OptimumOnline → Is Ool Throttling connections now?

I'm not sure where the slow down, but on newsgroups I get my max for about 3-7 minutes then it slows down to 350KB/ps. I'm on newshosting so it's kinda weird as i've never had a problem with them.

P.S i'm in the bronx area code 10467

I'm not personally convinced that they are throttling download speeds yet, but I wonder, if they can do it on download as those here are posting, why aren't they doing it on upload vs capping someone?

Why wouldn't they determine that the upload is excessive for a given modem, throttle it in the network, and then after some amount of time, un-throttle it. I think that's what folks here are posting about the download throttling, aren't they?

Well see, that would be the logical thing to do, if CV was an honest company.. but no, they are greedy (as expected from most companies)

Why let people with no knowledge use alot of upload bandwitdh (even if they'd get capped again) if they dont notice the difference?

And I'm sure you know that upload bandwitdh it alot more expensive than download..

not quite

Your numbers look more like a network issue than throttling..

The issue we're discussing here, maxes out at exactly 350KB/sec.. 46kb/sec is really low

Tell me about it

Same exact thing, was doing great then all of a sudden speeds go strsaight down. I'm pretty sure i'm not capped seeing as how I hardly use bittorrent or any other p2p app.

Is this affecting anyone who doesn't have a capped upload?

Throttling would be done at the CMTS, it is in a one to many relationship to the modems and can control the downstream flow pretty easily. The Upstream is a lot more difficult under docsis 1.0. The modems are in a many to one relationship, (the opposite of downstream) and there are contention slots that are used to request Upstream slots. Therefore the capping is done with a configuration file, otherwise the traffic in the contention slots would cause packet loss. Trying to send the config file when needed would cause a lot of disruption for the user with the modem needed to be rebooted to send the file. Now if they are in the middle of an Upload and they couldn't resume it, imagine the howls.

Ok

I can confirm this happens outside of NSP downlaods.. It happened while downlaoding a game demo.



These precise symptoms tells me this is not a network issue, but some sort of enforcement on OOLs part

UPDATE:
Speed came back after a while, maybe 10mins or so...

Since I like to 'beat a dead horse' I downloaded the NASA Space Shuttle movie again and did not get 'throttled' down.

Even though my speeds fluctuated wildly I never hit a spot where my speed was consistently low or throttled.

said by Lex Luthor:

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I'd be more than happy to test it out if anyone wants to provide me with an external news source.

---

First let me apologize for starting that other thread. My thinking was that if E88 were busy he might not have time to read through every topic.

Although a couple of people are reporting that they're only throttled during NNTP downloads it seems that most of us who are affected (and certainly not all of us are seeing this) are affected in all protocols. Have you tested with HTTP or FTP? Here's a usually quick server where you can find Debian Linux ISOs via HTTP:

»debian.midco.net/pub/iso/

And here's a Red Hat Linux FTP site mentioned earlier in this thread:

»ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redha ··· so/i386/

For me the throttle is 100% reproducible any time day or night, NNTP, HTTP or FTP.

Guys, guys! This is the "new improved" OOL.. even faster than before... don't you see the ads on TV? The most astonishing fiber-optic network!

Hello? Reality? Are you there? LOL!!

I can't wait for FIOS.

WHERE ARE YOU VERIZON??? OH PLEASE COME SOON!!!

And may I say that I have seen a lot of odd speed fluctuations of recent. And yes, I do subscribe to 3rd party news server. Those bastards are up to something.

You may now resume your regularly scheduled program.

interesting..i seem to be experiencing this throttle too :/
this is screenshot when i was downloading Everquest2 trial from fileplanet.com on a single http stream.

i'll post another update when the transfer is done

First Speed Test no cap nohing going on -> »/speed ··· 09825706

Second Speed Test afte Throttle --> »/speed ··· 09826276

I used the debian site. I think it may kick in at the .5GB mark. It seemed to be under the 10 minute mark. I was downloading the first iso (585MB) at 1MB/s and with 45 seconds left went to start the second iso and when I got back to the Bandwidth Monitor I was down to 3 mbps.

well, my download finished and as you can see 3/4 thru it started going full speed again
however speed test are still slow »/speed ··· 09827588
strange indeed

i just downloaded these 2 files
»ftp://ftp.cmf.nrl.navy.mil/pub ··· time.mpg
»ftp://ftp.cmf.nrl.navy.mil/pub ··· /nrl.mpg

and sure enough like clockwork: 10mintues of going full speed, 20minutes of 3.5mbit throttle, 10minutes of full speed, 20minutes of throttle

@streetwolf: Excellent. Thanks for providing info that this is not occurring in ALL areas-- yet.

@MxxCon: Welcome to the club.

I have only experienced it (in bklyn) when d/l'ing from usenet, as have others. And it happens no matter how many threads are going, even one.

AFTER a throttle has been imposed on my IP address, my entire connection (d/l only) is completely affected.

Others, even those who don't download from usenet at all, are seeing the same timely throttle with ftp, or http downloads (BUT I will say that at least once it appeared to "skip" a cycle, wherein the throttle did NOT kick in until around 20 mins I think).

