AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:08 AM UTC

kaszanka wrote: post #70

fjni wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the era of traffic shaping as you describe it is no longer. Most connections are encrypted these days, a good thing. But that also means, me as an ISP in the middle, I only see the layer 4 packet. So I know where a packet is coming from and where it's going (and ttl and some other not really helpful data for this purpose.) I don't even know the port. So I'm left with doing (dumb) traffic shaping by destinatio…

Wait, why wouldn't they know the port? I'm not aware of any cases where the TCP header itself is encrypted.

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 5:20 AM UTC

inportb wrote: post #227

riceart wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite sure I understand - what do hospitals need a ton of bandwidth for? Why would those bandwidth requirements rise significantly during the pandemic. Sure there were a bunch of people on vents in the MICU, but pretty much every elective procedural service plummeted.

Other than telehealth, we also use the bandwidth for remote desktops/apps and lossless high-resolution radiographic images. While one might expect this traffic to occur over local networks, many hospitals have multiple sites and partnerships that are connected over the internet. So, for example, one might operate the hospital's apps while sitting in the library at the affiliated university.

Post by neurostimulant » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 6:02 AM UTC

acaloiar wrote: post #200

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome. I took a very quick look at the iPhone capture. I don't see any notable issue (which is expected since this is "working" behavour), and the main noticeable item in the comparison is an apparent lower latency to the server. This appears to match the speculation I saw in the updates as well. One thing you might be able to try, if you're able to change the APN on the hotspot, is to see if you're able to…

I considered switching APNs, but didn't want to run afoul of any AT&T rules. I went ahead and gave it a try anyway, switching from `broadband` to `NXTGENPHONE`. I wasn't able to authenticate with `NXTGENPHONE`, so I switched it back to `broadband`. After re-authenticating, I'm no longer being throttled. I'm both happy and deeply dissatisfied with this outcome because I think now I'm less likely to get to the bottom o…

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 6:49 AM UTC

chasing wrote: post #181

Animats wrote: post #96

Remember how 5G was supposed to support "the metaverse"?[1] I've been working on a high performance metaverse client. All Rust, all multi-threaded. Designed to max out a gamer PC. Supports Second Life and Open Simulator. Second Life had a reputation for being sluggish. Fixing that. I'm pulling content from the servers at 200Mb/s, sustained. 400Mb/s in tests, but don't need to go that fast. The servers (AWS front-ende…

As I learned the hard way once, when AT&T say “unlimited” they mean up to a certain amount for data. Y’know. Like how Olive Garden offers unlimited breadsticks but then when you get your bill they charge you $40 for each breadstick over the unlimited amount of 2.

Post by m0dest » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 6:50 AM UTC

thorum wrote: post #20

I noticed this same issue with my AT&T internet. After some investigation, I found that using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) effectively resolved the problem. It seems that when internet traffic is encrypted and routed through a different server, the traffic shaping technique they employ isn’t able to identify and throttle specific types of data.