Report on Web-Surfing Speeds Finds Pervasive Throttling 189
Stirling Newberry writes "New York Times has a report on web-surfing speed tests that their reporter ran using Glasnost, a tool that mimics the bittorrent protocol and measures the results. BT in the UK was among the worst. From the article: 'In the United States, throttling was detected in 23 percent of tests on telecom and cable-television broadband networks, less than the global average of 32 percent. The U.S. operators with higher levels of detected throttling included Insight Communications, a cable-television operator in New York, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, where throttling was detected in 38 percent of tests; and Clearwire Communications, where throttling was detected in 35 percent of the tests.'"
Gassy (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on the time (Score:5, Informative)
My ISP clearly states that they throttle P2P and Torrent protocols if necessary. After midnight, there's less people using their connection, hence less throttling.
I can attest to this. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:my netflix is more important than your BT (Score:5, Informative)
Power companies charge by the amount of power used. If they could technically give you 100% of the power you demand they would. And then charge you for it.
ISPs could move to that model too. But they don't want to. They prefer to charge flat rates and then throttle people who use it more.
Re:I'm sure they'll stop (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I can attest to this. (Score:5, Informative)
BT customers - there is an alternative (Score:4, Informative)
For those in the UK who suffer from throttled connections, there are some alternatives. I am a very happy customer of Be (part of the Telefonica group) who provide an uncapped unthrottled service with a static IP for less than £20/month. I get 18Mb/s down. On the same line with BT I got 12Mb/s, capped and throttled for the same price.
This [ispreview.co.uk] is a good resource if you've not found it already.