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Throttling

jayed
Grafter
Posts: 108
Registered: ‎16-07-2009

Throttling

I bet you think from the topic I'd be complaining, but I'm not. Just intrigued. I'm totally aware of throttling and happy with it, but I'm wondering how it works.
I've been downloading World of Warcraft using Blizzard's client and that uses a single HTTP connection and a bunch of peer to peer connections, I guess to take load off of their servers. My current line speed is 2000kbps but my download from Blizzard is throttled, as I'd expect. This thing I'm wondering is why the speed fluctuates so much. If I were limited to say 500kbps then since my line is faster than this I'd expect to be pretty much maxing out that 500kbps limit and get a 500kbps download speed, however I've sat watching the download speed (sad, I know) and it's ranged from around 70kBps to about 140kBps over a small space of time.
I'm just intrigued as to how it works and why it seems to fluctuate rather than hit the limit and stay there.
5 REPLIES 5
scootie
Grafter
Posts: 4,799
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎03-11-2007

Re: Throttling

70KB/s times by 8 works out at 560kbps. which is about right for the rate limit on download servers at 8pm-10pm.
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/speed.shtml
jayed
Grafter
Posts: 108
Registered: ‎16-07-2009

Re: Throttling

Yeah, I know the speed but what's with the spikes to 140kBps? Why is it able to go over? Why not just latch at say 70kBps?
adie:quote
scootie
Grafter
Posts: 4,799
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎03-11-2007

Re: Throttling

what you monitoring the speed with. i use netlimiter 2 to monitor speeds an usage of diffrent apps and that spikes over what my lines profile is so it could just be the monitor in the program your using thats at fault.
it may just be that there is some packets mixed in with download traffic that are off a high prioity and so geting a faster speed which spikes the speed.
jayed
Grafter
Posts: 108
Registered: ‎16-07-2009

Re: Throttling

Well I was using the reading on Blizzard's client, so highly unreliable but should only be traffic they are interested in. As unreliable as it is, I'd have not expected it to jump 200% at times.
scootie
Grafter
Posts: 4,799
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎03-11-2007

Re: Throttling

Quote
it may just be that there is some packets mixed in with download traffic that are off a high prioity and so geting a faster speed which spikes the speed.

when i said this i didnt mean there was some random traffic in the download i was meaning that there could be some genuie packets of data in the download but plusnets traffic mangment signature for this download server does see some of the packets as download server an thus the spikes in speed. i wouldnt worrie about it to much as long as its spiking over the expected speed and not below it  Wink
one of the network guys might give an explation of why it spikes