Rogers Fights BitTorrent by Throttling All Encrypted Transfers
Written by Ernesto on April 11, 2007In its ongoing war against BitTorrent, Canadian ISP Rogers decided to throttle all encrypted traffic. ISPs and BitTorrent client developers are playing an ongoing cat-and-mouse game, but Rogers really crosses the line here. A very bold move, to say the least, which affects not only BitTorrent users, but everyone who is using encrypted transfers.
Last year Rogers was one of the first ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic because it generated “too much” bandwidth. The developers of uTorrent and Azureus soon countered this move and added support for encrypted transfers to their clients, that’s where the cat-and-mouse game started. Encryption seemed to work for well for most Rogers clients, until this week.
Rogers realized that the bit-shaping applications they were using to limit the traffic that is generated by BitTorrent weren’t effective anymore, and started to throttle all encrypted transfers as well. As a consequence, people have trouble connecting to encrypted e-mail services, and other applications that rely on encrypted connections.
Rogers is not the only ISP that tries to cut down the BitTorrent traffic. Last year we had a discussion whether traffic shaping is good or bad, and both BitTorrent users and ISPs had some good arguments. However, limiting all encrypted transfers is a completely different story, it affects a wide range of customers, not only the ones using BitTorrent.
What makes it even more ridiculous is that Rogers still advertises with the slogan “for sharing large files and much more”. Last time I checked BitTorrent was still the best way to share large files, but I guess the people at Rogers don’t want their customers to share large files after all.
Rogers’ competitor Shaw is also limiting BitTorrent traffic, but at least they still leave encrypted traffic untouched (for now).
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I’m sure some canadian consumer protection advocates can sue this company for breach of contract if they limit old customers that don’t have such limiting clauses in their contracts, and/or if they now use contracts with new clauses but still advertise in a now missleading way.
some canadian “shawn hogan like” rogers customer anywhere near, who has a few bucks to throw into a fight for net neutrality?
I’m a Rogers customer and my speeds haven’t been the greatest for some time now. They may heve been rolling out this plan for some time now.
My speeds dropped from a consistent 200kb/s avg (600 max) to 20kb/s avg (60kb/s max), and my uploads are just completely shot.
@luckyunthrottledguy: Rogers has made a lot of changes such as this in the past few years. Last year they introduced hard caps on all their services. Originally, they planned to cut your speeds down to ISDN speeds before cutting you off completely. Now they charge you $1.50 for every MB (I believe) that you go over your cap. People have been trying to take action against Rogers for years; it seems that no one has been successful, sadly.
why stick to that provider? is there no other broadband services around?
there is one other provider but they charge if you go over their measly 30GB cap. Rogers doesnt charge, just warns then cuts off service,
There are lots of broadband providers, which don’t have a 30 GB cap. Shaw High Speed, for example, has a very reasonable 60 GB. Sure, I’ve read about them throttling, but I can get decent speed with them.
Im out… This is it! My new stuff is in already aswell… Ill give you all a MUCH BETTER alternative… Acanac.com is where I went to despite the bad rep seems to be circulating.. Everything has been smooth so far.. Apparently there sales is local \ Tech support etc is routed internationally (I believe)…. Checkem out…
@Cat
Shaw is only available in Western Canada. I’m in Toronto.
As for not switching: Sympatico doesn’t offer great service, and I’m still tied to my Rogers contract. It’s up soon.
check out 3web @ http://www.get3web.com/highspeed/highspeedMenu.jsp?page=hsindex
they resell rogers at a much cheaper price, but without the throttling
Another alternative from switching to Sympatico is TekSaavy (DSL). They have an extremely good reputation, better upload speeds and no throttling.
http://www.teksaavy.com
There’s also lots of reviews on dslreport.com
3web is THROTTLED: my upload speed wne t from 800kbps to 300kbps a few days ago - they are using rogers infrastructure after all
Rogers is considering capping the internet usage to 5GB/month and charge you by GB over 5GB. I just participated a Rogers Advisory Panel survey and the writing is clearly written on the wall. Be prepare for the shock!!!
We’ve created a site to help people switch to a less offensive ISP and hopefully send Rogers a message that they can’t treat their customers like dirt. http://www.boycottrogers.com
I use 3web which is another company that just pays Rogers for using there lines ect.
Just last week i notice that they were throttling as well,download and upload speeds just went to nothing.
When i was with Rogers they did this b4 to me as well,the wierd thing it seems is that not everyone gets throttled just seems to be the high end users that use the torrent sites.
Seems so far theres no way around this except find a new isp but the thing is also,they are all going to be throttling :(
And remember…don’t just switch ISPs, when you call to cancel your service, make sure to make it good and clear -why- you’re out the door and going to a competitor. Any large company tracks that type of thing, and if they hear it enough, it’ll get wheels spinning upstairs. (Though it takes a while sometimes.)
@tromik
Yak is available in southern Ontario, $35 a month for 5mbps dl and 800kbps ul, no traffic shaping or blockage of encrypted data. Great deal.
VERY IMPORTANT!!!
I was on the phone with Rogers supervisors and customer relations people, etc. for the past few hours and I’ve discovered that the blockage of encrypted data is NOT an effort by Rogers, in fact they are doing everything possible to get rid of it. Here is was actually happened:
Due to Rogers exponentially growing enterprise, they were recently required to purchase a set of new IP addresses (these all begin with 99). Encrypted data is blocked on all of these adresses. They are also not registered as Canadian addresses.
MOST IMPORTANTLY: this was something that was done by the company Rogers purchased the IP addresses from and they are working as hard as they can to get them unblocked.
Some bad news: No one has any projection as to when the IP addresses are unblocked. Could be within a week, could take months.
-Steve
@Steve
I’m pretty sure they’re just saying that to keep you as a customer.
By the time “the few months” have passed, people would have gotten used to Rogers again, and thus not switch, which is what they want.
Another company that I heard good things about is http://www.velcom.ca
They use the Sympatico infrastructure and offer a 5mbps down and 800kbps up package for $30 a month which is almost half the cost of what you pay to Rogers.
Sure it might be a bit slower on the downloading but it is not capped and they have actually said they do not plan to ever throttle torrent bandwitdth in their FAQ section.
I was all set to switch to them however I have a Rogers Home Phone line which is digital and not analog so they would have to come and setup a dry-DSL loop and that would cost about an extra $8 a month which still makes them cheaper.
Rogers is simply asinine nowadays.
I have Vonage VoIP connected to my motorola cable modem for the Rogers service in Toronto. It was just about a week ago that BT traffic went to 5 Kb/s. I’m still looking for an ISP I can switch to where I can keep my existing physical h/w setup (and not deal with re-wiring, VoIP mods, etc.)
It’s possible that the IP’s starting with 99.x.x.x could be the ones blocked. mine starts with that… but my downloads are usually ok its the uploads that kill me. 1.4 kbs. wtf!
Well my Rogers ip starts 74.x.x.x and I am being throttled through the floor.
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