Download speeds via Easynews..

[lordy]

I'm on 2Mb and download speeds are slow via all 6 EN backbones.
One thing the routes have in common are 10% packet loss right at the
end of their journey

HOST LOSS RCVD SENT BEST AVG WORST
10.10.10.1 0% 10 10 0.36 2.43 20.83
e-2-31-1000m.core-03.phx1.puregig.net 0% 10 10 0.27 0.33 0.46
ge3-3-0.jr1.phx1.llnw.net 0% 10 10 0.92 3.06 13.06
agg1-6-1.ar1.phx1.llnw.net 0% 10 10 1.42 1.75 1.99
so1-5-1.ar1.dal.llnw.net 0% 10 10 28.60 31.72 54.12
so1-5-2.ar1.ord.llnw.net 0% 10 10 53.00 53.21 53.50
so1-5-2.ar1.lga.llnw.net 0% 10 10 74.57 79.21 111.72
so1-5-1.ar1.ams.llnw.net 0% 10 10 151.45 152.04 153.18
so1-15-1.ar1.lon.llnw.net 0% 10 10 153.28 153.81 155.27
ag1-21.fr1.lon.llnw.net 0% 10 10 152.71 152.84 153.02
ge-2-1-0.ar3.LON3.gblx.net 0% 10 10 144.73 147.76 174.04
so6-0-0-2488M.ar3.AMS2.gblx.net 0% 10 10 160.64 160.91 161.20
opentransit-1.ar3.AMS2.gblx.net 0% 10 10 160.78 162.94 176.25
??? 100% 0 10 0.00 0.00 0.00 I think this line is a red herring
so-3-0-0-0.loncr4.London.opentransit.net 0% 10 10 154.58 154.98 156.72
po3-0.loncr3.London.opentransit.net 0% 10 10 154.65 154.78 154.96
po0-0.brsbb1.Bristol.opentransit.net 0% 10 10 157.82 164.10 204.24
po4-0.mctbb1.Manchester.opentransit.net 0% 10 10 166.13 166.26 166.38
ntl-2.GW.opentransit.net 0% 10 10 163.65 165.97 185.33
win-bb-a-so-300-0.inet.ntl.com 0% 10 10 165.36 170.24 194.09
bre-bb-b-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com 10% 9 10 165.24 169.07 196.23
brom-t2core-b-pos31.inet.ntl.com 10% 9 10 167.18 172.28 212.09
bmly-cache-2.server.ntli.net 10% 9 10 166.97 167.57 170.69

Any ideas? Not sure if this is a routing thing or if it is a proxy thing, but it looks like ntl infrastructure is pants. I wonder what 10meg is like!

From easynews point of view its a routing issue, not sure what it is from this forums POV. but I'm downloading via port 81.

[Stuart]

anychance you could post a properly formatted Traceroute to the news server? What you posted looks like a traceroute, but is almost impossible to read.

I did my own traceroute (results posted below) and the connection appears to slow down between London and Dallas. I have not included steps one and two, as I don't want my personal IP on the forum.

3 9 ms 7 ms 7 ms brom-t2cam1-b-ge93.inet.ntl.com [80.1.226.133]
4 7 ms 7 ms 19 ms brom-t2core-b-ge-wan63.inet.ntl.com [80.1.225.14
]
5 9 ms 21 ms 14 ms bre-bb-b-so-320-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.184.109]

6 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 195.50.91.129
7 14 ms 11 ms 10 ms ge-0-3-0.bbr1.London2.Level3.net [4.68.124.61]
8 124 ms 145 ms 137 ms ae-0-0.bbr1.Dallas1.Level3.net [64.159.1.109]
9 163 ms 177 ms 179 ms as-0-0.mp1.Phoenix1.Level3.net [64.159.3.213]
10 161 ms 160 ms 160 ms ae-11-51.car1.Phoenix1.Level3.net [4.68.98.2]
11 151 ms 150 ms 151 ms eth-2-14-1g.core-03.phx1.puregig.net [67.72.71.3
]
12 152 ms 154 ms 152 ms www.easynews.com [140.99.99.90]

Regarding what you said about proxies. AFAIK, the proxies only cache port 80, and even then it would not be your port 80, but the port 80 on the server. So, they would not be used for news. Unless you are using some sort of web-based news reader.

[lordy]

Aha. Getting full speed using https rather than http so it looks like
NTL are throttling http traffic on port 81 across all their routers (not just web-proxies ??)

