Rogers Fights BitTorrent by Throttling All Encrypted Transfers
In 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).
Previously: How To Use Usenet, A Beginners Guide
Next: Piracy Investigators Infiltrate Private Torrent Sites
64 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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.
I have recently been on the phone with rogers tech support about slow overall performance. the rep ran several test on my router as i eliminated different possibilities. she explained to me it must be the azureus, as the ping was five times faster when the app wasn’t running. keep in mind she was pinging the modem, not my box. i installed transmission and the same thing happened. it seems as tho my rogers service is slowed down across all ports when a torrent client is running. i am trying bitorrent next. Quacks like a duck to me.
I’ve been having the same issues with using torrents. However, I think it is more than Rogers throttling bittorrent. I download indian movies from a site (imtorrents), and it is consistently downloading at over 180kb/s +. Comparing that to Mininova and the like, which right is downloading at 0.1 :(. And both have roughly the same number of seeders (over 30).
i am not overly pleased with my service from rogers. torrent download and upload speeds are in the gutter. sometimes i will get really high d/load speeds [close to 200k if there are lots of seeders] but most of the time it is in the low teens. up load is in the single digits :( oh well, leave the pc on 24/7 and wait.
when i move, it will be a hard decision to stick with rogers for the isp/cell/cable [bundled package isn't too bad price wise]
Hey I just got secureIX premium downloads went from 30 kbs up to 500kbs and uploads went from 0 to 40kbs, seems a litle low but just glad to have the internet back. Oh Yeah for just 25 bucks I get 3 months and a static IP.
Yeah ME!!!
I use VPN and SSH connections to do lots of my day to day work. I’ve been noticing them getting slower and slower. Two weeks ago I noticed if I upload a large file through SSH my download rate disappears. (0-1 bps). If I upload via ftp I still get the full 8Mb/s download.
I phoned Rogers support; first guy told be I should be getting 8MBytes/sec not 8MBits/sec and I need to go buy a new modem. second guy said all my 5 linux machines had a virus and needed to be reformatted with Windows Vista to work with rogers. third guy hung up on me.
I’m stuck between a rock an a hard place. I can’t go to a business account unless the house is zoned commercial. DSL physical speed is 1Mb. (Thus no point going there) Rogers Web/FTP still work at full 8Mb/s
Rogers is the only cable internet provider in the area that offers more than 1Mb/s
If another company comes in the area… I’m definitely telling rogers where they can stick there non-service.
I had their Extreme plan with 100gb/mo installed at a new house 2 days ago. I had BT speeds of around 200-300kb/s on the first day. They have since capped my BT. I thought Telus’ service was ridiculous, this is even worse.
Also, if I leave my bittorrent software (be it Azereus or uTorrent) on for an extended period (say… an hour or so), my internet locks up. I have no explanation for this, but my internet literally locks up. Firefox browser has no response; Windows Live Messenger signs out; etc. My modem and router keeps blinking. Once i close my BT software, internet resumes as if nothing happened.
I did not pay $41 per month for this. And how do they expect me to use up my 100gb/mo without BT? Might as well downgrade my plan to the cheapest one if I can only surf websites and email/msn.
At my house and my girlfriends torrents are barely breaching 20 kbs, I even have the best tier at home. It appears that there is little that torrent program can do to stop the throttling… the only next course of action I can fathom is integrating a torrent client into a web browser - a uTorrent extension for Firefox maybe?
No idea if it is possible or would even work… but there must be something else to get past these crooks.
Throttling “all encrypted transfers” sounds like straight bullshit to me. Hello? There is no single encryption scheme. Do they throttle SSL, TLS, SSH? How could they detect any custom or modified standard encryption protocol? Either they are throwing smoke grenades or they simply throttle any kind of traffic they cannot identify. Has anyone compared a straight unencrypted HTTP/FTP transfer with a raw TCP transfer of random data?
i was with rogers and my speeds were still going around 200-600k until i moved last week.. now i am lucky if i reach 60k.. this is ridiculous…and its not my line because when i download off websites it seems even faster than before i moved. but considering that 99% of my downloading is down via bittorrent that doesn’t really matter much to me.. i hate rogers.
They’re throttling everything that moves.
I had a problem with WoW about half a year ago. The latency went from 30ms to 12k ms. I called them up, asking them to stop blocking WoW, as there is nothing illegal there. Obviously, they denied it all, switching me from one department to another.
I got pissed, threatened to burn down their main office and hung up.
Next day Wow worked smoothly again.
Now however, I have the same issue with SRO and bittorrent.
I doubt shouting through the phone will work, so I resorted to subtle harassment: Each day, I drop by their office and spend at least an hour arguing with their representative.
I imagine that sooner or later they will forbid me from entering their office; when this happens, I’ll have to find another way to make their life as hard as possible.
