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Author Topic: Are BT throttling connections?  (Read 36836 times)

simoncraddock

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Are BT throttling connections?
« on: November 27, 2014, 07:27:52 PM »

Just an observation but if I download my favourite tv shows from the likes of 'billion uploads' it can be painfully slow. If I download from the same link however via a vpn service its twice as fast.

Anyone else noticed similar results?
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kitz

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2014, 07:44:46 PM »

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simoncraddock

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #2 on: December 12, 2014, 01:01:16 PM »

This might be why...

https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity-Speed-Connection/BT-Infinity-issues-for-the-last-few-days/td-p/1420828

Some suspect there's been traffic management introduced.

Quote
It's been suggested that BT have recently introduced some additional traffic management/filtering, perhaps responding to government diktat. They must surely have comprehensive network management tracking the performance of all their core gear. Something somewhere must be dropping SYN/ACK packets like crazy. You'd have thought alarm bells would be ringing in their operations centre.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2014, 01:03:57 PM by simoncraddock »
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kitz

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #3 on: December 12, 2014, 02:23:40 PM »

Ive not read the whole thread but that doesnt sound like traffic management.

No ISP in their right mind would shape http traffic that would affect opening of webpages, or stop gamers being able to connect to popular servers.
My first thought was DNS, but someone has already tried different DNS servers so it cant be that.   I notice someone has posted a tracert, which implies packet loss & drops a few hops down the line.   That to me suggests something wrong with the routing, for it to be so wide reaching then possibly something on the core network...  but if its on the core then you'd expect other ISPs to also be having problems, so perhaps their peering?



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kitz

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #4 on: December 12, 2014, 02:45:51 PM »

Just scanned a few more pages and it seems that there's quite a few that dont appreciate the difference between a router or server that doesnt respond to ICMP and genuine dropped packets.

Its no good performing tracerts to bt.co.uk or bt.com because that is never going to answer.  It doesnt mean theres something wrong with BT just that their webservers are configured to not respond to ICMP. 

Same goes for several hops, most of the (20CN) RAS servers were configured to ignore ICMP ping.  Dunno if its still the same these days, but the fact that hops afterwards respond ok without any loss of latency implies nothing wrong.

However this may have something to do with it.  I notice a few giving their locations were in the north

From Plusnet SS

Quote
Yesterday we received notification from BT Openreach that they have declared what they refer to as an MBORC (Matter Beyond Our Reasonable Control) in certain areas of the country. This has the potential to cause fault resolution delays due to recent bouts of severe weather.

A copy of the notice is as follows:

"Parts of the UK, in particular Scotland and the north of England, were hit with severe storm conditions, including strong wind and lightning strikes, from Monday 8 December 2014 and continuing into Tuesday 9 and Wednesday 10 December 2014.

This seriously impacted Openreach's infrastructure, both above and below ground with fault intake in these areas at extremely high levels. The adverse conditions have also seriously impacted transport in the region.

Openreach is therefore declaring MBORC for repair activities, in the following area, with effect from 23:59 on 11 December 2014.

and on BT's own site - link

Quote
Fri 12/12/2014 at 10:28

Intermittent issues when loading webpages.

We are aware of an issue, which is causing some customers to experience intermittent issues when attempting to load web pages.

We are sorry for any inconvenience caused and we are working to fix the problem


PS.

The fact that the above SS was issued this morning and people are still posting like crazy this afternoon (theres a further 5 full pages since BT issued the SS) , it may be good if someone with access to the BT forums, updates that thread so at least their users know that BT is aware of a problem.




« Last Edit: December 12, 2014, 02:50:35 PM by kitz »
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simoncraddock

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #5 on: December 12, 2014, 02:53:41 PM »

Admittedly I've not read the whole thread being at work, but this as been ongoing for a couple of weeks. If I go on the Overclockers forum for example it can some evenings from home take up to a minute for the webpage to load and if I post often it times out. Whereas here at work via a Virgin connection its instant.

Issues related to the weather in the north of the UK are a separate issue.

