I think my ISP's been fucking me and giving me less speed than what I'm paying, so I'm looking for a free app for windows that will let me continuously measure my connection speed (i.e. runs in background or something and measures up/down speed)

Ideally it should be able to graph changes in speed and save info to a log.

Can anyone help me with this?

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Bandwidth-Tools/ISP-Monitor.shtml

I haven't use it, but here's a free ISP Monitor. Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for.

Well, I have 4mbps and I'm not getting more than 1.5 mbps...

Well you won't see your max speed constantly unless you're constantly maintaining max speed. Unfortunately not ever site out there will give you that max speed. I am capable of about 900k/sec but don't usually get more than 150-300k from most sites. Run a speed test from your ISP or from a site like dslreports.com and make sure your modem is able to send and receive at near max speed of your current plan. If it is, and you're DAMN sure whatever you're connecting to should be giving you higher speeds, then it's something on your side. Either your router or your system.

Speed tests suck.
The connection is there, but I'm being artificially shaped.
Not even a torrent with a 1000 seeds will get me anything past 150kb/s.

On the other hand, a week worth of calling, insulting and complaining the supervisors over the phone seems to be working.
I mean, you don't just do this to a guy who's been your client for the past 12 years and get away with it.

ISPs are becoming crafty and they know when you're doing p2p as opposed to HTTP downloading. I share a house with 4 other students and one of my housemates ABUSES our net to fuck and it's really annoying. He'll have like only 10Kb/s throughput on his torrents but it will slow down our 20 MEG CONNECTION. When he turns it off it's fine. Reason: THEY KNOW ABOUT BITTORRENT.

It took me about 5 weeks to get this into his thick head. 5 WEEKS of web pages loading as if I were carrying the 0s and 1s into my house under each arm.

(End anger rant)

Speed tests are very important. If your cable modem is getting correct speeds, but none of the devices connected to the cable modem do, thats your issue. The cable company only troubleshoots your cable modem and outward. If a tech was to come to your house to troubleshoot the problem, and he saw the modem able to hit its max speed, he could only make suggestions as to the solution. They only make sure that you have the capability of that speed, they're not responsible if you're not constantly hitting that speed or the devices connected to it are slowing it down. Bit torrent is also throttled by many ISPs nowadays, and even though encrypting your packets helps deter that, bittorrent is still a very poor way to guage your net speed. Also that many number of connections open could bog up your router, and cause even less performance.

Yes. I want them to stop throttling my torrents because that is fucking illegal.
I don't give a shit if they know I'm downloading torrents, I want the full speed I paid for, because seriously... Do you need anything more than 300kbps for HTTP?

Yes. I want them to stop throttling my torrents because that is fucking illegal.
I don't give a shit if they know I'm downloading torrents, I want the full speed I paid for, because seriously... Do you need anything more than 300kbps for HTTP?

Hahahaha, no, it's not illegal, not at all. Better get used to throttling torrents, because they're not gonna change that for you. Chances ARE getting the full speed you payed for, right into the modem, it's just not being applied to what you want it to.

Yes. I want them to stop throttling my torrents because that is fucking illegal.
I don't give a shit if they know I'm downloading torrents, I want the full speed I paid for, because seriously... Do you need anything more than 300kbps for HTTP?

Technically torrents are the ones illegal. And torrents take up a LOT of bandwidth on the internet, so your ISP really does give a shit if you are. Getting slow speeds on torrents is very infuriating, but it's dependant on the speeds of the people sharing the file, the availability of the file, and their ISPs shaping their traffic as well.

Try enabling packet encryption, uses a bit more CPU but allows you to avoid most traffic shaping. Not much else you can do. You could change ISPs but odds are they too will have some sort of bittorrent throttling enabled as well. It's much more common now since it really does account for a big chunk of internet traffic.

