Jump to content

College internet throttled on some websites and not others ?

ethancox64

I have connected to my college WiFi on my laptop, and when I test the speeds on certain speed test websites I get 200-400 mbps and on others I am throttled to 1.5mbps. 

 

For example, Ookla's speedtest gives me these results:

 image.png.6ccd19ce801fe9330a29da0c63a03a39.png

 

whereas Netflix's fast.com gives me these results:

image.png.f9d2b7996170a9915fdbd1790272b76d.png

 

These speeds are confirmed by my computers task manager:

image.png.7a72b6024b6abc26bd1122a717afefbb.pngimage.png.3fe7728086799ea0b6f724f74eb45646.png

 

As well as this, it varies on normal websites too. For example, YouTube is throttled but watching Netflix movies is not.

 

The network is protected by a Sophos firewall, and I am assuming that it is trying to throttle all devices on the WiFi network. On the college computers, you get full 500mbps speeds. 

 

The main reason why I need the faster speeds is so that I can connect and smoothly use my cloud PC using Shadow, which also happens to be throttled. However, the built in speed test on Shadow automatically set my bandwidth to 70mbps so I assume the speed test is not throttled.

 

I have tried various VPN's and proxy's but they have no effect and the speeds stay throttled.

 

I would like to know if there is any way I can bypass the throttle by maybe sending all my traffic through a website / proxy that is unthrottled, or if there are any other workarounds to the problem. 

 

Thanks in advance for any help ?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Have you tried just using a different DNS? Such as 1dot? I don't know if it will help with this issue, but it lets me around the shenanigans at work, so I figured I'd suggest it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Quote

Have you tried just using a different DNS ? Such as 1dot? I don't know if it will help with this issue, but it lets me around the shenanigans at work, so I figured I'd suggest it.

 

I have tried Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 as well as Google's 8.8.8.8 but thanks for the suggestion ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

As an addition, Floatplane isn't throttled ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Also just a thought, this could possibly have something to do with QoS or something similar prioritising certain types of traffic 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Labeled said:

Have you tried just using a different DNS? Such as 1dot? I don't know if it will help with this issue, but it lets me around the shenanigans at work, so I figured I'd suggest it.

And prohibit you from opening any internal ressources.

DNS doesn't affect download speed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

My guess is they're doing packet shaping.  

Current Rig
AMD Ryzen 5900X - Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming WiFi 2 - 32 GB GSkill TridentZ RGB
GeForce RTX 3080 - WD Black SN850 1TB  - Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Acedia said:

And prohibit you from opening any internal ressources.

DNS doesn't affect download speed.

He'd only need it when watching youtube videos... So he could always switch back.

 

DNS it self doesn't, but just a different DNS can bypass some firewalls so it can't hurt to try it.

23 hours ago, ethancox64 said:

Also just a thought, this could possibly have something to do with QoS or something similar prioritising certain types of traffic 

I've been doing some digging, and this sophos shit seems to be a pretty advanced firewall compared to what I usually have to deal with. I'm having a hard time finding anyway to bypass it.

 

The fact that netflix isn't blocked but youtube is is pretty weird to me.

 

Have you reached out to staff to ask about why they do this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Labeled said:

DNS it self doesn't, but just a different DNS can bypass some firewalls so it can't hurt to try it.

A firewall filteres traffic by ports. DNS resolves names. You can only get around DNS filtering that way. The firewall could easily block 53/tcp/udp for you to stop you from doing it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

On 5/3/2019 at 9:05 AM, Labeled said:

He'd only need it when watching youtube videos... So he could always switch back.

 

DNS it self doesn't, but just a different DNS can bypass some firewalls so it can't hurt to try it.

I've been doing some digging, and this sophos shit seems to be a pretty advanced firewall compared to what I usually have to deal with. I'm having a hard time finding anyway to bypass it.

 

The fact that netflix isn't blocked but youtube is is pretty weird to me.

 

Have you reached out to staff to ask about why they do this?

No I haven't but at this point I doubt there is a way I can get around it. I may just have to talk to one of the IT team and see if I can get an exception for my device but I doubt they will. Either way I'll question it though and if I find out why I'll update the post. 

 

Cheers for the help tho guys ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

On 5/3/2019 at 9:05 AM, Labeled said:

He'd only need it when watching youtube videos... So he could always switch back.

 

DNS it self doesn't, but just a different DNS can bypass some firewalls so it can't hurt to try it.

I've been doing some digging, and this sophos shit seems to be a pretty advanced firewall compared to what I usually have to deal with. I'm having a hard time finding anyway to bypass it.

 

The fact that netflix isn't blocked but youtube is is pretty weird to me.

 

Have you reached out to staff to ask about why they do this?

Also, I don't think they explicitly throttle certain websites, it seems to be based on some sort of rule or perhaps some type of traffic as Floatplane is also not throttled as well as about a third of all other speed tests I have tried. Also on Shadow I have the choice of switching between TCP and UDP for the connection. With UDP I can't even get it to display anything its just black, but with TCP I get a still image of the first frame to be sent and then it freezes where it doesn't have enough bandwidth as it's throttled.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, ethancox64 said:

Also, I don't think they explicitly throttle certain websites, it seems to be based on some sort of rule or perhaps some type of traffic as Floatplane is also not throttled as well as about a third of all other speed tests I have tried. Also on Shadow I have the choice of switching between TCP and UDP for the connection. With UDP I can't even get it to display anything its just black, but with TCP I get a still image of the first frame to be sent and then it freezes where it doesn't have enough bandwidth as it's throttled.

That could very well be... I have seen mobile ISPs using different throttling algorithms for TCP and UDP traffic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

On 5/2/2019 at 9:19 PM, Acedia said:

And prohibit you from opening any internal ressources.

DNS doesn't affect download speed.

I don't plan on accessing any internal resources, I just want my cloud PC service to work ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×