Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Is my internet being throttled or is it OS X?

poppe

poppe

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Hey so here is a weird thing that happens a lot to me. If I am ever downloading anything using a bittorrent thing my internet will randomly start to loose connection. The 5 wifi bars are still black, but my internet stops working. If I turn off the airport and then back on, it magically works again, but only for a while.

I turn off my torrent thing and suddenly the internet works flawlessly.

What do you think? I have a lot of problems with my Airport on my laptop, but this seems more of an network ISP problem no?

NOTE: The torrents I am doing are for work, the company shares large files this way. We own the rights for them.
NOTE: Running newest leopard. Had this problem in older updates of leopard.
NOTE: MBP 17" C2D 2 gb ram and 160 hard drive with 15 gb left.
 
I third the ISP.

Are you using Comcast by any chance ?

If you are they have been and probably still are throttling and cutting off Bit Torrents.
 
Peace said:
I third the ISP.

Are you using Comcast by any chance ?

If you are they have been and probably still are throttling and cutting off Bit Torrents.
Click to expand...

No I am using Time Warner in the Los Angeles area.
 
Peace said:
TW might do it too.

Here's a way to find out and a good read about the ISP/Bit Torrent controversy.

http://torrentfreak.com/test-does-your-isp-slow-down-bittorrent-traffic-080507/
Click to expand...

Please keep in mind that the degree of traffic shaping varies a lot between different ISPs. Some ISPs only limit BitTorrent traffic during certain times of the day or do not throttle until the customer has exceeded a certain data threshold, others only slow down traffic in specific regions. More advanced tools have to be developed to detect these methods.
Click to expand...

Interesting tidbit from the article. Might be what is happening for me because the the network works better the later in the night.

I am going to do a test soon, but the test thing just said their test servers are too busy...
 
I have this problem specifically when I'm using Mac OS X at home on battery power only. Any other combination of wireless networks, OS, and AC/battery power is no problem, so I don't understand what's going on exactly. The only difference for me is that I don't turn off AirPort; I just click the AirPort icon in the menu bar whenever my connection drops off (within a few seconds after pages stop loading) and it will automatically reconnect as though nothing were wrong.
 
Possibly your ISP.

Possibly your equipment. Try setting a lower number for maximum connections and see if the problem goes away. Check for firmware updates to your router/access point.

No one seems to have answered it (except the guy above with wireless trouble), but the problem is least likely to be OS X, as long as you are up to date on it.
 
I was having the EXACT same problem, what you do is go into your routers settings and change the channel from 1 to 4 or something...this should fix the problem
 
Use transmission! It encrypts the data transfer so that your ISP wont be able to tell what you're downloading/uploading!
 
I don't think this has anything to do with the ISP. If your Airport signal is physically cutting out then it has to be to do with the router.

Use a higher channel (13 in EU, 11 in US) also check your power input to the router - perhaps it's on a multiplug extension cord with a LOT of other appliances. This can interfere with the electrical frequency, making the router think there's been a power cut and has to restart. This has happened to me.
 
Please, people. This is not the ISP. If your ISP throttles your torrents through traffic shaping, you will get a slow speed at downloading the torrent... But your internet/mail speed would not be affected at all.

I would look at your router. I used to have a Linksys router that would choke everytime I downloaded torrents. It just couldn't handle the enormous amount of open connections that these torrent downloads required. I had to update the router firmware to resolve it.

--Erwin
 
Erwin-Br said:
Please, people. This is not the ISP. If your ISP throttles your torrents through traffic shaping, you will get a slow speed at downloading the torrent... But your internet/mail speed would not be affected at all.

I would look at your router. I used to have a Linksys router that would choke everytime I downloaded torrents. It just couldn't handle the enormous amount of open connections that these torrent downloads required. I had to update the router firmware to resolve it.

--Erwin
Click to expand...

I think this person's post makes the most sense.. idk if it'd be easy as a firmware update. But maybe ... if your router is old then this would make sense. I imagine any new router is prepared for large networks and very high traffic with multiple connections.
 
Erwin-Br said:
I would look at your router.
Click to expand...
I third this; if I'm reading the behavior you're seeing correctly, it sounds a whole lot more like your router is partially seizing up than any sort of throttling. The two AEBSs I've used with BT never had a problem, but I've read in a number of different places about routers--Apple's included--stalling/freezing/otherwise going haywire on account of the heavy network activity BT generates. That power cycling the base station fixes it temporarily I'd say 90% confirms this.

Solutions, not sure; lower number of connections allowed could definitely help, so try that first. Firmware updates, if any are available, definitely try. Otherwise trying another router to confirm is the best bet--if it still happens with another model/brand, maybe it's your modem choking or something else, not the router.
 
macbooker15 said:
I was having the EXACT same problem, what you do is go into your routers settings and change the channel from 1 to 4 or something...this should fix the problem
Click to expand...

How do I do this?

Apple Ink said:
Use transmission! It encrypts the data transfer so that your ISP wont be able to tell what you're downloading/uploading!
Click to expand...

That is what I use.

SpaceMagic said:
I don't think this has anything to do with the ISP. If your Airport signal is physically cutting out then it has to be to do with the router.

Use a higher channel (13 in EU, 11 in US) also check your power input to the router - perhaps it's on a multiplug extension cord with a LOT of other appliances. This can interfere with the electrical frequency, making the router think there's been a power cut and has to restart. This has happened to me.
Click to expand...

How do I do this? It is on an extension cord, well a surge protector, but the only other thing attached is the modem from Time Warner. Sometimes my computer and phone are attached as well, but performance is the same whether it is attached or not.

