marshalc

Another update. Have a tech coming out this week to look at the line, modem (he's bringing a replacement modem so we can test on that too), etc. since my speed test is a bit off tonight. Insight told me that Sandvine is affecting different communities differently, based upon capacity. In other words, if your community has enough physical capacity to support the users, Sandvine isn't doing much of anything, but if you're in a community where their equipment isn't sufficient for the capacity, then Sandvine will affect the peer-2-peer stuff outside of the network. Was told to expect to experience problems at least one a week because they're scheduled to install new equipment weekly in my area for several weeks (months?) to increase capacity on the network. We'll see what happens. - Marshal

Yep, low priority = lowest cost path, I should have been clearer. Usually, it won't affect the end user, and it some ways it actually makes things faster. One thing it does is allocate bandwith to those actually using it at the time. It's like a voice activated tape recorder. When you're not using it, it just sits there monitoring for activity. When it senses no activity it doesn't do anything, and in this case, shifts resources to others in need of them. When the tape recorded detects something, it snaps into action. Like the tape recorder, when your computer starts using traffic, there's a very slight delay while the resources are redirected for you to use. All of this works fine for one way traffic and/or things is sees as "short term" connections. But when it comes to peer-2-peer (and it should be any kind of external peer-2-peer like VOIP, online gaming, etc., not just torrents), the fact that the connection is "long term" and hence "using" resources for a long period of time, that's when sandvine causes problems because it will redirect the low priority/lower cost resources for those using them for the long term and outside of network, and save the faster, higher priority/higher cost resources to those using them for what it thinks will be the shortest time and inside of the network. Of course, this is all based upon how the program determines what kind of traffic to move to high priority vs. low priority. I am still getting tracker reported errors, but I don't appear to be having speed issues for the torrents I've been on. I should mention, there is an alternative, but it's not cheap. You could get a virtual server account somewhere, and then run your torrents off of there, and just download/ftp them from the server to your PC. Some torrent sites actually offer services like this for between $20-$50/month. The benefits are that it avoids the ISP traffic issues as well as it provides much better speeds. I'm not saying it's the best option but for someone who wants to do a lot of torrenting, it might be the best option. - Marshal

If Insight is using Sandvine, then it helps explain why different users are getting different results. Sandvine gives priority to internet traffic that remains within an ISP's network, (however the ISP defines their network). Since I live in a college town and in a student area, there's alot of torrenting going on here, and it'll pick up when the students return from break. This increases the likelihood that someone or someones in the network will also be using the same torrent, which means I may be getting both high priority traffic from within the network and low priority traffic from outside the network. So I may have less trouble getting torrents to work than those in other areas. This is also consistent with something else Insight has done, which is created their own speed test, which is within their network. If you call about poor speeds now, they only use that test. Of course, if Sandvine gives priority to traffic within the network, and the speed test is within the network, then the speed tests will likely always be good. I would suggest using high #'d ports (above 10000), randomizing them, and a torrent client that uses encryption. I can't guarantee this will work, but it seems to work for me. This also makes sense as to why Insight can say they are not restricting peer-2-peer access. Technically, all their doing is prioritizing their in network stuff to save money. It's still constructively the same thing, but technically not, which allows them to say so. I don't know if it matters, but I only use torrent trackers that I know are reliable and I only torrent via a few different live music sites. It's also possible that Insight has flagged certain sites as threats or for another reason and is limiting access to only some trackers. ISP's have some major issues to deal with, and Skype will be one of them. If you have problems with Skype, I would contact Skype or Ebay (they own Skype) and let them know Insight is not playing nicely with Skype. Since Insight has it's own VOIP service, and it gives preference to in network traffic, that means a call from a Skype user will get less priority than a call from another Insight user, which could result in clarity issues and other problems. If Ebay knows that ISP's are hurting their product, eventually they may get involved. This issue is also running around capital hill, so at some point someone's going to do something about it, it's just a matter of when. As a side note, I will say that prior to this new episode, Insight was always willing to give me to another tech to try to solve the problem. Now they just say "the speed test is fine, so it must be your computer." That's not a good thing. - Marshal

Well, I won't say things are completely back to normal, but I'm able to run torrents without any real speed or connectivity issues. There are some fluctuations and bursts (not in speed, but in number of peers connected), but there's no more disconnecting. I just joined a well-seeded torrent and downloaded about 200 MB in 6 min, which caught me right up to everyone else. I watched the speed, and it hit 1000kB/s and never went below 900 during that time span. Previously, the torrents were slowing down much quicker than that. Two different trackers are still reporting an error from my client, but it's not affecting the up or down speeds. It's still less than 24 hours since the routing was fixed (sometime between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST which were two of my calls to Insight yesterday), so we'll see if the last few things get better as the day goes on. - Marshal

An update. Insight said that they have resolved their routing problems. Right now I'm connected to one torrent that's running fine and one that's not (on different trackers), so I tend to believe Insight when they say that they're not throttling torrents. What's interesting is that the tracker where the torrent is working is using vBulletin software, and while the status light on the client shows problems, the tracker itself shows everything is fine. On the other hand, two of the trackers I'm having trouble with are running a version of EzTorrent and show a problem with my client. That's probably a coincidence that they're using different software . It's also a positive that on one of the trackers using EzTorrent I am now able to run torrents, even though they're very slow. Earlier, I was not able to even stay connected. Anyways, since it was a routing problem, I'm going to wait to see what happens after all the DNS stuff gets updated overnight. We'll see how things stand then. So far, so good. Keeping my fingers crossed. - Marshal

Just joined this forum to chime in. I was having the same problems with Insightbb and torrents. I've spoken with them and they are having some routing issues that are affecting torrents and other things. Both the tech people and the service people told me there has been no change in Insight policy. We'll see if things clear up anytime soon. - Marshal