Have been using rogers for some time now why? because there is no other alternative here in New Brunswick and service sucks downloads are working fine uploads are down to 1KB/sec regardles what you use bittorents or winmx or any p2p I just wish that some other company moves in here.And seems to be they know that and thats why they do whatever they please since you got no place to go I hate rogers hope thay bankrupt or burn.
i’m in toronto, ontario, on a rogers wireless connection. five bars at all times on the modem. i’m routing it thru a linksys dir-625. with a torrent client open, websites cannot be found and msn messages come back as unsent, people can not send me messages, and eventually the connection is interrupted and cannot be re-established until several minutes after the torrent client has been closed. there’s got to be a way around this…i know some geek is working on it somewhere…i’m going to keep digging til there’s a solution. screw you, rogers. make as much as you can while you can cuz dinosaurs will die.
[quote comment="84205"]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?[/quote]
lol I hope they do just like TPB sued Media Defender I think…
Rogers will only continue to do this crap if people don’t make noise and switch to another company.
I’ll be switchin my service once i move and i’ll let them know exactly why. I can’t get a speed over 60kb/s and paying close to $50. Might as well use dialup.
Noticed some throttling a few months ago, but speeds have come back up. Not back to early ‘07 numbers, where I was downloading at about 400 kb/s to 600 kb/s but now about 300 kb/s to 400 kb/s. Guess it all has to do with where you live.
I Think,İt is very nice information…
Hitchhiker Nation
Even if bittorrent users switch from Rogers to another ISP, Rogers will not change their ways. Bittorrent users tend to consumer disproportionate resources, and so are less profitable than the grannies paying $50 to send email and buy crochet hooks on ebay. I’m sure Rogers would be more than pleased to either deny service to bittorrent users or, failing that, have them move to another ISP. Actually providing the services (I’m guessing) doesn’t fit into their business model.
Ugh, I’m dropping Rogers ASAP.
When I was using utorrent, my download speed was ~40 kb/s and upload was >10 kb/s, so I switched to azureus and encrypted my transfers. My dl improved to ~400 kb/s and my upload to ~120 kb/s. But ever since yesterday (January 14), it’s dropped to dl ~19kb/ul ~10 kb. This article is from April but I seem to have only been effected recently. I’m really tired of not receiving services for which I pay.
And guess what people ROGERS prices for internet will go up March 2008, so they can provide better service.
ROGERS eat sh@# and die
But that increase wont come off my pocket, had a 300$ plus account with them just canceled all my services homephone ,2cellphones ,cable with most packages, and internet.
HOW YOU LIKE THEM APPLES NOW ROGERS.
Only if everyone did like me they would be offering services at half of what they are currently offering
I live in a four unit building what I did was (5 years ago) subscribe to rogers cable ,internet, the works, and share that account between all 4 tenants all we need was a router with 6 ports was sufficient for internet connection,a digital box for each tv for cable, and now with their cag of 60G doesnt apply to us so in another words it’s unlimited downloads cause where (i mean I) am an old customer our cable and internet bill is peanuts between the 4 of us sometimes we reach as much 200G downloads alone its slow but leave ur comp on 24/7 with at least 25 torrents downloading at the end of 3 or 4 days u got 25 movies or whatever it is ur downloading for peanuts ,like crajack says
HOW U LIKE THEM APPLES NOW ROGERS.
This whole throttling business sucks, I”m in the Waterloo area, Rogers is really killing down my ssh connections to Uni servers, this whole nonsense is affecting my everyday work massively! I’m waiting for the the day WiMax comes out all over, I’ll surely kill these nasty Monopolies.
Bell is really messed up. They throttle so much that between 10am and 2 am(!!!!!) my whole connection drops to 40kb download and 28kb upload. When I use torrent client,40kb download become 30-35kb. It’s extremely wrong and unprofessional. I can’t even watch Utube movies with shitty speeds like this. I hate how they ask 50$ a month for such crappy service. I am swtiching in 2 week,so i am happy.
rogers charged me $40 more dollar fee for downloading a movie over 2 gb
they said customers can only download 2gb permonth and that is it
Whats a good service to switch from rogers in the TORONTO area that wont traffic shape?
Sounds like it is time for everyone to band together and start a class action lawsuit against Rogers. They are not giving the service that they promised in the slightest, and are breaching the contract that they have with their customers…. a no-no in ANY country in the whole world.
hey so is Rogers enforcing the 60GB bandwidth limit by charging if you go over? I read some forums(and Wiki) that said they are not currently doing it. Is that true?
First of all I have been a cable and DSL tech. I am a special tech now that does computer repairs and DSL but know allot about the systems used when I send the field techs out for the US version.
After reading some of the comments added hear from rogers reps that have been called I have decided to speak up on a tech standpoint.
The more doanload activity on a server/node the greater wear on the machines is correct but a proper serice adds newer servers that also preform better to increase space or replace older models. My rogers service went from 100-300kb which I was happy with even with 614 gigs cap before they would warn you. they ignore 1 gig difference I was told to 30kb or less even on regular downloading from norton and other antivirus comapnies that I see on my jobs Internet users are getting 80-300kb depending on computer conditions. 90% of my downloads are tv shows and older movies you can’t get easily after 5 years.
