Travel Technology - Are ISP's slowing down international Slingbox streams?

I've been experiencing some weird behavior when Slinging into a US Slingbox recently. When I connect in from Europe, it starts out OK, then slows down to about 28Kbps. I've run speed tests on both ends of the link and there is plenty of bandwidth. But something is slowing it down.

So then I ran a VPN to a server in the US, and voila! The Sling feed was back up to over 500Kbps. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Many ISPs employ throttling for bandwidth control. Were you attempting to do this from a hotel? Could be anywhere in the chain. Many ISPs (and hotels or those with public internet connections) implement priority based throttling based on traffic. So things like video can easily end up at the bottom of the list (and they should). I'd hate to have your video downloads interfere with my ability to get e-mail.

This is from both hotels and my home where I have 8mbps download from my DSL line, plus I get over 100 channels of TV over the DSL which always works great.

If an ISP is doing the throttling, they would have to look at the presentation layer to see that it is a Sling feed, and specifically throttle Sling media. I have no other application, including Joost, which gets throttled.

If I put my conspiracy theory hat on, I would say that the US TV networks are behind this to prevent people outside the US from watching their content for free. Or maybe it is the NBA? That is what I was watching yesterday.

I've had no problems using my US-based SlingBox in Japan and Hong Kong. It does not really work in China, though. {:-(

I too have used it quite often in Asia, but not since the NFL playoffs.

I'm fairly sure you can change the port on the Slingbox itself. If there is nothing else using it, try changing it to port 443 or port 80 and see if that helps. It could be that the ISP thinks that the data stream is torrent traffic and is throttling that.

I'm fairly sure you can change the port on the Slingbox itself. If there is nothing else using it, try changing it to port 443 or port 80 and see if that helps. It could be that the ISP thinks that the data stream is torrent traffic and is throttling that.

I already moved the port to 5002 since 5001 wouldn't even connect. That was getting blocked somewhere on the overseas link since it works fine in the US on port 5001. Maybe I could try 80, but if they are snooping at layer 7 it won't matter.

As for torrent, that isn't being blocked here. I have no problems using torrent. So that tells me they are snooping layer 7 and specifically looking for Sling content.

My sons in HK and another state aren't complaining but dad is. When they sling, slows things down at home. Number 2 son did the setup, is there something I should know or can do to speed things up at home?

Also, looks 90% certain I'll be getting TMO's hotspot@home, which means need their router installed?

:p

I'm fairly sure you can change the port on the Slingbox itself. If there is nothing else using it, try changing it to port 443 or port 80 and see if that helps.
Certainly, all ISPs do some filtering based on port number. But most port number filtering is done to block traffic, such as "no outbound port 25 except to our mail servers". And ISPs that throttle traffic generally use DPI boxes to decode the actual underlying data stream. For example, Packeteer has been selling equipment that can determine the underlying protocol since the turn of the century. They don't care if Bittorrent goes over port 80, it's still Bittorrent, and they can throttle it. What protocol is the slingbox using when unicasting traffic to a remote user?