Am I Being Throttled?

The Chad

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Feb 22, 2005
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570
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Northwest Ohio
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'11 Fiesta SES
Hey,

I have Time Warner cable internet, and I believe my download is 7 meg. This is all fine and dandy, and I'm always happy with my speed. But lately, I've had a couple of issues. When watching streaming content from Hulu in the 480i format (the high quality), or when I'm maxing out my download bandwidth (approx 800kBps) my cable modem loses it's connection. It'll disconnect, then when the modem attempts to reconnect, it reconnects with no problem. So it's like an outage, but isn't.

I've heard of ISPs dropping packets and just throttling speeds, but this seems like a pretty destructive way of controlling bandwidth. Is it throttling?

600kBps consistently doesn't give me a problem, only when I enter the 700-800 range do I get problems.

If so, is there a way I can cap my download bandwidth about 10% below this limit? BitTorrent and some downloads are easily resumable (even though I have to manually restart some downloads), but other downloads cannot be resumed and I would rather have a consistent slower speed than having to restart downloads. Also, with Hulu, losing your internet connection apparently sets of a DRM alarm in the software, and I actually have to basically reboot my Mac for the video to work again on Hulu.

It's frustrating to say the least.
 
Perhaps.

Comcast just got in trouble for doing something similar, I believe, to what you describe. They would knock out the connection to "over-users."
 
I am getting the same effect all the way over here too. Intermittent disconnects are annoying! I may moan (Winge) to the ISP (Virgin) when I get a minute.
 
I am getting the same effect all the way over here too. Intermittent disconnects are annoying! I may moan (Winge) to the ISP (Virgin) when I get a minute.
 
I'm pro-net neutrality and anti-packet shaping and throttling, but I'd rather have my cap max download speed reduced rather than losing my connection entirely for brief periods of time.
 
how old is your modem?

do you have a router? if so, did you try to plug one computer directly in the modem?

does it do it with every computer you have?

since when it's doing that? 1 week? month?
 
I am getting the same effect all the way over here too. Intermittent disconnects are annoying! I may moan (Winge) to the ISP (Virgin) when I get a minute.

Same here, very unhappy about it, I'm with Demon though which I thought was quite a fair ISP, what really annoys me is that I pay more for the "HomeOffice" package and they still don't give me true unlimited internet. Its not like the BBC stop me from watching TV if I watch to much, or BT cut my connection if I use the phone to much, I paid for the service so fucking well deliver it
 
how old is your modem?

do you have a router? if so, did you try to plug one computer directly in the modem?

does it do it with every computer you have?

since when it's doing that? 1 week? month?

Modem is a couple of years old.

Currently have an Airport Extreme gigabit router, have used a Linksys in the past.

Started noticing beginning of the year, when I was watching Hulu.

Haven't tried a direct connection yet, will do so tomorrow and report back.
 
Maybe, maybe not. 800 KB/s is 6,400 kbps, which is pretty close to 7 Mbps. Factor in network overhead and the fact that you rarely get the full advertised transfer rates, and it may just be that your hitting the transfer rate wall.
 
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Maybe, maybe not. 800 KB/s is 6,400 kbps, which is pretty close to 7 Mbps. Factor in network overhead and the fact that you rarely get the full advertised transfer rates, and it may just be that your hitting the transfer rate wall.

But shouldn't I just "bounce off the limiter" instead of having the "car shut completely off"?
 
my dumb router's signal is all over the place. It will go up and down between less than dialup to high speed constantly and dumps my connection all the time i hate it
 
Just for a test: You guys all got your half open connections raised (if you're on windows...)?
Go to lvllord.de, download the patch and apply it. It won't hurt your PC.

I had to do it again this week, because fooking MS keeps updating tcpip.sys and therefore restoring the original setting. I can't dl + browse with that shit.

Other guesses: Router FW update or router security (somebody else is using your bandwidth, you never know in case your encryption is weak)
Router restart might help as well... Have to restart mine everey now and then when its really hot...
 
Noone has posted a workaround yet, so here goes - throttle your bittorent client to 1000 kb/s. If you still get dropped, reduce that even further. If you don't, try increasing it.

Evil American ISPs drop your TCP/IP connections based on download speed over time. Throttling is a good way to make sure you don't get restarted. Also, consider switching to a less evil ISP, if possible.
 
Noone has posted a workaround yet, so here goes - throttle your bittorent client to 1000 kb/s. If you still get dropped, reduce that even further. If you don't, try increasing it.

Evil American ISPs drop your TCP/IP connections based on download speed over time. Throttling is a good way to make sure you don't get restarted. Also, consider switching to a less evil ISP, if possible.

Which I do throttle my BitTorrent connections. But when I'm downloading files in general, through the web browser, or watching IPTV through Hulu.com, I experience this issue. Is there a way to throttle myself in the web browser? Or do I need a hacked router to do that kind of work?
 
Which I do throttle my BitTorrent connections. But when I'm downloading files in general, through the web browser, or watching IPTV through Hulu.com, I experience this issue. Is there a way to throttle myself in the web browser? Or do I need a hacked router to do that kind of work?

I used to use a program called NetLimiter, it's able to throttle ALL traffic. The trial version only lasts 30 days, but that was all I needed, so I haven't looked for any free alternatives.
 
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