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
Next: BitTorrent is hiring
140 Responses
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
The best way to deal with this problem is for the majority of customers to start calling customer service department. And keep calling. If everyone keeps hammering them for days in a row, they will back down. When I say hammer, the phone system needs to have a 30 minute wait time constantly.
Cogeco is where it’s at. nuff said.
Stop talking about this and find the work-around (I did, I am with Roger’s and everything is fine).
I don’t think this is a human rights issue. Just switch to another company if you don’t like it.
And stop attracting attention unnecessarily to BT.
Wow, I’m truly surprised! This actually confirms what I am seeing on my end; disgustingly slow Torrent downloads around 1-5k/sec. Why not use a 2400baud modem and dial up then?!?
Not only that, but to my regret a few months ago, Rogers went ahead and CANCELLED NNTP (news groups). Did anyone know this?!?! I asked when did they do this, and why was I not notified as a customer, to which they said “we sent all customers an e-mail.” If their e-mail service was not so bad, I would actually use it and found this message. Further in this discussion with the rep, I asked if there would be a reduction in price, and of course they said no.
Did anyone know about this service cut as well? News is a wonderful resource for file sharing movies, games, apps, pics, music etc, and I am very disappointed it was taken away.
I say again what everyone is asking, how can they shamelessly promote highspeed transfers and large file sharing when its becoming nearly impossible to use any means to do this?
The things that bothers me most, is the loose “contract” they have in their favor, to change anything they want, and also the lack of options for ISPs. If there were more competition, I think they would offer better service. Moreover, the general public has no recourse or resources to take on a huge company like Rogers on a legal level to get anything changed. Helpless.
Pillick, the email was in fact sent out to everyone. (I got it and was very sad :()
Simply http://www.ihaterogers.ca/ – I moved from Rogers years ago, and have been happy since.
You know what… I happen to have this and similar conversations every-so-often… it just makes me sick!
They continuously find ways of limiting what users do… took down newsgroups, b/w limits, throttling and you know what solution I always come up with?
Well… they do it because they can!
Face it… they’re practically a monopoly in the communications area. Theres nothing you can do about it.
Funny thing is when a friend of mine tried to unsubscribe they told him they each house is only allowed to unsubscribe twice to their service and once they go over that limit they will stop offering service to your house unless you can prove you’re a new owner or something. Geez this is the only company that can do such BS.
Simply put, what they’re saying is; We own you. We can do whatever we want… so what if a few hundread ppl leave us… we have a couple million other clients that have no other choice. Go on… leave but you’ll be back.
We cant really do anything about it… but if someone can organize something huge im sure more than half their customer base will support the cause.
-X
I got fed up with rogers BS and have cancelled Internet, home phone, am looking for a new TV signal provider, then will cancel rogers cell phones. Theres a constant stream of cutbacks and price increaces from Rogers. I am moving on. Found a cool littl DSL company i the area…3mb line for 30 a month ..no caps.
Rogers can piss-off.
Just use port 1720. It’s the same port
they use for VOIP. So if they start throddling that port QOS will be affected on the VOIP.
My speeds increase once I changed my torrent client.
the solution is easy, use Azereus 2.4.0.0 and follow these instructions to enable Transport Encryption:
http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/Avoid_traffic_shaping
it works. i moved to an area thats restricted and BT is freakin slow, now my speeds are 1-2Mbit with 8 torrents downloading.. back to normal!
quit complaining. your lame torrents suck up sick amounts of bandwidth, and given the shared nature of coax broadband between the customer and the HFC receiever there is only limited pipe. what gives you the right to hinder other users with your lame wasted bandwidth just so you can have the latest pirated release? If you want to do whatever you please – pay to have an optical line installed.
“If you want to do whatever you please – pay to have an optical line installed.”
I would settle for it doing what they advertised – being faster than DSL. Heywood, people are complaining because they signed up for what they thought was high speed only to find out later that they are paying money for something they can’t use. It bullshit that they say it’s 3.0 MB or higher but cut you off for the stuff you really need it for. Phuck Rogers!
Bell now offers naked dsl (no home phone needed) at no extra charge and I got $30 a month no contract for leaving Rogers. Torrents once again faster but more importantly my VOIP now works well. Bye Uncle Ted!
the best
Hi For about the past 5 years, I’ve run a Direct Connect protocol filesharing hub. One day it basically died as connections to it could not be held. Way to go Rogers. :(
They advertise the ‘Extreme’ modem for faster downloads and make other claims they cannot or chose not to meet.
Here’s how I see it after being in the IT field for about 33 years:
1. Rogers now sucks.
2. The Rogers system just doesn’t cut it anymore. Cutting back the heavy usage customers is cheaper and faster than upgrading their equipment and they couldn’t care less if a heavy user quits their services.
3. Rogers sucks.
4. If Rogers makes claims of performance that are not the same as their EULA (or whatever they called it) then I hope a Class Action lawsuit burns their ass!
5. Rogers still sucks.
What about the contractors that work for rogers..one i reported for stalking, and another got so violent with me my husband had to get between us to stop him. we have done nothing wrong, and pay every month..they were acting like we were criminals, and harassing us for paying our bill!
God damn rogers sucks! I couldn’t agree more with the people saying there should be some kind of class-action lawsuit launched against them…. When the focus of all your advertising is “We’re the best for downloading large files” and then you block the #1 source of getting said files… Well if that isn’t misrepresentaion and false advertising then i don’t know what is! Never mind the fact that if you claim a service is XXXX k/s Up or down.. then it should be that speed 24/7… FOR ALL PROGRAMS!
It all comes down to what many have also posted here before… Rogers simply hasn’t bought enough bandwidth to meet the demands of their userbase… AND THEY KNOW IT! … They also know the biggest consumer of all that bandwith is a relatively small percentage of users that use P2P heavily. So they’ll gladly do everything they can to drive those users off… it’s cheaper to do that than buy the amount of bandwidth to cover that kind of usage. So it’s really no use to complain to rogers about it.. They’ll just happily hide behind that Bogus EULA they shoved down everyone’s throat. And if you don’t like it then tough beans… “Them’s the rules!”
Personally i think the best way to fight back is not to quit rogers.. but exactly what’s happening within the bittorent community right now.— Clients with packet encryption to disguise P2P Traffic… Maybe eventually they will learn that for every attempt they make to “throttle” or “traffic shape” users will eventually find away around it. there is no way they will ever find a way of sniffing out P2P traffic that users won’t find a way to defeat… Not with a handful of lame-ass rogers techs VS millions of bittorent users!
For now I’ve settled on using the new Utorrent client (1.5) with a random port, Forced encryption, and legacy connections enabled. My speeds have been great and i’m making sure to download more than ever! :D just to stick it to them! :)
Take that and your stupid EULA and shove it You-know-where Ted…..
lol @ you ppl … I am on the rogers extreme package and no word of a lie i max out at 700 kb/s on all my torrents i dont if it has to do with the port im using or that it is a private tracker or what but they have not throttled me whatsoever and i am completly satified with rogers so far ..
Chris, which BT client you are using and your settings? I’m using BitComet 0.64 but still up until 2 days ago, my overall d/l is only 25kb/s!!! I signed up for just over 1 month, 2 days ago, I can still see the overall is anywhere 100kb/s+ to sometimes 300kb/s … but damn all a sudden .. it dropped!
