Canadian ISP is throttling BitTorrent traffic
Written by Ernesto on December 21, 2005The Canadian ISP “Rogers” has started to kill all BitTorrent traffic on their network. Rogers uses a bit-shaping application to throttle the traffic that is generated by BitTorrent and other p2p applications.
They are still finetuning the bit-shaping application, and apparently they had some problems configuring it the right way. Last month they were even blocking podcasts and songs from the Itunes music store.
It’s ironic that the same ISP advertises with the slogan:
“for sharing large files and much more”
Well, there’s not much to share when they block all p2p traffic including the best protocol to share large files (BitTorrent). You can can read more about this over here.
upd: But we have encryption
Previously: Unwanted torrents
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Would you let the telephone company limit how fast you could talk on the phone, or what you could talk about?
I remeber using Rogers (before Shaw “swaped cities with them 5 years ago, here in canada”, and Rogers was charging $40 canadian (~35US) per month for “high-speed” cable broadband, and then, when Shaw took over, it all of a sudden got faster?
It seems that Rogers had secretly throttled-back the speed to what essentially was the slow, low-grade equivallent (or slower, who knows?) ($24/month) account mode on all their customers without telling anybody and now they think that they can pick and choose what type of service you get??
What gives here, they should loose their common carrier status, the world is really turning into this weird big-brother domain just because technology allows an ISP to monitor the traffic patterns, that they should essentially, be allowed to snoop on their customers?
I, for one am sick of these ultra rich, vast commercial interests throttling back and manipulating your communication options.
I signed up for Rogers without knowing that they were shaping traffic. That sucked.
There is a workaround that does not require encryption that works. For now.
an ISP is only there to serve its customers, they pay it to provide a service. This ISP is not doing its job, its going beyond its duties and its affecting its customers in a negative way. If that happened to me I would cancel my subscription and go elsewhere.
The problem Simon, is that many people don’t have alternatives. Thats when it sucks.
Bones noted that there is a workaround to Roger’s throttling. Would you be so kind as to help someone find the details?
I’m so pissed at Robber’s, I’d leave them in a minute if I had any alternative, but we got rid of our land line so Sympatico is out.
Try using port 1720 or use the latest version of utorrent or azureus with encryption enabled
bleeeee
Rogers Suck ! I have noticed a huge speed difference between now and about 5 months ago. Rogers need a punch in the head. Here’s another reason, they have also bandwidth limit which I was surprised to find out. They never told me that there is a bandwidth limit. I’ve been using rogers for past 4 years. When I started using rogers there was no concept of bandwidth limit, I don’t know where they came up with bandwidth limit, and never told me about it. As consumer I have the right to know what excatly is going on, because in my home there are 5 computers and 5 different users.
One of their rep. told me on phone that they block certain users who dowload a lot so that they won’t affect other users in that area.
Rogers!
Stop false advertisements
i spoke with someone in the complaint’s dep’t at Rogers today and was told that i was SOL.
the end-user service agreement provides that they can pretty much do whatever they want to protect the integrity of the network. then the guy told me that the problem with bittorrent was that “even if you aren’t uploading or downloading at full capacity, it is still taxing the resources at full capacity” .. which is BULLSHIT. i opened my activity monitor while i was on the phone with him and told him that the amount of bandwidth being used was exactly what the torrent program said it was (which, by the way, is now all under 5kb/s due to throttling)…he changed reasoning.
OK - here is what we need:
1) A way to outsmart the Rogers throttling
2) A class-action lawsuit claiming fraudulent misrepresentation and breach of contract.
For #2, here is the rationale:
Rogers claims to be throttling BitTorrent because its use is violating the integrity of the network. however, in the same conversation with the Rep, he told me that the network is capable of extremely high bandwidth. There are not enough Torrent users running at full capacity to cause harm to the network.
THE REAL REASON Rogers is limiting this traffic is: MONEY. Rogers has to pay for the bandwidth its customers use. Limiting the bandwidth of Torrent users under the guise of “network integrity” is useful - but FRAUDULENT.
A complaint to the CRTC will do nothing - they do not regulate ISPs (nor does anyone). A complaint to the Office of Government Affairs (a.k.a. Consumer Affairs) may be helpful but the remedies would probably be insignificant.
The only way to attack Rogers would be through a Class Action lawsuit - assuming you can get around the arbitration provisions of the End-User Agreement.
My Complaint to Rogers:
Rogers Communications appears to be fraudulently misrepresenting their services by advertising them as “Unlimited” and for the purposes of “sharing large files”, when in fact they are arbitrarily limiting bandwidth and not providing services as contracted for.
While their End-User Service Agreement(s) stipulate that they can limit bandwidth for the purposes of ensuring “network integrity”, there is no publicly available information that the use of “BitTorrent” technology is threatening the “network integrity”. Upon speaking to the Complaints Department at Rogers, they informed me that 1) they have limited certain ports that are commonly used by this program, 2) their networks are capable of far more bandwidth than is being used, and 3) Rogers itself has to pay for bandwidth used by their users.
This leads me to conclude that Rogers is arbitrarily limiting BitTorrent usage on their networks in order to limit bandwidth usage not because it threatens the “integrity” of their networks, but in fact because they are seeking ways to save money.
I believe that this results in Rogers being in breach of contract with its users (as they are limiting bandwidth outside the scope of the requirements of the End-User Agreement(s)), and have been fraudulently or negligently representing their services as “unlimited” and for the purposes of “sharing large files”.
