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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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?
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