You know what i think? Think of it from a marketing stand point also not just your issue this your issue that. They know that Bells internet and bundle deals are not as good as Rogers themselves so they are thinking that you wont switch and just stay, and even though u switch to Bell and find out their atrocious customer support and not send you some sticker to send back the modem and also sending it late so fishes out the money out of you pocket. youll switch back for another contract.
here’s the deal. Rogers isn’t an individual, its a corporation, run by people wiht short term goals, primarily to up quarterly profits. So they will bend you over and stick a 24 inch dildo in your *ss if they can make a buck doing so.
What they have ton throttling bittorrent is basically piss their customers off as much as you possibly can. But they dont care becuase they have a captive audience – are we going to go to Bell or some isp using Bell’s dsl network? they suck just as bad, and Bell throttles bitorrent as well I’ve heard.
basically an isp’s dream customer is some old lady who barely knows how to use email and chews up 30kb of data a month but pays the 40 bucks for her connection.
everyone in canada is basically f*cked until there is some real competition in the market. the moment customers have a viable alternative to rogers / Bell, they will leave in droves. the question however is when that alternative will present itself, if ever.
at this point in time all the average customer can really do is accept that rogers has no problem f*cking its customers in the *ss to squeeze another dime out of their pockets and to order as little from them as possible and to let them know you are doing so because they suck.
really, at the end of the day, the true *ss munchers in all this is the CRTC – those are the d*cks who are suppose to step in and regulate the monopolies to ensure they aren’t screwing customers over.
oh one other thing, for those of you who went to giganews when rogers killed their newsgroup service will know that you get blazing high speed downloads with basically unlimited amount of bandwidth.
i’ve been using giganews and have been downloading probably over 100 gigs a month off the news groups.
which really confuses me as to how they can throttle bit torrent but let you eat as much as you what at super high speeds off giganews.
To Everyone! Stop using Azureus! First off, its the #2 targeted BT client aside from BT itself. Second, its a damn CPU hog, anywhere from 10-30% on my WinXP Pro, P4 3.0Ghz, 1GB RAM machine. Also, I’ve heard rumors of hackers and virus authors exploiting it somehow, not sure if this one is true.
Use uTorrent, you don’t even have to install a damn thing on your machine, it all runs from the executable and probably puts a couple of configuration files in your user directory under application data. Set port to 1720 range or 1755, enable or force encryption, and leave legacy checked (small speeds are still better than nothing), and forward ports through your router if required. Stop your whining and do what you can to get around Rogers and Shaw’s BS. These methods have worked for me, I have Rogers Xtreme 6Mbit and get BT speeds up to and over 600KB/s for p.t.’s. Hope this helps.
I must have really been lucky. My throttle back really only kicked my ass about June 22/06. But I ACTUALLY got yelled at by a Rogers manager about “illegal” this and that. Saying I was wrecking the internet for everyone else. Just like another poster I asked if I would get a 70-85% drop in my monthly fees. I was told that my speeds would still be high for other sites and pages. I said what the hell do I need 5Mb/s for reading my e-mail. I agree we as a consumer need to go with our wallets and we need to complain to the monkees we elect in gov’t. Both Federal and Provincial.
I complained to Roger’s “Office of Presidents” and CRTC claiming that nobody can reach their entitled data transfer as advertised by Rogers. That’s a gimmicks and apparently nothing positive coming back
I HAVE SENT THE FOLLOWING EMAIL TO ROGERS. AND A COPY OF THIS TO CRTC. Lets all do the same. You are welcome to copy and paste my email and send it to rogers and the CRTC. The link to CRTS complaints is
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/Register.asp?lang=E
HERE is my message.
I am a rogers extreme customer and lately have been noticing degraded performance on some file sharing applications. I have searched the net and have come across information that rogers is throttling traffic by certain applications. This traffic shaping or throttling goes completely against the info on the Rogers extreme AD. “Our Fastest Residential Service for Sharing Large Files and Much MOre”.
I have been a loyal rogers customer for my cable TV, internet and cell phones. There was no email sent to me regarding this move. I guess you would say that to provide better service, we need to reduce the bandwidth consuming applications etc etc. But in the end I am being treated like a substandard customer. The prices of internet use have gone up. As a part of the extreme service, I have purchased your cable modem, and then suddenlly the service is cut.
Few months ago there were also limits placed on the internet usage (total dats transferred per month) but we coped by limiting the data sent or received. Tranferring it to CDs or DVDs and using postal service. If you are already placing limits on the amount of data sent where is the need to strangle sharing applications, that limit automatically caps the use.
I have also heard rumors that rogers is using the same servers or internet equipment for some of their new phone (VOIP) services. And there comes in the need to reduce the internet usage by shaping traffic. This kind of thing would be quite contrary to acceptable business practice if not illegal. (by strangling existing customers, opening a new vnture to recruit new customers).
Bell sympatico have advised me that they do not shape traffic and nor they have any plans to do so. Please let me know if your traffic shaping policy is likely to change anytime in the future. If not I would look into changing my ISP and if I do I would like full refund of the cable modem I had purchased. Its like selling me a car with a promise that it will do 150 Km/hr and then at a later service you put a speed limiter in the car without my knowledge or permission that caps the speed at say 100 km/hr.
I am sending a copy of this email to the CRTC complaints department as well. Thank you.
I’m fairly certain they have found a way to throttle people even if their using encryption on port 1720 (although it did work nicely for a while).
So, as of today I’m looking for a new source of highspeed, I’ll even switch to Bell if that is my only other choice (is it? suggestions welcomed)…
I’m willing to pay more if they will just MIND THEIR OWN #@%(@* BUSINESS and just sell me a set amount of bandwidth per month.
ps – Can anyone confirm or deny, does BELL throttle torrents too?
lol, it is really funny how everyone likes to go on and on about bandwidth throtolling. It is there and always has been, it is just a matter of the throttles targerting specific protocols. If you have dsl, you are being throttled. Those little dsl modems can do 1,10,100 mbps, depending on the age. The isp throttles them and always has. Not to sure on capacities of cable. Just remember that with cable the bandwidth is shared by all clients in the local service (micro level) and thus slows as more people do such heavy bandwidth demands. Hurts everyone. And do not forget that your end of service agreement explicitely sais “no servers” and “no connection sharring”. There Rogers has most of you there. Yeah it stinks that certain protocols are being throttled at this point. It is just a reality of infrastructure in Canada and the greater world network. The world network is barely handling what is going on now and slows down as a hole periodically because of traffic beyond it’s scope. So all of you torrent people you are just slowing down the internet for everyone everywheres. That is the point. And yes Bandwidth does cost money, a company will only stay in buisness if it is breaking even, and will leave the market if they start to loose money. Economics are different in different countries. Bandwidth is much cheaper in Asia for an isp to purchase. So they can offer those prices. And as more and more users connect in developing areas such as China, Asia will be much the same as what we are all complaining about in North America. Reality kids. Remember the UT2003 demo week. The internet as a whole globally slowed down 30-40%. So yeah people who were not downloading UT were affected. Everything affects everything else in a closed system. The internet, a closed system.
