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Hi i recently switched to Macs and let me just say i live everything about them. About a month ago or so i signed up with the free Open DNS web service to anonymize my activity and all that. Or thats at least what was recommended to me for that reason. Everything was fine until i noticed that my download speeds were uber slow, if its up at 20Kb/s thats fast, and thats never happened to me before. Im not sure if tahts what caused it or not but i started to notice it close to the time i signed up for this service and now ive been trying to fix it/get rid of it. ive changed my Network settings so that my DNS is retrieved automatically instead of it going through the Open DNS servers but no cigar.
I was just wondering if anytone knows how to fix this, or could it be a problem with something else that i dont know of? I would really appreciate some help here.

Thanks,

matt
 

vansmith

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openDNS should not be affecting your download speeds and should only affect the speed by which pages are loaded (or better yet, located). Are you sure you removed the openDNS servers (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) from the Network prefs? What else have you changed recently with your router/network settings?
 
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-mateusz
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Yeah i got rid of those DNS servers. Just now i tried forwarding my ports and it looks like the speeds improved a little (up to about 30Kb/s) but its still not what i had before downloading at at least 100Kb/s. And im not sure what else i could have done to affect this, i know i changed the settings in my Azureus for best download speeds referring to the Wiki page and after that it seemed to boost my download speeds but shortly after was when i registered with Open DNS and noticed the speeds go down. Do you know what it could be?
 
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And i just did a speedtest. I used to average around 10-15 Mb/s downloading and 0.50Mb/s uploading looking at my previous tests and this time i got this:

 

chscag

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I don't know who told you that Open DNS would give you anonymous surfing ability because it's not true. If you're currently using your ISP's DNS settings and your speeds are still slow, then there may be something wrong with your router settings or Airport settings. Without any other information from you, we can't suggest a remedy. The only thing I can suggest is to check all your settings.

Regards.
 

vansmith

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I notice that you mentioned Azureus. Is this problem specific to torrents? If so, it could be a few things including a lack of seeders and/or throttling. It appears as if throttling may be a problem with Shaw.
 
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No it was all torrents regardless of the seeders/lechers. and i played a little with it last night and i think i might have fixed it. It might have been my azureus settings cause i just deleted the configuration file and started over, reset my settings and so far it seems as though its running good, getting around 200Kb/s speeds :D
 

vansmith

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I've also read that Shaw's throttling is spotty in that it comes and goes. If it comes back, it might be something to consider.
 

vansmith

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See wikipedia here. Essentially, it would be your ISP preventing higher speeds if you are using a lot of bandwidth (as is done with torrents).
 
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Oh alright thanks, ill keep an eye out for that. And im guessing if thats the case then i cant do much since its my provider blocking it right?
 

vansmith

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There are ways around bittorrent throttling but I don't know if there are any repercussions for doing so as I only use bittorrent rarely and don't download much with it (a linux distro or two a month at most).
 

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