If you’re in the UK and are a broadband customer of the 02 ISP, you may experience slower speeds during peak hours. O2 has announced that they will begin to throttle certain ports and protocols from 8-11pm to address bandwidth concerns.
According to the announcement, it blames those that run their computers day and night consuming precious bandwidth. They state that this results in slower access to email and websites for other customers. The three hour throttle is expected to alleviate traffic congestion.
The ISP 02 will throttle certain peers and protocols, including USENET newsgroup access, from 8-11pm. It will not block access to programs that use these protocols or peers, but will slow traffic coming from or to them.
The throttle has already been reported to have been rolled out yesterday, where small degrades in speed where noticeable while accessing newsgroups.
This is not the first time that an ISP has announced plans to throttle certain ports and traffic. Cox and Comcast both have run tests and have locations where the throttling is still taking place. Some resistance in the US through means of the FCC has kept throttling a concern and continues to be monitored.