another note; Micheal, if you want to pay for a set amount of bandwidth, switch over to a dsl client, it is very much impossible for any cable isp to offer you a set bandwidth unless they cap everyone on the system and keep the number of users bandwidth total sums bellow the capacity of the system then you will be fine. But in all reality you probably do not want this. Reality coaxial cable caps off at 165gbit/s, and what is typically layed around north america caps off at 52gbit/s. So with Rogers roughly 1.2 million suscribers, fudging the bit total into a decimal form, if Rogers were to not allow anymore subscribtions ever, you could count on 0.43 mbit connection allocated to you under ideal conditions (ideal conditions never happens with computer hardware), 0.43 mbit connection meaning roughly 54 kbytes/second to split between your upload and download, therefor if you want Rogers to guarantee you a bandwidth then look at your max downloads capping off at 30 kbytes/second. As well your bill will go up do to Rogers having to buy more Bandwidth off of the international pipes. And if you want Rogers to lay to faster cable all over there territory to bring your download speeds to near 100 kbytes/s, which will never happen, be ready to sign a life contract with Rogers high speed for much more money. X10 anyone, mabye X20. There you go, your 100 kbyte dedicated bandwidth from Rogers is costing you $1000 a month. Slower then you are receiving now. Alas if you want dedicated bandwidth, switch to a dsl provider. Otherwise stop complaigning. Japan, Hong Kong, S Korea, and some parts of China all had governments willing to lay vast amounts of fiber everywheres. So if you want that, pay more taxes. Accept reality, stop complaigning. If Rogers does not cap Torrents, everyone on the network could be drawing bellow 100 kbytes/s, forget about it.
I’m sure back in the old days people were pissed off when they found out that you can’t just drive your car as fast as you like anymore. Police created what they call speed limits. So even though you own a car that can do 200 you have to drive it at 50 because somebody tells you too. Its sort of the same thing.
The reality is most bittorrent traffic is of an illegal kind. So Rogers is well within their rights to restricting illegal activities originating within their network.
Then some of you ppl will say blah blah blah there are legal uses for bitorrent, and what if I want to download linux or some s#!t like that. But you all know the truth of it. Sure bittorrent is an excellent technology to use for sharing files. But unfortunatly most people use them for illegal purposes.
And besides, if Rogers wants to disallow torrents then they can. Just like, if Rogers wants to cut out its news service, then it can, and will, and have already done so.
So go pay for your news service somewhere else, and go buy your software and movies, cause your not getting them from Rogers supplied internet.
As for people saying “phuck rogers,” those people should realize that rogers don’t care if you leave. In fact, they probably want you to. Like somebody before me wrote, Rogers would rather have 87 year old granny’s paying $40 a month for internet that granny forgot was hooked up but was still paying for.
They love customers who pay their big bill, but hardly ever use it.
I’m surprised they haven’t regulated skype yet. Its even a competing technology for rogers. Skype for those who don’t know is like msn messenger or yahoo instant messenger except that you can place ‘calls’ to and from computers. It also has the ability to “skype out” to any phone with a phone number. So you can call your friends cell phone in new jersey with your pc if you wanted to. (Free calls to canada/us until dec 06) Worth looking at. But thats another story.
So, those who can, will fight against the system. Just like the rogue programmers creating the software cracks and keys that everyone loves so much. Encrypting bittorrent packets are the thing these days, just like yesterday it was ‘use port 1720′. Battles are won and lost on both sides but the war won’t be over any time soon yet.
If Bell experiences any kind of negative effects from people downloading torrents or whatever, rest assured that they will take action to turn the balance back to them. Just like any other big corporation would do.
So, for those people who want to continue to steal software and media from the internet, I guess you’ll all have to learn how to use irc and do it old school. I haven’t heard of IRC being blocked yet. That would be downright nutty.
But who am I to say what will and won’t happen, I’m just another guy…
Just thought I’d point out that BELL SYMPATICO DOES NOT THROTTLE BITTORRENT TRAFFIC!
The only possible reasons you’d get bad speeds with them is either your phone lines were bad to begin with, your distance to the Central Office is too long, or your BT settings are crap.
I’ve been with Bell Sympatico for quite a while now (at least 3 years), and they’ve NEVER throttled my BT traffic. Heck, they don’t even have caps anymore.
Just check the Sympatico forums at dslreports.com vs the Rogers one.
If you’re thinking of switching, don’t immediately cancel Rogers, but try out Bell for a few days, (and tweak if necessary) then compare the two.
Just did this myself, thanks! Using Utorrent, changed the port to 1720 and enabled encryption… Speeds went from 2kbs to 22, then 40+. Seems better already.
I just got Bell Sympatico last week and i live in montreal. Im not sure if their stoping my Torrent DL’s or what. It was working fine for 3 nights and just today all the torrents that i try to download dont speed up or anything. Could it be that they found out im using torrents and throttled?
If bandwidth hogs are their concern, why don’t they just charge by the megabyte instead of by the month? They could give you 25 GB for $25/month and charge $1 per GB above that. Transfer 100 GB with bittorrent and get a bill for $100. Simple solution that won’t piss off all the customers nearly so much.
Guys!
don’t worry, hehe, Rogers will eventually HAVE to come to unlimited traffic!!
with itunes on board, and some movie companies wanting to distribute movies and content over the internet, it’s going to come to that.
there’s going to be MASSIVE distribution of content over the internet…
and bit torrent might be the way to go, the solution.
Rogers is trying to hold back a TSUNAMI, that they will eventually, have to fall and crumble to let go of… in order to maintain competitive…
more and more people are getting stuff off the net.
and it’s Rogers job to provide that, and eventually they’ll have to cave in and do so.
WELL Guys
IT VERY SIMPLE
Someone Create a HTTP site with a loop download of around 50mb and for a prtest everyone leave it on in your area encourage others so normally when you not using the internet turn it on and hardcore bitchslap and ISP that wants to throttle the world of bit torrents
It Costs them the same as if the the bit torrents were let to go the speed of what you pay for and mabye they might start paying attention to customers rights
any ideas email me at warzcokefinal@msn.com
@JN
If bandwidth hogs are their concern, why don’t they just charge by the megabyte instead of by the month? They could give you 25 GB for $25/month and charge $1 per GB above that. Transfer 100 GB with bittorrent and get a bill for $100. Simple solution that won’t piss off all the customers nearly so much.
Did you even read the article there not moaning about the bandwith usage but there moaning about harsh protocol useb by torrent clients thay when not even download 100gb a month would create the same strain on the network as if somewere to download 10gb a month
Ah Rogers…
I never had their broadband. Thank GOD!
I did on the other hand have a cell phone with them and I had a Wats line with them (thanks to sprint). Here’s what happened to me.
I lost my cell phone. I called Rogers to tell them that I had lost my cellphone, of course it was 1:00 am. They not only put a freeze on my phone, they deleted my mail box and any and all phone messages that were in it.
Then I received the next month’s bill. Still being charged for the mailbox! I complained and they took the charge off, but the next month, they had it right back on there again.
So, I decided to cancel my account, even though I’d had it since 1998. (this was 2004) and I learned that I was under a contract.
Well, the contract came due and I cancelled. That was in February. I received my final bill in March. Again, I was charged for the mail box. So, to get rid of the account once and for all, I simply paid the bill, online as I have been doing since the beginning. Except that my husband, paid the bill online as well. So in April, there was a credit on the closed account.
