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Century Tel DSL and Bittorrent

Who promised you 10mb up and down?

The only package I'm aware of is 10000/768.

reply to eak435s
I don't have any problems with torrent on my line, but what I noticed is that if I configured my modem for ADSL2+, the line would continually drop and experience many of the same issues.

While I couldn't do this on my Westell, I pulled out my old Qwest modem and was able to tweak the modem to use only ADSL2 (not ADSL2+) to connect to CenturyTel. All of a sudden, my connectivity issues suddenly vanished.

The folks at CenturyTel were never able to provide me a straight answer as to why ADSL2+ would never work, but ADSL2 did.
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reply to eak435s
I've asked this question of CT and they (CSR and local tech) claim they do not disrupt torrent traffic.

My torrents smoothed out once I got a clean signal to the DSLAM (new whole house filter NID, clean cable pair to the DSLAM) and a replaced my BEFSR41 with netgear rpv614.
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reply to eak435s
thank you guys for the advice. i just switched back to my old carrier today... too much hassle with century tel. they let me out of the year contract and apologized after i read them a few speed tests.

i guess i'll just have to deal with cable upload rates for a while longer. anyone want to loan me money for a T3?
-erik

It's 10MB down and 768kbps up. Btw, there are known bandwidth issues in Columbia, no eta at the moment but it is in the process of being fixed.

reply to eak435s
Actually, CT DOES throttle their customers. CT doesnt want you to know it, and wont admit it unless you push the issue far enough and talk to the right people. If they wanted you to know it, they wouldnt bury it in the so called "fine print" of the "fair usage" or "acceptable usage" agreement. The "what"? you say........ exactly. Most customers have never heard of, nor seen a copy of this agreement. But is basically states that (if you have a 1.5mb service) that they have sold you a service "up to" 1.5mb... that if you try to use all of the bandwidth in that 1.5mb service you bought, for............. oh........... say 60 minutes straight....no matter what reason, torrents or not..... they will throttle you back...... and if you KEEP trying to use that bandwidth you thought you had.... youll get throttled back again.

If you want dedicated bandwidth, they instruct you to buy a "business" service which is a LOT higher in price. Even if you do, youre only guaranteed that bandwidth during business hours. If you want to be able to use all of that 1.5mb service 24/7, they tell you that you need to buy the "pro" or "premiere" (I forget exactly what it was referred to) service which would guarantee that speed 24/7. Only thing is, that service went from $30/month to HUNDREDS of dollars a month.

It sickens me the way they fail to tell you all this when they sell you something. It also proves how much ISP's oversell their bandwidth. If they had available bandwidth for their customers, they wouldnt have to charge more for trying to use it.

What you end up with all honesty is THIS from CT:

We sold you a 1.5mb service.... but that speed is "up to" 1.5mb..... we dont have to guarantee anything. We also reserve the right, and will throttle your speed, if you attempt to USE full bandwidth for longer than a time limit we will impose, on the service you paid for. If you STILL try to use it full time and speed, we will throttle it again. You may only use your 1.5mb service AT 1.5MB speeds WHEN we say its ok from X time to X time, for as LONG as we say its ok. Oh yeah, and we dont have to guarantee anything. Basically that we sold you a 1.5mb service but we can give you any speed we want at any time and we dont ever have to provide that full 1.5mb unless we want to.

That is incorrect. If you do not like CenturyTel and the way things are handled then please, be my guest and switch to a different provider that caps your monthly bandwidth and actually cancels any P2P packets. CenturyTel has never done so and as far as I know never will either. As for the "up to" speeds, it is for 3MB or higher due to other network conditions and the sites you are visiting or downloading from. As you can see in other forums people's issues have been resolved due to other reasons. All service no matter what provider at certain speeds are considered "up to" because of the fact that the internet, as a whole, is not consistent. One second you're going down a DS3 the next you're going down a T1. I download torrents all the time, and a lot of them are very large files. The speed does not get throttled. Plus, have you ever considered the fact that the person you're downloading from probably has more than one person seeding off of them and that they might, just might be actually using their internet at the same time? I believe that would affect a connection. SilverFox66, I thought you were smarter than that, didn't you think of these things before going off on a rant in a post? Those policies, by the way, are there to protect the network and other uses, and every company has the same type of policy or something very similar. But, it's a matter of who enforces it and to what degree, or even abuses their own policy, CenturyTel isn't one of them, at least not for me or anyone that I personally know that has them.

reply to eak435s
In the past I have downloaded 600+gigs in a month with my CT connection. Never have been capped or throttled with CT.

