Can my ISP cheat on me?

Question

Yes, it sounds a bit weird, since this normally happens in screwed up relationships :P. However, I have a feeling that my ISP is cheating on me, because my internet connection speed is horrible. What do I mean by horrible? No more than 300 Kb/s download speed while downloading a very well seeded torrent on a 20 Mb line. And when this is happening, no one else can use the internet.

This is worrying since until last summer, I could dl at 1.5 mb/s, my brother could stream HD (1080p) video and I could watch HD videos on youtube. But then after we came back from the summer vacations, we could no longer do this. Now it takes at least an hour (1 hour!!!!!) to download a movie! And no one can use the line at the same time, not even for email, since the ping will be over 2000 ms (even for google), and sometimes it can't connect to the internet at all. My speed test shows up MAX 3.5 Mb/s down, and .5 Mb/s up, on a 20down/1up Mb/s line. And this is when NO ONE is using the internet connection!

So what I think is happening is that my ISP is cheating on us since we still pay the same amount of money, but they jammed several more clients on the same connection/switch box/whatever so now most of the time no one has a full connection. Plus, they downgraded our connection to 15 mb/s, and when we called them to make sure they fix their error, they told us that we never had a 20 mb/s line (a complete lie, we had it 'till last summer). This, along with advice from someone who knows about this sorta stuff, makes me think that my ISP is cheating on me and by adding more clients they are slowing down everyones lines.

Answer 1

What you described sounds very accurate, although I wouldn't really call it "cheating" you.



The first thing that has to be asked is...what is the actual throughput you are paying for? You have a package, that package has certain guaranteed speeds. Whatever that speed is is the maximum speed they have to give you.



I believe that your assertion is 100% correct, tho. You were the only people on one branch for a long period of time, so resultingly, you had some blistering speeds. Then somebody noticed that your line wasn't being used, things were restructured, and now you have to share the speed with other people.



Just because you were getting 20/mbs speeds doesn't mean you have a dedicated 20mb/s line...it just means that was the highest capacity you've reached. My guess is that they either added more lines, or capped your service once they realized how fast you were going.



So, I'd check the fine print, see what their max. guaranteed speed is. That is, if there even IS one. Some ISP's will say "average speed is subject to vary depending on area, times of usage, etc.". If the service is really lower than what you're paying for, then call and insist on getting a tech out there.



Otherwise...you might have to upgrade your connection.

Answer 2

The truth is it depends on where you are located on the node in your area. lets say you have a ped in front of your home --a little green box-maybe brown? anyhow, it serves minimum four people surrounding you. now, if the tech didn't adjust your signal according to your speed than you should have lag. your ISP can view your signal status and tell you if your TX or RX levels are high or low. If they are high, it's called 'spiking' and you have poor signal. Same goes for the SNR. try speedtest.net to measure your bandwidth. now, the thing about the NOC: If we catch someone using torrents we shut them down. they get a notice and we slap their hand. a second time and not only do we threaten you but we monitor your activity. a third time and you will be looking for a new ISP. you'll be permanently banned from that ISP.



We offer powerboost to customers with 9mbp/s and higher. Powerboost is just that. As the previous poster said, it could have been less people on that node last year and because of that you received more bandwidth. regardless, your ISP will have it in writting what you pay for and if that is not being met, request a tech visit from your ISP

Answer 3

are you sure you weren't in a 15mb package and powerboosting to 20mb? thats exactly what i do. my package is 15mb or 16mb i forget, but when i do speed tests i get anywhere from 15mb to 22mb. on busy times i get down to like 10mb but that's still fast so i don't complain.



as far as downloading, ISPs nationwide throttle bittorrent because its a hog. and its 90% illegal. so they slow down the illegal users so other customers can stream paid-for netflix movies and stuff.



its not even really the bandwidth, its the RAM in their routers. a good torrent can connect to over 1000 different hosts just for your 1 torrent. so if you are downloading 4 files over torrent then theres an easy 4000 connections to your computer. if you are seeding too then you can have over 10,000 hosts connecting to your computer! not a problem for your fancy dual-core cpu and 4gb of RAM. but if the ISP Has 40,000 customers and even a small percentage of them run torrents, it quickly overwhelms them as its like 3 million people pulling up web pages at once, not a whole lot of bandwidth, but a ton of memory and cpu juice to maintain who is connected to what.



so my guess is over the summer they started throttling your bittorrents and thats why the speed dropped. as far as your speed tests im not sure, if you are running the speed tests while torrenting its probably the same problem, as your router at your house runs into the same problem with RAM and the number of connections. then you add in the spyware and viruses that come with bittorrent and you could have a lot of reasons your speeds have decreased.

Answer 4

Exactly. They're sharing the connection with multiple households. You have to get over there and tell them you want a dedicated line. And if they make you pay more, get a receipt or something from before summer to show them that you had a dedicated 20Mb/s line. If they said they changed their policy, then there's not much you can do except pay more and raise your speed or switch your ISP.

Answer 5

a superb variety of ISPs throttle/cap bandwidth for torrent site visitors. subsequently, you'll be able to desire to be getting suited speeds whilst surfing yet ridiculously low speeds while downloading P2P site visitors. I propose you do slightly diagnosis and verify out to be sure the form to bypass the capping measures your ISP is taking. each so often it is as basic as changing the port you employ.

Answer 6

try messign with the settings on the router box provided by the company