ISP Traffic Shaping: Detection and Analysis

We design methods for active and passive detection of traffic shaping in ISPs. The active version, ShaperProbe, enables users to detect whether their Internet Service Provider (ISP) is shaping traffic, and measure the extent of shaping. It is hosted as a free, open source, service on M-Lab. We also take a look at the shaping data we have been collecting since 2009 (from about one million runs), and show case studies of four large ISPs. The passive tool can detect application-specific traffic shaping by looking at an ongoing TCP trace on the user's machine, and gives the user estimates of sustained rate and capacity.