Can an ISP restrict bandwidth for KaZaA?
 

Hello all,

I had a question: Can my ISP restrict the bandwidth I can use with KaZaA? I was on an ADSL account, with a 5GB monthly limit, 128kbs downlstream, 128 upstream. Now I changed my ISP, everythings the same, accept for the monthly limit which is now 12GB. Only, scince I got it last night, my KaZaA which will normally download files at around 15KB/s has not reached higher speeds then around 3.5KB/s. Can this have to do with my ISP restricting that type of activity? The thing that confuses me though, that when I do a search, and it finds a file, it says the bandwidth is still 122kbs, which it has always been.

Anybody know what the deal is here?


Thanks,

Sander

could be poor connections on the other sides of your downloads.

could be a "packet shaper" that gives less priority to p2p stuff.

What's a 'packet shaper'?

i think so too, you just dont have enough good sources to download from.

i dont see how they can just cap the limit for a program.

Well, sweeze was right! This is from their website:

Service Specifications

- Unlimited Traffic: HTTP (Web Browsing), ICQ, Email, Newsgroups, All National Traffic, National gaming, Telnet, SSH, IRC.
- Moderately Limited Traffic: FTP, Some international gaming services: i.e. Everquest, Diablo,
- Limited Traffic: Peer-to-Peer applications, (i.e. Kazaa, Morpheus), International Gaming, all protocols not listed above.


They didn't tell me about that when I signed up! This type of stuff pisses me off!

They can do whatever is in the extent of your service contract or EULA.

Perhaps you didnt actually read what you signed up for ... most of the time no one does, including myself. If they did not tell you or other customers, I am sure there would be a lawsuit against them.

i signed up over the phone. didnt actually go through the website, so i didnt see that. i just think they should of told me on the phone. owell. all is good now. i changed isp, and they didnt bill me for their 12 hours of service ;)

Always read ALL the details of something you sign up for.

What they were doing - for future reference - was limiting traffic through certain ports. It's actually possible to get around this IF the p2p progarm supports changing ports. Typically though this will effect the performance of the application anyway.