5 Ways to Test If Your ISP Throttles P2P « NewTeeVee

5 Ways to Test If Your ISP Throttles P2P « NewTeeVee
Do your torrent downloads seem to be taking longer than usual? Are you trying to transfer, say, a home video to a friend via Pando and the upload keeps getting stuck? Or maybe you’re having problems with BitTorrent’s new streaming service, which just doesn’t seem to work on your system? There’s a good chance your ISP is at fault, as more and more providers are putting the brakes on BitTorrent these days.

Though Comcast was the first to make headlines with its anti-P2P policy, a bunch of other ISPs in the U.S. and elsewhere are throttling BitTorrent traffic as well. Take, for example, Bell Canada, or Germany’s Kabel Deutschland. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to tell if your ISP is one of the bad guys — we’ve pulled together five tests that will do it for you.

How to Change the Timezone in Linux – wikiHow

How to Change the Timezone in Linux – wikiHow
Most modern Linux distributions have user-friendly programs to set the timezone, often accesible through the program menus or right-clicking the clock in a desktop environment such as KDE or GNOME. Failing that it’s possible to manually change the system timezone in Linux in a few short steps.

1. Logged in as root, check which timezone your machine is currently using by executing `date`. You’ll see something like Mon 17 Jan 2005 12:15:08 PM PST, PST in this case is the current timezone.
2. Change to the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo here you will find a list of time zone regions. Choose the most appropriate region, if you live in Canada or the US this directory is the “America” directory.
3. If you wish, backup the previous timezone configuration by copying it to a different location. Such as

mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime-old

4. Create a symbolic link from the appropiate timezone to /etc/localtime. Example:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Amsterdam /etc/localtime

5. If you have the utility rdate, update the current system time by executing

/usr/bin/rdate -s time.nist.gov

6. Set the ZONE entry in the file /etc/sysconfig/clock file (e.g. “America/Los_Angeles”)
7. Set the hardware clock by executing:

/sbin/hwclock –systohc

Creating a HOSTS Editor in Windows XP – mvps.org

This is by far the easiest way to edit the HOSTS file in XP that I’ve found. I also like the serving up a HOSTS file from a server (see the link). 

Lifted from: myps.org 

To edit your HOSTS file you can create a custom Desktop or Quick Launch shortcut.
Note: the below locations are for the default paths, edit as needed. Right-click on the Desktop, select: New > Shortcut (and paste the following)

Windows XP
Target: C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc\HOSTS

Start In: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC

Or put a Notepad shortcut in your SendTo folder
Start | Run (type) sendto (click Ok)
File > New > Shortcut
In the command line, (highlight and paste the below)

C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE (provided Windows is the default location)

Then simply right-click on the HOSTS file and select: SendTo > Notepad