What's going on here - Are we being blocked?

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bradlesliect

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Hi,

Not sure if this is just coincidence but since the Telkom outage the past weekend, none of my torrents want to download anymore.

However, when i do a SpeedTest, DL speed is 75-85K Int and 90-98k Local.

I was upped to 1MB about 3wks back and everything has been hunky dory. Line has been stable, DL speeds extremely good and no dropped connections.

I live in the Plumstead area of CTN and according to Telkom on Saturday the problem was at the exchange. By Sunday afternoon all services were restored but my torrents just died. I tried another modem and from my other computers in the house, still nada!

So....woo dunnit?

I'm a MWEB user. So... are MWEB throttling and/or sniffing torrent download ports and blocking them or is Telkom involved because its happening to all my torrent downloads.

Using a download manager like Orbit to download SQL Service Packs its extremely fast.

Anyone have the problem? Hopefully just an isolated incident.
 
Not isolated at all it seems. Im also with MWEB on a 1mb line in Tokai. Torrents only seem to work after 2 in the morning and stops after 7 am. Seems I'm being throttled too. Netlimiter indicates a max download speed of 40kb up until 11pm on all protocols (http inclusive). After 11 I get full line speed. Been like this for the past 2 weeks.

Thought it could be congestion but at exactly 11 I get full line speed.
 
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I just setup a quick utorrent server and download everything full blast via http... haven't seen any kind of throttling on http at all.
 
moondoggie86 said:
Not isolated at all it seems. Im also with MWEB on a 1mb line in Tokai. Torrents only seem to work after 2 in the morning and stops after 7 am. Seems I'm being throttled too. Netlimiter indicates a max download speed of 40kb up until 11pm on all protocols (http inclusive). After 11 I get full line speed. Been like this for the past 2 weeks.

Thought it could be congestion but at exactly 11 I get full line speed.
Click to expand...

Same here. The only website that is not affected is www.speedtest.net.
 
AcidRaZor said:
I just setup a quick utorrent server and download everything full blast via http... haven't seen any kind of throttling on http at all.
Click to expand...

AcidRazor....where you at? CTN? Which part then? To others with same or similar problems...let us know where you from. One incident might be an isolated one....two incidents maybe depending on the location...but three....now that's a whole new ball game. It is said ..."where there is smoke, there is a fire"...

Me thinks that MWEB has now taken strain on their own backbone, servers cannot serve traffic like HTTP,SMTP, POP, FTP and all the nice ports anymore...so...what do they have to do? They place access-lists on their gateways where they pickup the most traffic from to prioritise this type of traffic only and the rest gets their HUGE bit from 11PM until about....if you lucky...about 2:30AM

...then...ASTALA VISTA BABY!!! It probably makes business sense I suppose?

Right now...just as a test, I'm downloading Win7 SP1(260MB) and its coming down at about 75-84kb/s

Now explain that?
 
I've been having a similar problem on and off for 3 weeks now. Also Mweb 1 Mb/s, also in the Plumstead/Wynberg area of CTN.
I know I have no problem with distance from the Telkom exchange, and in between the inconsistencies I do get great speedtests, so I'm sure I don't have any other line issues.
And yet - this weekend torrents sucked most of the time. Today, I was getting as low as 38KB/s on HTTP and FTP downloads!
That's a 384K line people!
W.T.F.
Even speedtest.net was going as low as .5 meg. (incl tests to Mweb JHB)
 
IMHO, it would appear that MWEB may have used this "outage" to identify where the most traffic is coming from and its given them time to put sniffers on the network. Now, since they have some information, they've "throttled" traffic not using the standard HTTP, SMTP, POP3, FTP and other standard internet browsing ports by applying access-lists to either prioritise this traffic normal internet browsing only and the rest is sent to a "blackhole". Others have also said the only time they get PEAK browsing is from 11PM to about 2AM every day. I'm paying for 1MB uncapped and now only getting about speed equivalent of about 512k. What happened to "you get what you pay for"?

@MWEB Guy - Comments please? Is what I'm say true or just an impression? I've tried a different router and another notebook, pc and it still the same.
 
bradlesliect said:
Hi,

Not sure if this is just coincidence but since the Telkom outage the past weekend, none of my torrents want to download anymore.

