

Runs in-browser and requires JAVA

As you are with BT I will tell you now: you most likely are being throttled. BT are very bad for doing this, particularly at peak time or for certain services (bit-torrents and so on).

What can you do? Not a damned thing essentially bar change ISP. As ever I would recommend who I use, O2. They do not do any limiting, shaping or general fiddling about and they provide me with a genuinely unlimited 8meg connection for £6pm as I have my mobile service with them.

Hope this helps

EDIT: one addendum to this. A massive digital restructuring is being rolled out across the UK at the moment. All (or at least most) of the old copper wire from exchange to street is being replaced by fibre-optic. My area has just been done and the switch-over is due to happen in the next 2 weeks. If this has happened by you recently (are there damned great green metal boxes that hum appearing on the corners of nearby streets) then there might be some disruption to service for a while. Just a thought.
EDIT2: failing that check that your Wi-Fi has not been compromised. You may have fleas =) (people piggy-backing off you for free)

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

thanks for the advice howard. i've tried to run that java test, but all of them time out before they're finished. that's how bad that connection is :/ and up here we're not scheduled to get fibre optic... at all. ever. not a sausage

we've decided to give it a week or two, then switch (or at least threaten to). we're with sky for tv and talktalk for landline, both of them do broadband so those are likely alternatives. any experience with these? line limit is 2mb/s, i want to get as close to that as possible, don't want to be throttled, don't want any gimmicks (interfering software, free router etc), no download/usage limit. i'll be taking a look around, but if anyone knows a decent provider that fits the bill please recommend. (i'll take a look at O2 as well, although we won't be changing from vodafone for our mobile phone provider).

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ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless

That is bad mate

FWIW Talk Talk are one of the worst providers out there right now for internet. Sky are much better but they do traffic shape as well.

Good luck however it works out mate

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Definitely take a look at ukonline http://www.ukonline.net

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Don't worry I got some silicon carrots - [SpA]Bucky O'Hare

it's testament to how much of an idiot i am that everything was fixed when i reset the router. which i should've done first. ugh. yeah, i know >_< may change isp's anyway cos BT haven't exactly been brilliant.

thanks for the help, but y'all can go ahead and lock this now.

_________________
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless