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Measurement Lab

Google-sponsored M-Lab or Measurement Labs is a project that provide tools and research on Internet connectivity. Currently there are three tools in the suite, a general Network Diagnostic Tool for detecting issue that might limit network connection speed. Glastnost can help you determine whether your ISP is throttling or blocking BitTorrent traffic.  The also provide a tool for Network Path and Application Diagnosis. More tools are in the works.

The tools are all Java and fairly easy to use. I gave Glasnost a try and here is what I saw (apparently, my ISP does not block BitTorrent traffic at this time.)

Is BitTorrent traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6887) throttled?

* The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There’s no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests a TCP upload achieved minimal 629 Kbps while a BitTorrent upload achieved maximal 757 Kbps.

* The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There’s no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 1782 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 1880 Kbps.

Is BitTorrent traffic on a non-standard BitTorrent port (10015) throttled?

* The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There’s no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 638 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 709 Kbps.

* The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

* There’s no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 1319 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 1991 Kbps.

Is TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6887) throttled?

* There’s no indication that your ISP rate limits all downloads at port 6887. In our test, a TCP download on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 1782 Kbps while a TCP download on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 1319 Kbps.

* There’s no indication that your ISP rate limits all uploads at port 6887. In our test, a TCP upload on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 629 Kbps while a TCP upload on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 638 Kbps.

They also provide a readout of who is blocking the traffic and where. Most of the reported blocking (US) is occuring in Cox and Comcast controlled networks.

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