Malaysian ISP Throttles P2P Traffic by 90%!

First the Australian ISP Exetel, now the Malaysian ISP TM Net has decided to throttle P2P traffic as well. This time the action isn’t as overt and publicized as the Exetel matter was but, apparently enough customers have noticed a difference and conversed with people "on the inside" that it lends credence to the claims.

On a Malaysian blog called Lowyat.net, a self-described "Tech Enthusiast Resource" forum board, a guy using the alias "nwk" starts the thread that first reports the TM Net throttling situation. He says that he has talked with a guy from the TM Net CEO’s office who "… confirmed they are throttling all P2P traffic 24 hours everyday." So instead of the Exetel plan to "reclaim" bandwidth by throttling P2P traffic only from noon to midnight, TM Net wants to take back midnight to noon from their paying customers as well .

Why would TM Net do this? Well "nwk" explains that he was told the following:

…they are doing this because they are running out of bandwidth and also because of Lim Keng Yaek ordering them to improve their service due to a lot of people complaining to him about slow browsing speeds. He said they are aware of the situation and our speeds should return once TMnut add in more bandwidth by the end of the year. He says we have to bear with the slow speeds until TMnut acquires more bandwidth.

I like the vague "end of the year" phrase. Too bad customers still have to pay all of their monthly bills until the end of the year. Customers can’t "throttle their bills" if they’re having a probably with too much demand for their money. Once again a company provides half a service for the full price of that service.

Just how dramatic is the difference with the newly throttled speeds? It’s not even a standard 50% as was the case with Exetel in fact, the differences are often an even more startling 90%! Here are a few examples of what some of the posters in the thread had to say:

sholtsy:
Aikk…
My BT got throttled since 20 September until now, call the CS tmnut, also never solve the problem.
Previous the speed i can use around 100+, after throttled only get <15kb are better liao, normal only have <10.
CFM already report , still same
Apparently 90% is being throttled in some cases. The matter was so frustrating that a guy
nVidiaFX:
really f*** their mom for the past 1 month I’ve been getting average 1~3kb for all my torrent dls.
evilhomura89:
Here’s d speed for 2day.
Still d same running at 55-60KB/s

(HE EVEN INCLUDED SOME SCREENSHOTS, HIS USE OF BITCOMET FOR HIS BITTORRENT CLIENT SERVER A SEPARATE ISSUE….:P)

yangxi:
this few days , melaka speed only ~10-30kb/s !!

if comfirm throttling P2P , I want cancel two 1mb adsl line..

Mrs. Giggles (hey, I just report the news I find), a blog out of Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, even writes:

Many ISPs in many countries …reduce the bandwidth by, say, 50%. Being a Malaysian company and therefore by Malaysian law run by idiots of the nth degree …t hey have succeeded in making my connection to hosts and servers outside of Malaysia completely FUBAR! If the connection is not as slow as a tortoise on its last legs, I cannot connect at all. It isn’t just P2P that is affected – every kind of international connection is affected from simple browsing to using MSN to chat to someone outside of Malaysia! I don’t know what the babboons in TMNet did but I suspect that they must have hired, as the norm, failed MARA scholars who couldn’t read the English manual and just used the eeny-meeny-mo method to determine what buttons to press.
At least other countries have options. In Malaysia, there is only one ISP, which explains why it doesn’t give a damn about the quality of its service.

Mr.Giggles has a good point, that they have a monopoly as the sole ISP of Malaysia and deserve to held to a higher standard of practice than they seem to be currently.

What’s interesting to note in all of this is that the very people who would need fast connections are the guys who use P2P software, file-sharers, and not John Q.@hotmail.com who simply checks his MySpace and e-mail accounts each day. The only guys who are willing to pay for faster connection speeds are file-sharers plain and simple. I mean how quickly does a webpage need to open? After that it’s all about transferring 725MB XVID files or 3.2GB .ISOs. They are essentially ripping off the very people who have created the demand for their services in the first place.

As another member of the Lowyat.net forums, Hornet, notes:

The only practical thing that need anything faster than a basic 512k package is p2p activities, so all these user pays 22 bucks more than others in believes that it will meet their p2p requirement, but now TmNet is killing off the only application which moves user to get the faster package.

When I asked people on the Lowyat.net boards what the deal was Amika, a guy from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah replied that where he’s at "…it’s like 24/7 capping.. speed like 5k-10k without local peers.. like going back to those dial up days." Makes me cringe just thinking about dial-up, that dam AOL squawking sound makes me feel like Pavlov’s dog.

