Slashdot Mirror
Bell Canada's Misinformation About Throttling
rsax writes "Bell Canada's chief of regulatory affairs Mirko Bibic has been attempting to justify the throttling of the last-mile connection to independent ISPs. As is typical, Bell Canada is abusing people's confusion between issues around Network Neutrality and the last mile natural monopoly. If people continue to confuse these two related but separate issues, Bell Canada and other incumbent phone and cable companies will win this critical debate."
Bell does make one valid point that the smaller ISPs are not speaking about, namely that they are purchasing bandwidth from bell wholesale. There is nothing stopping those ISPs from installing their own routing centres, even within Bell's infrastructure whereby the only must lease the lines, not the other stuff. Instead, they want to avoid such infrastructure investment. That being said, most of the small ISP's probably lack the capital to undertake such an endeavor.
I like to kill your couch. HE DIED HARD! MOO.
I need an analogy to understand what's happening. :-)
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
How frequently would one need to download a Linux distro? Is this a common thing for you?
Not everybody surfxors the Interwebs for pr0n and MP3z you know....
That's just blatantly untrue. Unless you are also including people who don't have access to computers and the internet.
The Canadian government should just nationalize the last mile cables and have a government agency responsible for maintaining and upgrading the lines. Bell has enjoyed its monopoly position with free right of way, government subsidies and floor pricing set by CRTC so Bell can not complain they made a loss by setting up the line in the first place.... their investment has been multiplied tenfold.
And for those skeptics who think they government would not be able to maintain it I would say this: If they could make our roads run in a decent way, the garbage collection in a decent way then the last mile cabling could be done in a decent way also. Ofcourse if required they could just contract the maintenance out to Bell Canada but then at least the government would be incharge.
somebody think of the FREE porn!
Yea 99% of those downloading torrents are not downloading porn, mp3s, movies and other warez.
One day "the people" are going to learn the only thing a company is interested in is making money. They work for the consumer when it's more profitable to work for the consumer than it is to do something that isn't in the interested of the consumer. Network congestion is not solved by throttling, the only thing throttling does is make the internet slower. Which is supposedly the very thing it is supposed to solve.
Of course, that's what they say. Here's the thing, if those guys could figure out a way to charge people for calling me on my phone, they would. Oh, but you say they are already paying for phone coverage, well our phone network is getting over used, we need set priorities, so we are going to direct your call in 5 minutes while more important people (who paid extra) can make calls to out customers right now. Sounds stupid doesn't it. IT'S THE SAME THING THEY ARE PROPOSING.
One thing I don't get, why does something magically get confusing when the words "computer" or "internet" are used in the business discussion? Like somehow it's all of a sudden a debatable thing to talk about?
Oh, that article writer is an idiot. Net Neutrality needs to me set in stone by law, end of story. Networks are made faster by putting in more pipes, not by turning off/down some of them.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Actually, that's not even remotely true. Rogers used to throttle BT bandwidth. There were legitimate things that I wanted to do with BT that I couldn't. I am a hobbyist photographer, and I sometimes share stock photos with my buddies. I wish I could've used BT to share those huge RAW files, but I couldn't. I also have to download Linux distros, and WoW updates. Those are legitimate actions that I couldn't engage in because of the throttling. Does engaging in those activities make me a "system abuser"?
As far as I can tell, Rogers doesn't throttle anymore since I've experienced up to 10Mbps for some of my BT transfers, and they've actually offered HIGHER throughput since they stopped throttling (from 8Mbps to 10Mbps). They now put, and enforce, an advertised bandwidth cap on all their plans. My particular plan, the highest available, has 95GB of transfer. They also notify you when you reach 75% of your capacity. If their current practices are any indication, I think that "this neutrality business" is actually a very simple thing to solve. I'm getting exactly what they tell me I'm paying for, a 10Mbps line with a 95GB cap. No draconian laws or heavy oversight. The cure is simple. It's to give your customers what you tell them you will. Instead of advertising "unlimited" or "unmetered" bandwidth, offer different bandwidth caps and different throughput levels at different price ranges.
I have to applaud Rogers for doing this. They've gone about it the right way, and I am now a very, very satisfied customer.
