Since I dont use UKO, Im unable to test this out oneway or another,
but like rizla I stopped using p2p several years ago 1). because it was slow and 2) there isnt really anything that I want that cant be obtained by other means.
If UKO were using ellacoyas to shape it would still catch the encrypted traffic at some point. Ellacoya have made their name and reputation on the fact that they are able to do the deep packet inspection and also identify traffic pattern types.
afaik theres only one way to fool the ellacoyas, (not with encryption) but the ISPs are wise to that too.
If they were shaping to this extent I would have expected to hear about it at least on TBB since its no big secret that many on there moved to UKO because of their FUP which is quite generous compared to most other ISPs.
If UKO has shelled out what must amount to many 100's of £1,000 for ellacoyas I couldnt imagine them not using it for NNTP and the pattern identification for encrypted p2p too.
I'm not trying to defend the ISP - Ive no reason to.. but one thing that does strike me is that certain software is better at p2p than others and its also imperative that you make sure any ports are correctly forwarded. I noticed p2p in general starting to slow down several years ago depending on which client I used. Without a doubt some were better than others.
I also cant remember where I read this since it was about a year ago.. but Im sure that there was something about if you use encrypted then you can only connect to other users who are using encryption.. but the point being made was that unencrypted traffic was tending to be slower since there were less available peers to connect to these days as more users are moving over to encyption, not only to avoid ISP detection
If you want to check if your traffic is being shaped, you could perhaps try capturing data packets with Ethereal/Wireshark.
It should tell you in the Differentiated Services (TOS) field. Its all done in hex... but for eg 0x80 (DSCP 0x20) would be gold, 0x40 = silver, 0x20 = bronze. Whilst 0x00 identifies no shaping/QoS/ellacoyas.