How do I unsubscribe to the maxis phonebook backup service?

How can I detect if an online backup service is doing IP-based throttling?

• I live on a campus in the US and I am trying to understand why my upload speed to the online backup service http://www.backblaze.com/ on area Y of the campus is 10 times slower than on area X of the campus (20000 vs 2000 kpbs as you can see in the details below). Area X on campus (Ethernet): Backblaze speedtest: Download Speed: 48764 kbps (6095.5 KB/sec transfer rate); Upload Speed: 25035 kbps (3129.4 KB/sec transfer rate) http://speedtest.net speed test: Download Speed: 82460 kbps; Upload Speed: 71640 kbps Backblaze actual upload speed using the client: around 20000 kbps Area Y on campus (Ethernet): Backblaze speedtest: Download Speed: 50500 kbps (6312.5 KB/sec transfer rate); Upload Speed: 3249 kbps (406.1 KB/sec transfer rate) http://speedtest.net speed test: Download Speed: 94790 kbps; Upload Speed: 50880 kbps Backblaze actual upload speed using the client: around 2000 kbps I have similar results for wifi but I think that's enough details. The network administrator suspects that Backblaze is doing IP-based throttling. This surprised me as the Ethernet's IP is pretty similar between area X and Y the Wifi's IP is pretty similar between area X and Y I don't see what Backblaze would target area Y and not Y, since both are on the same campus. Also Backblaze vehemently denies doing any IP-based throttling, and I couldn't find anyone complaining about it. My feeling is that area Y "as well connected" as X to the outer Internet, but most of the web services work fine, which gives credit to my network administrator's explanation. Hence my question: is there any way to detect whether an online backup service is doing IP-based throttling, beyond comparing the upload speed with different IPs? Some more details: All tests where carried out using the same laptop. I disabled the throttling in the Backblaze client's options.

• Answer:

  No solutions offhand, but some more thoughts to test: If you have a friend with a similar laptop using Backblaze, do they see similar results at similar times?  Some IP load balancing is done based on IP address and if there is a bug somewhere, it is easy to get different performance just by changing your IP address. What does traceroute tell you going to Backblaze and http://speedtest.net?  You should see the exact same hops for the same portions of the various paths.  What about latencies? Assume that there's a bug in someone's networking gear.  It's always a good bet.  ;-)