I'm sorry, that's a lie. I just can't get too excited about this type of thing. The only users who are really inconvenienced by traffic shaping are the system abusers. All others use a paltry amount of bandwidth which is not throttled.
The tumult over this neutrality business is boring. The only way to solve this is to enact and enforce draconian laws and heavy oversight to make sure that net neutrality is maintained. The cure is more expensive than the disease.
Makes me sleepy... zedzedzed... It's more a matter of principle. If I pay over priced rates for X-Level of service, I expect that said ISP meet their legally bound obligations and provide X-Level of service. e.g. If I'm paying for a 10Mb/1Mb then damn well better have a constant 10Mb/1Mb connection, not a 10Mb/1Mb in off hours and a 5Mb/.5Mb during the prime hours.
I think the issue lies with the fact that Bell itself is confused. Just remember that upper management doesn't know squat about techie stuff like internets and tubes and stuff. The CEO used to work for CN rail - a company he nearly ran into the ground by causing numerous safety issues, firing inspectors for mentioning things that needed repair. He probably just told the techies to "Make it cheaper for us using any and all means possible. Fuck the customers."
"The only users who are really inconvenienced by traffic shaping are the system abusers. All others use a paltry amount of bandwidth which is not throttled."
Huh? You've got to be joking. People streaming endless YouToob garbage take up a 'paltry' amount of bandwidth? Large scale data transfers to co-located servers? VOIP applications like Skype? Just about any streaming application takes a significant amount of bandwidth and I suspect that you are aware of this.
The ONLY - your words - users who are inconvenienced are 'system abusers' (your own perjorative)? Here you have adopted the dishonest language of the money-hungry state-supported ISP's.
First off, I fail to understand how a customer who is using their service as advertised (X amount of throughput) can 'abuse' the system. Do they send endless amounts of SYN packet requests? Beat their modems and forget to send them birthday cards? What is your definition of abuse?
I certainly don't call it abuse if I pay 2$ to cross a toll road at a max rate of speed of 55 mph. Nor would I call it abuse if the toll road company offers to allow me 'unlimited' access to the road for 20$ a month, even were I to drive tour buses packed with people down the road, 24/7. If the toll road operator complained about the excessive traffic my bus was generating, they have two options: widen the road or amend the contract. They cannot simply shoot the tires as I pass by in my bus (and everyone else driving a bus), then tell everyone they have improved road service.
All of this being said, I've already cancelled my Bell Sympatico residential service earlier this week, to become effective on May 14th. I had previously been a Sympatico customer with the same account for over 6 years. I am sure I am not the only person who's taking such action. Paying good money for a connection capable of 600+ KBps, yet only allows me to achieve 30KBps for torrents, is like me burning my money. Maybe another company will value my cash more than Bell seems to. We shall see, I suppose...
you right, if they can't delivery what they sell, don't sell that much. It's like buying a car that the vendors says it goes to 300km/h but... only gets to 100km/h because you are "abusing" the car you payed for...
If its a good deal or not really isn't the issue (yet).
If my ISP wants to throttle my connection to a specific speed, or only of specific protocols, they can. But goddamnit they NEED to tell me this BEFORE I sign up, so I know what I'm buying.
If I purchase an "unlimited" plan at 10mb's, I expect unlimited usage of that 10 mb like because well shit thats what I'm paying for isn't it?
If my ISP does not want to invest in infrastructure to support growing traffic demands thats their business (a poor decision I think but hey I'm not a stockholder) and therefor can no longer deliver unlimited plans, they need to own up to that. If my ISP can't give me unlimited they need to advertise what they are giving me.
The GP noted he was a happy customer because there was no bullshit, he pays a certain amount and he knows exactly what hes getting.
He didn't sign up for an unlimited plan at 15 mb and find out it drops to 2 mb after the first 10 minutes, he's not getting cut off with no notice because of some sketchy rule in the ToS that lets his ISP decide hes misbehaving, certain services aren't slower than others. He's got a net connection, its got a limit (though if you need more than 95 gigs a month clearly its time to cut back on the pron), but he knows exactly what those limits are.
