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[kitz]

 

[tracer]

gonna give ukonline a go, mind you i'l not be on LLU so it may be that i'l get flagged up.

spoke to ukonline recently on the phone and the guy reckoned i would be ok,  course he's sales so i guess he would say that.  he said they don't restrict speeds though which is interesting. they will send out a polite warning letter then if you ignore that and carry on downloading too much they will cut you off completely.  i asked what would happen if that was within the first 12 months and he checked with his supervisor and said i would still have to pay for the full contract period!! better make sure i pay by direct debit just incase i need to cut them off.

[guest]

As I said in the PM I'll be very surprised if they allow you to do much more than 40GB/month. That's the limit Sky have on non-LLU connections.

Get something in writing.

[tracer]

yeah ur right, thanks for the advice rizla.  so i'm not going with ukonline

think i'l end up with dmcdial , they were my original choice with a 2meg unlimited    service for £17.99 http://www.dmcdial.co.uk/homeusers.htm .

i gave my parents my old pc and used dmcdial to get them a cheap broadband service, at the time they offered 2meg for £14.99 with a 1 year contract.

shame they don't offer that anymore, now they have a 3month term for the slightly higher price.

plus they have a newsgroup service which appears to be included as standard. yey.

have tried applying online but comes up with a charge for a migration fee, which is supposed to be free.  so will see if i can get a hold of someone on the phone to sort it out.

[MikeJJ]

Hi.
In regards to this page, and ukonline, i've got a bit of feedback for you
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/caps.htm

I recently signed up with UK Online, and got stitched with a 12 month contract.  Just to confirm that they do use Ellacoya, and non encrypted Bittorrent traffic generally travels at 5kb/s, whereas encrypted Bittorrent traffic will go at full speed.  And this is before the FUP gets hit. :S

[guest]

Interesting then that usenet traffic (unencrypted) is totally untouched. I wouldn't have thought they would throttle P2P and leave usenet alone........

Edit - just tried a 3.3GB torrent (LOTRO) and its fine. Nowhere near as fast as usenet (2MB/sec) but its fine. If UKO were throttling then I'd expect to see complaints on TBB and there aren't any......

[MikeJJ]

Did you try the torrent, without using encrypted traffic ?
I had to download an old version of Bittorrent (ver 4) to test it like this, since uTorrent would still encrypt, even when set to disabled.
One of the Technical Support guys said that they use Ellacoya in response to an email.

[kitz]

Thats quite interesting thanks, but I havent seen anyone else say anything about this.
Are you on LLU or IPStream do you know?  I have been told that the 2 may be handled differently with regards to any throttling.

There's one thing that puzzles me with regards to the Ellacoya statement.
Users tend to use encryption for p2p to avoid certain ISP throttling, but Ellacoyas are to a certain extent able to identify this type of traffic.
I dont understand the total ins and outs.. but whilst the encryption stops deep packet inspection being able to 100% positively identify it being p2p, theres something about the type of traffic + and with it being encypted that makes it highly suspicious as being p2p. 
Plusnet openly admit to using ellacoyas, yet encrypted p2p traffic is still identified and throttled.  Although there does at times appear to be a running battle between p2per's finding new ways and Ellacoya playing chase up with the pattern identification.

Would need some-one like Carl N whose supposedly one of the top UK experts to explain it properly.  Im afraid I dont use p2p these days so my knowledge of whats going on is poor.

[guest]

My wife tested it - she's the LOTRO player - and it was unencrypted. I don't use P2P as its too slow anyway

I don't believe they are using Ellacoyas (on LLU) regardless of what you've been told as if they were then there is no way I'd be getting 2MB/sec (that's bytes not bits) from usenetserver.com regardless of time of day. It doesn't matter what port I use (25, 119, 80, 443, 563 etc etc) - they all perform identically.

When there is a slowdown (like last Sunday) it is invariably due to some problem at usenetserver.com - eg they were testing new SSL authentication servers at the weekend and that didn't go well. Oh there was one time that the transatlantic transit UKO/SKy/Easynet use went tits-up but that's the only issue that I can blame UKO for in the last 3 months or so.

Are you on IPStream? Perhaps they are using Ellacoyas on that?

As kitz said, it is quite possible to identify P2P traffic regardless of whether its encrypted or not as the upload/download pattern associated with torrents is fairly unique. All encryption does is prevent identification of the traffic content.

[MikeJJ]

Encrypted traffic not working sounds like Fast4.net the isp i tried before this one.  I tested this downloading linux iso's, thinking it would get a fairly consistant speed.
Using the IPStream / LLU test the router Connected using that username but google wouldn't load, is that normal ?

[kitz]

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.

[kitz]

>> Using the IPStream / LLU test the router Connected using that username but google wouldn't load, is that normal ?

Its normal - That test connection is for BTws "private part" of the network and you wouldnt be able to browse the internet.

[guest]

This connection has been caned today on nntp and http - we're talking 60GB+ here so I think we can safely say that LLU has no shaping or throttling

[MikeJJ]

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.

I got 0x00.   
In that case, still cannot figure out why some protocols work, and others don't for me. (on IPStream).

[kitz]

>> I got 0x00.

It doesn't necessarily prove that your traffic isn't being shaped in some form. 
It is possible to do a lower level of QoS using just the edge routers such as Juniper ERX's.  But they dont have the capability of the ellacoyas to do the clever stuff and it is possible to find ways of getting round that sort of QoS (such as encryption).

From what you've seen and also what Ive seen elsewhere I dont think that UKO are using ellacoyas though.
Have you checked that everything is port forwarded through your router correctly?  Thats a common cause of slow p2p.