I then asked "What’s you’re normal connection speed? One guy makes it seem that he’s got maybe 10% of what he once had, from 100kbs to now like 10kbs, is this really true?"

Amika:
Yes it’s true.. actually everyone is getting that speed now(those that are effected by the capping) i.e. 10k doesn’t matter what package u subscribed.. and now after the capping my msn and yahoo messenger kept on disconnecting itself every 5 minutes or so.. and surfing is a pain as well.. everytime i’ve to refresh a few times before i could get anything from all the website i go to..
Sholtsy:
Yes, that true…
previous time have the speed around 100kb,
now only get not more than 12kb on the BT,
but other like FTP and HTTP are no problem

Then Ahruji Sora, another guy from Kuala Lampur, had some real bare bones data to lay down specifics regarding the "alleged" P2P throttling, as TM Net refuses to confirm or deny the claims.

Haruji Sora:
Before last month.

Normal BT speeds for RM88 1024kbps DL package = 100+kb/s
Normal BT speeds for RM66 512kbps DL package = Around 50 +/-10 kb/s

Since suspected throttling (i use the term suspected because TMNet HAS NOT, i repeat HAS NOT release any form of official announcement in regards to this matter)

Both packages (torrents without local IP) = Around more or less 5 to 20kb/s.

Torrents with Local IP can reach up to 50% or more of our max speed, depending on the upload speed given by the local peers (and also the number of connected local peers). Since we’re capped on 512kbps Upload, the max we can upload is around 40kb/s, +/- 5kb/s.

TM Net has yet to reply to my e-mail requesting further information on the matter but, this isn’t sup rising as they refuse to reply to the tens of thousands of file-sharers in Malaysia as well. But, amazingly enough they did send one gentleman a reply which I will post for you to read as follows:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your e-mail to TM Net.

Referring to your e-mail please be informed that prior to the remarkable rise of P2P traffic recently, it has indiscriminately pushed onto the maximum utilization of our network capacity, while on the other hand proven to be utilized by only 20% of our total user.

Due to this, currently, bandwidth are not equally distributed amongst DSL users upon file sharing applications and thus, resulting in a reduced performance in P2P applications. Nevertheless, such exercise is not exceptional, as some other non-local service provider has already been doing this so as to manage the impact of P2P traffic on their network.

Regretfully, this approach can easily be positioned as unfavorable amongst our subscriber, and we’re truly aware of this. While this is not a popular method of controlling Internet traffic, the fluctuation of the connectivity will be considered as best effort basis. The problem may surface and appear later depends on the condition of the NET. The feedback received from your good self is very significant for us to improve and again, this is actually how the service is improved wherever DSL technology is offered on the other side of the world.

Should you require further assistance or would like to submit any enquiry/feedback, kindly visit www.tm.net.my and click "Need Help? Contact our Customer Service".

Thank you.

Regards,
Ahmad Nizam Bin Ismail
Customer Care Support,
TM Net Sdn. Bhd.

www.tm.net.my

(ICOMS#2973933-250683)

What a nice guy heh? Maybe P2P traffic is utilized by only 20% of their customer base but, that doesn’t excuse TM Net from their actions. How can you charge people the full price for, as in most cases, a TENTH of the service? That takes some real brass tacks to do. Also, this 20% they so arbitrarily dismiss are the very ones WILLING TO PAY FOR PREMIUM SERVICES. They are ones who need the fast connections speeds. Is John Q.@hotmail really going to shell out for a 10Mbps connection? I think not. He wants to look at family pics, e-mail, MySpace, and maybe the news. That’s it. It’s the file-sharers that are creating the need for expansion and growth by TM Net. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

What can you do? For those of you who reside in Malaysia it is suggested you contact the CFM, the Communications and Multimedia Consumer Forum of Malaysia and lodge your complaint about TM Net. The CFM is your consumer complaints division, charged "To Promote the national policy objectives as stated in the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (CMA)" as well as "To provide and avenue and channel for complaints, disputes and grievances." Contacting the CFm in sufficient numbers ought to get their attention.

Now what everybody can do is contact the office of "the man" over at TM Net and give his office an earful. You can contact his office at ceo@tm.net. First Australia, now Malaysia. Who’s next?

SOULXTC: walking the streets of P2P

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