---------- Post added at 23:59 ---------- Previous post was at 23:49 ----------

Originally Posted by Stuart C

anychance you could post a properly formatted Traceroute to the news server? What you posted looks like a traceroute, but is almost impossible to read.

ooops. I just cut n pasted the Web based traceroute that easynews provide from their backbone to end users PC. I guess it's more relevant than a traceroute going the other way? Didnt realise it pasted so bad. Hopefully it's a little neater now.

As soon as I switch to https on port 81 the speed went up so it looks like
the are throttling plain http traffic on that port with (in my case) 3 drops of 10%???

Regarding what you said about proxies. AFAIK, the proxies only cache port 80, and even then it would not be your port 80, but the port 80 on the server. So, they would not be used for news. Unless you are using some sort of web-based news reader.

EN have a web based interface with choice of downloading via ports 80 or 81 and using SSL or not. This is usually quicker than NNTP because ther is no 'ascii armour' overhead - which increases speed by about 20% and for anyone on 10meg line you get more data per G. Also there is no hassle with newsreaders eating up resources with millions of headers (In my Windows days - Xnews was a right memory hog in this regard)

[IanUK]

In this case I don't think it is NTL, there have been several threads running in the Easynews Support forum about a weird 'capping' effect that is affecting some of their customers (from all different ISP's).
Some downloads are full speed, and then a weird slowness occurs, close your browser and restart and it speeds up again, then slows again etc.

They are looking into it, I too find the https port 81 to be best on NTL and using Level 3 routing, but since Easynews did some work over Xmas speeds have dropped for quite a few people.

[lordy]

Hi,

Hmmmm.

I'm not downloading via a browser but 'wget' commandline, but after a couple of restarts it does seem to hit full speed. Odd! There goes my conspiracy theory...

Network trace still shows 10% packet loss at ntl routers (it could be wrong though) but my non-ssl download is speeding along at 250KBps

Originally Posted by Stuart C

I did my own traceroute (results posted below) and the connection appears to slow down between London and Dallas.

That trace looks fine. The rise in ping time does not mean it's "slowed down" it's simply a reflection of the distance the packets have to travel to cross the pond.

Originally Posted by lordy

NTL are throttling http traffic on port 81 across all their routers.

The routers have enough on their plates routing. The only traffic they intercept is port 80 - to forward it to the local proxy group.

I download using nntp with 10 connections and I get more gigs for my pennies that way with easynews

[deadite66]

when your downloading try changing route until you find one where the dpwnload speed is acceptable
linky -> http://members.easynews.com:81/route...che=1133036784

though the it likely won't hold and you will likely have to reset it after a few days.

[Horace]

The only way I've found of getting full speed via EasyNews over their web interface is to use a download accelerator, flashget for example, which opens multiple connections. As mentioned above, using secure also improves things but I personally can only manage about 50% of full speed(10meg) attainable using the above methods or multiple connections via NNTP. I used to reroute every day to attain usable speeds.

Regarding usage on NNTP vs the web interface, Easynews give an overhead allowance over and above the standard 20gigs to compensate for encoding overhead which means only 75% of bytes downloaded are counted. Obviously you still have to take this into account when calculating gigs downloaded in relation to NTL's 75gig cap.

[lordy]

Originally Posted by Horace

The only way I've found of getting full speed via EasyNews over their web interface is to use a download accelerator, flashget for example, which opens multiple connections. As mentioned above, using secure also improves things

Yup. That's what Easynews recommend. Using a download manager allows multiple threads per downloads and reduces latency. This is equivalent to consecutively downloading parts using NNTP.

Originally Posted by Horace

Obviously you still have to take this into account when calculating gigs downloaded in relation to NTL's 75gig cap.

Exactly. Those on NTL caps should really consider using the web interface.
Also you get your downloads faster because you are not wasting bandwidth downloading redundant data.

And you get to find out about the Easynews global search!!

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

I download using nntp with 10 connections and I get more gigs for my pennies that way with easynews

That's not how I understand it. The price for HTTP and NNTP data is the same on Easynews. But NNTP cost you more (from NTL perspective) if you are on NTL caps (10meg). And it is slower because you are downloading redundant uuencode data (or the newer protocol whose name escapes me) which adds about 20%-25% to the size of your download.

Originally Posted by deadite66

when your downloading try changing route until you find one where the dpwnload speed is acceptable

Yes Ive been faffing about with that but nothing great has happened lately.

I did a little bit of testing last night and found that SSL on port 81 give consistently higher download speeds. It could be co-incidental. SSL has a slight CPU hit.

[Bifta]

It's not just NTL this happens on, I have the same trouble on ADSL, I also have to use either multiple NNTP connections or a download manager unless I want <50k download speeds