Technically torrents are the ones illegal. And torrents take up a LOT of bandwidth on the internet, so your ISP really does give a shit if you are. Getting slow speeds on torrents is very infuriating, but it's dependant on the speeds of the people sharing the file, the availability of the file, and their ISPs shaping their traffic as well.

Try enabling packet encryption, uses a bit more CPU but allows you to avoid most traffic shaping. Not much else you can do. You could change ISPs but odds are they too will have some sort of bittorrent throttling enabled as well. It's much more common now since it really does account for a big chunk of internet traffic.

1) I do use packet encryption.
2) I know I'm not getting the speed because I was using a monitor, it was just shitty.
3) Oh yes, they are going to change it (And I think they already have and did just now) if I take it upon me to find out who the fucking CEO is and yell at him for a couple of hours on the phone.

About three years ago I had the same problem and I called everyday and complained for three months, in the end they stopped throttling me... Now, they were doing it again and after about a week or two of complaining, it seems to be fine again.

You see... If they decide to double the speeds of every person in the country and advertise it as such, and it's on the news and shit... I will not stand for getting half the speed I had BEFORE getting it doubled.

Also, this is not the USA... And, boy... I'm glad of this when it comes to this kind of stuff. In here, there's about a dozen government entities on the consumer's side without even having threat with a suit.

P.S... Even if torrents are ilegal (And they're not, and nobody enforces it in here), the ISP is in no position to fiscalize that. In the end, it's just like someone mini-modding on a forum.

Where do you live? (just curious)

This may or may not help, but apparently sandvine is a method ISPs use to throttle your connection, and theres a method to fixing it here:
http://wakarimasu.googlepages.com/

Chile.

Your country not having a good pipeline to most the people on the internet (North America, Europe, Eurasia) could be a factor.
It's not uncommon for some ISPs in less wired countries to limit international bandwidth seperate from domestic, leading you to less than advertised rates due to a seperate cap they don't tell you about. I found a few forum posts that said an ISP in Chile named "Telefonica" splits bandwidth going outside the country in half, meaning a local 500k connection will only see 250k anywhere outside of the country. It's also not uncommon for companies to sell more bandwidth than they can put out, based on the assumption that not everyone will be at 100% at all times. Countries with less bandwidth to hand out may do this more so than others.

Your country not having a good pipeline to most the people on the internet (North America, Europe, Eurasia) could be a factor.
It's not uncommon for some ISPs in less wired countries to limit international bandwidth seperate from domestic, leading you to less than advertised rates due to a seperate cap they don't tell you about. I found a few forum posts that said an ISP in Chile named "Telefonica" splits bandwidth going outside the country in half, meaning a local 500k connection will only see 250k anywhere outside of the country. It's also not uncommon for companies to sell more bandwidth than they can put out, based on the assumption that not everyone will be at 100% at all times. Countries with less bandwidth to hand out may do this more so than others.

I am aware of all of this. Now, this all doesn't mean they are by law forced to provide me for what they advertise or get raped by the superintendence of telephony and communications.

Exactly.

I was tired when I said that. I meant, it doesn't mean they are NOT forced to do it... Because, well... They are.

Here's the thing:

You are not guarenteed anything.

You are wrong.

Whether you like it or not, every ISP advertises the following:

up to XYZ kbs.

Up to means they can give you whatever the fuck they want up to that amount. They are in control of your connection, you pay for access to their connections. If they want to, they could give you 1kbps for everything and there is absolutely 0 you could really do to change it if they wanted to keep it there except change companies. This is pretty much universal. The exact same thing happens in MMO's, players get a misconception that they own their account, when in actuality, the company owns your account, you just pay for access to it. A ton of people believe that ISPs owe them full speed because they pay for it and therefore it is their connection, but it is not your connection it is the ISPs and their say is final. Sure, you can probably bitch at them for a couple hours and maybe fix it, but if they are set on keeping something they way it is, then tough shit. They have pages upon pages of EULA's and legally binding contracts and asterisks in their commercials with small font for a reason.