UK Connection speed capping "a question"

[Carl]

I have been having connection problems for about a week at
peak uk times i cant connect to entropia and as you can guess
im starting to pull my hair out
i did a ping test and found a bottleneck at 213.200.77.73
funny i thought so i did a bit of searching and
found a lot of sites that say if u use online gaming a lot with
a fairly high bandwith this certan isp that i get my connection
from will cap your speed at peak times making gaming imposable
and not tell you

now the point
I was just wondering if any other uk players have had
this problem as i allways take stuff i read on the web with
a pinch of salt

and also if so how did they resolve it
i have been banging my head against my isp support for
a few hours a night at 10p per minuit and if they
tell me to turn it off then on again i swear ill kill somone

any veiws or help would be appreciated

cheers
carl

[timmmers]

Who is your ISP ?

BT definitely do this as do other providers ....unless you pay for a better contention ratio. If you can.

I started out online god knows how long ago with a company called f2s ..because they provided free webspace with PHP and actually gave a shit about their customers....they are not the cheapest but they have a superb support staff and service so I love paying them that bit more.

I could have chosen from various ratios when I switched to ADSL way back, so I'm sharing with less people at peak times ....if you live in a place where everyone is on broadband that can slow you waaaay down.

Welcome to Freedom2surf now seem to have introduced a new gamer service...I'm thinking I may give that a shot if I can be bothered changing at all for CE2.

I installed cable here for a long time....you wouldn't believe the piss poor speeds some customers got from Telewest in Brum, and how little TW cared about that.

Taking to a mate it seems that Bulldog also cap customers...and it's not just gamers causing it, it's online video that is the main culprit, people watching telly while you try to kill that mob selfish sods.

Best of luck.

t

[mrproper]

I don't know about you, but here we pay 15-20$ for cable/adsl2 internet, with 3-4mbps download speeds and around 512kbps uploads. Due to the large number of clients, new equipment, and the fact that it's Romania, there are no speed issues, but only a slight extra lag friday evening.

(Romania is the second/third fastest country in Europe, by bandwidth test standards)

[Carl]

im with tiscali atm
and thanks for the sugestion timmers
can i add that if anyone has any suggestions for a good isp
please tell me

the sooner i can get away from tiscali
the sooner i can get back to eu

:O 21:20 an im back online lol

[aridash]

i get 31ms return on that address, if thats what you are getting i hardly consider that a bottleneck. I use BT and never have any significant, consistant problems (of course get few connection drops). stay well clear of cable, they are notoriously bad due to the way they share the pipe.

[xentric]

I use bt also with 3 comps on my network and the kids youtubing and playing games and not had anything to complain about. gl sorting it out

[Midori Fairlona]

Originally Posted by aridash

i get 31ms return on that address, if thats what you are getting i hardly consider that a bottleneck. I use BT...

A WHOIS search states the IP belongs to Tiscali. Based on that fact and the earlier comments by Carl, 213.200.77.73 is probably a Tiscali server sitting between the Tiscali customers and the internet. As a BT customer your ping test is showing the internet to Tiscali server speed. Carl's problem is the Tiscali customer to ISP server speed.

Originally Posted by Carl

any veiws or help would be appreciated

For a long term solution, a change of ISP or an upgrade of your connection package is probably in order. Many ISPs place restrictions on the customers that use an above average amount of the available bandwidth in order to be fair to all customers (if all customers are paying the same amount, why should one customer be forced to get a poor service because another customer is hogging the bandwidth?). Some ISPs offer premium packages without restrictions, but you will usually have to pay a little more than a normal package. Check with the ISP what their policy is in these situations before you sign up.

As a short term solution, try turning the connection speed down in your client loader. This will force Entropia to run slightly slower, but it will give you more time before you reach your usage limit. The trade off here is a few hours of lag free Entropia, or several more hours of slightly laggy Entropia.

It may also be worth checking whether you have any other programs eating up your bandwidth. For example, do you use BitTorrents or other file sharing programs? Do you download lots of video footage from YouTube? Cutting back on these luxuries may not be the best solution, but it may give you a bit more time in Entropia.

Also, do you have anti-virus and anti-spyware protection? If you aren't protected there is a possibility that you have a malicious program running that is stealing bandwidth.

You mentioned that the problems only seemed to start in the last week. Has anything about your system changed during the past month, or is this a new policy only recently introduced by your ISP? If your internet habits haven't changed and nothing at the ISP has changed then this could indicate a malicious program at work.

[Carl]

hi i have the tiscali unlimeted package that is upto
8 meg and supposed unlimited downloads
which is the max tiscali do

my change in habbits the winter has set in and as well i needed to use up some days off before the end of the year and have been on eu a fair bit more than usual
an i dont use peer to peer progs

and i have done a full check for virus/spyware/background progs
and im ok there

during the day i get 4 to 6 meg connection

at 6:30 poof nothing

and checking the web it seems to be that they cap the usage of peple
using peer to peer progs but eu and many ol games show up as this
so ure dl of garry botter and the order of the free nicks may slow down
a fair bit but the genuine ol gamer cant log on
the problem is tiscali support is sooo bad
so you cant get a straight answer if you get an answer at all

i dont mind paying for the bandwith as long as its there

[Lem]

Wish I could get cable... used to have 2MB ntl and it really was 2MB not like this up to 8 MB ADSL that gives me 1.5MB if i'm lucky.

More important than the bandwidth though is the ping RTT which has gone from 20-30ms on cable to about 80ms on ADSL... almost into dialup territory !


Give me cable any day!

[Radio]

8mb from virgin runs at 2 mb constantly. Frequent dropouts, packet shaping and all manner of other nasty things.

Just signed up to Be, 24mb service - we'll see fi that's any better next week.