Dan asks about ISP throttling
Can a ISP throttle back on certain sites or across the board only? Do you have any tips on your site or elsewhere to help prevent such antics? I appreciate your efforts… Daniel
Our answer
Hi Daniel. ISP’s can and do throttle bandwidth across the board and site by site, especially targeting movie streaming sites or movie download sites.
When people began accessing the Internet back in the mid and late 80’s, everyone was restricted as to how much bandwidth they used. Then came the unlimited ISPs. Now that there is so much content on the Web, we’re circling back to limited Internet and it’s becoming more and more widespread. Comcast and Time Warner are experimenting with tiered Internet access and we can guess that others are too. There are some ISPs who, right now, limit each user to a certain number of gigabytes or even megabytes per month.
Most ISPs throttle bandwidth only for high-bandwidth users at this time, but that could change soon. ISPs do have the capability to throttle your bandwidth usage across the board or on a site-specific basis. ISPs can also block access to some sites.
If your ISP does start throttling your bandwidth you’ll probably have two options: Pay more or switch ISPs.