Bandwidth Throttling - Application

Application

A bandwidth intensive device, such as a server, might limit, or throttle, the rate at which it accepts data, in order to avoid overloading its processing capacity. This can be done both at the local network servers or at the ISP servers. ISPs often employ deep packet inspection (DPI), which is widely available in routers or provided by special DPI equipment. Additionally, today’s networking equipment allows ISPs to collect statistics on flow sizes at line speed, which can be used to mark large flows for traffic shaping. Two ISP's, Cox and Comcast, have stated that they engage in this practice, where they limit users' bandwidth by up to 99%. Today most if not all Internet Service Providers throttle their users bandwidth, with or without the user ever even realizing it. In the specific case of Comcast, an equipment vendor called Sandvine developed the network management technology that throttled P2P file transfers.

Those that could have their bandwidth throttled are typically someone who is constantly downloading and uploading torrents, or someone that just watches a lot of online videos. Many consider this as an unfair method of regulating the bandwidth because consumers not getting the required bandwidth even after paying the prices set by the ISPs. By throttling the people who are using so much bandwidth, the ISPs enable their regular users to have a better overall quality of service.