Sounds fairly decent to me.
Finally it should be interesting to note, since his ISP is selling him throughput, not the connection it self, that it actually provides the ISP incentive to make sure his connection is as fast as possible. A faster connection means hes more likely to go over his limit and incur an extra surcharge, in this case they WANT your BT to work well because if you go nuts on it they make more money.
Areas where flat rate is the norm will inevitably see infrastructure investment stagnation, bandwidth caps, throttling etc etc. With flat rate, there's really no incentive for ISPs to invest in more bandwidth. They don't get any more money for doing it. You want infinite bandwidth? Go pay for it.
Deleted
Unfortunately, they can and do put in "traffic calming" infrastructure downgrades which is analogous to what Bell is doing. But that is a gripe for another day...
My rights don't need management.
Make the last mile a co-op: any ISP (or phone company) that want's access can buy into it, and they pay a membership fee as well as a per-line fee.
All moneys and profits for infrastructure stay with-in the co-op, and companies compete on service and price. Profits are determined by how efficiently you run things.
Torrents aren't just for Linux distros and media piracy. Jamendo distributes music via torrent and World of Warcraft updates are torrents, for example. Jamendo might be a small fish, but you probably know at least one person playing WoW.
Managed torrents (like WoW updates) would be an excellent way to distribute operating system patches and updates.
- chrish
Where do you live? The roads I drive on are full of potholes and crumbling bridges. The excessive gasoline tax I pay (that is supposed to maintain transportation infrastructure) is siphoned off for other things. You really want the people running our roads to run our internet connections?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I think it should be obvious to everyone that no ISP can provide 10mbps (or even 5) to every customer AT ONCE. The amount of infrastructure that that would require is beyond of budget of any ICP.
Of course they have to limit your bandwidth at times. Or am I'm missing the point?
This isn't really a debate about network neutrality. This debate is about Bell throttling traffic on OTHER People's networks.
Bell has no legitimate business interest in how third parties run their network since said third parties have to pay for any resources used.
This is about Bell wanting to raise prices for it's own customers but needing to make sure theres no competition for them to jump to first.
Yes, all I have to say to the grandparent is *screw you*.
I run a small webserver through my account with Teksavvy, which leases lines from Bell. In the last while I've noticed that my encrypted traffic (IMAPS in particular) when connecting to home has been shit during the day, but fine during the night. From various things I've read online it appears that the times for this coincide nicely with the periods when Bell likes to mess with traffic.
It's not just torrents that Bell is messing up, there is collateral damage. To add to this, the last time my main desktop had filesystem issue and I needed to download a LiveCD for fixing... the torrent download rate of 5kbps really wasn't a pleasant thing.
I am fairly inconvenienced by the fact that my VOIP service has suddenly turned to shit from 4:00 pm to 2:00 am because of a change in Bell's (NOT my ISP's) policies.
Granted, this only happens if I am running bittorrent. However, throttling P2P is one thing, but turning my phone service (which competes directly with Bell's offering) into an echo-y, choppy mess is a whole other ball of wax.
And, yes, I know how to set up QOS on my router to give VOIP priority over BT, but during the throttling period, this doesn't work anymore. That effectively means that during that time I cannot use ANY P2P services, since I haven't yet mastered the ability to predict when other people will call me, or I will urgently need the phone. Furthermore (I could go on all day), it's not even enough to simply stop Bittorrent when someone calls - there seems to be some 'settling time' before my connection gets back to normal, and usually I have to hang up and call back.
I've asked this before: what happens if I need to call 911 suddenly? I know it's probably not the best idea to rely on VOIP for that sort of thing in general, but my phone service has been working great (P2P or not) for the past two years.
And all this without giving any advance warning to the third-party ISPs. They've still yet to explain why that was necessary.
CBC(our national broadcaster) has podcasts for many of their shows and is trialing a bittorrent based video distro service.
Now go troll elsewhere, this bridge is too small for you.
Just out of curiosity, when did we decide that monopolies, and the abuse of power were to be encouraged? Did I miss a memo, or something?