Rogers main reason that started throttling was they put VOIP on the exsisting servers without inprovements. The servers mus be fairly old even with all the R&D fees that they can’t handle 100kb torrent or regular downloading. It should be the higher the speed package the greater torrent speeds since I have the 6megs package 100kbs seems resonable to me. I use my downlaods on my computer like a VCR since my hours can be anywhere from 12 to 15 hours away from home that tapes can’t do and rather not have the cost of PVR and other chices since 60 hours HD won’t cover 2 weeks.
I am switcing to acanac which is offering 5 meg service at $19 for the first year including tax and regular price $34 a month. NO RESTRICTIONS.
I forgot to add the 99 IP address that were bough with torrent restrictions is a load of (you get the point). Rogers can manage the new IP within weeks of obtaining them. They were made delibarately for restricting internet since Azerus automaticly claims restricted Internet. This is another proof that the info they spout about whta is being done is 90% garbage mixed with 10% truth.
yingjai,
Here is an article that may or may not help. I ran into this same thing with Comcast recently:
http://youarestupid2.blogspot.com/2008/01/comcast-vs-bittorrent.html
here’s an idea, instead of limiting the amount of bandwidth there is in use, why not you know… increase the bandwidth? I know it’s not as easy as it sounds… but when us (as in the americans) are ranking 17-20th in terms of internet speed, someone is doing something wrong.
Use VPN.
http://blacklogic.com
I just heard on the News here in Toronto this morning, News 680 am (a Rogers owned station) that Broadband in a couple of years will be non-existent due to teenagers downloading music and going onto video sites like YouTube.
Let me put on my Tin Foil hat. Rogers will slow down traffic on purpose to try and get everyone buy into their new fast pipeline. Which will be fast to the sites that pay them money and the ones that don’t well they’ll be like 56k slow. But Disney, CBC and CNN will be super fast.
This is called Net Neutrality. We really need to fight.
I was told, by Rogers’s techs, that I would receive unlimited access to the net however it would only be slower. I also asked if they slowed down any programs and was given a firm no as this would not be legal. I was asked why I this was a question? My response was that I had noticed a major difference with the same models of computers and different ISP download responses.
Now Rogers sends a custom notice that tells me that I have to accept a notice that I will be charged $5:00 per MB after June.
Not only has Rogers mislead me about my access time, they, in my opinion, hacked into Google and or distorted the intended page I was to search on. This is a breach of privacy as Rogers sent me an email telling me that I have illegally downloaded a patch from Microsoft. Microsoft had a different view. This same company creates a breach of another company’s software and calls it progression. I am also expected to click on a tab that will remove the notice from my computer. Note: Rogers always does things with addendums attached, by this way you agree to have your internet time knocked down to well below 50% while Rogers continues to profit off your money. This may truly be only a warning as stated by Rogers, however you must look at your own and hones dealings with Rogers to form your conclusion. I am moving all my services away from this company. The only action Rogers will understand is when ALL of this company’s customers decide to say that we have had our fill as we know this reaches beyond concessions. This reached dictation. Be the smart person you are, Speak through your wallet. Change services now, but don’t forget to ask questions and record your calls.
This works great. There are plenty great providers out there; you will trip over them the moment you steer away from Rogers.
Rogers sucks plain and simple.
They are cutting the traffic because it costs a large amount of money to revamp the whole system so it handles the traffic properly. I’ve been told this plenty of times by their staff. They also took down their customers access to the usenet(news groups) services and then raised the price of their services. As of March 15/2008 they also decreased the GB cap limit on all accounts. Remember something people…..IT’S A COMPANY! It bought out the Blue Jays and even outsources their call centers to save money. All it’s concerned about is making money without giving out the proper services. The Blue Jays suck ass, and in the future they will be cutting down their GB cap limit even more. The only way to stop them is to cut your services completely. If that’s not an option then decrease the amount of services you have with them. Go with another cell phone provide(like virgin), change your internet plan, YOU DON’T NEED HIGH SPEED TO SURF THE NET. They burn fools into thinking you need their 5mbs package in order to send emails, surf or buy things from the net. YOU DON’T! The lite service will do. Stop complaining about them and do something about it, otherwise you fools will have no one to blame but yourselves.
Rogers(Bell) indeed is slowing (throttling ) internet high speed against contract.
I use high speed wireless portable other wise known as inukshuk.
Premium prices and now slower than dial up between 6 pm and twelve pm.
High speed in the arctic but none within eye site of the CN tower.Time for public boycott as rogers and Bell
are co managing the potable wireless
and the site near me is Bell managed.
No high speed here!
if you are in Toronto you are f*cked, there are no choices but Rogers and Bell. And if you live in a condo or apartment it is Rogers or bust. Talk about monopoly.
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