I called Rogers to ask them to either refund the credit or move it to my Long-distance account. They told me that they couldn’t move the credit to my long distance account, because Rogers cell-phone and Rogers lond-distance weren’t the same company. So I said, ok, refund the money. They wouldn’t do that, because I had paid online and the only way that they could refund the money would be if I were to have my bank pull the funds back into my account.
So I called my bank. They thought it ludicrous and told me that it would cost the clearing house $30.00 which the bank would have to pass to me, in order to have the funds pulled back from Rogers. That all Rogers had to do was reverse the entry. So the bank (with me on the line) phoned Rogers. Rogers was adamant that there was nothing they oculd do. Although they offered to move the funds to someone else’s account. But not knowing anyone, I didn’t know who to move it to. So finally, I told the bank to hang up on Rogers I was so sick of them that I’d pay the $30 just to get my $42 out of Rogers’ slimy hands. The bank, went above and beyond for me. They not only reversed the payment, refunding the $42. They absorbed half the clearing house fee for me. Out of the goodness of their pocketbooks and because I’d been a customer for so long.
The bank understands the meaning of customer service. Rogers doesn’t.
Pity that, you couldn’t pay me to EVER give business of any kind to Rogers ever again and better yet, I tell everyone I can how they treated me.
If Rogers calls and you aren’t a customer… Run screaming. They don’t deserve your business.
T
Acually, im pretty sure Sympatico (which Im a customer of) does some kind of packet throttling, shaping or whatever; but I dont know how exactly they are doing it and what exactly is affected.
If I ever connect to any *public* BitTorrent tracker (pick a torrent on TPB or any illegal-ish search engine) and start transferring in any directions, my whole connection is slowed down up to a 56k-like connection. And by “transfering” im talking about a mere 20Kbps download, which isnt a big deal for an ADSL connection.
In a matter of minutes after being connected to a public tracker, my connection is brought down to a “close to non-functionnal” state, where I even have troubles reaching Google.ca; heck it even sometimes fails to resolve hostnames due to “timeout”.
If I cancel, disconnect or quit my torrents or application hosting my torrents, my connection is “brought back” instantly and goes full speed, normal behviour.
For the record, I use uTorrent, using a non-encrypted non-default port, semi directly connected to the Internet (Linux box acting as a firewall/NAT in-between, with my uTorrent port accordingly forwarded to my local IP)
If anyone of you says “no, sympatico doesnt do that”, im pretty sure of the other way around.
i dont have a router or anything anyone know a good port to use with bell because i use to have rogers and i know por 1720 let you get the fastest possible downloads. Anyone know a port to use with bell ? I dunno if this helps but i live in scarborugh
To my knowledge and experience, Bell customers for high speed DSL arent able to forward ports through the Speedstream series of Modem/Routers. When I had Bell Sympatico, if I changed any of the settings in the modem/router, it disabled throughput and I was then forced to reset to factory defaults and a reinstallation with their software CD. Bell does throttle traffic by not allowing ports to be forwarded through their equipment. Your best option for DSL would be to use another provider if possible or ask Bell if their service is compatible with a modem that you bought yourself. Absolutely do NOT use speedstream products provided by Bell. As for Rogers, the ports 1755 and 1720 still work through uTorrent for me, I’m getting speeds upwards to 600 KB/s depending on the health of the torrent. Ares works well on these ports too for music and other smaller files. I would not trust it for programs though.
Remember to always scan files for viruses and spy/adware.
[quote comment="14169"]To my knowledge and experience, Bell customers for high speed DSL arent able to forward ports through the Speedstream series of Modem/Routers. When I had Bell Sympatico, if I changed any of the settings in the modem/router, it disabled throughput and I was then forced to reset to factory defaults and a reinstallation with their software CD. Bell does throttle traffic by not allowing ports to be forwarded through their equipment. Your best option for DSL would be to use another provider if possible or ask Bell if their service is compatible with a modem that you bought yourself. Absolutely do NOT use speedstream products provided by Bell. ….[/quote]
I’m currently using a Bell supplied Speedstream 5200 DSL modem with modified settings.
I’ve enabled port forwarding, PPPoE authentication, and several other tools that are built into the modem without any problems at all and it’s more robust than any SOHO router I’ve ever used.
I’ve never had any reason to install the Bell software either.
Bell doesn’t promote that these features are there so they don’t have to support it.
No sweat off my ‘nads anyway. ISP phone support in Canada sucks big time.
To add my two cents, I started looking for what ports Rogers blocks because I started having problems with several applications including MSN Messenger and Google Talk.
I called them and they said they don’t block any, but when I tried to describe what the problem was I got rudely interrupted by the tech support person who just kept saying “The problem is obviously not on our side” without giving any reason why it was obvious and that they “do not support other applications”.
I got to the second level of support somehow, but this guy was even less cooperative and he actually said that they do not block any ports but they “do not support any ports other than those used by web browser and email client”.
I see some posts about them trying to throttole traffic on some ports messing up other ports.
I suspect this too, but is there a proof?
someone send the end user licence agreement. i can check it for validity for a class action law suit (law student)
mikedh999@hotmail.com
IF YOU WANT A REEEEALLLY good ISP in Toronto email me, spamkrap @ gmail com.
Slightly cheaper than Hell, errr Bell, for the EXACT equivalent services they provide with tech support that actually CALLS YOU BACK if you leave a message.
Put in the subject heading “ISP Rogers sucks”, I helped a lot of people getting out of Robbers and Hell for ISP service and the subject bumps all emails into a specific folder.
What really, really bugs me about all of this is that over the past 5 years the price and the speed of internet from Rogers, Bell, etc has stayed about the same, yet:
1) The price of networking equipment is about 1/20 th what it was then.
2) Bulk internet access prices are going down to follow.
The CRTC is handing these companies a golden motherlode of money.
I desperately want alternatives like the Toronto Hydro thing to work out well. Just remember to sign up to any high speed alternative that comes along!
–knobsturner
Rogers support lies. They say they don’t throttle your bandwidth or block ports and they tell you it’s your fault. But I KNOW that if I have any p2p client running for 24 hours straight my signal drops. I have their IP list in my PG2 and I think when they see people blocking them from monitoring what the user is doing they kick the connection.
When I call customer support I get someone in India doing their best to hide their accent and typing my problem into a computer. Then they just read back whatever response(s) come up in front of them. That’s NOT support. I can google my problem myself and come up with the same crap they give.
Configure your utorrent properly and you still get good DL speeds. DO NOT USE PUBLIC TRACKERS!!! Only private and IRC or you’ll get burned. I get about 400k/s average.
The signal drop is my point though and it’s Rogers doing it. They should lower their prices to reflect the lower hardware costs and the money they saved by outsourcing all jobs they can. They should provide the service they promise to. Inevitably an alternative will come along but in the mean time I hate giving money to some faceless corporation who orchestrated a monopoly.
Bell, Rogers et al should see this as a wakeup call to the imminent bandwidth explosion. Rather that trying shield themselves by capping and blocking they should “grab the bull by the horns” and use it as a justification to their shareholders to upgrade their networks.
