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Bell Canada Throttles Wholesalers Without Notice

Posted by kdawson on from the because-it's-my-last-kilometer-that's-why dept.

knorthern knight writes "The Canadian family-run ISP Teksavvy (which is popular among Canadian P2P users precisely because it does not throttle P2P) has started noticing that Bell Canada is throttling traffic before it reaches wholesale partners. According to Teksavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault, Bell has implemented 'load balancing' to 'manage bandwidth demand' during peak congestion times — but apparently didn't feel the need to inform partner ISPs or customers. The result is a bevy of annoyed customers and carriers across the great white north."

6 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Share the road by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Unlike a highway which has a left hand lane for overtaking, the Internet is like a series of tubes through which data packets are propelled at relatively the same speed. When one type of packet starts taking up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, sometimes the tube owners decide to cut back on the number of tubes allotted to those packets and give more tube capacity to other types of packets. Flooding the tube system with any one type of packet degrades the user experience of all users. So it makes sense to protect the user experience of other types of packets by purposefully throttling the antagonist packet types.

    What is the result of the throttling? Is it lost connections, or is it just a slowdown of service? If it is just slowdown, I don't think these bandwidth hoggers have a claim. OTOH, if they are losing connection midstream, they too have a right to the road, even if they need to obey a slower speedlimit.

    1. Re:Share the road by iamdrscience · · Score: 4, Funny

      Unlike a highway which has a left hand lane for overtaking, the Internet is like a series of tubes through which data packets are propelled at relatively the same speed.
      So what you're saying is the Internet is not something that you just dump something on, it's not a big truck? Well that explains why I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday.
  2. Re:Just before everyone gets excited.... by kaos07 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I never stated that it did. I'm merely pre-empting a lot of posts along the lines of "Oh god it's the end of the world another large ISP is destroying our right to download Linux ISO's."

  3. Re:However in this case... by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't get your analogy at all.

    Let me try to break it down to something simpler.

    Imagine there were an infinite number of Supermen. Where would they fit? How super could he be if there are an infinite number of him taking up all the space in the universe?

    There wouldn't be any space left for Lois Lane or even the planet Krypton. You sometimes need to remove a few "super" users to make room for the normal people.

  4. Re:However in this case... by jamesh · · Score: 5, Funny

    You are in a maze of twisty little analogies, all stupid...

  5. It's not throttling... by Notquitecajun · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's just saying "eh" a bunch in the sentences.

    Which is how they learned to spell Canada, by the way. C, eh! N, eh! D, eh!

    /Dives behind desk before the RCMP polites me to death, because I've been waiting for a proper Canadian thread to use that joke and couldn't hold back anymore. With credit - I think - to Bob and Doug.