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When connected to the internet at my University there are some websites and services that load incredibly slowly. Nothing actually appears to be outright blocked, but certain websites (mostly games, and sometime YouTube and social networks) load at incredibly slow speeds. While just about everything else seems to work just fine. Additionally Steam community features (chat, online games, and forums) all work fine, but updates/installations always time out. Torrents seem to be totally dysfunctional. Social networks seem to fluctuate from usable to unusable. The network connections likes to drop out completely during Skype calls (but comes right back after the call drops).
However most websites and services work perfectly fine, as if nothing is wrong.
What is weird is that there doesn't seem to be any actual blocking ("this page has be blocked by the access policy" kind of thing), and downloading massive files is not throttled (I downloaded over a GB of data at one point, and there was virtually no bandwidth fluctuation). And even if Youtube pages load slowly, the video will stream normally once it loads.
Furthermore there is no information from the university to indicate any kind of usage policy (beyond "don't do illegal stuff") and as a public university with resident students from around the world, blocking of gaming, social networks, and especially Skype seems strange.
What could be going on here? Are they just trying to be sneaky? Is this a (rather poor) attempt to keep usage down? Or is there perhaps something wrong with the network?
And beyond all that, what can I do about it? I (and all the other students) are technically paying for this service as part of tuition, so shouldn't I be able to use it? What can I do to get around this problem?
Accept it's not just popular sites. There is a online game I often play, and the online player count averages 50 (total players). And I know they are not all from my school. I would estimate that ~1 person (me) from my school is on that game. So if the problem is as you describe, that site should not be effected. – zeel – 2013-10-21T22:26:59.453
You're correct. Your symptoms look now more like SPI/DPI gone awry (e.g. overloaded SPI firewall). You might want to involve the University's network engineers/support in the matter. Updating answer... – LSerni – 2013-10-22T07:19:33.633