Videos/Downloads being throttled

Hey, I suspect this isn't actually a bug on Giant Bomb's side, so feel free to move this to a more appropriate place if necessary. It's just about undesired behavior on my internet connection. Big wall of text incoming to try to be as thorough as possible!

I'm experiencing an issue where video playback and downloads start out at a nice high quality, but then it appears like the connection is being throttled. Sometimes I'm able to get it to download an entire file, and sometimes it just starts at a slow speed, but it seems like whenever it does get to slow speed mode, it stays there.

Here's a couple of screenshots of what I mean. It'll start out at a good speed (actually I've seen it as high as 7 MB/s, but my partner is streaming YouTube videos right now, so our bandwidth is partly used up. This behavior occurs whether or not she's doing stuff on our network though):

and here it is less than a minute later:

It's not consistent in when it goes to slow mode. For example, earlier, I was able to download around 800 MB of this file before the speed started dipping, but this time it only got to ~100MB. Then it stays between 60-80 KB/s. This is Firefox, but it happens in Chrome (which I use more often) as well. Sometimes if I turn my WiFi off and then back on again, the high speeds return temporarily, but if I just leave it on, it seems to just stay slow.

The issue does seem to be mitigated somewhat if I use a VPN (the overall speed is slower, but I don't experience the throttling behavior), which is why I suspect it isn't directly an issue on Giant Bomb/cbsistatic's end. I use an AT&T hotspot because I live in an RV, and I think they have a proxy on their end that I can't avoid entirely. However, this overall issue of download speeds being cut to really slow speeds doesn't seem to be an issue on any other source, like downloading big video games, streaming in HD from sites like YouTube and Netflix, or stuff I have to do for work (lots of pushing/pulling of Docker images for example).

Has anyone experienced anything similar, and if so, how did you get around it? A VPN isn't a good option for me if I'm on my work computer or on any of my gaming consoles in a web browser. My workaround option right now is to pick out a video I want to watch ahead of time, download it locally, and then play it; but I'd like to not have to do that if possible.

Thanks in advance!

I just tried it on that exact video. I did not let it finish as I have a Zoom meeting in a few minutes (and I already have this one downloaded) I did pull down 2 GB of the file at between 4/MB and 5/MB per second which is pretty much how I have my 2.4ghz network set up. I usually pull these files down on my Plex box which is hard wired and not capped, and I can start a HD download, get a soda, refresh my Plex library.

You mentioned an AT&T hotspot. Unlimited data or not, I have a feeling if you're in a certain % of bandwidth used, they will start to throttle you. If you're regularly pulling down 6GB files, I have a feeling it's AT&T throttling you. It looks like 55GB is the highest threshold I can find before they may start throttling.

Maybe AT&T just never enforced a bandwidth cap on you until recently and certain types of traffic are exempt from throttling? Or you're getting throttled now because usage of hotspots in your area has increased?

https://www.att.com/help/wireless/data-usage/

i just tried downloing the same file, i was getting about 12 MB/s until it was about 20% done at which point the speed went down to about 5 MB/s.

i'm in Canada, not on AT&T; i don't think i see throttling like this when downloading other large files like games from other networks, i'm not 100% sure though, i don't usually pay all that much attention to be honest.

edit: try downloading a large file from another website and see if it gets throttled, if it does it might be ISP related.

Thanks for the feedback, @zelyre and @nick. Like I said, I do regularly download large files for work, and my normal monthly data usage is somewhere around 600-700 GB without any throttling (I'm on a business tier plan that doesn't have caps or limiting). It's good (or not, depending on how you look at it lol) to see that it's probably on my end and not from the servers hosting the GB content.

I did just try downloading a 2.6 GB file without experiencing the speed degradation issue. Always good to try to control for as many variables as possible :)

Edit: The theory that maybe some types of traffic get QoS above others is a good one. Just to get it out there, I have moved around between North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama in the past few weeks and have seen it at each of those locations, so I don't THINK it should be because of congestion.

@dartwa: There was also a similar thread here which sounds like it could be the same issue.

@shrubsy: I almost replied to that thread directly before realizing that turning my VPN on helps the issue, so I felt like it deserved its own mention.