Is my internet being throttled by Time Warner Cable?

[lRedacted]

Hi, I've been having a problem for the past couple of weeks with my internet connection. Every night at about 6PM my speeds and quality of connection degrades greatly. I'm paying for 30mb/s down and 5up, however once this starts happening every night it changes to 4 down 5 up. Between 11-12 at night the speeds start to return to normal.

Netflix is the only thing NOT affected by this. Twitch and youtube will buffer a lot, however Netflix is able to stream HD video while speedtest and other speed test sites tell me i'm getting 4mb/s download.

I have a feeling this is TWC's way to deal with heavy traffic during "primetime" when most people are using the internet and streaming things such as netflix... This is bad for me however because it cause bad connections in games such as Battlefield 4 with my ping spiking up to 200 at times.

So what do you guys think about this? I'm going to be contacting TWC about this shortly but i wanted to see others' opinions on it first.

 

[digitaldoc]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZyNjeIZ8BE

Looks like the tests go all over the place, and TWC throttles at times.

 

[lRedacted]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZyNjeIZ8BE

Looks like the tests go all over the place, and TWC throttles at times.

Wow, i just did what he did in the video and the exact same thing happened. I got 30down 5 up at speedtest.net and 5down 5up at testmy.net

Thanks for that video, it lets me know im not the only one this is happening to. I'm worried though that when i call them they'll play dumb and say it must be a problem on my end however and try and send a "technician" to "fix" it...

 

[digitaldoc]

Yes, the cable companies do usually play totally dumb in these situations. If you get the runaround, I would recommend to ask for Tier II support and escalate the issue.

 

[bill001g]

Have you not been following the news and the huge mess netflix got into on the net neutrality topic. Netflix went out and bought direct connections to a bunch of the large ISP so they did not have to be concerned about the speeds ISP connect between each other. If for example the content you are watching say youtube buys their ISP services from ATT. At some point this traffic must cross between ATT network and TWC. Someone must pay for this connection and it is not unlimited in size.

Likely netflix has a direct connection to TWC network.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi, I've been having a problem for the past couple of weeks with my internet connection. Every night at about 6PM my speeds and quality of connection degrades greatly. I'm paying for 30mb/s down and 5up, however once this starts happening every night it changes to 4 down 5 up. Between 11-12 at night the speeds start to return to normal.

Netflix is the only thing NOT affected by this. Twitch and youtube will buffer a lot, however Netflix is able to stream HD video while speedtest and other speed test sites tell me i'm getting 4mb/s download.

I have a feeling this is TWC's way to deal with heavy traffic during "primetime" when most people are using the internet and streaming things such as netflix... This is bad for me however because it cause bad connections in games such as Battlefield 4 with my ping spiking up to 200 at times.

So what do you guys think about this? I'm going to be contacting TWC about this shortly but i wanted to see others' opinions on it first.

Are you comparing speeds on WIFI or wired? If WIFI, do you live in an apartment where there would be dozens of competing WIFI signals? If both of these are true, then it could just be the crowded WIFI spectrum causing problems rather than your ISP.

 

[lRedacted]

Hi, I've been having a problem for the past couple of weeks with my internet connection. Every night at about 6PM my speeds and quality of connection degrades greatly. I'm paying for 30mb/s down and 5up, however once this starts happening every night it changes to 4 down 5 up. Between 11-12 at night the speeds start to return to normal.

Netflix is the only thing NOT affected by this. Twitch and youtube will buffer a lot, however Netflix is able to stream HD video while speedtest and other speed test sites tell me i'm getting 4mb/s download.

I have a feeling this is TWC's way to deal with heavy traffic during "primetime" when most people are using the internet and streaming things such as netflix... This is bad for me however because it cause bad connections in games such as Battlefield 4 with my ping spiking up to 200 at times.

So what do you guys think about this? I'm going to be contacting TWC about this shortly but i wanted to see others' opinions on it first.

Are you comparing speeds on WIFI or wired? If WIFI, do you live in an apartment where there would be dozens of competing WIFI signals? If both of these are true, then it could just be the crowded WIFI spectrum causing problems rather than your ISP.

Nope, live in my own house. Also using a wired connection and i've tested the speeds on 3 different PC's during the times it's getting throttled and all show the same result.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi, I've been having a problem for the past couple of weeks with my internet connection. Every night at about 6PM my speeds and quality of connection degrades greatly. I'm paying for 30mb/s down and 5up, however once this starts happening every night it changes to 4 down 5 up. Between 11-12 at night the speeds start to return to normal.

Netflix is the only thing NOT affected by this. Twitch and youtube will buffer a lot, however Netflix is able to stream HD video while speedtest and other speed test sites tell me i'm getting 4mb/s download.

I have a feeling this is TWC's way to deal with heavy traffic during "primetime" when most people are using the internet and streaming things such as netflix... This is bad for me however because it cause bad connections in games such as Battlefield 4 with my ping spiking up to 200 at times.

So what do you guys think about this? I'm going to be contacting TWC about this shortly but i wanted to see others' opinions on it first.

Are you comparing speeds on WIFI or wired? If WIFI, do you live in an apartment where there would be dozens of competing WIFI signals? If both of these are true, then it could just be the crowded WIFI spectrum causing problems rather than your ISP.

Nope, live in my own house. Also using a wired connection and i've tested the speeds on 3 different PC's during the times it's getting throttled and all show the same result.

Then it probably is overloading somewhere in the ISP infrastructure. I don't know if you can get them to fix anything. You can open a service ticket with your documentation, but it will be interesting to see if you get any results. It MIGHT be some kind of traffic shaping, but I bet it is more likely an oversubscription of some specific hardware.