PrePaidGSM.net Forum (Archived) - View Single Post - Tchibo/O2 selectively throttling download speeds?

RobF · 14-06-2012, 14:40

Thanks, inquisitor, for the interesting technical details. I'd also found the location of the 3G towers O2 uses in my cell through this link: o2 GIS BTSMap

It turns out I'm located within 1,500 ft. of 4 clusters of antennae on top of an 8-story building. I can see these antennae from my window - there is no newly introduced obstruction.

I'd also posted the present query in the following forum:
Drosselt O2 selektiv die Geschwindigkeit von html downloads?

The two people who replied so far thought that O2 is selectively applying bandwidth prioritization (through selective throttling & traffic shaping?) prior to exhaustion of the 5 GB allotment of fast access, presently perhaps none to their own O2 Netzclub Customers and plenty to Tchibo customers.

If this problem persists, I'm thinking of jumping from my Tchibo XL plan to the equivalent Lidl plan (prepaid 5GB of HSPA/UMTS access for €15/mo). However, Lidl also uses the O2 network. Are there any reports of Lidl/O2 resorting to the same manipulations as Tchibo/O2 appears to?

FWIW, some more details about this problem:

1. The worst aspect of this is the near 100-fold reduction, since late May, of the sustained speed of html DL of files to some 50-60 kbit/s. Interestingly, this throttling is only applied on a per-thread basis. If I download a file with a multi-thread DL-accelerator, such as the Firefox extension DownThemAll!, each thread will be downloaded at 50 kbit/s, so that if I use the max. setting of 10 threads, the file will come down at 500 kbit/s.

2. A name resolution problem at O2's DNS servers does not appear to be responsible for the slow webpage loading. Linux "dig" records quick lookups (100 msec), and when I replace the default O2 DNS nameserver addresses with those of the OpenDNS nameservers, there is no improvement in webpage loading.

	(#7)
RobF (Offline) Junior Member Amateur Member Posts: 16 Join Date: 20 Oct 2011 Country:	14-06-2012, 14:40 Thanks, inquisitor, for the interesting technical details. I'd also found the location of the 3G towers O2 uses in my cell through this link: o2 GIS BTSMap It turns out I'm located within 1,500 ft. of 4 clusters of antennae on top of an 8-story building. I can see these antennae from my window - there is no newly introduced obstruction. I'd also posted the present query in the following forum: Drosselt O2 selektiv die Geschwindigkeit von html downloads? The two people who replied so far thought that O2 is selectively applying bandwidth prioritization (through selective throttling & traffic shaping?) prior to exhaustion of the 5 GB allotment of fast access, presently perhaps none to their own O2 Netzclub Customers and plenty to Tchibo customers. If this problem persists, I'm thinking of jumping from my Tchibo XL plan to the equivalent Lidl plan (prepaid 5GB of HSPA/UMTS access for €15/mo). However, Lidl also uses the O2 network. Are there any reports of Lidl/O2 resorting to the same manipulations as Tchibo/O2 appears to? FWIW, some more details about this problem: 1. The worst aspect of this is the near 100-fold reduction, since late May, of the sustained speed of html DL of files to some 50-60 kbit/s. Interestingly, this throttling is only applied on a per-thread basis. If I download a file with a multi-thread DL-accelerator, such as the Firefox extension DownThemAll!, each thread will be downloaded at 50 kbit/s, so that if I use the max. setting of 10 threads, the file will come down at 500 kbit/s. 2. A name resolution problem at O2's DNS servers does not appear to be responsible for the slow webpage loading. Linux "dig" records quick lookups (100 msec), and when I replace the default O2 DNS nameserver addresses with those of the OpenDNS nameservers, there is no improvement in webpage loading.