Here are my bandwith logs for the last few days, still able to download at over 10 down and still get the full 760+ upload:

Mar 7, 2008 4.04 GB 0.19 GB
Mar 6, 2008 23.57 GB 0.62 GB
Mar 5, 2008 15.84 GB 0.48 GB
Mar 4, 2008 6.03 GB 0.50 GB
Mar 3, 2008 0.32 GB 0.24 GB
Mar 2, 2008 0.31 GB 0.26 GB

My point exactly.

reply to SilverFox66
I'm assuming you have this somewhere in writing about being throttled back after "x" amount of time? Nope, you don't. Know why? Because it isn't true. There is no throttling. Business class DSL doesn't have any different usage terms, or any guaranteed uptime either.

Now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Ctel hasn't over sold any areas due to over subscription, and that they're perfect. I'm not sugar coating any of your issues, just setting things straight.

I also have issues that SilverFox66 has, and have been told repeatedly by CT reps that if I want "full bandwidth" 24/7 that I must purchase the "Business Pro" package for around $190 a month.
I also can attest to the finding of SilverFox66 that if you use your full bandwidth for any sustained duration(like an hour) during normal business hours (7 am to 6 pm) that your DL speed will decrease dramatically and abruptly. If you wait a few minutes or sometimes I have waited a few hours, then my full bandwidth is miraculously available again(during normal business hours)...to resume my DL or start a new one or 2. As long as I cap my DL speed at my end to a portion of my "max residential service speed" all is o.k. for hours sometimes overnight, but rarely more than 75% of the max supposedly available.
It's very clear what is happening...the server at the COS or even at the DSLAM level is throttling my service to give it to another client or clients request...probably one of the "business accounts" that actually pay a huge premium for the full bandwidth.

Although CT will not admit to this to me(obviously for legal liability reasons) what possible reason could there be to charge a business $190 a month for the "same" service I can get for $50 (10Mbit residential) if they are in fact the same service....B.S.

Re: Century Tel DSL and Bittorrent

Yes it would be full and guaranteed bandwidth with a business line because they have a service agreement, residential users do not. Just like if you had a T1 at your location, it's a dedicated circuit; all yours.
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"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
- Abraham Lincoln

reply to eak435s
Look, there are obviously known sporadic bandwidth issues in your area, so for you to assume that equals throttling shows your mis-understanding of the situation. They don't pull a "Robin Hood" on you to give bandwidth to biz accounts. If there's a bandwidth crunch, then it's entirely possible that a biz will feel it to.

Have you even filed a complaint with the public service commission? Those usually make companies react a little faster.

reply to SilverFox66

reply to SilverFox66
I've got some of the same profiles....most have been updated to 1792/320 for a 1.5 line (to compensate for overhead), and others (mostly the Adtran units) are still at 1536/256. It's a simple issue of adding a new speed profile, or editing the existing one.

I never said I know everything about your situation there, because I don't. I was merely pointing to the fact that if there are known bandwidth issues in an area, then doesn't it seem premature to jump to another problem of "throttling" before your bandwidth issue gets fixed?

reply to Icon
I agree with that and have seen lots of ups & downs lately, however, my service here in Wentzville just started this erratic behavior in the last couple months so I will certainly give CenturyTel a little while to resolve its bandwidth issues, which I'm also sure is why we're seeing these "throttling" issues...throttle "some" so "all" can have service until they get it so that all can have the 10Mbps service they are paying for...I understand that.

I also understand why the reps aren't saying much about the new OC3 here. I'm sure it's expensive, and it still may not be enough to give everyone the 10Mbps service that they have been paying for...or at the very least they should not be selling this as "10Mbps Residential DSL Service".
It should clearly be "Up To 10Mbps Residential DSL Service- very Rarely during normal business hours".

To make this "throttling" public would require CenturyTel to give "all" customers credits for lost bandwidth, most of whom probably don't know they're losing it, so to them it's not a really big issue, but still they would like a credit for lost or not fully available service which of course would cost CenturyTel millions.
This is NOT going to happen, which is another reason I'm posting and reading comments here on DSLReports.com.

I have nothing against CenturyTel, in fact I have had very few issues with them until now, and they are about the best company & service I have available in my area. But to read ICON and DSLDUDE08 repeatedly deny & defend any "throttling" issue on the behalf of CenturyTel is simply ridiculous. Especially when even a dumby like me can demonstrate & repeat the "throttling" process being placed on my service, as well as show the unusually low bitrate here lately.
Geez I'm only getting around 140K a second most days when just a couple months ago I was routinely hitting the full 10.0 or 1,000K a second.
That's around 14% of what I'm paying for...imagine going to a store and giving them a dollar and them telling you it's only worth 14 cents. That's all there is to it, & again I am being very patient with CenturyTel, but it needs to be fixed soon.