Review by zipman 
UPDATED: 101 days ago
member for 105 days, 5 visits, last login: 84 days ago
 Toledo,Lucas,OH
 $5 per month
 "high download speeds (web)"
 "P2P throttling"
 "If you're a P2P nut you may get annoyed with buckeye, they're ok otherwise"
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I guess I should get the basics out of the way:
I am NOT an employee of buckeye BUT my mother works there so I always had the highest tier level for dirt cheap.
I don't live with my mother now and I can only afford DSL myself, but every so often I'll take my computer over to her house for a one or two week download binge.
I am a heavy P2P who maxes out his connection (or tries to) 24/7.
With that said, I am providing my experience with buckeye -mostly p2p- over the past 5 or so years.
In the beginning, all was good--albeit slow. There was no capping, and I could max out the whopping 1mb or so down/128k up connection all the time. A couple speed upgrades later things were looking a little better.
At some point-at least three years back-uploads on P2P went to pot. I was using direct connect (DC) heavily at the time and all my uploads were worse than dial-up (they were good for the first second, quickly dropped down to a few KB, then usually dropped to 0 and died). Of course I tried everything from changing ports, going from router to direct to modem, changing wires, changing clients, even using a different computer - but nothing worked. Upload speeds were piss poor except between 2 and 7am when magically the max speed was restored. As I cared more about download than upload this was only a minor headache when people complained or I get kicked from my hub (eventually I had to use DC sparingly to avoid being banned from my hubs). I should note that it was only the DC protocol that I noticed being capped, I could connect to the same users via ftp and upload just fine. I do not know if other P2P protocol uploads were capped at the time, though it is likely that they were.
At this point downloads did not have the same (7am-2am) cap, though I did notice in protocols such as bittorrent, the MORE connections you opened the slower the download became. Basically if you went above some set # of connections the speed would cap to 1/2 or 1/3 the max, so for example I'd have to set my max connections to 30 or so and hope some of those 30 had good speeds. Other times I would simply settle for the ~300KB/s I could get. (DC-with its smaller connection count-could still be regularly maxed out on downloads)
This situation continued up until I moved out (over a year ago). More recently when setting up my computer over there for one of my download binges (her line now being 10mbit) I did notice that in all P2P apps both download and upload were now capped. Connecting to 20 or so people in DC (many of them having 10 or 100mb uploads) would produce just slightly better download speeds than my home 1.5mbit connection. Needless to say this is very disappointing, who wants to be capped from 1/5 to 1/3 their max in p2p 80% of the time? Lucky for me I have an unlimited newsgroup account, which is not affected by this cap (at least not yet). On a great day I could download up to 90gb with the 10mbit. I have not tried the upgraded 12/1 speed yet.
That's all I really have to say about BEX, their bandwidth shaping methods are very disappointing-but then again I've downloaded many many terabytes with them over the years. If your fed up with p2p and can afford some extra cost a month, try an unlimited usenet service.
Followup comments:  hottboiinnc
Kyle
join:2003-10-15
Toledo, OH
 ·buckeye cable
 ·Time Warner VOIP
 ·1and1
| Have Buckeye I have Bex and do not have any problems with P2P. And if your mom always gets the highest tier for dirt cheap- she should now be on th 12Mbps plan now.
Unlimited Internet also doesnt mean you should max out our connection 24/7. I would have killed your connection long ago if I was the Block Family. | |
|  | zipman
join:2008-05-15
Toledo, OH
·buckeye cable
| Re: Have Buckeye Yes she should be at 12Mbps now, I just said I haven't tried it because I haven't had my computer over there since it's been active. In fact the last time I had it over there was late January early February. And I don't actually TRY to max out my connection 24/7 I just download that much stuff. I was simply admitting to being one of those people the ISP's hate, the bandwidth hog. That is the main reason I have to download at my moms every so often, the 1.5mbit (~13GB/day) I have simply isn't enough for me. My queues get so backlogged it becomes a problem, e.g. torrents start to expire.
I'll be honest-without increasing my current download habits, I probably would NOT be able to max out a 12mbit line 24/7. Even with HD and DVDr releases I wouldn't have over 100GB to download a day.
My question to you is are you sure you are getting your max speeds when using P2P? Many other people are complaining they cannot. What type of p2p do you use and how often? It could be possible only the heaviest users are targeted. Or you may just not notice that your download speeds aren't going as fast as they could be. | |
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tater_gunz
Shoot to kill
Premium
join:2003-08-22
Toledo, OH
·buckeye cable
| Re: Have Buckeye said by zipman :My question to you is are you sure you are getting your max speeds when using P2P? Many other people are complaining they cannot. What type of p2p do you use and how often? It could be possible only the heaviest users are targeted. Or you may just not notice that your download speeds aren't going as fast as they could be. Zipman, if you are who I think you are, I hope your foot is doing well.
Just to add my own $.02 to your traffic shaping conversation, I'd like to point out that I uploaded a screenshot to DSLR a while back which showed me maxing out my 8 Mbps BEX connection with torrent traffic. Of course, that was back when 8 Mbps was the highest tier. Since then it got bumped to 10 Mbps and now currently sits at 12 Mbps as you guys discussed above. I don't do much torrenting these days, but I wouldn't be so quick to blame Buckeye for poor throughput. The only suggestion I have is to make sure you don't allow your upstream to become saturated, because that'll kill your incoming torrent performance. Since your parents' connection is now 12 Mbps down and 1 Mbps upstream, I would rate limit your global torrent speeds to 10 Mbps down and no more than 384 Kbps upstream. Although I don't have any screenshots as proof, I averaged 7 Mbps on the Fedora 9 DVD ISO yesterday using uTorrent and these settings. That was during the evening, at around 1800 EST.
I'd also like to clarify something that has been kicked around before; Buckeye does not target individual users ("bandwidth hogs"). Traffic shaping is done on a per-protocol basis, regardless of how much bandwidth a subscriber might consume per month.
Mind you, this is all subject to change -- but as of now, this is the way things are set up.
- Tate
--
Happiness is an OC-768 in your basement... | |
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Buckemp
@buckeyecom.net
| Traffiinc shaping I AM a buckeye employee, and I'll be the first to say that we do employ traffic shaping during peak periods, probably amounting to about eight hours a day total that we need to employ any sort of throttling. We do this to ensure QoS to all of our customers. Even at that rate, we still don't completely slam the door on torrent traffic the way that comcast does. We simply slow you down to a level that allows the network to function optimally. That being said, if you jam your outbound, your inbound will suffer. That's simply the way the system works. Leave yourself a pad and your inbound traffic will be much better. I would recommend not using much more than about 70% of your upload speed for torrent, or about 700k on a 12 meg connection. (we currently offer 1000k upload on the highest tier) | |
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