A word to the wise, never trust your ISP! If you have experienced unexpected drop in internet speeds while streaming online and have to wait hours for a video to buffer, than there might be a possibility that your ISP is throttling your bandwidth.
Bandwidth throttling is when your ISP intentionally slows down your internet based on your bandwidth usage. ISPs can monitor and inspect your internet activities, so when you start streaming on services such HBO NOW or download a lot of torrents, your ISP restricts the internet speeds causing massive delays, slowing down all your processes, and limiting you to a stone-age like internet connection.
ISP throttling is a chronic problem faced by numerous internet users around the world. Many ISPs use terms such as ‘reducing network congestion’ or ‘managing network traffic’ to defend bandwidth throttling but that is far from the truth. One way to bypass ISP throttling is through a VPN service.
5 Best VPN to Bypass ISP Throttling
Here are some of the best VPN providers that you can use to defeat ISP throttling and enjoy unrestricted, blazing fast internet speeds:
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How Does a VPN Help to Bypass Throttling
Since ISPs can scrutinize all your internet data, you need a tool that can hide your web activities. And the best solution to stop ISP throttling is through a VPN service. This is because a VPN conceals the contents of your internet activities, not allowing your ISP to monitor what you do over the internet.
When you use a VPN to bypass ISP bandwidth limit, all your internet traffic routed through one of its own servers. In doing so, your original IP address is cloaked and replaced with the IP address of the VPN server, hiding your true location.
Secondly, a VPN uses secure tunneling protocols and encryption algorithm to keep your internet activity hidden. So when you ISP decide to inspect your data packets, all they will see will be encrypted gibberish that does not make any sense.
Defeat ISP Throttling Caused by Peering
Peering is when two different ISPs connect with each other and exchange network traffic. So your internet traffic travels from your ISP to a third party ISP and then onto the desired location. This process is helpful under normal conditions as it helps to clear congestion. Unfortunately, this isn’t as simple as you might think.
In peering, conflicts arise between two ISPs over traffic ratios. This is especially evident when you use a heavy streaming service such as Netflix or HBO; these services demand high bandwidth for smooth and high quality streaming. But when there is a conflict between ISPs, one provides might increase the bandwidth limit but the other may not, causing your internet speeds to drop and resulting in ISP throttling.
This is where a VPN comes into play, helping you to bypass ISP throttling caused by peering. When you are connected to a VPN, your traffic is routed through VPN servers instead of a third party ISP network; allowing the data packets to travel through uncongested pathways. Hence, you get the internet speeds you paid for and are relieved from bandwidth throttling.
How Do You Check ISP Throttling
The issue of ISP throttling has been plaguing numerous internet users around the world but with a VPN by your side, you have nothing to fear. That said how do you know that your internet speeds are being throttled? To check whether your ISP is restricting your bandwidth, here are some tools and tips that you can use:
Conduct Frequent Speed Tests
Different ISPs place bandwidth caps and when you hit a certain threshold, your connection gets throttled. Since it is quite evident that almost all ISPs throttle your internet, you can gauge how much speeds are slashed off through speeds tests. There are different tools you can use to conduct speeds tests such as speetest.net or testmy.net.
Many users that have complained about ISP throttling say that their internet speeds drop usually by the end of the month. You can check this by conducting speed test once a week. This way, you will get a comparison of week by week internet speeds; showing you when your network is throttled and when you get maximum bandwidth.
Use The Internet Health Test
The Internet Health Test is tool that shows any signs of your internet degradation and helps to determine ISP throttling. The Internet Health Test uses infrastructure and codes from M-Labs. It works by sending traffic from your device to a measure point located outside your ISPs network.
This way, the tool measures any sign of congestion between your ISP and the measure points. If there is a large difference in the results, then this shows signs of ISP throttling. However, it is better to conduct a series of tests spread across seven or more days to get conclusive results.
Glasnost
Glasnost is a tool that allows you to measure the performance of different types of internet traffic. You can choose from P2P apps (BitTorrent, eMule, Gnutella), Standard apps (Email, HTTP, SSH transfer, Usenet), and Video on-demand (YouTube). The test will show you whether your ISP is throttling your network and you will notice inconsistent speeds in the results.
Overcome ISP Throttling on Torrents & Streaming Services
One of the many perils faced by various internet users is when their bandwidth is limited once they use online streaming services or torrents. ISPs usually notice when you download large torrent files or stream heavily on popular services such as Netflix, BBC iPlayer, HBO NOW or Hulu.
Torrents and online streaming takes up considerable network speeds and requires high bandwidth for seamless performance. Therefore, your ISP throttles your internet claiming to reduce congestion. However, that is not the case as you hit a certain threshold limiter installed by your ISP, notifying them about amount of data being consumed.
Using a VPN to bypass ISP bandwidth limit will help you enjoy fast online streaming and torrent downloads. A VPN will bypass ISP throttling altogether and provide your internet traffic a new, fresh, uncongested pathway to flow from.
Why is Bandwidth Throttling Considered a Bad Practice
In a world where the concept of net neutrality is being given high emphasis, ISP bandwidth throttling is considered a tactic against such an idea. Under net neutrality principles, everyone has the same grounds to play with. There are no discriminations in prices, the amount of data that can be used, access to resources, content, and everyone is treated equally.
That said, bandwidth limitations go against the concept of net neutrality and offering equality to all internet users. Hence the increased control of ISPs over user’s internet speeds has promoted many users to resort to VPN to bypass bandwidth throttling.
Similarly, some ISPs offer their own streaming services to subscribers and throttle the internet to downgrade other streaming services. For instance, Netflix has paid considerable amount of money to different ISPs to escape throttling. Therefore, if you are a fan of online streaming, it is better to use a VPN and avoid ISP throttling.
Conclusion
ISP throttling is an act that can be seen as unethical, unfair, and violates equal rights and should be abolished on multiple grounds. Since that is far from happening anytime soon, it is better to use a VPN to bypass ISP throttling.
The five VPN services that we have listed above will help you encrypt your web traffic, tunnel them through secure protocols, and stop your ISP from monitoring what you do over the internet. Each of these providers offers leading edge protocols and military grade encryption to prevent ISP throttling.