Traffic Shaping on ISPs

Thu Sep 10 07:53:48 UTC 2009

Hi Nanog, 

We have recently introduced a MMORPG (online game) to the Internet. We currently are receiving many complaints from UK (and a few EU) customers of sudden traffic loss or slowness which makes the game unplayable. The complaints come through like clockwork from 6:00PM to 11:59PM (GMT). Our chief complaint customers originate from British Telecom who equate to an aggregate estimate of 200Mbps during said hours. 

Is there any advice, known traffic shaping bucket or predictive traffic shaping of sorts that could be impeding our customers use over our ports TCP/7000-7500? Would our traffic be considered P2P traffic and throttled once inside their ASN (or even outside)? 

Understandably ISPs would want to protect the precious bandwidth and IP services.

We are based in US but I am at a wits end on route shifting over our major ISP connections and finding no resolution. 

Is there anyone who has experienced cross-the-pond issues such as this and had had luck in finding a resolution or at least an answer? (Maybe a form to fill out for cut-through allowance/whitelist for our prefix and port range, if such a thing existed?).

Much obliged, 
Jake