Internet connection question

[Vapor]

Okay...I use bittorrent for various things, it's great but I ALWAYS get piddling speeds. This does not matter if I'm at home or at school.

Well, so I thought at least. Every so often, my school's connection will cut out. It usually does this at ~4-5am, but sometimes does in the middle of the day. When it does in the middle of the day, Bittorrent's speed increases ~10 fold, within seconds of being back online. This is universal through all three clients I've tried (BitTorrent 3.4.2, Rufus, Azureus).

Why could this be? At home I don't have a firewall of any sort so I doubt it's a firewall setting at my school, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. General B/W does *not* improve after the brief lapses.

[Vapor]

Also of note is that BT's upload speed increases 10 fold as well.

If I restart the application, then it will not resume at higher speeds.

[Disposibleteen]

Could it be becuase when the line has just cut out not a lot of people are back online so you get more bandwidth for yourself. I know this is how most college dorms are wired up. Im not too sure about the whole bad speed at home thing but your download speed is dependant on other people's upload speeds.

[Vapor]

That's what I'd think, but normally I get around 20KB/s up and down on Bittorrent 24/7 (even at like 4AM when usage is next to zilch) and can go anywhere online and easily go to the cap of that server and maintain multiple connections of that for hours (i.e., I can sustain at least ~1MB/s for as long as I want).

[Vapor]

Okay guys, more info....not sure if it helps though. I traced my IP and logged IP from before and after and I'm on a completely different network now (well, not COMPLETELY, but somehow I'm on a different dorm's network). So I changed network, but that doesn't explain why I get piddling speeds when I restart the app or when I'm at home, does it?