ISP throttling question

[pdxdvr]

I use my landlady's internet (with her permission), so the ISP won't answer my questions directly. I thought I'd see if anyone else had any ideas.

Whenever I use BitTorrent (Transmission client), you know, to legally download Linux distributions and such, I can get reasonable speeds in the 300-500kbps range. But I can't browse or do anything else really. When I limit the bandwidth down to 3kbps max, I still can't browse.

So it seems like it's not an available bandwidth issue, but could they be detecting torrent traffic and throttling the whole connection? Or is my DD-WRT router doing something stupid?

 

[cheshire]

Not sure which torrent client you use, but force encryption if you think your ISP is throttling you. Probably a good idea to use encryption anyway.

 

[Fastb]

You can actually test to see if you are being throttled with a Glasnost test:

Glasnost: Test if your ISP is shaping your traffic

My ISP has a very shady history when it comes to this.

They make it a big point to say they rarely participate in such practices, then in the fine print it clearly states that they reserve the right to throttle you if you are doing something "sinister" such as uploading or downloading files.

Note: Shaping and throttling are basically the same thing, the word throttling has a bad connotation and is subject to lots of complaints so the ISPs prefer to say they are just shaping traffic.