Slow speeds despite whats necessary has been done

[SledgeVan]

Hi guys, I have some questions again, this time with regards to speed and Throttling of downloads by ISP.

brief summary of what I have:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

2 Gb Ram, Pentium Dual Core Processor 2.2ghz

60 Gb Hard disk space left.

Windows Firewall (No other software firewall installed)

AVG Free antivirus 9.0

Modem Router, with listening port forwarded

using DSL internet connection 10Mbps advertised

Using Bitcomet 1.21

I use port 60000, forwarded in my router to my PC. Windows firewall exceptions set in Bitcomet 1.21, with Upnp port mapping disabled. Port tested opened in "canyouseeme.org" and having "Remote" peers.

Have Capped 80% of my tested upload speed (taking considerations of the units (bits vs bytes)

Enforced Bitcomet to run only 1 active task at a time.

Always restrict to run Bitcomet only when other applications are not running, and when the other PCs connected to the network are not utilising bandwidth.

BT protocol encryption "Auto-detect"

From my own observations, I seem to be having slow speeds (less than 100kB/s), but slightly faster speeds at a certain time of the day, assuming approximately having the same amount of seeds/peers. I speculate that it might be due to busier internet traffic (peak period)in the local area, or that my ISP is throttling P2P downloads. Well I have no idea which is the case.

Anyway, how do I find out if my ISP is throttling my torrents downloads (if it is). And if an ISP is throttling P2P downloads, will it do it only in certain times of the day. I heard that an easy way to find out is to download the open office or linux distros, but where do I find it?

Thanks again for any insight provided to a novice like me.

SledgeVan

[kluelos]

Throttling really isn't all that common. When it does happen, the speed limit is way below what you're seeing -- typically down around 25-30 kB/s on a connection that supposedly supports much more.

Suspect throttling when your speed hits a wall around that speed and stays there, neither faster or slower and despite anything you can do, during certain hours, and is otherwise mostly much faster. An Open Office torrent download should, if you're configured correctly, basically max out your connection. You get it from openoffice.org

What you're seeing is more likely configuration issues, or usage issues like trying to run too many tasks at one time. This will hurt your download speed. It also matters if you tend to download unpopular torrents without many peers. Downloading Wager's "Rinse Cycle" from the one other person that's interested in it is just gonna take awhile.

[greywizard]

A pretty accurate way to tell if you're being throttled is to try and download something through HTTP/FTP of from a fast Usenet server at that moment when you believe you're being throttled.

If you get low speeds for a very well seeded torrent such as Open Office or a popular Linux distro but you get speeds close to your connection's max when using HTTP/FTP or NNTP then you can assume you're being throttled.

Of course, one has to make sure first that his/her client has an open listening port, is properly configured and it doesn't run too many tasks at once. But you say you already did that so this shouldn't be an issue.

However, this will only stand true in case your ISP is throttling specifically the BitTorrent protocol. But, if your ISP is throttling your whole connection as part of a policy which limits the bandwidth during certain "peak hours" then you won't see any difference.

Greedy ISPs who subscribe a lot of clients without buying the additional bandwidth to support all of them, have to resort to this type of measures in order to provide a minimal service to everyone and to avoid tons of complains of the type: "my Internet stopped working!".

[SledgeVan]

Thanks for the answers. I got speeds up to 700kB/s when i was running the openoffice torrent. At least I believed the ISP may not be throttling my torrent downloads during that "non peak" period.