Nildram/Pipex Problems with P2P

[RoachycaL]

Hey guys,

Recently Ive been having some big problems with downloading torrents, I'm on Nildram and have been for the past couple of years and to be honest I'm really not happy with the service but I cant do anything about it as I'm 18 and living at home etc (dont have the power to change the isp )

Basically Im looking to find out if nildram/pipex block ports? If so which ones? I did hear that they were one of the first ISP's in the UK to start capping P2P speeds and blocking ports if they find out their customers are downloading torrents etc.

I also get quite high latency when playing games (usually 50-60 from UK servers) however my mates living in the same city as me usually get around 30 ping. Is that anything to do with how far away from my local exchange I am?

How are other people finding nildram for downloading torrents and gaming etc? I know pipex took them over a good few years ago and they just seem to be going down the drain.

Are there any online tests I can do, or any tests with my router to post on here for people to tell me if my connection is healthy? Same with my phone line? (I live in an old area of Newcastle)

For instance right now I'm downloading a 3Gb torrent from a public tracker, utorrent tells me that my ports are forwarded fine as my pc has a static IP and my router is portforwarded, I check the peers tab and there are people downloading at like 400/700Kb a sec whereas I am downloading at 40Kb/sec!!

My line speed also seems to fluctuate a lot!!

Some help and advice needed - thanks

 

[RoachycaL]

Try a download from somewhere which is isn't extremely variable - here would be a start.



You mean what your modem reports?
It's got nothing to do with Nildram, but if it's fluctuating much it'll drag down your IP profile, which will also slow down your downloads.

No sorry I mean when I run speed tests, my speed will sometimes be 3000 - sometimes 6000... it seems to vary greatly. I got roughly 560kb's on that site on the 100mb file (I'm paying for 6.5meg apparently)

And @ Little_Crow, what are the ISP's naughty hours? I wouldn't really call myself a heavy user, I only download one tv show a week and possibly a few other small ish torrents throughout the week... but I cant help but get the feeling that now because its tiscali they are throttling for definate!

 

[RoachycaL]

Speedtests aren't that useful because there's a huge amount of error involved, and so many variables that it's impossible to draw any real conclusion.

560kB/s = 4480kbps, so you're not that far off 6.5Mbps. What's your modem connected at, and what does the BT Speedtest (instructions in sticky) say your IP profile is?

I dont suppose you could link me to this speedtest could you? Ive done it before but I cant locate it in your sticky

@ Littlecrow - Im using a wireless router and its all passworded so thats not the problem, I do however feel as though Im running on a degraded line

So basically nildram/pipex/tiscali arent all that bad? We dont really know if they throttle p2p but I do know for a fact that at peek times the internet is definitely slowed down.

Do be* throttle anything? Ive heard nothing but good stuff about them but surely lots of people switching to them will cause them to start throttling stuff?