My first few years with Rogers were great. Never had any issues (unlike my numerous problems Bell… or better earlier referred to as Hell). Over the last year I’ve been having more and more problems with Rogers. First was the throttling… okay, found some ways around that, then… I lost my internet connection and digital cable (basic cable still worked). I let it go for a couple days thinking just network problems/maintenance, and then called support. Went on to say everything looked fine, but after pressing that I didn’t have a connection said they would send out a tech. (in 5 days!!!). Turns out that Rogers had come to my home and without any notice or notification of doing so, put some sort of filter on my line that killed my internet connection and digital cable. When the tech. came out, he eventually found it (with a note saying do not remove) and just removed it and everything was fine again. I never complained about that lost week of service (which I should have), but have been since looking for a good alternative (a company that would do such a thing without even a simple note on the door is not worthy of any business imho). I have not been able to find something in Kitchener/Waterloo. Anybody have something they are happy with? Now, in the past couple of days, connection sucks and torrent is almost unusable…
my beef.
wonder if anybody else is having this issue? my bell sympatico dsl used to be very stable and fast, even I run Bittorrent. just recent months, my speed may go to 56Kbps. all I have to do is to power off/on the modem and then the speed goes up to 3Mbps. then after a few hours, the speed is reduced again to 56Kbps. I’m not sure if it’s due to BT. I will turn it off and see if there is any difference.
as soon as the speed is reduced to 56Kbps, it never went up by itself. I have to cycle the power.
[quote comment="13335"]Acually, im pretty sure Sympatico (which Im a customer of) does some kind of packet throttling, shaping or whatever; but I dont know how exactly they are doing it and what exactly is affected.
If I ever connect to any *public* BitTorrent tracker (pick a torrent on TPB or any illegal-ish search engine) and start transferring in any directions, my whole connection is slowed down up to a 56k-like connection. And by “transfering” im talking about a mere 20Kbps download, which isnt a big deal for an ADSL connection.
In a matter of minutes after being connected to a public tracker, my connection is brought down to a “close to non-functionnal” state, where I even have troubles reaching Google.ca; heck it even sometimes fails to resolve hostnames due to “timeout”.
If I cancel, disconnect or quit my torrents or application hosting my torrents, my connection is “brought back” instantly and goes full speed, normal behviour.
For the record, I use uTorrent, using a non-encrypted non-default port, semi directly connected to the Internet (Linux box acting as a firewall/NAT in-between, with my uTorrent port accordingly forwarded to my local IP)
If anyone of you says “no, sympatico doesnt do that”, im pretty sure of the other way around.[/quote]
Recently my download speed has dropped with rogers from 200 to
Recently my download speed has dropped from 200 to
The encryption on Azureus doesn’t work for me. The downloads are ok but the upspeeds are terrible. Can’t get higher than 6kps. Does anyone know if the encryption on Utorrent works better? I am using port 1720, anyone have more success with another port? Can’t get high speed DSL so Bell is not an option and their wireless network it too expensive, $60 per month and you have to purchase the modem, 99 if you commit to 2 years otherwise 200 +.
rogers has cut off torrent downloads for good!…I spoke with a technical support person and the president……in the Toronto area.
Essentially had to change my service…if others do this too the service my be changed down the road. The president understood my stance….and said the “service my change back if there is enough people down-grading or leaving rogers all together)
so….down-grade or leave rogers!
heres my letter to rogers also , I encourage people to do the same!
I’ve been a customer of Rogers for quite sometime, and for the most part have had a good experience.
Unfortunetly this is a complaint about how Rogers has “shaped”, or “throttling” any and all torrent p2p activity. Basically I purchased the internet from rogers for the ability to do this. Ihad the service for quite some time and just recently the service has grinded to a halt….. meaning 2 kb to 6 kb download (when i’m technically paying for 6mb ability). Hence I am unfortunetly paying for a service that I can not even use anymore.
As a result of this I’ve had to down-grade my service to the lowest option (ultra-lite) because I can’t use the service to its proclaimed ability.
I Sincerely hope that Rogers reconsiders its stance on this issue, or after a few months I will no choice but to also find a new service provider too.
Just got this BS letter from ROGERS!! Paying top dollar for downloading and if they dont fix this problem Im going to ma-bell!!
Rogers Cable (Rogers) has received a notice stating that activities
associated with your IP address are infringing copyright in material(s)
owned or exclusively licensed by others.
The full notice is appended to this e-mail below.
Under section 4(d) of the Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet End User
Agreement (EUA) and Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), you are prohibited from
using the Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet service to engage in illegal
activities, including activities that infringe copyright. Copies of our
EUA and AUP are available at:
http://na.edit.client.yahoo.com/rogers/show_static?.form=terms&.intl=ca
Where there has been a violation of our EUA and/or AUP, including the
unauthorized distribution of copyright-protected material, Rogers has
the right to take appropriate action against you.
If you have any questions about the attached copyright notice, please
contact the sender of the notice using the contact information provided
in the notice. Please do not reply to this e-mail.
We trust you will comply with our policies and all applicable laws in
using the Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet service.
Rogers EUA Management Team
Sincerely,
EUA Management Team
Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet
I read minutes from Rogers meeting where they admit slowing down everyone and they think it is ok not to notify anyone about this.
I see this highly illegal. Breach of contract. The only way is to let everyone with rogers know.
You’ll see them move then.
Minutes from Rogers meeting admitting it all:
Surreptitious (Bandwidth / Throughput / Performance) Rate Reductions
* Rogers cited customer service, network congestion, bandwidth abuse and the optimization of financial resources as justification for rate throttling
* Rogers chose not to notify their customers of the throttling at any time, due to their belief that it would be challenging for the majority of their customers (i.e. unsophisticated users) to comprehend the rate reductions; Rogers feels this constitutes not only a reasonable, but superb level of customer service
* 6 notices detailing the rate throttling were sent to customer support reps, so management couldn’t understand our claim that some reps denied any knowledge of this action
* less than 0.1% of all calls made to customer care were complaints about rate throttling
* 0 (zero) subscribers have canceled their service due to rate throttling
* Rogers plans to do nothing about the situation where subscribers receive subpar service under the new rate throttling regime; they see it as a non-issue; the service is “best effort only”
* the RBUA was asked to provide specifics of high latency spikes being caused by rate throttling and we shall
* yes, there was “hot spot congestion” in the network which prompted this action and now everyone is better off after the implementation of rate throttling
* there are too many architectures (i.e. LANCity, Terayon, Motorola and DOCSIS) currently in place for the deployment of DOCSIS – which provides 200-400% more capacity than the other architectures – to be a factor in doing away with the rate throttling
* the 12.5% billing rate increase for the existing service is very fair in comparison with the U.S. broadband services market
* customers benefit from rate throttling with improved service; employees benefit due to less calls made to customer care because of the improved service; shareholders benefit due to the financial optimization incurred from the rate reductions; management does not benefit from this action; no answer supplied as to whether Roger’s creditors benefit or not
also this:
Personal Server / EUA Issues
* a written response is expected as to why subscribers running SSH and Telnet servers are being specifically targeted by the abuse department
* a written response is expected as to why subscribers who have DNS aliases are also being targeted
* regarding service disconnections due to apparent non-abusive server usage, Rogers will follow up with us on this issue as soon as we provide some examples, which shall be done in short order
I’m curious, where did you get those minutes from? I find it hard to believe that no one is leaving their service over this. I’ve already ordered a different service. The modem is supposed to get here tomorrow, so if it all works, I’m gone. If we can prove those minutes are genuine, it might give us some leverage.
