Re: [tlug] Tokyo ISP Throttling? Why does my internet speed increase so much by setting up a proxy?

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 12:09 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull
<stephen@example.com> wrote:
> Raymond Wan writes:
>  > That makes sense, though a bit disappointing to think that my
>  > workplace (a university) would somehow limit bandwidth to a
>  > perfectly work-related web site.
>
> I doubt that the university is deliberately throttling.[1]  I would
> guess that the problem is that they can't (or won't) afford multiple
> connections to different providers, and therefore end up with uneven
> bandwidth depending on which providers have to be traversed.  They may
> also have pessimized routers (see article "Bufferbloat" on Wikipedia).


Yes, I guess I should not be accusing them of throttling without any
proof.  I haven't seriously asked others in other departments about
their transfer speed, but the general consensus seems to be that our
university's connection is fairly poor.

It may also be because I'm in the life sciences and they just think we
don't use the Internet...  So, we've been allocated less bandwidth.

Thanks for the "Bufferbloat" information...never heard of it before
until I looked at Wikipedia!


>  > I should probably look into whether my home connection and work
>  > connection takes a different path to the USA...
>
> That's exactly what [tcp]traceroute does, but it's limited in terms of
> giving you other information about the route.  The mtr ("my trace
> route") utility mentioned by Jens and Time also provides ping-like
> information about times and dropped packets.
>
> Tim Osburn's posts also identify a bunch of other things that could be
> causing issues.


I'll investigate further to see what I can find.  I just ran mtr at
work but I probably need to run it at home to compare the numbers.


> You probably can't do anything about most of them,
> but you never know.  I've occasionally gotten improved service if I
> can diagnose a problem because the technical staff is too busy
> installing software on professors' PCs and dealing with virus issues
> to think about network QoS.  But if they know what the problem is and
> it's a simple tweak, they'll do it (it makes their lives more fun,
> too!)


Well, that's a good way of putting it.  The technical staff are too
busy with software and printer installation and those long lines of
students complaining about not being able to log in.  Indeed, network
QoS isn't on their radar since they don't need to transfer GB or TB of
data.

I naively transferred a set of of files last year for 2 weeks at
work...should have done it at home.  :-)  That was when I first
complained about it, but I gave up and realize I just have to put up
with it and spend 2 weeks looking at YouTube cat videos while its
downloading.  :-)

I'll see if I can find anything and if it's worth escalating up to the
technical staff.  Thanks a lot for the advice!  (And sorry to Jawaad
for taking over his thread...  :-D)

Ray