Andre Yoskowitz
9 Aug 2008 11:21
According to a new hardware-based monitoring project from the ISP analysis outfit Samknows, the ISP BT is throttling all of its broadband users, not just the heavy BitTorrent users. The throttling is occurring at peak times during the day when the most users are online.
In the evenings, when BT network load is high, even light users are seeing their "non-port 80 traffic" slowed down as much as 15 percent, says Samknows. Port 80 is used for HTTP web traffic and Samknows tests other ports to simulate P2P traffic, even for the casual user.
Samknows CEO Sam Crawford says, "Everyone knew that BT does traffic shaping. What's surprising is that they seem to do it to everyone."
After the report, a BT spokesperson confirmed the data. He did say however that the throttling only occurred for P2P applications and would not affect streaming services such as the iPlayer.
You can read the whole report here: Samknows BT report