All right everyone, move along, nothing to see here. Free market capitalism is SO Twentieth Century. Everybody move along ...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I hate when people bring up the Linux distro argument. Even if you were to download a DVD sized Linux distro every month (which would be quite odd) I'm sure they still wouldn't have a problem with it. If that's all people ere doing, there would be no problem. If it was just people downloading MP3s, they probably wouldn't complain either. What they are complaining about is the people who download 2 or 3 movies every day. These people exist, and they put a real strain on the network. If you want 300 GB of transfer every month, you better be prepared to pay for it. Most people have no more need for that much bandwidth, and it's time for those users to stop subsidizing those who do use that much bandwidth.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It seems kind of odd to claim that last-mile internet access is a natural monopoly, considering that it's subject to "public right-of-way" regulations and fees imposed by local governments.
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
So you like being ripped off by Rogers. Not surprising.
At least they're not lying to their subscribers, unlike Bell. He's making an informed decision, instead of being defrauded like everyone else.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
What if you were transporting wide loads down the toll road at 10 KM/H and ruining the use of the road for everyone else. The road can only be so wide. Only so many cars can fit on that road at any time. If you are downloading at full speed 24/7, then you are using up bandwidth that others can't use, and ruining their experience. Granted, I don't think that any ISP should ever offer unlimited service, as it is impossible for them to provide. But saying that just because they don't specifically say you have a limit, doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with their network. There is no minimum speed on most highways, but if too many people drive too slow, it causes problems for everyone.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The government should be in charge of laying out the infrastructure and lease it to all ISPs at the same price. What they do with it beyond that point is 100% their choice.
The problem with Bell is that they own both the infrastructure and the service, so when they sell the service they give themselves lower infrastructure leasing rates than 3rd-party ISPs and make it impossible for them to compete. By all other accounts Bell is *worse* than all other ISPs. Their own competitive advantage, price, is gained through illegal monopolistic practices.
The government should nationalize the infrastructure and fine the heck out of Bell for their practices.
Didn't Bell say that cable and satellite is a plenty of competition? I guess it is their answer to your why =(
I switched from Bell in November as soon as they started throttling my traffic.
In March my traffic with TekSavvy was throttled as well due to Bell.
There is no other Internet provider that I can use and get Unlimited Internet usage package at speeds for ADSL or Cable.
Bell as singlehandedly brought their competition to same level of crappy service that they offer. I as consumer have no alternates. There is nothing I can do other than to write to all politicians in my areas, as well as inquire with all Internet providers as to what they are doing to keep me as a customer satisfied and fight Bell.
So far, politicians seem ignorant of the issues and web services all throughout GTA are promising to fight Bell.
While in Europe and Asia people are getting fiber coming up their doorstep, North America is tightening it's belt on innovation, and technology .
We used to be innovators and leaders. What happened here?
The people that are using that amount of bandwidth for the most part don't care if the companies want to charge more while still allowing them to continue using the service how they please. Thats not the freakin' problem, the problem is when they say it's unlimited but then secretly block/throttle someones traffic instead of just telling them they are breaking a rule and making them pay more. Why are these companies so scared to just be upfront with people who want to download this much???
I do like the fact that they are letting you know. Having said that, I live in a household where we average 120GB per month on good months... and thus I was hoping to move on to DSL though this issue with Bell is making me pause a moment. I wonder if this issue will ever get resolved and how long it would take. One hand, I don't want to pay $2 / gb over usage...on the other, I don't want to pay for something that's only 30 KB for even simple browsing.
dude...
that is the lamest car analogy EVER
personally, I wonder how much we each lose due to corporations corrupting the market
it seems that there's no justice when it's the shop that's doing the lifting
I blame AOL and all the overage charges people got back in the day for making people averse to subscribing to any ISP that isn't unlimited.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
that is the lamest car analogy EVER Not by a long shot. Actually, a speed governor on a car that is capable of much higher speeds is a very apt analogy in this case. Better than most other analogies I've seen.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There are these people out there called 'computer guys'. These people build computers for themselves, for friends, and sometimes for a living. I am one of these people. Sometimes I want Ubuntu, sometimes Fedora, and sometimes I want to try a few different distros just to see what works best with the hardware at hand. I regularly download half a dozen Linux distros every month. And thanks to Comcast, each one takes nearly a day to complete.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
The problem is that any use of DPI is a problem to all. VOIP, VPN and gaming gets caught up in this. And if the majority of people don't get excited about these kind of things, then what is stopping the telcos from doing more to our connection. Replace ads in websites? throttle YouTube? How about blocking sites/services that compete with their own? Start getting excited!
