Adasel

As Newbee2 said, there are many UK ISPs that throttle P2P connections and there is nothing you can do about it other than move to another ISP, like Bulldog.

You know that many ISPs, including BT, claim that you get "Unlimited" downloads and anything up to 16 Megs download speed. However, ISPs have redefined the word "Unlimited" to mean strictly limited with unspecified exceptions and your so-called 16 Meg downloaded speed now stands for 0 - somewhere near 6 megs, if your local telephone exchange has the appropriate equipment and you don't live too far from it.

You should read this BBC article:

BBC NEWS | Technology | Broadband speeds under scrutiny


And to answer your original questions:P2P Throttling is done intentionally, ISPs have to buy and install specialised hardware and software to perform this specific task. As for workarounds, some users have discovered workarounds but these tend to last only for a day or two because as soon as the ISPs monitoring equipment detects the breach the throttling equipment is recalibrated and the breach closed.

Finally, I believe that until someone (or a consumer champion) sues a group of ISPs for constantly using misleading adverts we, the public, will be constantly and repeated lied to by UK based ISPs about what we are buying into and what we are actually getting.


UK Bob