Mysterious internet speed throttle

S

Speedy

I run a little FreeBSD web server at home. Nothing commercial, just sharing some pics with friends and over time I've added a few text pages. There is mysterious loss of speed, some friends on the other side of pond complain they cannot see my videos, connection is too slow. From my side I tried speedtest with a server in Tallinn and got my upload 1 Mbit/s. Which is surprisingly low, but still not too bad and the videos should be seen. Speedtest against servers in the USA varies 6-8 Mbit/s for my upload. ISP level networking is beyond my knowledge level, does anyone know why my tested upload speed is sufficient to stream a 720p video, but in actuality the speed is much lower. A friend from Tallinn tried to download a file from my server over HTTP and got steady 25 kB/s (0.2 Mbit/s). This is all on port 80, haven't tested other ports yet. See for yourself - 9 minutes video. Any comments are welcome! If this video does play for you - what region you are in? Same if it does not play.
 
I don't have any suggestions just feedback: I am in South Central Texas and got to the video just fine, but it took a while to download a portion so I could see the first frame (?). I started playing it and it repeatedly buffered so I only got 1 or 2 seconds of video and music before it buffered again. I am on a 400+Mbit connection. Not successful for me.

Used to ride the Texas Hill Country every weekend for several years. Haven't ridden in 3 or 4 years. Need to get back into it but would like a new bike. Been a Harley owner and rider for over 30 years but am tired of they way they are; I want a BMW GS adventure bike.
 
Thanks. So how it is possible my speedtest shows plenty of upload speed and in actuality it is not there. My upload speed to Houston shows close to 5 Mbit/s. Something is rotten here.

My buddy who is coming to Yellowstone with me this summer is riding BMW 1200R. He also switched from H-D. Wanna join us? Planned start is July 17th near Baton Rouge. Virus permitting.
 
It's not uncommon for ISPs to cap upload or even block common "server" ports if you're on a residential connection. You also have transit and peering (traffic between different ISPs and/or backbones) etc which may be overbooked which is very common for residential connections and so on.
 
The USA has fairly decent infrastructure, at least the main backbones are. If you live somewhere in Podunk things might be different locally but overall the infrastructure should be good. From various locations on the east coast of the US there are connections crossing the big pond (Atlantic Ocean), these often end in GB, Netherlands or Germany. The west coast is connected through various locations in Asia. Regional backbones in Europe and Asia are generally good, some parts of Asia can be somewhat dodgy.
en.wikipedia.org

Internet backbone - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

In any case, "the internet" doesn't really exist. It's made up from different networks owned by different companies that are all linked together in various ways. It's actually nothing short of a miracle it works at all if you look at the sheer number of parties that are involved.
 
Speedy said:
I run a little FreeBSD web server at home. Nothing commercial, just sharing some pics with friends and over time I've added a few text pages. There is mysterious loss of speed, some friends on the other side of pond complain they cannot see my videos, connection is too slow. From my side I tried speedtest with a server in Tallinn and got my upload 1 Mbit/s. Which is surprisingly low, but still not too bad and the videos should be seen. Speedtest against servers in the USA varies 6-8 Mbit/s for my upload. ISP level networking is beyond my knowledge level, does anyone know why my tested upload speed is sufficient to stream a 720p video, but in actuality the speed is much lower. A friend from Tallinn tried to download a file from my server over HTTP and got steady 25 kB/s (0.2 Mbit/s). This is all on port 80, haven't tested other ports yet. See for yourself - 9 minutes video. Any comments are welcome! If this video does play for you - what region you are in? Same if it does not play.
Click to expand...
Hi,

From France access to video is not possible, the loading speed is zero, shame, we can hear the music.
 
net/mtr is extremely useful :)

Code: 
                                                                                           Packets               Pings
 Host                                                                                    Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. X.X.X.X                                                                               0.0%    21   13.8  10.8   7.7  16.8   2.1
 2. 212.142.53.101                                                                        0.0%    20   10.3  11.0   8.0  14.7   2.0
 3. 213.51.7.96                                                                           0.0%    20   15.2  13.0   6.5  20.9   3.2
 4. 213.51.7.96                                                                           0.0%    20   13.6  13.2   9.7  18.5   2.6
 5. 213.51.64.186                                                                         0.0%    20   11.0  12.8   9.6  24.7   3.2
 6. 213.46.182.38                                                                         0.0%    20   17.5  14.3   9.7  19.9   3.3
 7. 213.200.119.198                                                                       0.0%    20  150.0 148.8 143.9 174.4   6.8
 8. 209.120.139.54                                                                        0.0%    20  147.0 150.2 143.6 172.8   7.7
 9. 68.1.0.161                                                                            0.0%    20  146.1 150.1 145.5 183.9   8.3
10. (waiting for reply)
11. 70.180.34.35                                                                          0.0%    20  149.6 152.4 149.1 159.3   2.6
Looking at the numbers the transit between Liberty Global (213.46.182.38; Amsterdam, Netherlands) and GTT (213.200.119.198; Germany) seems to add an awful lot of latency, much more than I would expect between these two countries. GTT Germany (213.200.119.198) and GTT US (209.120.139.54), across the pond, look really good. The first and last stretch of the "line" between you and me is fine, it's the lousy transit between Amsterdam and Germany that appears to ruin things.
 