Erwin-Br said:
Please, people. This is not the ISP. If your ISP throttles your torrents through traffic shaping, you will get a slow speed at downloading the torrent... But your internet/mail speed would not be affected at all.

I would look at your router. I used to have a Linksys router that would choke everytime I downloaded torrents. It just couldn't handle the enormous amount of open connections that these torrent downloads required. I had to update the router firmware to resolve it.

--Erwin
Click to expand...
This thing was released in 2006. It is a "N" router, and it has not had a firmware update since the a few months after I bought the thing. Now it is not even on D-links support page or anything... weird. Its the DIR 635 N Router.

Makosuke said:
I third this; if I'm reading the behavior you're seeing correctly, it sounds a whole lot more like your router is partially seizing up than any sort of throttling. The two AEBSs I've used with BT never had a problem, but I've read in a number of different places about routers--Apple's included--stalling/freezing/otherwise going haywire on account of the heavy network activity BT generates. That power cycling the base station fixes it temporarily I'd say 90% confirms this.

Solutions, not sure; lower number of connections allowed could definitely help, so try that first. Firmware updates, if any are available, definitely try. Otherwise trying another router to confirm is the best bet--if it still happens with another model/brand, maybe it's your modem choking or something else, not the router.
Click to expand...

Power cycling is what I am always having to do, the problem is that it only fixes it for a couple of minutes, and when I need to download a gig file it makes things quite difficult.

--------------

I think there is a variation of three things going wrong:
1) My computer has for a long time lost signal or dropped connections no matter what network I am on. I have called Apple, and they can't figure it out.
2) My router has always seemed to drop my connections and completely loose signal
3) Last night the Time Warner modem went completely haywire and lost internet for a good couple of hours. Recycling didn't do anything. A time warner guy is coming out to figure out what is going on with the modem at least.
 
Not due to OSX.

You probably didn't set a reasonable max upload speed limit, perhaps 75% of your available uplink bandwidth.

(If you saturdate your UL limit, then your other requests will be slower to get to the web, and slower downloads).


By the way, your excuse does NOT make sense. A company doing such a thing
- won't be doing that on a employee machine
- won't be doing that on a laptop that travels to different networks
- won't be doing that on a computer at the employee's home
- won't be doing that on a machine connecting to wifi

Instead a company would do it with a server.
 
Kilamite said:
Really? Does it apply to all torrents, or only specific ones that are encrypted too?
Click to expand...

You can force it to only accept connections from or make connections to peers that can encrypt the data being sent to you or received encrypted data. This works on any torrent. It also works in various other clients.
 
m1ss1ontomars said:
You can force it to only accept connections from or make connections to peers that can encrypt the data being sent to you or received encrypted data. This works on any torrent. It also works in various other clients.
Click to expand...

Will this affect the amount of peers you can connect to, affecting the over all download speed?
 
Consultant said:
Not due to OSX.

You probably didn't set a reasonable max upload speed limit, perhaps 75% of your available uplink bandwidth.

(If you saturdate your UL limit, then your other requests will be slower to get to the web, and slower downloads).


By the way, your excuse does NOT make sense. A company doing such a thing
- won't be doing that on a employee machine
- won't be doing that on a laptop that travels to different networks
- won't be doing that on a computer at the employee's home
- won't be doing that on a machine connecting to wifi

Instead a company would do it with a server.
Click to expand...

Well since my company consists of 3 other people, we have no one with in that massive 3 people (that's including me) that is anywhere near network savy, and we use torrents because we are 3 film makers trying to build our production company. I was trying to download some dailies that we put up. Sorry my excuses don't work for you. I really don't know what ever came over me...

- my employee machine is my home computer
- my laptop travels from starbucks, to my network, to our office network, and to the home network of the two other people I work with...
- again my computer is my home computer and my home is practically my office anyways.
- I'm doing it on a machine that is connected to Wifi because I otherwise have to sit in my closet or other wise buy a 100 ft cable to make it to the office or bedroom

Again sorry these "excuses" don't make sense to you. Don't worry I just called the Make Sense Police and they are on their way for my bad behavior with my excuses that don't make sense. I hope the Make Sense judge can't understand my excuses then, but I'm sure they won't make sense since I will be in Make Sense Land. Troll.


--------------------

UPDATE: So time warner has come and gone. They said my signal strength from the line was strong, and there was a power outage yesterday. That is why I lost signal in the morning. He also found the modem was not performing a nicely as it should have been compared to the signal. He replaced the modem and the signal strength was consistent straight from the line and straight from the modem. We then tested my download/upload speeds using speedtest.net and the first two times he tried it we got 1.5 and 4 mbs. Then we tried it using the ethernet port and we got 9.5. We then tried wifi again and got 9.5ish again; this was all while trying two different websites. He said my modem might be the big problem here if it is giving such inconsistent download upload speeds.

Thoughts?
 
poppe said:
Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Get that 100' cable, or buy yourself a used mac mini and a terabyte external drive. Let that serve up your stuff.

One other thing, TWC has some tough acceptable usage policies, you should verify that you are not violating them, and if you are they might be throttling you. Even if what you are doing is legal.
 
Lershac said:
Get that 100' cable, or buy yourself a used mac mini and a terabyte external drive. Let that serve up your stuff.

One other thing, TWC has some tough acceptable usage policies, you should verify that you are not violating them, and if you are they might be throttling you. Even if what you are doing is legal.
Click to expand...

Ha right... well i've considered it. I have an old G4 I was trying to turn into a Server, but that kinda got put on hiatus.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back