Yesterday I changed my ISP to one that allows port forwarding. Today the port forwarding has been enabled by the company and I set it up on the router.

After enabling it, my download and upload speed dropped from peaks of 50 MiB/s and valleys of 4-6 MiB/s to a very stable 2 MiB/s. Nothing else has changed in my qBittorrent configuration. If I close the ports again, the speed goes back to normal. I checked if the ports were open on various websites and all of them show that they are forwarded.

I was looking forward to be able to port forward and connect with every possible peer for years, and today has been a big disappointment in that regard!

Has anyone else seen something like this and if so, can you point me to the right direction to fix the problem?

Edit: Thanks everyone for your time and your help! Still working on it, but it's heartwarming to be on the receiving end of the goodwill of this community.

Sometimes I love the internet!

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[–] _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 8 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

more likely they just know it's bittorrent traffic. that's not hard for an ISP to sniff out, if you aren't using a VPN. it's not uncommon for ISPs to throttle bittorrent traffic automatically.

[–] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

And the reasons they do it run the gamut from 'mildly shitty' to 'profoundly shitty'.

You might consider routing torrent traffic through multiple old garbage laptops on your network, then putting your regular traffic through on an 'unforwarded' looking computer at full speed? Might work.

[–] dividedby0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I'll look into it, but I don't think this is something I would be capable of doing. Would a couple of raspberrys work?

[–] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but ancient secondhand laptops are about the same price, come with storage, and you're taking ewaste out of circulation.

[–] dividedby0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That's a great point!

[–] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago

Reduce, reuse, recycle, steal shit!

[–] dividedby0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I would really like avoiding a VPN. Money is tight rn and it's another payment at the end of the month.

[–] _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Understandable, but without one you’re totally at the mercy of your ISP. If it turns out they are automatically throttling BitTorrent traffic, there’s nothing you can do without a VPN because on a fundamental level they control your access to the internet. The unfortunate thing about BitTorrent is that it’s not sneaky at all. Your ISP will be able to tell you’re doing it if you aren’t encrypting that traffic.

[–] dividedby0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago

Yeah, I think I'm just delaying the inevitable. I'll call the ISP in a couple hours and maybe it will be time to look for a christmas deal with airvpn.