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
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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
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