Question about isp and bandwidth

3

I have pretty high bandwidth and my speed test download normally clocks over ~22 mb/s but I am unable to do anything else when my downloads reach over 1 mb/s (using torrents). What's the point of getting a high bandwidth plan and being unable to use most of it. How does it work and how come I can't use my bandwidth efficiently?

Also, do isp have limit on how much you can upload/download like xxgig per month and etc?

I use Charter Cable and I lan with 2 other people though they don't use much bandwidth. I'm always the one using most of the of bandwidth.

I don't know any other information you guys should know about. Tell me if you need any other information.

FireDragonMule

Posted 2010-09-03T22:55:08.130

Reputation: 143

Answers

2

SpeedTests are overexaggerated because they use super-optimized servers. For a more accurate test use wget to download a copy of Big Buck Bunny (because it's big and most of the servers are optimized but live in Europe) for a more accurate test of your bandwidth.

Not to mention Torrent throttling.

digitxp

Posted 2010-09-03T22:55:08.130

Reputation: 13 502

I'm not using linux or gnu and I can't seem to find a windows version of wget. Is there a windows equivalent of a command prompt equivalent?

Also, I'm a newb. What is torrent throttling? – FireDragonMule – 2010-09-03T23:18:21.213

I got wget and is downloading the movie. I'm in USA and it's download ~ 500kb/s. Which I know is slower than my connection. Is there a better way? – FireDragonMule – 2010-09-03T23:42:12.573

It's a pretty accurate test. You can try a different humongous file, for example a Linux LiveCD. – digitxp – 2010-09-04T01:21:56.307

@FireDragonMule Torrent Throttling is when evil companies (e.g. Comcast) limit the speed that you can use P2P at supposedly to hinder piracy. – digitxp – 2010-09-22T02:54:04.027

2

Charter cable actively disrupts peer to peer file sharing. You need to use encryption to obfuscate the P2P activity.

I have Charter and use utorrent, and the default encryption works great.

JNK

Posted 2010-09-03T22:55:08.130

Reputation: 7 642

I use Utorrent too. Do you have to enable encryption or do it encrypt automatically? – FireDragonMule – 2010-09-04T01:57:09.803

You need to enable encryption manually. Go to options->preferences->bitorrent and set it to enabled. – JNK – 2010-09-04T02:31:58.530

1

Torrents are different than most other forms of traffic. Because of the high number of concurrent connections (one per seed/peer), they place a lot of stress on many varieties of consumer routers.

Try decreasing the "max total connections" or "max connections per torrent" (or even "max active torrents") in your torrent app and see if this helps.

zildjohn01

Posted 2010-09-03T22:55:08.130

Reputation: 2 212

How do you check how much connections you can handle? Do you just have to wing it or is there something like a stress test to calculate it. I enable 200 totally connections with 50 per torrent. 6 upload per torrent (I have really low upload bandwidth. – FireDragonMule – 2010-09-04T01:53:46.240