Severe throttling (on SSL connection to News Demon)

[#1]

Hi.
I have a reliable 10Mb/s connection. However, quite a lot of the time I get speeds of around 10-30Kb/s when attempting to download articles from News Demon.
I raised the issue with the helpdesk, and we tried the standard speed tests and everything shows up fine.
However the Newsgroups d/l speed fluctuates between 10Mb/s and 10-30Kb/s with no intermediate speeds.
So I am concerned that there is something that is limiting me to this ridiculously slow speed on SSL newsgroup connections.
Media sites (iPlayer, Youtube etc) also seem to buffer far more than they should on a connection of this speed.
I am on Plusnet unlimited.
According to tech support everything is ok.
Anyone had a similar problem, and how was it resolved?

[#2]

The product you're on does has traffic management in place, take a look at the table here for the details: http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/products/archive/plusnet_unlimited_archive.shtml#downloadSpeed...
P2P and Usenet is limited on that product between Midday and Midnight, although not down to 10Kb (do you mean 10KB?)
Streaming should be good, so I'll be interested to know what time of day this is happening.

[#3]

I'm pretty sure it's 10Kb as the speed indicator goes up to 999Kb then changes to 1.0MB It sometimes slows into single figures.
I cannot ever even try to watch iPlayer HD broadcasts, and most of the time we experience regular buffering at SD resolutions. This is anytime. Most often around 8-10pm and sometimes late morning at weekends.

[#4]

I saw the status update that suggests that there is a known issue on the unlimited package. I definitely see the issue during supposed non throttled times.
What can I do about it? and why is my newsgroups sooooo sloooooow. It's really not acceptable.

[#5]

Quote

I saw the status update that suggests that there is a known issue on the unlimited package.

Can you point me to that as there aren't any we're currently aware of (and it's my team that make the service status posts).

Quote

I definitely see the issue during supposed non throttled times.

That's very odd, as outside of the advertised times there aren't any rate limits in place, this suggests something else is at play here.
How long has this been going on for? Have you tried a single disconnect/reconnect in your router just in case that's where the problem lies?
If it continues can you perform a wireshark capture and add it as a zip or rar to a ticket on your account: http://community.plus.net/library/faults/using-wireshark-for-data-capture/

[#6]

The bulletin I am referring to is here (I got it from browsing for similar issues): http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1342431858.htm
It's been going on for a long time, long before I raised the last ticket.
Does it matter what time I do the wireshark capture thing?
Thanks for your replies so far.

[#7]

Quote

The bulletin I am referring to is here (I got it from browsing for similar issues): http://usertools.plus.net...us/archive/1342431858.htm

Ah, thanks. That was actually resolved a couple of days later: http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1342717881.htm
You'd be best to do the wireshark at the times you're having the most issues. It's important that you start the wireshark capture before the download, so we can see the negotiation part of the download too.

[#8]

Good to know that's fixed. I will try to do it tonight.
I'll do newsgroups and also iplayer.
Those are my biggest issues I think.
Cheers!

[#9]

I have the wireshark results but I'm not allowed to upload that type of file to the website. tried renaming to .txt

[#10]

zip it and attach it as a zip file

[#11]

I tried with rar files, that wasn't allowed. I used up my winzip trial so I uninstalled it.

[#12]

Use 7zip http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

[#13]

Ok, thanks.
I've uploaded a zip to question #57724511
Let me know!

[#14]

Hi Andrewem,
I can see within the data from the capture that this is SSL traffic over a non-standard usenet port. The traffic is being marked as Bronze which is correct for the product.
The capture shows it was captured at 19:15 which is setup with a restriction of 128kbps, the most sever of the restrictions for this protocol
I have filtered out the data unrelated to the Newdemon SSL connections and I can only see traffic related to your local network and a lot of UDP traffic which I cannot specifically see what is the source of. It looks like some form of peer to peer network.

[#15]

I've tried all of the following and get the same issue;
news.newsdemon.com port(s): 119, 23, 25 and 80
europe.newsdemon.com port(s): 119, 443 and 8080
 
us-secure.newsdemon.com * (THIS IS 256-BIT ENCRYPTED) port(s): 563, 80 and 81
europe-ssl.newsdemon.com * (THIS IS 256-BIT ENCRYPTED) port(s): 563, 80 and 81