Sky Unlimited Broadband shaping traffic? Ports 119 and 563 suddenly extremely slow

[VirtualJr]

Please help, I can't figure out what's going on. My download speed is stable around roughly 12 Mb/s, and the upload speed's stable at 900 Kb/s or so. Except on ports 119 and 563, since a few days the speed on those ports does not go over 80 Kb/s instead of 12 Mb/s. This came out of nowhere and nothing I try on my end seems to solve it. Those ports are required for a downloading programme I use and would like to keep using. Has Sky shaped traffic to those ports? If they have, is there anything I can do about it? Thanks for any help.

[Scubbie]

A quick response as the forum is about to be updated...

Could you take your router's stats and post them up please?

How to get your router statistics

Also what is trying to use those specific ports?

[VirtualJr]

Are these the stats you refer to?
Router Statistics

System Up Time: 00:45:25
PortStatusTxPktsRxPktsCollisionsTx B/sRx B/sUp Time
WAN MER 109370144685045697093700:44:39
LAN 138846105667066482454300:45:25
WLAN 225931774605773137100:44:29
ADSL LinkDownstreamUpstream
Connection Speed 13310 kbps 1105 kbps
Line Attenuation 29.0db 16.8db
Noise Margin 7.0db 7.9db
Poll Interval: (secs)

And the programme using those ports is a Usenet programme, for downloading from newsposts.

[VirtualJr]

Wow the copy - paste really messed that up. Let's try again.

Router Statistics
System Up Time: 00:45:25

Port

Status

TxPkts

RxPkts

Collisions

Tx B/s

Rx B/s

Up Time

WAN

MER
109370
144685
0
4569
70937
00:44:39

LAN

138846
105667
0
66482
4543
00:45:25

WLAN

22593
17746
0
5773
1371
00:44:29

ADSL Link

Downstream

Upstream

Connection Speed

13310 kbps
1105 kbps

Line Attenuation

29.0db
16.8db

Noise Margin

7.0db
7.9db

Top of Form

Poll Interval:(secs)

Bottom of Form

And again, the programme using those ports is a Usenet programme, for downloading from newsposts.

[Scubbie]

Quick note: The Copy & paste works a lot better with the new forum software in WYSIWYG mode

I suspect that is it more likely that your New Server is slow. Hopefully someone else can comment on that particular one.

With your Line Attenuation you should be able to achieve 14mb to 16mb for your connection, but looking at the noise margins you are on about as much as you will get.

[VirtualJr]

I'm afraid it's certainly not the specific provider I use for the downloading. Other locations using the same details are getting full speed downloads. And other types of downloads, test files designed to be downloaded through specific ports, through ports 119 and 563 are also extremely slow, while other ports do not suffer this problem and provide normal speeds. Has Sky shaped traffic to those ports? What can I do about it if they have?

[gatecrasher3]

If its a usenet server can you test by using port 443?

[VirtualJr]

Port 443 has the exact same problem. 119, 443 and 563 are all extremely slow, and as far as I can tell the only ones that are.

[Scubbie]

Could I suggest using 'tracert'?

It may show where the traffic is being slowed down.

To do this:

Windows XP: Click on the <Start> button, then click <Run>. Type in 'cmd' and click <Ok>
Windows Vista & 7: Click on the <Start> button, type 'cmd' into the search box and press return

In the DOS box, type 'tracert {address of the usenet server}'

If you could cope and paste the results, it may help people to see what is happening.

[VirtualJr]

Assuming I did it right, this is what I got:

Tracing route to sslreader.eweka.nl [81.171.64.102]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 23 ms 22 ms 30 ms 02de517e.bb.sky.com [2.222.81.126]
3 28 ms 23 ms 28 ms 10.245.170.209
4 33 ms 30 ms 31 ms 89.200.131.171
5 39 ms 28 ms 29 ms 1-2.r1.lo.hwng.net [195.66.224.227]
6 46 ms 47 ms 51 ms 7-1.r3.am.hwng.net [69.16.190.57]
7 52 ms 49 ms * 1-3.r5.am.hwng.net [209.197.0.62]
8 47 ms 52 ms 47 ms sslreader.eweka.nl [81.171.64.102]

Trace complete.