Obsidious
Evard's Tentacles of Forced Intrusion
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2010
- Messages
- 631
- Reputation score
- 78
Re: In today's news...
Whether there is an official cap or not, many "providers" (why not call them linelords really) already engage in what is called traffic shaping. For instance I have an unlimited 100 MB/s connection without bandwidth cap, but in the past I noticed my downstream obviously being throttled when using Bittorrent, as long as I didn't encrypt my connection via VPN.
However it depended on the time of day, and a few hours later there would be a download speed of 10 Mbyte/sec again. So the providers prefer already do prefer some data packages compared to others that are "less wanted" in order to "improve user experience" - it's somewhere in the fine-print, despite the fact what the FCC or politicians in other countries of the world may still be discussing. Another example would be that there have been many reports of speed tests always giving better results than what would've been expected if you take your usual browsing experience into considerations. But of course it's hard to prove something like that. However it is a technical possibility for any provider to prefer some protocols to others.
There are some ways to test - among other things - if your provider is shaping your traffic on the Glasnost site:
or on m-lab:
Whether there is an official cap or not, many "providers" (why not call them linelords really) already engage in what is called traffic shaping. For instance I have an unlimited 100 MB/s connection without bandwidth cap, but in the past I noticed my downstream obviously being throttled when using Bittorrent, as long as I didn't encrypt my connection via VPN.
However it depended on the time of day, and a few hours later there would be a download speed of 10 Mbyte/sec again. So the providers prefer already do prefer some data packages compared to others that are "less wanted" in order to "improve user experience" - it's somewhere in the fine-print, despite the fact what the FCC or politicians in other countries of the world may still be discussing. Another example would be that there have been many reports of speed tests always giving better results than what would've been expected if you take your usual browsing experience into considerations. But of course it's hard to prove something like that. However it is a technical possibility for any provider to prefer some protocols to others.
There are some ways to test - among other things - if your provider is shaping your traffic on the Glasnost site:
You must be registered to see the links
or on m-lab:
You must be registered to see the links