Anyhow, their part about improving performance is just a lie. I believe they are cutting connections initiated within a certain time span, or within a certain port. Some examples:
1) I try opening an ssh connection to my workplace. After 9 ssh connections, I can no longer connect to my workplace. Even after closing the earlier ssh connections, I cannot connect to my workplace.
2) Firefox accelerates web pages by pipelining the download process. Specifically, it opens up many connections to download each image individually. That doesn’t seem to be working nearly as well now. Probably a case of Rogers cutting off the connections.
3) I tried downloading a Linux ISO on BT. I wasn’t reaching even 2k, when I used to get 250k+. I gave up and downloaded with HTTP. Unfortunately thats not good for Open Source community.
So it looks like they have made the service much worse in every way for me. Perhaps I should buy a share in the company so I can go the financial meetings and give them an earful.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think the only way Rogers is going to change their position is if we hit their bottom lines.
I propose that we organize a mass cancel day. We coordinate our efforts via a website and track the number of people willing to cancel. Once our target is set, we all call at the same time and flood their call-centre.
I say lets hit Ted where it hurts most! 100,000 subscribers or about 4M in revenue should do the trick?
Who’s in?
Like many others, I’ve watched my BT speeds slide considerably over the last few weeks. That said, after switching to Azureus and enabling transport encryption, everything seems to be back to normal.
try this
http://www.secureix.com
use hotspot shield, you don’t need to set up any ports either, it just works :D
http://anchorfree.com/hotspot-shield/
anyone know of an ISP in Canada that doesn’t throttle torrents? this is terrible lately
please check out http://www.rogers.tv
I am trying to let people’s comments about rogers become known and understood to all
Hey we’re getting some nice discussion on http://www.rogers.tv check it out
We could use some insight!
My thanks to The Shadow!
SecureIX worked for me, it basically hides your activities from your ISP and (if my understanding is correct) you do not need to encrypt your torrents any longer. If you had set the encryption option on, it limits the number of peers that you can connect to because those peers not using encryption are not considered.
As far as I can tell, SecureIX provides an anonymous and encrypted solution to your torrent woes. Once set up, my torrents were back to normal. Until Rogers comes up with a way to get around the VPN solution, I recommend trying it out. I do find that my email does not work when the VPN is connected. So far, that is the only draw back but it is easily dealt with by shutting down the VPN.
I just hope that people have enough patients to get to this posting as there is at least a years worth of responses. This solution really works.
i hate rogers.. capping my bittorrent ports.. they should all rot in hell … at home i have bell.. it is constantly fast no limit to bandwith.. and most of all NO THROTOLING MY ports… when i am at my brothers house (he has rogers) i don’t bither with downloading anything.. thos F%^kers(roger) don’t let me connect to peers. when a torrent has 200Seeders and like 500leechers i only connect to like 5 leechers, and download at like 4 kbps.
somebody should hack into Rogers servers and remove the throttling stuff they use, and than f**k up their system,hahahahah that will show them not to mess with us downloaders. And besides i bet 75% of their user are bittorrent user too
HOTSPOT WORKS GREAT!!!
Rogers sent me a letter to bring in my old modem and trade for a new one. Did it and bittorrents were capped. I am using HotSpot and everything is back to normal. So if you have an old modem and downloading fine KEEP IT! If not use Hotspot! Good call brian.
glad it worked for you guys ^_^
Strange.. I started using SecureIX about two months ago since they’ve added their new “Hardware traffic shapers” ; and since then has worked with mixed results, but mostly positive speeds over what rogers was offering. As of yesterday, I started a torrent but forgot to turn on my VPN while doing so. It is reaching speeds of 125-140kb/s, with many clients connected. I’m not sure why this particular torrent is allowed through the traffic shaper, but the stats are as follows : (Utorrent 1610)
9(133) seeds
78(642) leechers
upload : 24-36 (set at 40kb/s)
upload slots : 5 (some reaching 30kb/s when no others connected)
Encryption is disabled, but legacy connections (incoming) are enabled.
Perhaps rogers decided to lighten the amount the traffic shaping does to our P2P Clients ? I mean, getting 300-400kb/s before was nice .. but i’ll settle for this, 100-150kb/s. Can anyone located in Southeastern ontario using rogers give it a try on a torrent with tons of seeds and leechers, post their results here? Thanks.
- Mildaine
rogers.tv is still going
check it out
Rogers is an absolute joke. I’ve never been with them, but my best friend is with them only because he can’t afford both cable tv and a home phone. I go to his house alot and have witnessed the pathetically throttled speeds myself. He tells me that he usually starts to notice it in the third week of every month after he has downloaded a certain amount.
I’ve been with Bell Sympatico dsl for about 4 years and have never had any problems with them throttling speeds for any reason. Prior to the spring of 2006, my max DL speed was about 320k and up speed was 80k. Since then, they’ve upgraded the DL speed in my area to roughly 550k (UL speeds still same) with no increase in price. I never have a problem with BT and don’t have to do anything special such as use encryption. I can always max out my speed whenever possible (large number of peers on a torrent or newsgroups etc). I live in Toronto near downtown, so that is probably a factor.
My only issue with Bell is their customer support is extremely lacking. I especially hate it when the person at the other end of the line has an accent so thick, it sounds like they’re speaking another language. Good thing I rarely have to call them.
rogers offers a $100/month service called “extreme plus” that’s supposed to offer speeds of up to 18 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload with a 90GB/month dl limit… anyone know if this service is free of the “shaping” and “throttling” wowes?
Got an answer to my own question. Here’s the result which I think some of you will find informative. (As for me, if anyone knows a good alternative to Rogers, I’m all ears)…
Letter from Rogers:
Thank-you for your email. We strive to provide you with the highest
level of customer support, and hope we can be of assistance in
addressing your questions.
We understand your concerns regarding peer-to-peer (P2P) applications.
To ensure a consistently high level of service for all Rogers customers,
it is necessary to put limits on the amount of network bandwidth
available for certain types of applications. This process is called
traffic regulation (rate-limiting, traffic shaping, throttling).
As peer-to-peer (P2P) applications have grown in popularity, their share
of overall network traffic has increased dramatically. In particular,
the application Bittorrent uses all of the space available for uploads.
To ensure that a relatively small number of applications do not slow
service for everyone, Rogers limits the space available for P2P uploads.
This ensures all customers have a high level of service for
time-sensitive tasks like sending email, requesting web pages or voice
messaging.
Rogers does not block any type of Internet traffic or application. Nor
do we monitor the content of customer communications or activities on
the Internet. Our traffic regulation is based on the type of
application, not the way it is used and is in place for all tiers of
service including Hi-Speed Extreme.
We thank you for your understanding in this matter.
Thank-you for your interest in the Rogers Yahoo! Hi Speed Internet
product. We hope that we can provide you with our service in the near
future.
Regards,
Alex M.
Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet
Electronic Support Group
Hotspots doesnt work! it has VIRUS!!
Don’t let it install the AnchorFree bar, der…
I have Rogers as well and Hotspot shield used to work great for me until I set up a wireless network, now it won’t connect anymore??? (*Note – My internet connection still works fine, it’s just that Hotspot no longer works)
Has anyone run into this problem?
