Traffic Shaping/Throttling.

[lofgents]

Please forgive me for posting in English.

I have been a customer of OTE/Cosmote for many years and have never experienced this.

Speed test of my line using a variety of websites gives 36 Mbps download speed and is consistent, latency is 22ms.

I use an IPTV service and they specify around 8 Mbps for H.D. channels and this has worked very well for a few years.

In the last week I have experienced problems with buffering and dropouts, the provider thinks this may be due to my I.S.P. traffic shaping or throttling. When the problem occurs I test the speed and it looks good, I have also done a trace report and that does not show any problems at the time the problem occurs.

I have done all the usual reboot of modem/router etc.

Has anyone experienced this with Cosmote, I do not want to telephone them and open the proverbial can of worms.

Thank you for any feedback it will be greatly appreciated.

[K1m0n]

To my knowledge, none og the Greek ISP actively does throttling/shaping/limiting.
Offc, it *could* be an isp issue (either routing, or capacity issues in peak hours),
but I would start by investigating on my end.
It could very well be an unstable wifi (asuming you use wifi, cosmote's cpe isn't the best really),
*or* it could very well be a capacity (and/or other) issue from the iptv provider,
especially if the "provider" is on the bad side of the law.

[netblues]

Also a kv bandwidth issue, if you are on vdsl from cabinet in the street.

[finos]

i was a wind subscriber (Both on a OTE cab and a Vodafone cab) for over 2 years with VDSL.

at winter mostly at the evenings when i tryed to pull my full 50mbit down or push 5mbit up they would consistently de-sync the modem , re-sync it emedietly with the same ip and 24/1 rate till i reboot (or wait 2h) countless calls at support and they didnt fix anything

at summer time this would happen 24/7

NOTE . my line did not have noise nor CRC or FEC errors .



in fact here is a old screenshot from the behavor .

and this was the line at its "normal"

[netblues]

i was a wind subscriber (Both on a OTE cab and a Vodafone cab) for over 2 years with VDSL.

at winter mostly at the evenings when i tryed to pull my full 50mbit down or push 5mbit up they would consistently de-sync the modem , re-sync it emedietly with the same ip and 24/1 rate till i reboot (or wait 2h) countless calls at support and they didnt fix anything

at summer time this would happen 24/7

NOTE . my line did not have noise nor CRC or FEC errors .



in fact here is a old screenshot from the behavor .

and this was the line at its "normal"

ultimate bullshit. No way.

[finos]

ultimate bullshit. No way.

i have no reason to lie .

this , plus the fact that they consistently bsed me over a pppoe password made me to terminate early my contract and leave for OTE.

[sdikr]

Please forgive me for posting in English.

I have been a customer of OTE/Cosmote for many years and have never experienced this.

Speed test of my line using a variety of websites gives 36 Mbps download speed and is consistent, latency is 22ms.

I use an IPTV service and they specify around 8 Mbps for H.D. channels and this has worked very well for a few years.

In the last week I have experienced problems with buffering and dropouts, the provider thinks this may be due to my I.S.P. traffic shaping or throttling. When the problem occurs I test the speed and it looks good, I have also done a trace report and that does not show any problems at the time the problem occurs.

I have done all the usual reboot of modem/router etc.

Has anyone experienced this with Cosmote, I do not want to telephone them and open the proverbial can of worms.

Thank you for any feedback it will be greatly appreciated.

If by IPTV service you mean some "gray" services, the problem is usually the IPTV provider and they always say the same thing it is not us it is your isp.
You could test that by using some form of Vpn to check if the problem exist there as well, that would mean that it is not a problem from your isp

[lofgents]

Thank you very much for the replies, I do use a very good VPN and think the problem maybe the bandwidth locally as there are a lot of people in the area during this holiday period.

[K1m0n]

I do use a very good VPN

There you possibly have a different issue.
The vpn service itself can be AAA,
but If you run the vpn client on the consuming device (asuming a low-power arm tv-box),
it might slow you down.
Typicaly, you would run your vpn on a beefy router.

and think the problem maybe the bandwidth locally as there are a lot of people in the area during this holiday period.

Also possible.
Basicaly, without detais on your network setup, we are just guessing here.
Having said that, and since you use vpn, I suppose your iptv service is on the bad side of the law,
and that makes it highly likely that the problem is on their end really.
Those services are on the market to make a quick buck, they don't have the infrastructure to support many clients.
Make a test, using the same setup, try to watch something on one of the major providers (youtube/netflix/whatever),
if the problem goes away its an issue with your iptv "provider".
If it's not, it might be the isp or something local on your setup.

[lofgents]

There you possibly have a different issue.
The vpn service itself can be AAA,
but If you run the vpn client on the consuming device (asuming a low-power arm tv-box),
it might slow you down.
Typicaly, you would run your vpn on a beefy router.



Also possible.
Basicaly, without detais on your network setup, we are just guessing here.
Having said that, and since you use vpn, I suppose your iptv service is on the bad side of the law,
and that makes it highly likely that the problem is on their end really.
Those services are on the market to make a quick buck, they don't have the infrastructure to support many clients.
Make a test, using the same setup, try to watch something on one of the major providers (youtube/netflix/whatever),
if the problem goes away its an issue with your iptv "provider".
If it's not, it might be the isp or something local on your setup.

I am using an Asus AC86U on Merlin firmware, it is capable of much faster speeds than I have, I use a wired cat 6 network and nothing has changed with my equipment since the problem began. This evening everything has worked flawlessly, so maybe it is a local bandwidth issue. I am not convinced running a speed test from a website is a useful tool in these circumstances and maybe I can explore downloading a large file from my cloud back up to see if the download speed is consistent.

Thank you for your reply.

[K1m0n]

I am using an Asus AC86U on Merlin firmware, it is capable of much faster speeds than I have

Yup, that is more than sufficient.

I am not convinced running a speed test from a website is a useful tool in these circumstances

Depending on where the other end resides, if it is under cdn the isp probably has a node on its data center.
Results will be useful but not indicative if there are capacity issues with international traffic.

maybe I can explore downloading a large file from my cloud back up to see if the download speed is consistent

Better.

Well, i'm out of ideas.

[finos]

ultimate bullshit. No way.

Here is a snip from the contract with WIND

they are telling basicly that they are doing Trafic shaping

[K1m0n]

they are telling basicly that they are doing Trafic shaping

Nope, nothing *that* specific.
They are reserving the right to adjust/limit traffic flows if/when issues occur,
to prevent a network meltdown if/when congested, under the obligation to treat relevant categories of traffic flow as equals.
That is reasonable/expected.

They could ofc. do it, but, IMHO, I find it unlikely, my reasoning:
a) personally, i haven't seen clues of shaping, and
b) doing qos and limiting vpn speed to int. destinations as op suggests,
the isp should do L7/dpi inspection (to pick the vpn flow) + qos on said data flows.
Not saying that technically it can't be done, but doing so on an ISP's scale is a major pain/expense.