Some more clarity, regarding priority traffic, shaping, after hours and the unshaping of downloads:
Shaping is not something that happens on a protocol, by protocol basis for the individual user.
Traffic is allocated into priority pools, with the aim of giving the best possible experience to the average user on the network. Each pool is allocated a portion of the available bandwidth on the network and at different times of the day, or dynamically based on the performance of the network the pool sizes are increased and decreased to allow more, or less headroom for different traffic types.
Within a given pool users making use of those traffic types will contend the available bandwidth, based on the shaping rules applied to ensure that everyone gets a fair experience.
So when we talk about relaxed shaping after hours, we are in effect saying that the size of the pool for peer to peer is increased as demand for priority traffic decreases.
This means that when someone intentionally unshapes their downloads they are no longer sharing bandwidth from the peer to peer pool with everyone else, but are using bandwidth from the priority traffic pool.
The net effect of this is that not only are they drawing from a bandwidth pool allocated to basic critical services, but they are also reducing the amount of bandwidth that can be allocated to the non critical bandwidth pool, which means that peer to peer users who play by the rules are also directly impacted by this behaviour.
Kind Regards
MWEB Operations (Tech Manager)