Thanks for replies everyone! I understand ISP's may cap it, but it is year 2021 and people do video chat, they want to see home security cameras live feed, upload a file, etc. All this means there must be some reasonable upload speed. Anyhow, after lengthy chat with tech support they decided to replace my modem. Will go and pick the new one up tomorrow.
 
Every image on the pages I accessed appeared quickly IMO and I have a capped speed.

They gave me a good deal to get me back but neglected to tell me it was not my old plan. It's less expensive and I am not downloading movies by the GB one after another, like a Pirate, so leisurely drift in the wind while listening to Dread Zeppelin and enjoy the salt air.

No rum, no thank you, Mon. Next port of call Jamaica.
 
Speedy , the pictures are loaded instantaneously, but the video page cannot be accessed at all from Colorado.
That's really strange, since your link points to an .html file, not the video file directly.
 
$ time fetch http://asclinux.com:8000/video/Austin_m.mp4
Austin_m.mp4 55% of 378 MB 431 kBps 02m50s

Not enough. The video would need ~750 kBps, the actual speed fluctuates from 1800 down to occasional 200 (from cloud host in Europe). Looks very normal for a periodically saturated path. Total download time is <7 minutes with average 995 kBps - as an average that might do, but not with fluctuations (and not with additional distortions on the client side).

Speedy said:
I understand ISP's may cap it, but it is year 2021 and people do video chat, they want to see home security cameras live feed, upload a file, etc. All this means there must be some reasonable upload speed.
Click to expand...
Well, this here is hi-res video, and arbitrary connections around the globe, usually at base-rate. Hm, hm...
 
My ISP replaced some equipment around here, now there is a block on port 80 ... had to redirect. I've been living in this location for 15 years now, it is the first time they block ports ...
 
Speedy said:
My ISP replaced some equipment around here, now there is a block on port 80 ... had to redirect.
Click to expand...
[/QUOTE]
Incoming port 80 or outgoing?

Blocking outgoing port 80 would be rude, since it makes web browsing via http nearly impossible. While there is a (justified) push to move everything to https (and therefore mostly to port 443), the world is not ready to give up on http quite yet.

Blocking incoming port 80 by default is not a bad idea. Most consumers do not run web servers at their house. Most of the time, inbound traffic on port 80 will find insufficiently secured web servers, which then are vulnerable to hacking. The people who are competent enough to run a secure web server (a) will usually do most of it on port 443, (b) are competent enough to run it on different ports (and set up the links correctly), and (c) are capable of asking the ISP to unblock port 80 (where "ask" usually means: Find some configuration page and enable it there).

This is similar to the fact that many ISPs by default are blocking port 25. Hardly anyone uses unsecured port 25 for e-mail these days. Most mail is done via encrypted ports in the 4xx/5xx range. I bet that 99% of the traffic on port 25 is for hack attacks, so blocking it makes sense, sadly. (When I say ISP, I include cloud vendors who provide the networking).
 
Most of the time, inbound traffic on port 80 will find insufficiently secured web servers, which then are vulnerable
Click to expand...
Most of home users run an OS which should never be connected to the internet and cause incredible damage to legit businesses and in the end general population is footing the bill - all business losses and expenses are passed to the customer. For instance, uncertified vehicles are not allowed to the public highways, and rightfully so. If there was a certification for operating systems to be allowed connect to the internet ... then the OS which relies on anti-virus software would never pass. One third of viruses/malwares go undetected (known fact) and the number of pwned zombies is incredible. Nowadays with fast internet people do not notice any more their PC is infected and used to carry out attacks on the internet. Anti-virus finds nothing and they think they are clean. Clean my foot. And you are worried about some maybe vulnerable web server at home? o_O
 
Speedy said:
Nowadays with fast internet people do not notice any more their PC is infected and used to carry out attacks on the internet.
Click to expand...
Malware creators have gotten smarter too. If you write a piece of malware that immediately floods the internet connection it's going to get noticed and removed quite quickly. Something that runs "slow and low" is less likely to get noticed and thus less likely to get cleaned up.
Speedy said:
If there was a certification for operating systems to be allowed connect to the internet ... then the OS which relies on anti-virus software would never pass.
Click to expand...
Most of the server-borne malware doesn't rely on bugs in the OS or webserver. It relies for 99% on bugs in web applications (PHPMyAdmin, Wordpress, etc). And funnily enough, most of the infected servers are running Linux. But that's not surprising as Microsoft's dominance in the server market has long past, especially when it comes to internet servers (webservers et al). If you look at the latest top 10 most reliable sites 9 are running on Linux and one on FreeBSD. Microsoft doesn't even make into the top 20. Lately however there's been quite a shift towards malware targeted at IoT devices (cameras, doorbells, that sort of thing) and routers. So from that standpoint it really makes sense for an ISP to block incoming port 80 traffic.
 
Speedy said:
If there was a certification for operating systems to be allowed connect to the internet ... then the OS which relies on anti-virus software would never pass. One third of viruses/malwares go undetected (known fact) and the number of pwned zombies is incredible. Nowadays with fast internet people do not notice any more their PC is infected and used to carry out attacks on the internet. Anti-virus finds nothing and they think they are clean.
Click to expand...
If there was a certification for people to be allowed to connect to the internet that included a study course on Internet Security and how to properly set up your web browser ... then half those people wouldn't be infected and the other half would never pass the course.
 
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