REMEDIES SOUGHT:
1) Stop blocking/”throttling” the TCP/IP ports used by BitTorrent programs; and
2) Indemnify all High-Speed customers from the date the limiting of bandwidth came into effect (as noted by Rogers, from December); and
3) Make clear to users, IN LARGE AND BOLD PRINT (reasonable notice), that their Internet usage is subject to bandwidth limitations required by Rogers to save money; and/or
4) Create a TRANSPARENT system for end-users to monitor network bandwidth usage so that if/when their bandwidth is limited, there is accountability for the limitations.
This is really getting out of hand with these corporate ass clowns… they advertise highspeeds and faster downloads… for what email? , no thanks… if i really wanted faster email download speeds i would have stuck with dial up… the problem is all people do is sit and complain about this in the forms and my friends nothing gets done this way, government/consumer affairs wont do shit as they do not care… rogers blows!!
Well surprise surprise Rogers is pissing people off!!! haha that’s new!!!
Why do you think “we” kicked them out of BC and Shaw came in!!
Wait .. umm isn’t Shaw one of the worst purpotrators of throttling? Well there is really nothing new here. I’ve been with Rogers since they started with the @Home “service”. I even remember them charging me 2 months of “service” when I was completely offline. Not only that, but the contractors they sent over completely botched the installation leaving me with multitudes of holes in my hardwood flooring … and a totally unusable Win98 machine .. (btw the guy who came to install the useless software was using a burnt copy of Win98 LOL)that being said the only real way to stop Rogers and their inept minions is to just move to a country like Hong Kong where I hear they have 10MBit connections for the low low price of $20 CND (do I jest? perhaps .. perhaps not ….) I kind of agree with Alphasee waaay up there in that we don’t have “real” alternatives. Although, there are roughly 5 or so broadband providers at least in Ont. If it makes you guys feel any better, I’ve used Aliant out in the east coast, Bell, Rogers and 3Web in Central Canada and Telus and Bell out in the West .. and lemme tell you, they all have one thing in common. They are all frauds. LOL
“Say no to technology! Or at least the ones that don’t work the way they are advertised .. which brings us right back to Say no to technology!”
Lots of ISPs do this nowadays. I can’t access any tracker on port 6969, for example. The port is completely blocked by my ISP.
encrypting bittorrent traffic ain’t gonna do much if you have it running on the default port. remember that. i use port 16881, but that’s pretty high up there. when you start going that far up, ports can become dangerous. someone mentioned port 6969 being blocked. i’ll give you two good reasons why (hope i can post links here):
http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/backdoor.danton.html
and
http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/backdoor.sparta.b.html
what would be a good idea is a list of questions written in the language of leagalese to ask an ip before entering into a contract with them.
record the conversation with the telemarkerter or whoever tries to sell it to you.
then when they start to pull shit send a legal threat.
and bam, no problems (theoreticaly)
Well I had a conversation with a Rogers rep around ~2 months ago, we switched from Rogers to Bell…
Rogers is being completely unreasonable, and is gouging just because it can…
I asked the rep. to look up how much I had downloaded and uploaded once capping was active, since I noticed it, 350 kbs to around 10 kbs, this was for Nov. and Dec. and I was paying the equivalent monthly subscription fee… oh around $45, now I only used like 10 ~ 15% like 8Gb up/down total, so I asked can you lower my fee by 85~90%… of course not…yet i was receiving lower service for the same amount of money.
I only download from bit torrent tv shows, and I subscribe to rogers cable, its so odd, that they would hurt their customer base… idiotic truely
I’ve had rogers since Nov 05, the Extreme package. As the months progress, even loading up basic pages like google.com are taking longer and longer (as in 10 seconds for the, simple google.com search page). cnn.com is almost instantaneous. Video podcasts which back in november took about 5 minutes at the most to download, now take 15-30 minutes.
I’ve asked them about their throttling of my speeds, and according to their speed test I am getting the promised speeds between my home and their servers. But they blame slowness on the websites I go to. I don’t understand how google.com is slow for anyone…. when its not.
If I had a choice of another ISP I would switch, but unfortunately, I don’t.
That’s one of the main reasons I don’t want to move back to Ottawa from Tokyo. I simply could not live with that kind of crap from Rogers.
I have been living in Tokyo for the last 6 years and enjoying capless true high speed internet for many years.
At home I have 2 connections.
1. ADSL 54MBdown/8MB up with IP telephone and IPTV services.
2. FTTH 100MB up and down.
Both are fantastic. To go from that back to piddly Rogers would simply be unbearable. I was back home for a visit before Christmas and was simply disgusted with the performance. Even loading a simple page was not the same experience.
North American ‘broadband’ providers really ought to hide their faces in shame but I suppose they don’t care as people are so happy to fill their pockets with cash for substandard crap service.
so saw this comming i wonder when bell will implement it oh and for the people who are all SHAW rocks blah blah i can tell you rogers owns shaw cable well 51% of the controlling shares neways
oh and i forgot to say it but maybe they are throttling because their infrastructure cant keep up with the amount of customers they have and are to cheap to u know upgrade it. oh and i dont have rogers myself but my friends who do in kitchener say they havnt noticed any serious slowdowns except during peak hours which is normal
not sure if someone has already posted this but.. rogers also has a ip phone system. Not sure what ports it uses but if you configure your bittorrent client to use that port or ports you are good to go..
@patman
It’s not only the ports but also the protocol header
link
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