Tata FTTH broadband artificially throttling download speeds to half from ISP

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I have recently taken a Tata Docomo FTTH broadband 16Mbps connection in Bangalore. I discovered that I am not getting 16Mbps when trying to download large single file and it is being capped at 8Mbps. But if I try multiple files download (from the same site) , the cumulative BW I get from these multiple downloads is very close to 16Mbps .
I tried this with a 2GB file (Win7 SP1) and then again with large multi part download of the same files from microsoft.com.
It seems that they are artificially throttling download speeds of single downloads (or may be any TCP sessions) to 8Mbps . This is definitely frustating because :
1. This caveat was not mentioned in their plans .
2. It does hamper large single download (movie, OS ISO image etc.) speeds. Maybe even streaming content (Youtube).
3. I was on Airtel FTTH before and they did not have this issue.
When I contacted technical team they came back with a lame excuse that single files usually "encounter" such issues and it is really a problem of the destination web servers and not Tata Docomo ! What BS !!
Anybody else experienced this ?
-Ujjal
 
this same logic is given to me by mtnl. fwiw my vdsl connection gives exact 10mbits on torrents. btu individual files via http dont show more than 3-4mbits. however i again get 10mbits on youtube which i think peers with mtnl.
again a linux iso with multi part download gets me 10mbits . a single stream download is usually ard 3mbits :)
 
It's usually not the ISP. It's the general routing to the destination server. If they were throttling TCP, you'd see the same effect in speed tests.
 
Hi,
I dont think I agree because of the following :
1. Speed tests do not usually tell the full story since download sizes are very small and due to bursty nature of internet traffic , such small files can be downloaded even if server was doing throttling. Correct way to do BW estimation is to download very large files.
2. Since when I download a single large file , I get half BW over long term , but if I have multiple simulataneous files downloaded from the same site (say 4 files) , I see that they get (on average) the entire BW equally split between them (i.e. each gets 1/4th of total BW from my example) , I do not agree that it is due to "general routing to destination server".
Can you please explan why you think it is not throttling from the ISP end ?
 
Because this happens on every ISP and is done by a large number of websites. Microsoft probably has content hosted on Airtel as do many other companies so you get full speeds on a single connection.
Your point #2 happened all the time even on my Airtel 4 Mbps line. Single connections from some sites didn't exceed 200-250 KiB/s. Four simultaneous connections to the same site would run at ~100KiB/s each.
 
Please note that I have validated my observation across several different sites (microsoft, google etc.) and got the same results.
Do you mean MIcrosoft has hosted content directly on Airtel servers ? I dont think that is true either. In any case I have validated thru multiple sites just as I said.
 

Also, btw, if the content is really hosted on Airtel as you say , then it is all the more reason that I should see full BW for single file also (even on Tata Docomo network ) , as the entire internet traffic becomes very local (and so does not suffer the delays/variations typically associated with long distant internet traffic).
 
I got an update from technical team that single file downloads are indeed not guaranteed to get full BW , and in order to utilize the entire BW available to me I need to initiate multiple downloads.
They did not give any justification why it is like that and I still dont believe that there is any technical reason for this.
To ask it differently, is anybody here subscribed to higher rate plans like 50Mbps , 100Mbps etc. ? What speed you are getting for very large single file transfers ?
Also, I am facing another problem. Every night after ~8pm , speed for *every* thing just drops drastically. While in the morning I am getting a sustained BW of ~8Mbps for single file downloads, in the night it becomes less than 4Mbps. Standard resolution You Tube videos start stuttering horribly.
Any body else experiencing this ?
It still seems to me that they have over subscribed the customer side and they dont have as much BW on the network side , so they are resorting to throttling policies (may be time of the day based, or total amount of traffic based etc. , dont know) .
 
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