Shaw now throttling torrents?

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Frank MetaMusil

I find that 99% of the time it isn't actually Shaw. They could really care less so long as you pay your bill on time.

Yep that has my experience as well, been with Shaw for many years. The only time they complained is when I used excessive bandwidth which was fair I went on vacation and forgot I was seeding at maximum upload speeds, it stayed like that for about 10 days. They don't like when you do massive uploads, at least in my experience otherwise they don't care.

[malcolmk14]

For what it's worth, I spoke to a friend at Shaw.

They "unofficially" throttle torrents of some users. They have a team that enforces the "Acceptable Use Policy" and occasionally they throttle your torrents, but they will give you a warning first if you're over the traffic guideline.

The guidelines can be found here: http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/AboutShaw/T...cyInternet.htm

Key issues:

The guidelines for Bandwidth Usage/month for each service package are the following: Shaw High-Speed Lite — 10 GigaByte; Shaw High-Speed — 60 GigaByte; Shaw High-Speed Extreme — 100 GigaByte; Shaw High-Speed Warp Internet — 150 GigaByte; Shaw High-Speed Nitro — 200 GigaByte; Point of Sale Connect — 10 GigaByte; High-Speed — 70 GigaByte; High-Speed (with Extreme) — 110 GigaByte; Extreme — 90 GigaByte; Extreme (with Extreme) — 130; Business — 175 GigaByte; Business (with Extreme) — 225 GigaByte (all bandwidth is based on combined download and upload).

Traffic Management Policies
Shaw uses traffic management policies to ensure proportional access to its network for all Shaw Internet customers. Some Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications used for non real-time file sharing can consume a disproportionate amount of upstream bandwidth causing disruption to other customers on Shaw’s network. Shaw’s traffic management policies were introduced to quickly address any upstream congestion caused by these P2P applications while standard network expansion activities are undertaken to increase the bandwidth availability for all users.

While it goes on to say that their traffic management policies don't affect download speeds, they do reserve the right to manage your download speeds if they feel you're outside of the guidelines. They do occasionally do it, but it's not widespread, and they will let you know before they slow it down on you. Like Frank MetaMusil said, 99% of the time, it's some other problem if you're not getting normal speeds.

Edit: to the post above, yeah, that's exactly it. They frown upon massive uploading.

[zamler]

^^Thanks for the info. I've found Shaw to be very reasonable actually, and when there is a problem they generally fix it right away. A week ago my connection kept dropping out, called and the guy told me my router was bad. I insisted that it was fine but he told me routers last "2-4 years" mine is about 6 years old. He was adamant that my router was failing, I asked to speak to someone else, he told me they "don't do that".

I hung up and called back, the person I spoke to found the problem in 5 seconds (signal out of range) and the next day someone came out and it was fixed. One of the junction points outside was bad I presume he was up on the ladder in a couple of places. Actually that was the first time I called Shaw and the person on the other end was an idiot, otherwise I've been happy with their service. (I have T.V. Internet and Phone from them)

[Lithium]

I capped out my download speed last night, 1.5mb/sec, using utorrent.
So no problems for me. In the Marda Loop

[Bill Bumface]

Why is it that uploading is always so much slower than downloading? What's the bottleneck?

[Frank MetaMusil]

Originally Posted by hulkrogan

Why is it that uploading is always so much slower than downloading? What's the bottleneck?

Upload speeds are generally slower than download speeds because of the fact that most internet connected equipment is asymmetric. Asymmetric means that any one packet of data can either go in, or out, but not both ways at the same time.

Since most internet users are receiving more data than sending, the internet connected equipment has shifted the higher majority of the signals to go toward downloading.


If an internet provider allows your connection to be 5Mb download and 1Mb upload, this same connection is capable of handling 3Mb upload and 3 Mb download. But this would then slow down the most important part of the internet, the receiving and downloading of requested data.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by onetwo_threefour

utorrent has been crashing my internet connection for over a year on Shaw. I pretty much can't torrent at all. Luckily I don't do it much, but if I want to surf and torrent I'm out of luck. I have to turn off utorrent if I even want to surf at all. I'm not sure what happened.

In my experience, usually when this is happening it's because you're maxing out your uploads. On vanilla Shaw you get 60 kB/s for your entire connection. If you're using that to upload torrents. If you're not sharing your connection, try capping your upload at 30 kB/s and see if that works.

[Fire]

What is consider a good torrent? For example I'm trying to download a pretty big but old torrent from piratebay. There are 39 peers but I'm only connected to around 7. I'm only downloading at 5.0 Kb/s max usually. It will take about a year to finish. When I first added the torrent it was downloading at about 1.5 Mb/s, it was awesome for about an hour then suddenly it's went down to nothing. Is this normal with only 39 peers? Why am I only connected to 7 of them?

I'm on Ubuntu using the Transmission bittorrent client.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Fire

What is consider a good torrent? For example I'm trying to download a pretty big but old torrent from piratebay. There are 39 peers but I'm only connected to around 7. I'm only downloading at 5.0 Kb/s max usually. It will take about a year to finish. When I first added the torrent it was downloading at about 1.5 Mb/s, it was awesome for about an hour then suddenly it's went down to nothing. Is this normal with only 39 peers? Why am I only connected to 7 of them?

I'm on Ubuntu using the Transmission bittorrent client.

There are both Vuze and utorrent clients for Ubuntu.

Vuze takes up a few more resources, and has a few other features to go along with it.

edit: From my experience and contacts in the industry, Shaw does not throttle in Calgary, but they have use the Arbor-Elacoya system to throttle in places where they took over aging infrastructure and wanted to put Shaw Phones in. Because they need to be able to guarentee a certain level of service with the phone. In Calgary our infrastructure is more than enough to handle the traffic, so there is no point. If we didn't have enough bandwidth then Shaw would be bitching at alot more people than it does now.

[Hack&Lube]

Remember Shaw has free newsgroups so you can use them as well. Most groups have 30 days retention which is good enough.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Fire

What is consider a good torrent? For example I'm trying to download a pretty big but old torrent from piratebay.

It is pretty rare for a public tracker/torrent to max out your bandwidth. The fastest speeds I have seen are from private trackers, or sometimes Linux torrents. On that note, torrents under Linux always gives higher speeds than the Windows platform. Network performance under Linux is simply superior.

[Hack&Lube]

How do you get on private trackers/groups anyway? I don't like insular communities but if it keeps them going, then perhaps it's for the best.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

How do you get on private trackers/groups anyway?

Usually invites, or sometimes luck (site will be open to new users for a short time). The best ones out there have a great community and excellent content.