P2P file sharing traffic can constitute up to 75% of all the broadband bandwidth depending on the country. This of course increases the cost of operation for the ISPs, since it means traffic congestion and slow internet for them which leads to unsatisfied customers.
To solve this problem they either buy more traffic, or they limit the p2p traffic. Businesses being businesses – maximize profit, minimize cost – some of them go for the second option, that is to limit the torrent traffic of their customers.
How to check if your ISP limits your torrent traffic?
This tool called Glasnost can check if your ISP is manipulating your torrent traffic. It takes 7 minutes to make a full analysis of your ISP.
Test on my ISP (Streamyx) returned a negative result for the main port 6885, even though Streamyx is in the Bad ISPs list that are known to throttle the torrent traffic.
Maybe I have not reached the limit yet? Glastnost’s note could be the explanation:
Note: that some ISPs do not throttle all BitTorrent traffic but only if this traffic exceeds a certain threshold. Thus, passing our tests does not necessary mean that there is no throttling occurring on your link.
That’s probably correct since I am not a heavy p2p user.
Website: http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest-mlab.php
Thanks for the cool tool. I ran the test and it appears that Qwest DSL in Minnesota does not limit torrent activity.
Thanks for such a useful tool….
keep up the good work :)
Glasnost….what’s next, Perestroika? Nice tool, Ades. I don’t really use bittorrent myself, but will pass this on to my champion downloader friends!
This is really excellent tool. Honestly i was not even knowing about any tool which does complete analysis of ISP.
Thanks for the useful tool. I don’t really use torrents as yet, but this tool will serve a great deal when I do.
I have heard of glastnost just here,I think I can use it in my work.
This is Really Nice Tool. I really Do not Know about the this tool. Thanks For Sharing tool.
I don’t use torrents, but I will recommend to a few friends that do. Thanks Ades.
;) yeah Gorbochev is next!
i like to read and explore this kind of site.
This looks a great tool but i am surprised by the ratio of internet bandwidth being used by torrents. 75% is a lot i thought,
Jason
This is really helpful too. I love it.
Really nice tool Ades. I read the issue that ISP are limiting or blocking your P2P traffic that may be the reason why torrent dowload are slow. Great help and tool to check the reality. Thanks Ades.