Fibertel & Throttling. Is It Just Me?

[rrptownley]

I had problems with my Fibertel, the speed suddenly dropped and it was losing connection.
A dozen phone calls (lots of shouting) and 5 engineer call outs over 2 weeks and one chap finally changed a "distributor" on the access point to our group of PHs. Works fine again, back to 10mbit speed test, 1.5mb/sec average dowload.

 

[Bricky]

So I wouldn't be surprised if Apple gave priority to main target markets - but that is just speculation.

They do, but it's not really throttling as such. They effectively pay for bigger/better pipes to bigger markets.
(Granted, the end result is the same of course)

@trennod, @RichardRPTownley: that seems to be the best approach - moan a little and the problem goes away. Would that I had the will


I've good news though: changing the mac address on the router made the problem go away also.
Well, maybe that's not so good: it means they definitely were throttling me.

I had a look at the last bill: there's no mention there of our actual usage, but the date, the 8th, would roughly correspond with when this seems to have come into effect.
Total traffic for the previous month (august) was around 250gigs (that's calendar month. billing month, 8th -> 8th, may have been slightly more).

 

[rrptownley]

I've good news though: changing the mac address on the router made the problem go away also.
Well, maybe that's not so good: it means they definitely were throttling me.

How did you change the mac address on the router? The standard fibertel one (pic) is a bitch to get into and configure.

 

[el_expatriado]

If you use Vuze as your torrent downloader you can encrypt your connection and this will avoid Fibertel's traffic shaping. However, since I'm over the DL limit each month I get capped at 600 kb/sec.

 

[Bricky]

How did you change the mac address on the router? The standard fibertel one (pic) is a bitch to get into and configure.

Is that a modem or a router? Looks like a modem tbh.
Mine is just a modem (says 'Scientific Atlanta' on the front), so I could change the address on the router (an off-the-shelf linksys) without having to get into the modem settings.

If you use Vuze as your torrent downloader you can encrypt your connection and this will avoid Fibertel's traffic shaping. However, since I'm over the DL limit each month I get capped at 600 kb/sec.

Unfortunately that wasn't the case for me. The throttling was indiscriminate. I'm surprised fibertel would do the kind of deep packet inspection necessary for that actually.

Is that 600 kbits/sec or kbytes/sec? If it's bytes, then that's about the max I ever see from a torrent (~5MBits/sec)

 

[rrptownley]

Is that a modem or a router? Looks like a modem tbh.
Mine is just a modem (says 'Scientific Atlanta' on the front), so I could change the address on the router (an off-the-shelf linksys) without having to get into the modem settings.

It's a combo router/modem. I've gotten close to getting the settings I want out of it through reading Taringa, but not quite.
This is one of the default Fibertel modems and they don't allow you to access the settings directly, only the engineers can do that through a webpage portal. They won't even let me know the gateway IP address.

 

[Bricky]

It's a combo router/modem. I've gotten close to getting the settings I want out of it through reading Taringa, but not quite.
This is one of the default Fibertel modems and they don't allow you to access the settings directly, only the engineers can do that through a webpage portal. They won't even let me know the gateway IP address.

Seems I was very lucky then

I had a similar issue with the supplied arnet modem/router: it came pre-configured with no access to settings. A little googling turned up the default password though, so all was good

 

[Gringoboy]

We have the same RP, with the 30mb Evo service.
Limited amount of access via the webpage.
Another example of dumbing down afik.

 

[germano]

They do, but it's not really throttling as such. They effectively pay for bigger/better pipes to bigger markets.
(Granted, the end result is the same of course)

But then it would be constantly slow ...

 

[ghost]

It's a combo router/modem. I've gotten close to getting the settings I want out of it through reading Taringa, but not quite.
This is one of the default Fibertel modems and they don't allow you to access the settings directly, only the engineers can do that through a webpage portal. They won't even let me know the gateway IP address.

If you don't know the gateway IP then how can you do anything to it/with it. Settings and etc.