Anyone know if (and how) I can somehow port-forward Hotspot? If this is even possible, will it fix the non-connect problems I am having
Any advice would be appreciated….
[quote comment="84840"]I have Rogers as well and Hotspot shield used to work great for me until I set up a wireless network, now it won’t connect anymore??? (*Note – My internet connection still works fine, it’s just that Hotspot no longer works)
Has anyone run into this problem?
Anyone know if (and how) I can somehow port-forward Hotspot? If this is even possible, will it fix the non-connect problems I am having
Any advice would be appreciated….[/quote]
I’ve been using Hotspot Shield for a few weeks and it’s been working great against the throttling up until 2 days ago now all i get is an authorization failure and then it disconnects. Don’t know how to fix it and i’m pretty bummed i think Ted caught on to it…but who knows.
I also emailed Rogers and complained. I got the same canned letter as pk above. I will also be dropping most if not all Rogers services. I wouldn’t even care if they only throttled the bandwidth a little but I currently get about the same speed as a 56k modem! I can actually see when they crank me out. I have tried secureix and hotspot. Unless there is some special way to setup secureix that I don’t know about. I get super fast speeds 500 to 700 kb/s for about a minute then down to 10!!! Then my VPN gets dropped. I called and asked about the new 18mbps service and was informed on the phone that they do the same throttling with that service. I’m calling on Monday to find out if Bell’s Optimax 10 is available to me. If not, I’ll prolly hook up with their 5mbps dsl. I hate Bell as much as Rogers but all I really want is to get what I pay for. I’ll also be sending a letter of complaint to the crtc.
{links30}
I was having the same problem with Rogers killing my torrents (LEGAL TORRENTS LIKE LINIX DISTRO) and I was downloading at a pethetic 0.2Kb/s. After reading many threads like this I came accross a recommendation to use SecureIX (SIX) VPN. SIX offers a free version of their VPN service that limits transfers to around 20Kb/s so I signed up for that and right away my torrent speed increased to said 20kb/s. Since SIX’s free VPN seemed to work as they claimed, I decided to buy their 3 day trial ($3.00 US PayPal Payment) and BOOM I’m downloading at over 250kb/s on some well seeded torrents. http://www.secureix.com HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Just took my cable modem back to rogers and told them why I was changing ISPs – the guy at the desk labelled it “techie paranoia” at first, until I told him that Rogers had already admitted to the throtting and there was no use denying it. I told him that I can’t VPN or SSH into work if they are throttling encrypted packets. He then changes tack and said that Rogers is under a lot of pressure from the MPAA, and that torrents are for illegal activity anyway. (I use torrents to obtain snapshots of various linux distros) I then ask him who is writing cheques paying for the service, me or the MPAA? He had to admit I got him there…
who ever has rogers Internet should ALL CANCLE their service right away so rogers loose all of their Internet customers and than they will not throttle anymore and beg us to come back
EVERYBODY CANCLE ROGERS INTERNET ON MAY THE 31!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great to see that this website is still here, and including some great postings. Thanx for letting me know and maybe you want to exchange links with me?
http://voip.watdoenwijmet.nl/skype-zwarte-handleiding-2007/
With lovely greetings,
Frank
I phoned about canceling my internet package with Rogers just to find out I am locked into one of their Bundled Savings contracts until January next year. If I cancel I have to pay all the money that I have saved over the past few years, which adds up to more than $300, so… I can only cancel next year… That’s why you never get Cable TV, Wireless and Internet all in the same account… (unless you know that company will give good service)
From: »www.timewarnercable.com/cincinna···orr.html
“# No speed bumps in sight when downloading large files and software updates
# Enhanced speed gives you the edge you need to dominate online games
# Multimedia mastery �€” blaze through video and music downloads ”
Seems shaping is all about invalidating their own selling point. Isn’t that called false advertising?
If a Canadian and a Chinese can VPN each other’s PC, both will be able to surf and torrent like normal humanbeing… security is a bit of issue here…
i have cogeco cable internet, torrents require a rc4 packet encrytion to work, however i find if i have a program like limewire dl a ton of music my torrent speed goes up, i guess they can keep up with the rest of the traffic
Rogers is pestering me to return my old modem and upgrade to the new one….should I do it? Is it true that the new modems will throttle back on torrent usage, whereas the old ones don’t?
I’m a Carleton student signed up with Vianet (formerly Telecom Ottawa under the Edunet program…for ~$400+tax/yr I get high speed DSL…currently my local area connection has a speed of 100Mbps. vianet.ca says that they offer both highspeed cable($50/mo, 6Mbps dl) and highspeed DSL ($40/mo, 5Mbps dl). I had Rogers cable 4 years ago, and liked that service a bit better than the DSL service that I have now, mainly because I found cable to be slightly more reliable, but that was 4 years ago, and after reading how Rogers is now, I would much rather have the DSL that I have now, because it still really is quite reliable (so far this year no “downtime” that I can remember, no noticeably frustrating or extended slow periods. Also, I find that the ~$33 a month that I pay is much cheaper than the ~$60 a month that roger’s charges for it’s extreme. I don’t know how my speeds compare to the rest of your speeds, but at least for Ontario users Vianet is an alternative to rogers…a cheaper alternative…
as soon as they get high-speed through the phone here(they only have dial-up right now)..its :waves: bye bye Rogers and when that happens the cable t.v is going to…at least once sometimes twice a month the internet will be shut down for 6,8 hrs at a time with a “server problem”….what freakin ever you idiot…
Hello!
What do you think about Apple Iogo? >:)
Wow I love the complaints from everyone over throttling bit torrent.
Big Companies like Rogers do this because theres illegal activity going on. And don’t give me that crap about open source and bit torrent because 99% of bit torrent traffic is piracy.
You can whine and complain all you like or you can move on to the next file sharing epidemic, cause it’s not legal and you can’t expect it to be offered.
Your reasons may be valid Matt, but there is no real justification. So if someone used public transport lets say TTC to smuggle stuff. Their going to limit the number of passengers or block all suspicious characters from entering? I think not. Not all the activity is illegal and most of it isn’t even illegal in Canada. SO WTF is up with you, you must have lived in the US and got in trouble there xD
I’m canadian, your point is somewhat moot though. If 90-99% of public transit was used for illegal purposes there would be repercussions.
Another thing to note especially by those whose sharing ratios are hurting. Downloading is not illegal in canada but uploading is, and bit torrent promotes uploading through sharing ratios etc.
I still download the occasional thing myself but complaining about a service being restricted is pointless.
“Big Companies like Rogers do this because theres illegal activity going on.”
My, aren’t you being rather naive?
They’re throttlingbecause they don’t want to invest in infrasructure (and because they made some promises they didn’t really mean). In some circumtances they’ve even admitted this.
The RIAA/MPAA (in europe aka MAFIAA) have some interesting perspectives on whoat’s “legal” and the balance between copyright holders vs fair use (note for example, the recent testimony of Sony’s lawyer in court, that making back-up copies and downloading songs that you already own both qualigy as theft http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071002-sony-bmgs-chief-anti-piracy-lawyer-copying-music-you-own-is-stealing.html)
And where do you get this “99% of bit torrent traffic is piracy” figure. From the **AA crowd? (And again, under what definition of so-called “piracy”).
