Rogers Continues to Throttle BitTorrent Traffic, Despite Contentious Pricing Scheme
Written by Ernesto on April 09, 2008The Canadian ISP Rogers recently introduced contentious hosting plans, which means that users have to pay for every extra gigabyte they consume. The problem is, however, that Rogers continues to throttle BitTorrent traffic, so most BitTorrent users will never reach their quota anyway.
Rogers‘ new pricing scheme (see image below) gets rid of the all-you-can-eat plans most ISPs offer, and charges customers for every additional gigabyte once they have reached their monthly quota. For example, customers with an “extreme plus” plan pay $99.95 a month for the first 95GB, and $1.25 for every additional gigabyte they consume.
Here’s what Rogers wrote in a letter to their customers: “With households doing more online every day - from downloading music and streaming videos to joining online communities - it’s important to have an Internet provider that evolves to meet your online needs. At Rogers, we remain committed to always providing you with the best Internet experience possible.”
Don’t get me wrong, a contentious pricing scheme makes sense. The more people consume, the more they pay, fair enough. What bothers most Rogers users is that, even with this new pricing scheme, their BitTorrent traffic is still being throttled.
Rogers was one of the early adopters of BitTorrent traffic shaping. The first reports date back to 2005, and last year Rogers even decided to block all encrypted traffic, just to make sure that BitTorrent protocol encryption didn’t work.
Nevertheless, Rogers plays nice to its customers, and says it is “committed to providing the best Internet experience as possible”, but how can this be true if their customers can hardly use BitTorrent?
In the letter they sent to their customers they mention that, with a monthly bandwidth limit of 95GB, users can download a whopping 24,320 songs a month. However, if Rogers continues to throttle BitTorrent traffic, it can take up to 67.6 months before their customers actually reach their quota.
In a response to the new pricing scheme, a Rogers subscriber told TorrentFreak: “Pretty funny actually, as with the throttling they are doing, I could downgrade my service considerably.”
Not to worry though, there are several tip and tricks to get around the traffic shaping devices rogers uses. For some, BitTorrent encryption is sufficient to circumvent Rogers’ throttling, others need to adjust a few extra settings to enjoy their torrents in full-speed.
Happy torrenting…
Rogers’ new pricing scheme
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[quote comment="339168"]Jesus, fucking expensive, I pay like $30/month for my 100/100 Mbps non-limited broadband…[/quote]
please dont say that. im paying $95/mo for a 1500/256k line capped at 25 gig… 10c for every meg over…
fuck i hate Australia
As a Rogers Internet customer, and where I am, I’m not affected by the Rogers ‘throttling’, nor is anyone else I know of. I’m still easily able to download to my full max. from BitTorrent, and fully seed the torrents afterwards, as well. They managed to ‘play around’ with my connection in early 2007 where it definitely WAS throttled, but it hasn’t been like that for quite some time. Perhaps they’re ditching the throttling, and just opting for a cap.
teksavvy.ca>bell+rogers
Ok, I’m in a country where 1Mbit/s is a pipe dream for most, and the majority still use dial-up, yet with 256 Kbit down and 128 Kbit up, and some independent bandwidth within the ISP’s users(about 384 down, and 198 up, or something like that), I manage to use well over 100 GB per month…
Giving 95 gigs at 10 Mbit/s, that’s just for one week :P
Download 3 seasons HD video of any series, and you reach the quotum…
I’m on DSL with 1023/8061kbps, and for the last year it’s been on average 500Gb/230Gb down/up/month… so I guess I’m using the pipe all out(at least as far as torrents go…)?
No throttling(as far as I can tell at least…)
Connection been down only a couple of times a year(for a few hours or so)
No caps(at least not mentioned anywhere…)
For that I pay 40 euro/month
Finland is such a nice place to live^^
One case where I can almost be glad to be under an American ISP. It seems as if Comcast is backing off a little in my area (semi-rural illinois) so I can enjoy pretty rough speeds. The only thing they do now is close a port when I excel 1.5 MB/s download for 5 mins+ or at least thats what it seems like.
You forgot to add to the article, max overcharge is $25 a month ;) I got the letter today in the mail.
bell does the exact same thing and switching to teksavvy is an honourable gesture but teksavvy gets their bandwith from bell so your still gunna get throttled. and im guessing teksavvy will have some problems soon that aren’t their fault at all.
take a look at http://www.supportcommunity.sympatico.ca/pe/action/forums/displaysinglethread?rootPostID=10145149&returnExpertiseCode=
im rob
Hey Sad: you can get unlimited adsl in australia for $70 / month. Look for buniness plans. Don’t bother with consumer plans.
In Canada we have the choice Rogers=Throttled+cap or Bell Pathetico=throttled+cap
Something has to happened we are getting scammed and extort by the month, but we have no choice to take it since nobody does anything about it. Pay more and get less.
Well, I just have to say. Thank God I live in Ca–oh wait nevermind.
Depressed!
in France (http://www.orange.fr/bin/frame.cgi?u=http%3A//abonnez-vous.orange.fr/default.aspx%3Fid%3D6773)
8mbs no limit
Phone
TV: all major stations
For how much! 40eur!
here: 30$ internet + 40$ phone + no cable it is too $%####@#% expensive!
Think about it, not so long ago we were laughing at them!
what ya all crying for here i have 448kbs limit for downloading havent gone above 100kbs for uploading yet $60 unlimited (the plan is no longer available because the service got over loaded)
$&%# Bell and Rogers!
Keep complaining to everyone, the government, your MPS, whoever! Don’t stop till this problem is fixed!
Who’s with me?
the prices are really very high
congrats guys. After all the inside tips abour rogers you choose this one.
Good!~~~~~~~~~
LOOK—> http://www.looskys.com
Seems like Rogers is run by some very intelligent managers. Removing Flat-Rates, blocking encrypted traffic, throttling bittorrent…
I mean c’mon are you serious. Who wants a provider like that? Do they still have any customers at all?
Seems a weird way of doing things, can’t say I understand the logic…
It looks like if the resellers can’t get their lines cleared of the involuntary throttling then Canadas’ screwed.
But hey, there’s always Imageshack!
I can’t wait for VDSL2 to become available in Australia.
Up to 100Mbit/s download speed and about half of download speed for upload speed.
Although Australia is lacking bandwidth.
And here Ukraine rocks again. 100Mbit unlimited channel, without any shaping in any way - and that’s just for $40.
Welcome to Australia. I pay $60 a month for 1.5mbit with a 25 gig cap. Our plan shapes us to 256k beyond the cap.
Soon to be upgrading to $50 a month for 24mbit with 25gig cap though. Maximum residential caps are about 55gig here….if you wna pay $90 a month.
I thought Rogers was throttling all
encrypted traffic, not just BitTorrent
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