5 signs your ISP is throttling your connection

Throttling is when your provider deliberately slows certain traffic — usually video, gaming or file-sharing — rather than your whole line. It’s common, rarely admitted to, and easy to mistake for a bad connection. Here are the tell-tale signs.

The five signs

1. Video buffers only in the evenings. Congested-hours throttling targets streaming when the network is busiest. Your speed test looks fine at noon; Netflix crawls at 9pm.

2. One app is slow while everything else is fine. If web pages load instantly but a particular streaming service, game or torrent client limps along, that traffic is likely being singled out.

3. Speed tests are fast but real downloads aren’t. Some ISPs prioritise traffic to known speed-test servers. Comparing a generic test with our Speed Test and a real large download tells you more.

4. Your speed jumps when you connect a VPN. This is the clearest signal of all — more below.

5. Streams cap at a suspiciously round resolution. Video that never climbs above 480p or 720p on a fast line often means the ISP is shaping video traffic to a fixed bitrate.

The VPN test

Because a VPN encrypts your traffic, your ISP can no longer tell what you’re doing and therefore can’t single it out for slowdowns. That makes it a diagnostic tool: run our Speed Test with the VPN off, then on, during the hours things feel slow. If speeds rise with the VPN connected, your provider is discriminating between kinds of traffic.

It’s also the fix. With the tunnel up, all your ISP sees is encrypted data to one server — there’s nothing left to throttle selectively. Streaming, gaming and downloads all travel incognito. If that’s the boat you’re in, plans start with a free trial.