Not to mention that those whove actually tried, find that free downloads actually increases income (try googling Janis Ian’s “Internet debacle” for some good examples, as far back as 2002). Also check out Nine Inch Nails current foray into “pay what you feel like” download offering.
Your remarks, while arguably logical and principled, are based on highly questionable assumptions and disprovable facts. The prevelence of these ulyimately bogus arguements says more about the PR and lobbying powers of huge corporations than about reality. I highly recommend doing some in-depth research on this subject — it’s a real eye-opener!
(PS: for what it’s worth, I have never, ever downloaded infringing music or software. I do occassionally download freely-offered, legal music (and sometimes bought CD’s as aconsequence) and open-source software)
I submit to you all, the following.
Rogers’ motivation in limiting bandwidth and torrent use has nothing to do with either infrastructure or piracy concerns (directly). They are doing it to protect the future of their cable television business.
With the internet and digital broadcasting, barriers are being broken. Rogers can no longer rely on the CRTC to act as their guardian as the internet exposes them to competition from the States and elsewhere and modes of delivery totally removed from the constraints of the physical cable they have in the ground. As Rogers looks into the future, they see that the stranglehold they have on living room entertainment is quickly disappearing and that the only thing standing in the way of people using the internet as their main entertainment source is social convention. In order to prevent the internet from becoming the main provider of entertainment they limit the ability of people to access that kind of data (torrents). If they were to overtly censor anything, the Canadian public would be up in arms, but they can subtly state that it’s in the interest of preserving their infrastructure and ensuring quality of service to all its users. Even if they tell you it’s a cash grab, you will be pissed but you will believe it. They would prefer upset customers who think no further about the issue, because if I am correct, they are a company in a position of market dominance abusing power in order to protect their interests. And that is illegal.
Sure they have damaged their reputation as an internet service provider, but that is of little concern to them, since their real interest is in protecting their television cable assets. They don’t want to give you a way around paying for their cable content, which is a larger source of revenue, has few (if any) real competitors in most of its markets and is protected by Canadian content regulation. It is not a coincidence that Rogers and Shaw have been perhaps the most aggressive ISP in terms of bit-shaping.
Just my two cents.
Seems like Sympatico is now throttling there connections too
As of Oct 1st 2007, bell has begun to ‘throttle p2p’ during peak times. What they consider ‘peak times’ hasn’t been released. Also, they are blocking on a packet base, not ports
I have noticed that between 3pm and 12am is the slowest times for dling.
All p2p are being throttled; torrents, limewire, kazaa, and I’ve of slow speeds for vpn too.
They are for sure throttling.
I just spoke with a woman named “Deborah Brann” who is the Manager of Customer Service at Bell Sympatico in Ottawa.
She confirmed to me that Bell is, in fact, throttling the network “at peak times”. She claims this is within the “Terms and Conditions” of the Bell Sympatico agreement. She said the promise is that the connection will be somewhere above 1Mbps, generally.
What is most interesting is her statement that there has been a 40% increase in use of Sympatico since August 2007 and “no ISP could handle an increase like that.”
Then, why advertise what you can’t deliver, I asked?
No answer to that one.
I started a group on Facebook to protest this – Let’s All Sue Bell Sympatico For Deceptive Marketing!
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting!
I just moved from BC to Ontario and holy cow, i was excited at the 7mbps from Bell… and now my torrents are going at 50k/sec and my upload is MAYBE 9k/sec (TOPS).
traffic management is what they said to me today. What a crock. I hear Telus internet might be coming here soon. That’s what I had in Vancouver and if they come, i’m getting it.
Hey guys,
I’m not new to this post. I’ve come across it a few times actually but never posted (until now that is).
I just thought I’d let you know about a website I came across by accident a while back, http://www.canadianisp.com.
In a nutshell it’s a website that’ll help you find alternative ISP’s in Canada (duh!)
I found one internet service provider, TekSavvy Solutions Inc. that doesn’t seem to port throttle or traffic shape.
It’s an ADSL provider, so I had to buy one of their modems (as I only had the cable modem I bought from Rogers). The mode was about….$100 plus $10 for shipping and a $20 setup fee (which if I understand correctly, will be reapplied if I ever move).
Overall the speed is ALRIGHT (about 3 Mbps) for where I live ; Brampton, Ontario. Nothing campared to the 8 Mbps I was getting with Rogers but at least I can download without having to deal with traffic shaping tactics. ;p
For now, http://www.teksavvy.com is alright. Check it out, you might find it a reasonable alternative. I’m happy with it thus far. My only beef really is that YouTube videos are somewhat choppy but you give, you take.
Cheers.
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links:
Bell Canada Sympatico has starting throttling as well. It starts after 5:00pm through to midnight.
Hey folks,
If you’ll read three posts back you’ll see my initial post.
Still with TekSavvy and STILL happy with them.
I just hope they don’t get too high on themselves (like Rogers did) and start playing games ’cause when they do….it’s Hasta La Vista!
But for now….two thumbs up!
Does anyone have one of the older rogers style cable internet modem for sale or to give away???
If so contact Larry in London Ontario at justicels@yahoo.com.
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Join the facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22831345087 to protest Sympatico and Rogers limiting P2P traffic
BitTorrent downloads on Rogers connections isn’t as limiting as you may think. All you need is the proper configurations to your software and hardware, and you can still max your download speed.
Last night, I used my Extreme connection to download something on uTorrent, and reached a 1.0MB/s download speed.
Do some research folks.
Well guys it’s this simple; I am paying ~40$ a month for 5Mb ADSL from MNSI, which unfortunately uses Bell’s DSlans so yeah, I’m going to get screwed here.
So what my problem is, when you pay for unlimited usage (no bandwidth cap) for 5Mb service, you technically are being told that everyone who bought this can, at the same time, download at around 540KB/s without stopping constantly all day all night forever. If not then they are overselling their network and lying to their customers. Even if it’s not MNSI’s fault that Bell is caping bandwidth on common BitTorrent ports, it still affects the end user.
Whenever a game patch is out, or when SP2 for xp came out, and SP1 for Vista and SP3 for XP comes out, I will only download via torrent, because unlike dedicated file servers which can only handle a couple of hundred users at a time, torrents actually get faster. So yeah, everybody wins except ISP’s who have to pay for that bandwidth.
This is, to put it gently, totally fucking bullshit.
rogers sucks ass. we should mount a class action suit
I don’t appreciate Rogers telling me what I can and cannot do, i purchased a service with no restrictions and i expect to receive that service.
Why are they targeting just p2p websites, why not target all illegal internet activities such as child pornography. If Rogers wants to act as an internet cop they can’t just pick and chose their battles.
This will slowly undermine the net neutrality concept in which the internet was founded on.
http://www.blogto.com/tech/2008/03/rogers_now_with_more_bullshit_and_baseball/
I just got charged two $30 charges for overusage… I was on contract for 3 years (extending every year) and nobody told me this feb that I was going to be charged for extra bandwidth… I hate telecom in canada we’re worse then a 3rd world country… i hope that bell and rogers burn in hell…
we’re paying more for high speed then 10 years ago… i remember rogers was $45 and was faster then it is now… its brutal
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