Many ISP’s are known to block Bittorrent bandwidth and video bandwidth. This can slow down your downloads and video streaming. When they ask you to run a speed test to check your bandwidth, it will show that you have the appropriate amount of bandwidth available but download will be slow.

How can be know if the ISP is limiting the bandwidth for a particular type of internet traffic ? The answer is the Glassnost test that can accurately check your bandwidth available.

The Glasnost Project tries to make the ISP’s bandwidth limiting for a particular service transparent for the customer. It helps you to check if the traffic is being throttled by an Internet service provider. It was developed by the Max Plank Institute for software systems.

This test measures and compares the bandwidth available for different applications between your internet service provider and the Glasnost servers. It can detect any traffic throttling being done on upstream and downstream traffic. Checking for traffic throttling on different ports are also supported. Bit torrents are known to use different ports than browsers, so this is very helpful.

The test can take some time depending on your internet connection. It can take upto eight minutes per test. Please note that while running these tests your computer should not be uploading or downloading any other content in the background. Else it may interfere with the tests.

A number of different applications like Bittorrent clients, emails, HTTP, SSH, Usenet and video protocols are supported by the test. I recommend you run the tests related to Bittorrent and video on demand separately as these are the applications that ISP’s are commonly known to throttle bandwidth.

Once the test if complete you can see the results. The rest should show you information like any limitations for uploads. It also checks different ports to see if they are being throttled.

Check out the Glasnost Test