How to Bypass Internet Service from Being Throttled

Your internet connection speeds can be slowed down for any given number of reasons. It may be due to hardware failure and maintenance activities by your ISP, network congestion, extreme weather and of course throttling by your internet service provider.

If you notice your data speed decreases when you visit specific websites, your ISP is likely throttling it. Some signs to know when that is happening include when videos keep buffering or they are streamed in lower resolutions, slow downloads and lagging when playing games.

What is Throttling?

This is a practice or technique that can be employed by an internet service provider to intentionally limit internet speeds and volume for specific websites, data types, and services or at certain periods of the day. It can also be referred to as bandwidth or traffic throttling. This will typically affect websites where you can live stream, play games, share files and p2p networks such as BitTorrent. You can learn more about it in this article.

Why ISPs Throttle

Internet service providers know everything about your browsing activities. They know your address, IP address, the sites you visit, etc. With all these, they can monitor your usage. While there exist legitimate reasons to throttle, ISPs may also do so when a user streams HD videos or download torrents. The legitimate reasons may be for reasons such as enforcing clearly stated limits on data transfer, network maintenance, managing congestions during peak periods, prioritization and optimization of traffic as well as to guide against DDoS attacks.

ISPs may also try to reduce speeds simply because they want to save money to generate more profit. Limiting data speed and usage allows them to serve more people without increasing their capacity so their profit margins can increase.

Before now, throttling was an illegal act as it was banned by the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) but this was repealed in 2018 through the net neutrality rule. You may learn about that here: https://www.wired.com/story/guide-net-neutrality/. The FCC argued that it is not her role to determine net neutrality which is a principle that allows ISPs to treat all traffic equally without discrimination or charging differently. 

With this, how then can users protect themselves? They can do that by various means of bypassing bandwidth throttling.

How to Detect Throttling

Knowing if your data speed is being throttled can be hard but there are different ways of detecting that. One very common way is carrying out an internet speed test to discover the speed of your internet. Many websites can help you with this. Another way to detect throttling is by using tools that can detect manipulation of your bandwidth. Also, there is what is called a YouTube test wherein you keep playing a video from a high resolution down to a lower one and see if it buffers and how many times it does so.

Ways to Bypass Throttling

You can bypass bandwidth throttling by different means. One of the most popular methods is through using a virtual private network (VPN). When using VPNs, your ISP can see your traffic but cannot see what you are doing as your activities are made private and encrypted so they are blocked from viewing it. VPNs are the best, they are easy to use and are effective.

Keep in mind there are several VPNs. You can however find some of the best ones in this article here. Any VPN should work but the best ones have features such as the following:

• Use of the right protocols.
• Zero-logging policy.
• Good server selections.
• Good server performance.
• Availability of a kill switch.
• Support for p2p and torrents.

Another way you can bypass throttling is through using a proxy server. A proxy routes your connections through third-party servers which helps to hide your traffic’s destination and the port numbers used.

Proxies are not as strong as VPNs as ISPs have different tools they use to monitor and detect this. This is especially true if they use deep packet encryption. This will enable them to read and be able to classify what you do.

There is also a way to bypass throttling without using either a VPN or a proxy. This applies to your computer. It involves carrying out some manual configuration on it. This may be a temporary fix and may not be as effective as using a proxy or a VPN. Read through this article https://www.beencrypted.com/bypass-isp-throttling/ to see how to do so.

Conclusion

If you ever find that your internet speed is being throttled, you can relax knowing that there are solutions to bypass it. You can now be assured of constantly enjoying faster internet speeds and having the freedom to do what you want to, whether stream a video or download a movie. Just be sure to do a proper research on the best VPN to use since that is the best method to use.