I could guess that perhaps certain areas are much more heavily burdened than others, and perhaps, the throttle is set up to slowdown any type of traffic which uses maximum d/l in an area such as that.

In other words, when node traffic passes one threshold, the traffic shaping software firsts looks to limit nntp d/l's. When it passes a second threshold, it throttles all d/l activity.

Also, I have taken my laptop to a neighbors who *only* browses the web, checks email w/their OOL.. NO real u/l or d/l. (The machine is maintained and was setup by me, so no trojans, malware, etc-- nothing that could inadvertantly suck up any bandwidth at all).

I opened the newsreader and in 10 minutes.. you know what..

BTW: Someone asked if this is affecting anyone who has never been capped. Neither my neighbor nor I have ever been capped.

What I think so far:

It definately is IP specific, since recycling your IP immediately, without delay, relieves it-- there's no denying that.

It is NOT tageted at any one persons' account/cable modem, since the modems' config is NOT changed, and I actually tested it at a neighbors place.

I believe that it is a throttle (perhaps) in the test(ing) phases because of its' timeliness and in the way it can be relieved.

Although, I suppose it could be some sort of router management "gone haywire" and "throttling" traffic to an IP based on its' recent usage, HOWEVER, how likely would that scenario be to be taking place at multiple headends, at nearly the same time-- seems too remote to be cosidered plausable.

I suppose-- it is possible, that the NE's maybe rolled-out a new router firmware, or config, to most service areas that could be causing this..

I'd love to hear other theories/possibilites.

Engineer88: At this point I personally have to say, it would really be a show of good faith on your part, if you would at least chime in, even if you have no info to add at this time, since by now I think we can conclude you've read this thread, and your absence speaks volumes.

P.S. Some of you people should spend be a little less time being belligerent and little more time being open minded.

Now can we all try to at least work together to bring this issue (whether deliberate or not) out into the open?

Thanks to all.

Back on topic guys. This is an important topic, let's not ruin it.

Moderator Action
The post that was here, and all followups to it, were moved to a new topic .. »trollock

I'm throttled here. Didn't time it exactly, but it started at about 520MB into that first Navy file.

My upload isn't capped, so that's not a factor in this. I don't have node slowdown problems (that I've ever seen), so I don't think I'm on an overly crowded node.

Even if you stop the download and download a file from a different site, you are still throttled for some period of time.

Very interesting, for sure.

I wonder what, from a technical perspective, they are doing and how they are managing this.

I'm sure a huge percent of the customers don't download files of this size and thus are completely unaffected by this.

I downloaded the file and actually got a download speed of 6 down.

My speed actually increased as it downloaded more.

Also that mpg file is an awesome hi def file from space. anybody know where i can get more? lol

I dont think its a network thing because i was not throttled down.

Notice how in the pic how I was throttled for about 8 minutes then had my full d/l speed. Then shortly after that I was throttled again.
With my luck I'll get capped uploading this file lol.

I've begun to notice this phenomenon too.

I've done a few tests and when the "cap" kicks in other downloads are affected.

Fwiw I read an interesting tidbit recently.

It seems that one of the newsgroups, the cd image one IIRC, had an enormous spike not to long ago that brought a lot of the newsgroup providers to their knees.

There could still be some aftershocks by way of spooling issues.

It's all over my head frankly but basically what I'm trying to say is that maybe there is a connection.

Perhaps, but it's happening with FTP downloads as well.

No question it is not just Usenet, I don't use newsgroups at this point, so that would not be why I was throttled doing an http download.

I get exactly the same. 10 minutes at 1.08mB/sec followed by 10 minutes at 363kB/sec and so on. I did a reverse trace-route to Giganews which clearly shows the trouble to be:

>Based on the information in the trace routers it appears that there may be some network congestion at hop #3 which is causing the slowdown.
>
>3 r1-pos2-2.in.nycmny83.cv.net
>
>Out of the 3 traceroutes started from the North America server, 2 of them show some latency spikes, which would point to the network at that point. This looks to be the first hop in your local ISP's network.
>
>Since the latency is fluctuating, that may explain why the issue has been somewhat random.
>
>If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.
>
>Thank you for choosing Giganews.

Contacting Optonline results in a purely generic repsonse with no signs that they are even listening (reading).

PigV

hey i just started geting this on mon feb 28, i thought it might be my old modem and ool suggest that i replace it. so i did , got great speeds, until i use newsleecher, got 1040k then it jump all the way down to 200 k then on some files 2.4 k. so i called up ool and they said my connection is perfect, stron the best they can give ya. i had a buddy check my connection he said i had packet loss from 18-24% nad to have a tech check my line, called ool told them this and they said its fine. i am a big newsgroup DL, i used newshosting and i acan easliy reach 400gb a month. don't upload since i get capped easily. this really sucks since i don't even get a constant speed. i rather get constant then these spikes i get. just watned to add my 2 cents. also only happens with usenet but havn't tried dl others and can't right now since i am @ work

Regarding OOL, before assuming you are capped or throttled, perhaps try a popular torrent such as knoppix (~700 MB)
»torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de:6969/
I often have really slow dls, but it seems to depend on the the remote sites/clients. For the aforementined link, I get 200-500K.