In Soviet Russia, Nigel makes plans for you!
Yes, but the distros don't change that fast. Once you have downloaded Ubuntu, you're good for 6 months. Do you redownload every time you want another copy? Even if you have 10 different distros you use, I couldn't see you needing to download more than 20 distros per year.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
As soon as my move date comes down, I'm doing the same. Dryloop customer for 2 years now.
Hello TekSavvy!
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
It doesn't matter how much data you transfer per month, YOU ARE ALWAYS THROTTLED. A grannie that tried to download a single torrent that uses 2GB per month is throttled. A person who uses 500GB a month is also throttled. They are not just throttling heavy users. The chance of a grannie downloading a torrent is pretty low but their throttling is also affecting legitimate encrypted traffic such as VPNs.
Actually, where I live in (Portugal) there is a default minimum speed for EVERY highway.
At the very most you may find traffic signs decerasing that even further.
There:)
And if my ISP says unlimited, I will demand unlimited. If a restaurant advertises "all you can eat", I'll bloody have my meal until I am satisfied or they run out of food (the former bring the most likely), and I will call the cops on them if they try to go back on their own word.
I see it like this: if you WANT to have a business, you must obey the law AND follow what you advertise to the letter (something that is actually mandatory by law, in my country: you advertise shit, you'd better do what you advertised or you are fucked). You fail to do one of those things you are not fit to run that specific business and should lose it.
In the end, there can be only one!
Ok People ... since we have some more discussion here.
how about cross link this with the on going struggle in http://www.dslreports.com/ struggle....
http://www.freeourbandwidth.com/
Help with your comments from some 3rd party ISP's in http://www.dslreports.com/forum/teksavvy
Ok People ... since we have some more discussion here.
how about cross link this with the on going struggle in http://www.dslreports.com/ struggle....
http://www.freeourbandwidth.com/
Help with your comments from some 3rd party ISP's in http://www.dslreports.com/forum/teksavvy
I don't understand this networking tech, last mile, independents, but I have personally seen throttling on myself in the last 2 months. I pay $50 a month for the unlimited high speed sympatico since June 2002. About once a week for the last 2 months my download speed drops in the middle of downloads. Last night it went from 400,000 bytes/sec to 40,000 bytes/sec. The only way I have been fixing this is power off the modem then router, waiting, disable/enable the connection and usually 30 minutes later I can be back up to normal, expected, payed for speed. Very annoying.
yah I make videos and release them to my friends on bittorrent and some times they are huge even after I compress them down.. so what.. and a apt-get upgrade if you have not done one in a month is usually pretty hefty amount of data too .. might not be bitttorrent but its big.. and voip can use 80kb/s using g711 (Ulaw/Alaw) codec (freeworlddialup.com
with all the video sites.. man..
I am happy with teksavvy they kick butt
Those bandwidth hogs sound like a really difficult problem. How could we deal with them?
1. Keep track of how much bandwidth each user uses (this is, of course, trivially simple compared to the packet examination required for shaping, and no doubt they do it already) and, at the end of the month, charge them a quantity of money proportional to the bandwidth they consumed.
2. Slow all peer-to-peer traffic to a crawl and hope for the best. When the best fails to materialize, abuse your last-mile monopoly to impose the same ridiculous policy on your competitors.
No, try tripling that number. Ubuntu alone has 8 different variants. Other distros have similar variants. You need to understand that I have laptops, desktops, ultra-mobile solid state pcs, virtual machines, et al. Not to mention that about 1 in five of my downloads don't pass the checksum test, and need to be downloaded again.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
So are you saying that small ISPs are the victims here? If we wanted to maintain Net Neutrality, would it be best to petition them or the providers they get their bandwidth from?