However, when i do a SpeedTest, DL speed is 75-85K Int and 90-98k Local.

I was upped to 1MB about 3wks back and everything has been hunky dory. Line has been stable, DL speeds extremely good and no dropped connections.

I live in the Plumstead area of CTN and according to Telkom on Saturday the problem was at the exchange. By Sunday afternoon all services were restored but my torrents just died. I tried another modem and from my other computers in the house, still nada!

So....woo dunnit?

I'm a MWEB user. So... are MWEB throttling and/or sniffing torrent download ports and blocking them or is Telkom involved because its happening to all my torrent downloads.

Using a download manager like Orbit to download SQL Service Packs its extremely fast.

Anyone have the problem? Hopefully just an isolated incident.
Click to expand...

Hi bradlesliect

We do not throttle our customers accounts we employ shaping on our network.
Send me your MWEB details so I can have a look into this.
 
Same problem here in Durban all month. I get full speed during the day but at night and weekends I only get 22kb/s unless I use a download manager as stated above. This is frustrating.
 
MWEB Guy said:
Hi bradlesliect

We do not throttle our customers accounts we employ shaping on our network.
Send me your MWEB details so I can have a look into this.
Click to expand...



Thanks for feedback. I know what shaping is and it involved prioritising certain traffic types. Its a good and sensible business rule to apply as it affects all customers(Corp and end user) but is there no way to lift that restriction a bit after hours? I mean, in all fairness, during the day you giving Gaming a better priority than p2p?
 
bradlesliect said:
SpeedTest gives me an all clear but remember this tests on standard http port(80) only. So its results will be different and/or better.

Sorry...I'm still not convinced that MWEB IS NOT doing something different to their IP network.

Comments?
Click to expand...

I hear you, just thought it might help narrow down the problem. For me it was Telkom. Still is, unfortunately. Seeing cables being laid in my area though, so hoping that means exchange will be upgraded too.
BTW, there's also a section on that site where you can download test files. At one stage I was getting good speedtests but couldn't actually download anything at a decent speed. Maybe you should check that too.
Edit: Think I saw an FTP test too.
 
@K3NS31

No complaints with DL'ing via HTTP and/or FTP accept for last night of course when it dropped to speed equivalent of a 512k. I do http downloads using a download manager(Orbit) and have done it this way since this app was released.

One of the MWEB dudes confirmed that p2p does not get as high a priority as other traffic. In fact, he said its "at the bottom of the pile". Nuff said? To me it still looks access-lists for QoS have been applied on gateways / edge routers in areas where huge volumes of traffic has been detected causing latency and strain on the MWEB network? MWEB needs to manage and remedy this ASAP to maintain customer satisfaction and retention. It does make business sense but can they ease up a bit after hours? I must tell you before my up to 1MB I was on 384k and my line ALWAYS maxxed.

SpeedTest does not tell you which port it testing so me thinks it port 80?
 
Yeah, I know mweb puts P2P on lowest priority but it used to be on weekends you'd get top speed all the time as well as after hours in the week. Even if that's changed you should surely get good speeds late at night? After all prioritisation is automatic so when the network's less busy it shouldn't matter what priority P2P is, as I understand it.
I must admit in between all the rubbish speeds I've been getting recently I have still had the odd day of good torrenting (via Mweb), even as recently as Saturday night; hence me suspecting it was Telkom in my case.

I also have no idea what port Speedtest uses, but most likely is 80.
 
Thats a negative on exchange. The other peeps around where I live r not be gotting the same problem as me. :mad: :cry:
 
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bradlesliect said:
Thats a negative on exchange. The other peeps around where I live r not be gotting the same problem as me. :mad: :cry:
Click to expand...

That's a good thing. You can beg / cajole / bribe / cry / whatever it takes until Mweb fixes your problem. Or you can change ISP's.
I'm fooked. I gotta wait for Telkom. That's a real :cry:
 
You quite right about that...the grass is not always greener on the other side. I know there is an AUP in place but you need to provide same or closest to best level of service to your consumers on both spectrums of your business? After all, the guys who helped to boost your biz are the end users?

Jumping ship is not really something I do. I show loyalty to companies I get good service from but...don't mistake that for weakness though.
 
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