Does anyone here download podcasts via iTunes? I'd like to know if there's been issues with the download speed and if you have had any issues, when did it start?

I'm working on something in which I need a second opinion for verification. This is something to do with Streamyx packet shaping, but I figure that I'd get more feedback here since there's a higher population of iTunes users here.

Yeah, your description fits what is going on with Streamyx as well. We have to access ITMS via a proxy because the traffic shaping installed by TM Net is deliberately restricting our net access based on the user agent (aka client) of the browser/iTunes.

Try setting up a proxy on your local computer and access ITMS via your proxy. If you have a Windows box, you can follow the steps listed in the first post here: http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/399896. Let me know if this works for you. Unfortunately I don't know of any proxy software for MacOS.

If you've manage to connect to ITMS via your proxy, try subscribing to a podcast and try downloading it. Note the speed. Then stop your proxy and then try downloading it again. Appreciate your help.

This post has been edited by fly: Jan 18 2007, 08:48 PM

Yeah, I've had problems myself getting into ITMS, not just slow downloads. The theory that the Networks and Broadband guys are working on is that TM Net is intentionally blocking ALL other HTTP request that don't have a user agent string that's a recognizable browser (i.e. IE, Mozilla Firefox).

Bittorrent clients have their own user agent strings when they connect to the net (i.e. 'uTorrent/1600', etc) and it looks like it's been getting blocked. iTunes also has it's own user agent string ('iTunes/6' or something like that). This is why iTunes is affected as well. What the PAW proxy does is that it clears all outgoing user agent strings before it goes out into the net, which then bypasses TM Net's user agent blocking.

In my mind this is highly inappropriate as it violates their 'best effort' promise; they're using their so-called 'best effort' to intentionally limit our bandwidth instead. With blocking and throttling BT, it was a grey area, but by limiting iTunes, it's a travesty because all content in iTunes are LEGAL and a FAIR USE of our bandwidth.

When I use the PAW proxy, all my podcasts come down at almost full speed. When I don't, the podcast isn't even updatable.

I'm waiting to try this again after the 23rd as it might be due to the temporary bandwidth providers that TM Net are using now. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for now.

This post has been edited by fly: Jan 19 2007, 10:31 AM

Those settings are fine. You'll also need to change your IE proxy options to use your local proxy (ie. localhost:8080) because iTunes for Windows uses IE to detect your proxy settings.

Yup, looks like more and more folks have been able to confirm that user-agent filtering is happening and it's most likely going to affect more applications beyond BT (the guys in Broadband user2user have already figured this out) and iTunes.

I doubt that they're deliberately targetting iTunes though; sounds more like poorly-configured filtering that's blocking anything that doesn't match a recognizable browser (IE, Mozilla, Safari, etc.) user-agent.