Can ISP throttle speeds only for torrents?

[NotMyRealName]

The question sometimes arises, how does it matter to an ISP, if you're anyway downloading at massive speeds. A few reasons:

• A lot of stuff these days is peered. Google/YT, etc. even NF i think. So the ISP saves on international b/w.
• Massive uploads in addition to the download can completely choke the n/w. This is one of the main reasons ISPs hate BT traffic.
• Regular downloads are typically from a single server with maybe a few multiple connections in case you have a download manager that splits into multiple segments. But BT traffic can be 100s or even 1000s of connections, downloading pieces from peers all over the world. Summed up, this can affect n/w QoS.
• Collusion (conspiracy theory). AMZN / NF and other streaming services are losing potential customers to free BT downloads. Way more risk than theaters. So maybe they're pressuring the govt./ISPs to restrict BT so that people would use their services.

 

[hotshot05]

But why would Hathway suddenly give such poor performance on torrents?

Normal downloads are insanely fast. I update my itunes (which typically runs into 100's of MB's) in no time.

Wouldn't the NAT issue generally affect overall speeds and not just torrents?

The iTunes download is most likely cached. Try downloading an international version of iTunes (I think there is an option on iTunes Singapore website)

 

[mach9]

So essentially we're fu*ked?

 

[6pack]

What ISP ? Again if it's a multiple NAT issue, the client is not the problem. And yes, sometimes outbound ports matter, sometimes it's just the time of day. My ISP seems to have some sort of contention ratio, because speeds are much better at off peak hours.

Its a local isp. ISP speed is not a problem since speed test from Fast.com and Speedtest.net show full speeds of 8Mbps. I can even download at 900+KBps from Mega at same time. qBittorrent will upload at full speeds almost always. So its definitely qBittorrent bug.

 

[nRiTeCh]

Why not try uTorrent. Also try alternate torrent files for same file and check.

 

[Futureized]

I have a 2Mbps connection.

Speedtest.net shows 2Mbps up/down
Fast.com shows 1.7Mbps down

While browsing the web or downloading from sites like sourceforge, i get around 170 - 250KBps speed.

In torrents, in the starting it hits 250KBps for 1 minute or so and then falls down to 70 - 90KBps and does not go above that. For a Linux iso torrent I got 250KBps, but other well seeded torrents I get max 110KBps.
All settings are default like encryption enabled etc. With same settings last week I used to get 250-270KBps speeds.

I did a traceroute and seems like ISP is getting internet from Reliance now. Also got a govt has banned this page with reliance logo on a japanese news site for some reason.

So is there something that one of these ISP's are doing to reduce the speeds of torrents only?

Forget all and try downloading any common torrent from your sources with maximum seeders, try to search for indian content only (like hindi and popular) and share results.

 

[6pack]

Forget all and try downloading any common torrent from your sources with maximum seeders, try to search for indian content only (like hindi and popular) and share results.

^ that problem was in 2017 dude. Now its 2019. :|

Edit: also want to add that number of seeders = high speeds is a myth. I've seen 2-4MBps speeds from just one single seeder torrents. Most probably seed box or some people having really high upload speeds now.

 

[hotshot05]

^ that problem was in 2017 dude. Now its 2019. :|

Edit: also want to add that number of seeders = high speeds is a myth. I've seen 2-4MBps speeds from just one single seeder torrents. Most probably seed box or some people having really high upload speeds now.

Can be a local peer as well who is on same network as you and so can upload very very fast!
Also can be caching server of your provider

 

[6pack]

Can be a local peer as well who is on same network as you and so can upload very very fast!
Also can be caching server of your provider

No. not local peer. Seen those speeds from countries like Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, Lithuania, Russia etc. Never got local Indian peer till now since i download anime only.

 

[NotMyRealName]

Its a local isp. ISP speed is not a problem since speed test from Fast.com and Speedtest.net show full speeds of 8Mbps. I can even download at 900+KBps from Mega at same time. qBittorrent will upload at full speeds almost always. So its definitely qBittorrent bug.

I asked about ISP because it's definitely a NAT issue then, since you're saying it's local. Problem is NOT the client. If you want to test objectively, test the same torrent at the same time using different clients. Of course not all at the same time. But say 10 minutes on each client within a 1-hour slot.

 

[6pack]

I asked about ISP because it's definitely a NAT issue then, since you're saying it's local. Problem is NOT the client. If you want to test objectively, test the same torrent at the same time using different clients. Of course not all at the same time. But say 10 minutes on each client within a 1-hour slot.

How does it download at 1-2MBps at other times though? NAT issue is forever and not related to time slots. I've tested using transmission and qbittorrent at same time on same torrent and transmission had lower speeds than qbittorrent. Other times at night transmission downloaded at full speed of my net connection. So its not a NAT issue. Its probably contention ratio or something.

Edit: Even others are having this issue.

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/7954

I've seen posts on Reddit complaining about this but too lazy to post those links here.

 

[NotMyRealName]

I'm not 100% sure about this but it seems to be some peers implement the BT protocol very strictly and some not at all. So you can get away without even an outbound connection at all and they will still seed to you. I know this because earlier my isp (local too) used to give a NATed ip when there was more load and a direct ip when there was less. Whenever i got the direct ip, it was blazing fast full line speed with perfect uploading and connection to peers. But the NATed ips would work just like it is now. I've tested this enough to know exactly what the symptoms mean, but i can't be a 100% sure about their back-end systems without being able to physically poke around in them. Tested various clients to be 100% sure it's not a client issue though.