How in the Tech

Proof that your ISP is Throttling BitTorrent

The idea of traffic shaping has finally started to garner some major press, thanks in part to the FCC investigating Comcast over such practices. The basic principles of this throttling involve chocking off the client’s upload speed for certain protocols, usually Peer to Peer or BitTorrent. Without a decent upload connection, it’s very difficult to achieve a decent download rate. It’s effectively the backbone of all P2P technologies and if the throttling by your ISP is severe enough, it kills the use of the technology. Whether you support BitTorrent or not is irrelevant in my mind, this is more about your ISP deciding what traffic is more important as compared to others and then affecting it’s transmission. Every one of us need to be aware and vocal concerning this practice.

Do you suspect that your torrenting is being throttled? Need proof without the complications of monitoring the connection manually and recording the results or worse, installing extra programs to do just that? Glasnot by Max Planck Institute has an online testing utility for just that. The webapp simulates a bittorent transfer from the server to your browser – JAVA plugin required. After a 4-7 minute test, the results are assembled and presented in a clean and concise format. Additionally, your results are mapped with others across the world.

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