Verizon FiOS → Verizon throttling usenet downloads?

Something fishy is happening tonight. I am downloading a good amount of files off of my newsgroup provider (giganews). I have 75/35 plan from Verizon. All night up until about 30 minutes ago I was getting my full download speed and fluff equaling about 89mb/s a second. I went to do some other things and came back about 45 minutes later and noticed my download speed was halved. About 45 megabits a second. So I exited out and ran a speed test. I was getting rougly 60mb/s. I waiting about another 5 min and started up my newsreader (newsbin pro) and now I am getting my full speed again.

I could be going crazy but would Verizon throttle traffic like this if they see a ton of bandwidth being used up late at night on a connection? I just noticed that my speed is dipping again. I've contacted giganews (never had a problem with them serving my 150/65 when I had it) and they are not having any issues.

Just seems odd that this is happening. What do you guys think?

I can never hit 80Mbit/s, it's always in the 60s on my 75/35.

I've never had a problem hitting my max speed. I always get above it. Speeds seem fine though now. Might of been just a bump in the network.

Knowing Verizon and the snafu with the peering between VZ/ALTER and LEVEL3 it's probably network issues between the two somewhere along the path. I would do traceroutes to the usenet servers you use and check for irregularities. Do you use SSL connections in your newsreader?

As the saying goes, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"

I use three different usenet providers and have never had a problem on the FiOS side. My 50/25 consistently hits 62.1 Mbps. If you look at a graph you'll see complete saturation.

You could also have a slow computer which can not offer you those speeds. Also try using other ports some usenet groups provide alternative ports like 8080 or 53. Also make sure your using the max connections. I have 155/70 and get full speeds depending on time of day.

Jara: It's more than likely Giga, they have seen increase in activity at night during peak hours and users have seen decrease in speeds during peak hours as they adjust their load balancing. It's sporadic and usually is resolved.

I have not noticed any permanent slowdown over the past several years out of Giga

Your best bet is to set up fill server definition with one to their European servers and that will resolve your issue, as articles will be pulled from Eu since its off peak during our night.

Try this^

Last night I was seeing slower than normal downloads from Astraweb, disconnected, reconnected using European servers and got almost full speeds.