networking - How can I detect if an online backup service is doing IP-based throttling?
2014-07
Franck Dernoncourt
I live on a campus in the US and I am trying to understand why my upload speed to the online backup service Backblaze on area Y of the campus is 10 times slower than on area X of the campus (20000 vs 2000 kpbs as you can see in the details below).
Area X on campus (Ethernet):
- Backblaze speedtest: Download Speed: 48764 kbps (6095.5 KB/sec transfer rate); Upload Speed: 25035 kbps (3129.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
- speedtest.net speed test: Download Speed: 82460 kbps; Upload Speed: 71640 kbps
- Backblaze actual upload speed using the client: around 20000 kbps
Area Y on campus (Ethernet):
- Backblaze speedtest: Download Speed: 50500 kbps (6312.5 KB/sec transfer rate); Upload Speed: 3249 kbps (406.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
- speedtest.net speed test: Download Speed: 94790 kbps; Upload Speed: 50880 kbps
- Backblaze actual upload speed using the client: around 2000 kbps
I have similar results for wifi but I think that's enough details.
The network administrator suspects that Backblaze is doing IP-based throttling. This surprised me as
- the Ethernet's IP is pretty similar between area X and Y
- the Wifi's IP is pretty similar between area X and Y
- I don't see what Backblaze would target area Y and not Y, since both are on the same campus. Also Backblaze vehemently denies doing any IP-based throttling, and I couldn't find anyone complaining about it.
My feeling is that area Y "as well connected" as X to the outer Internet, but most of the web services work fine, which gives credit to my network administrator's explanation.
Hence my question: is there any way to detect whether an online backup service is doing IP-based throttling, beyond comparing the upload speed with different IPs?
Some more details:
- All tests where carried out using the same laptop.
- I disabled the throttling in the Backblaze client's options.
JcMaco
My ISP is a reseller of Bell Canada DSL service. Bell uses Deep Packet Inspection for all of its users and resellers to limit the bandwidth consumed by P2P applications such as BitTorrent.
Bell throttles between 4:30pm - 2:00am daily.
Early workarounds such as using port 1723 was good at first but has since been rectified by ISPs.
What are your suggestions?
user8559
I do not have Bell Canada, but a number of users have reported that using the uTP (UDP torrenting) feature of the uTorrent beta (now 2.0) is successful in circumventing Bell's interference.
More information at this FileShareFreak article: http://filesharefreak.com/2008/12/02/is-your-bittorrent-throttled-try-utorrent-19/
DeadHead
If you are using Vuze (used to be Azereus), then they have a guide for encrypting bittorrent traffic here (They recommend level 5 for Bell). They also show here that Bell is awful for bittorrenting...
I've used these for Bell before, and it seemed to be hit and miss, but it still was better then doing nothing at all.
Some of what they show here will also apply to other bittorrent clients.
pgs
If your torrent client supports it, then enable encryption. This will only help when talking to peers and trackers that also have it enabled, but it will stop the packet inspection.
baudtack
Only using encrypted torrents will probably fix this. However, by passing this may be a violation of your ToS. Don't get yourself into trouble.
Chris Tarazi
I have used this article to help me with my BitTorrent and it worked.
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Optimize%5FBitTorrent%5FTo%5FOutwit%5FTraffic%5FShaping%5FISPs
nik
There are tricks like Tor and UltraSurf that will completely move you out of monitoring range.
These will increase your bandwidth utilization a bit though.
Glasnost: How to find out if your ISP blocks or limits torrents? -- may be useful too.
Another ref, Google helps to test whether your ISP blocks Bittorrent