The interesting thing I noticed as I've previously mentioned if I go onto a site that is blocked by BT using it's IP address rather than domain name it's painfully slow. Access the same site via a VPN terminating either in the UK or US and it's much faster.
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pedro492

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #6 on: December 12, 2014, 03:19:16 PM »

If Keith Beddoe (part of the furniture in the BT forums) is correct, it looks like BT is redirecting all udp/53 packets to their own DNS servers.

Which means that manually specifying the IP addresses for the Google or OpenDNS servers makes no difference.   All DNS queries, whatever their destination address, are redirected to BT's nameservers.

http://community.bt.com/t5/Other-Broadband-Queries/DNS-hijacking/m-p/1417341/highlight/true#M98520

Consequently, if BT's nameservers go down, or the routing or loading to them somehow fails, then the end-user has no remedy, as it seems is the case from all these complaints.  Pathetic state of affairs.

Presumably BT cites "security" as the pretext for deploying this "DNS Hijacking".  Not coincidentally, perhaps, it also means that, without exception, BT can harvest the address of every website we visit.  Tied with geolocation data, which BT can obtain from its RADIUS logs and its CRM database, that DNS data would be very valuable for marketing.

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loonylion

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #7 on: December 12, 2014, 03:40:28 PM »

if they try that on me I'll show them just what this 'end user' can do about it.
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simoncraddock

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #8 on: December 12, 2014, 04:00:02 PM »

But that in itself is DNS hi-jacking and not free from possible abuse. I can understand wanting to protect the end user but lets face it BT don't always have the customers best interest at heart based on past record.

I'll have to test it later to see if its true.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2014, 04:02:31 PM by simoncraddock »
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kitz

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #9 on: December 12, 2014, 04:03:22 PM »

hmmmmmmmm ..   thats a good idea NOT! ::)


It would certainly explain why what appear to be DNS problems arent solved by specifying your own choice of DNS servers  >:(
and could also explain why VPN works so much better if they have a problem with their own DNS servers.

Quote
Presumably BT cites "security" as the pretext for deploying this "DNS Hijacking".

Im not convinced that DNS Hijacking is a good enough reason for doing this.  If people want to opt out and use their own DNS then they should be able too.
Despite my ISP DNS being quicker because of the slight less routing, I still use other DNS because I know that from time to time PNs DNS servers can be flaky.

 
I certainly agree that it is not the "correct way" to do things as " DNS requests for any Google service are intercepted before they enter the core network, and redirected down very fast trunks doesnt quite ring true.   Traffic has to traverse the core to get to the BT/Google peer points anyhow.  I agree that  "Marketing Research " would seem to be the most obvious reason. 

The fact that Keith_Beddoe disclosed that information a few weeks ago, Im surprised that no-one has put two and two together before now especially when so many users are having what appears to be obvious DNS type issues  :(

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kitz

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2014, 04:16:58 PM »

Interesting post by Mad Penguin
http://linuxforums.org.uk/index.php?topic=11464.0

So this has been known about for a while?

Quote
Disclaimer :: this information is just my technical opinion, however the basic facts have been confirmed by BT technical support.



When you make a DNS request through BT, BT intercepts the request at packet level, by this I mean it intercepts requests made on UDP port 53. It then services those requests using their own DNS servers, and returns the result to you, while pretending to be the nameserver you were wanting to or expecting to query.

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kitz

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #11 on: December 12, 2014, 04:22:43 PM »

But that in itself is DNS hi-jacking and not free from possible abuse. I can understand wanting to protect the end user but lets face it BT don't always have the customers best interest at heart based on past record.

I'll have to test it later to see if its true.

Are you also aware of this  BT Web Address

May also be worth having a play with those settings whilst testing to see if they are tied in or independent from DNS
http://preferences.webaddresshelp.bt.com/selfcare/
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simoncraddock

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #12 on: December 12, 2014, 04:28:32 PM »

That really does explain why when I use my VPN Service things are so much faster at resolving.

I guess I could install BIND on my Netgear ReadyNAS and set my router to look at that rather than Google/OpenDNS for when I'm not using my VPN.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2014, 04:30:43 PM by simoncraddock »
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Bodge99

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #13 on: December 12, 2014, 04:32:00 PM »

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Black Sheep

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Re: Are BT throttling connections?
« Reply #14 on: December 12, 2014, 05:21:13 PM »

Which shower are you with, bodge ??
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